The Game Read online

  “Now listen, love,” Erytheia said, with her hand on the latch of the gate, “if anything goes wrong, or even starts to go wrong, go at once to the very end of this strand of the mythosphere.”

  “Everything hardens off there and turns into stars,” Hesperethusa added. “You’ll probably be a star of some sort yourself out there, but don’t be afraid. Nothing much can hurt our family out at the edge there. Just alter your path a little and go home another way.”

  “All right,” Hayley said. Her voice had gone down to a whisper.

  Both ladies bent and kissed her. Feeling so nervous that the skin of her stomach tightened and jumped under the nearly healed scratches from her first night in Ireland, Hayley slipped round the gate and in amongst the apple trees. Apples hung all about her, just above the level of her head. They did not look brightly gold. They were more like ordinary apples, with their gold fuzzed over with brown and some red streaks amid the brown. But they were obviously gold, for all that, drooping heavy on the tree, just as they were obviously growing and alive.

  This looks too easy! Hayley thought suspiciously. But she stretched up her hand to pick the nearest apple.

  “Er – hem!” said the dragon Ladon.

  He was coiled round the trunk of that tree. His scales were the same crusty grey as the lichen on the trunk of the tree, which was why Hayley had not seen him up to then.

  Chapter Eight

  Hayley froze, with her arm up and her fingers curled round ready to pick the apple, and simply did not dare to move. She hardly dared breathe. She was too scared even to think.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” the dragon said. His steamy breath wafted round Hayley as he spoke. It smelt like a wood fire, sooty and woody at once.

  Hayley thought she had lost her voice. It took a real effort to whisper, “Please, sir, I need a golden apple.”

  “You can’t have one,” said the dragon. “Do you think I’m going to let you loose in the mythosphere with something that precious?” He rolled an eye at her, while his breath coiled up among the leaves of the tree, filling it with fog. Hayley stared at his eye. It was like looking into a far distant sun deep inside a glass ball. “Don’t I know you?” the dragon said, filling the tree with fog again. “A tasty morsel – lots of hair and a body that’s half red?” His long face left the tree trunk and began to stretch out towards Hayley. “Didn’t you come with a friend and steal one of my old scales the other day?” The tip of his nose was nearly on Hayley’s chest by then.

  He’s going to eat me! Hayley thought.

  The realisation unfroze her mind and she remembered Erytheia’s advice. “Yes, I was there,” she said. She managed to bend her stiff body and jacknife herself away to the outer edge of the mythosphere.

  Everywhere was stars suddenly.

  At least that meant that the dragon was quite a long way off. Hayley could see his starry jigsaw puzzle shape drifting in the distance, just beyond the huge starry woman, who seemed to have turned herself round to watch him as he glided towards the mighty weighing scales. Beyond the weighing scales, an enormous starry insect with an arched up tail was just coming into view. When Hayley looked the other way, she could see the lion, and a crab receding into the distance beyond the lion.

  I suppose it’s better to be safe and not have an apple, she thought sadly.

  Something rustled tinnily above and beside her.

  Hayley was sure the dragon had somehow crept up behind her. She froze again. But when she managed to make herself turn slowly round towards the noise, she discovered it was made by starry leaves rattling on a silver tree. It was the wood where she had come with Troy. She was still in an orchard of sorts, except that this one was made of stars. Trees stood all around her, gently quivering in the solar wind, each one heavy with round, moony fruit. Some of the fruits were blue, some silver-white, and some gently shining a faint, peachy gold.

  “Heaventrees!” Hayley whispered, and wondered who had told her or where she had read of the trees of heaven.

  It doesn’t matter, she thought. Moving very slowly and gently, she carefully chose the nearest, most golden looking of the fruit and crept her hand out towards it. As soon as her fingers were around it, she plucked it off its starry twig. It went twing.

  The head of the distant dragon whipped round towards her in a cloud of fiery flakes, but by then it was too late. Hayley clutched the golden apple in both hands and became a comet.

  She was a proper comet, not like Tollie’s pretend one. Her hair gathered together and flung itself out ahead of her like the flame on a blowtorch. Behind it, her body was a small, curled-up, icy ball. But because she was clutching the golden apple, she knew she was carrying with her all the seeds of life – all excitement, joy, growth and adventure. She could go anywhere in the universe with this and still be alive.

  She forged off on her strange, eccentric comet’s path. She felt as if she was going crazily fast, bombing along – and yet, at the same time, it felt like a slow, stately progress. She wheeled away from the zodiac and that fell slowly behind, the woman, the lion, the crab, and two starry men who seemed to be twins, all swinging aside and away like the view from a train window when the train is going really fast. And as soon as the zodiac was out of sight, Hayley discovered that being a comet was more fun than she had ever had in her life. She zoomed along, laughing.

  Her comet course, she knew, was a long thin oval. Since she was outward bound at the moment, in order to get back to Earth, she knew she was going to have to rush out to her very limit and then turn a hairpin bend before she could head back sunwards. That meant at least a light year of rushing. “Whoopee!” she shrieked as she sped outwards.

  It was bliss. It went on for ages. But at last she felt her speed dropping, as if she was coming near the end of her orbit. Turn the corner, she thought. Now!

  She swooped herself sideways. If she had had wheels, they would have squealed and smoked with her speed. Hayley shrieked again at the joy and danger of it. And, as she careered madly right, and right, and right again, she remembered Hesperethusa’s advice, to alter her path and go home a different way. Or that dragon will be waiting, she thought. So, when she came to the last bit of her turn, she swooped herself just a little bit more to the right and went rushing off again not quite the way she had come.

  And it was still bliss. Stars streaked past, pale, bright, red, blue and greenish yellow, forming themselves into starry animals, birds and people as they whirled by. Hayley bombed happily onwards, until one set of stars turned itself slowly into an enormous bear. The Great Bear, she thought, and knew she was almost home.

  Sure enough, if she peered forward and down through the veils of her own hair, she could see the Solar System looking just like it did on Grandpa’s computer. There was the sun in the middle and all the planets sedately circling it. She saw big Neptune and heavy, white Uranus, ringed Saturn and Jupiter looking sultry and yellow, with red blotches on it. Pluto was lurking somewhere out in the dark, while little Mercury and cloudy Venus seemed much too near the sun and likely to fry in its heat. And there circled red Mars and blue Earth.

  Hayley began to hope she was aimed properly at Earth, but as she hurtled onwards, it began to look much more as if she was heading straight for the sun. Comets did sometimes plunge into the sun, she knew. Grandpa had told her. She tried to sidle herself more into a line for Earth, but she couldn’t. The sun was actually pulling her.

  “Oh, help!” she said. “I’m going to die. What a waste, now I’ve discovered I can do this!”

  Then, before she had totally panicked, it seemed as if she was only going to pass very near the sun – to slide by perhaps a mere million miles away. She could already feel the blazing heat from it. When she looked at it, she could clearly see the twirling sunspots and the hissing, leaping lumps of flame. And she could see the person in green clothes standing in the hard, hot midst of it.

  “What?” Hayley thought. “People can’t—”

  She was s
till only halfway through that thought, when the person in the sun waved at her and shouted. “Stop!” he yelled. “Match velocities now!”

  Hayley found herself – not exactly slowing – gliding beside the sun at about the same speed and much too near for comfort. The heat of it uncurled her, melting her from around her apple. “Don’t do that!” she shouted. And found herself looking across at Flute. “Oh, of course,” she said. “Fiddle said you stood in the sun.”

  Flute stood with his arms folded, surrounded in leaping hissing heat. He did not look entirely friendly. “Until this morning,” he said, “I had a thousand and one golden apples. Now I’ve only got a thousand.”

  “Are they yours?” Hayley said. “I didn’t know—”

  Flute nodded, his hair leaping among the white hot flames. “And you’ve got another one in your pocket,” he said.

  Up until then, Hayley had clean forgotten that she had zipped Harmony’s prize apple into one of her trouser pockets. She would have liked to pat that pocket to make sure the plastic apple there was still safe, but she was a little too icy and curled up to do that. She said airily, “Oh, that’s only a plastic apple Harmony gave me for a prize in the game.”

  Flute grinned a little. “Is it? That girl Harmony has stolen more of my apples than I care to think of. She now has the run of the universe, probably the whole multiverse. She’s everywhere, in spite of your uncle Jolyon’s orders. Don’t go giving her that new one.”

  “I won’t then,” Hayley said. “I want to keep it.”

  Flute lost his grin. “Do you? Then you realise you’ll have to pay me for it, don’t you? My apples are never free.”

  “Oh,” said Hayley. It was a relief, in a way, to know that she need not be a thief. She hated the idea that she had been stealing from Flute of all people. But it had never occurred to Grandma to give Hayley any money before sending her away. Glumly, knowing she was penniless, Hayley asked, “How much do you want for it?”

  “I’ll take,” said Flute, “one of the stars from Orion’s bow. We want that quite urgently, as it happens.”

  “Er—” Hayley began.

  “I know you haven’t got it now,” said Flute. “You can give it me when you next see me. And I want your promise that you will.”

  “I promise,” Hayley said, feeling small and sad. She thought, I’ll have to ask Harmony what I do about that. Oh, dear.

  “Very well,” said Flute. “Off you go then.”

  Hayley peered through the cloudy spout of her hair and tried to turn herself towards Earth, which had moved quite a way further in its orbit while they talked. She would never have managed it, if Flute had not reached out and given her a shove. This sent her gliding off on a course that would meet Earth as it went on round.

  “See you soon,” he called as Hayley headed away.

  She was still moving quite fast, but to her disappointment not hurtling along any more. She was simply travelling on her own inertia and getting cooler again as she moved. She went from hot, to warm, to balmy, to lukewarm and, in spite of this, she melted steadily. Even when she glided into truly cold air somewhere on the night side of Earth, she was still melting. Dripping and distressed, she came uncurled in darkness and her hair fell back again around her shoulders as she landed and knew she was a human girl again. It was a dreadful loss. Hayley could not help sobbing a little as she stood still and carefully stowed the golden apple in another pocket with a zip. She sniffed and wondered which way to go.

  Someone came up to her in the near dark and said, “You need to take this strand here.”

  Hayley peered. She could see the strand, if she strained, like a path made of coal. “It doesn’t look very inviting,” she said.

  “Well, you are on the dark side here,” the man said.

  Hayley was sure she recognised his voice. She turned and peered up at his face. Under a black cap, his hair seemed white, and it blew about rather. “You’re Fiddle!” she said. “I’ve just met your brother again. And,” she added miserably, “I’m not a comet any more.”

  “I know,” Fiddle said. “You can always be one again later.”

  Hayley’s eyes seemed to have got keener for her time as a comet. She could pick out Fiddle’s face quite clearly now. Although it was a sad face, it really was remarkably like Flute’s. “Are you and Flute twins, by any chance?” she asked him.

  “That’s right,” he said. “We take it in turns to stand in the sun.”

  Chapter Nine

  Fiddle came a little way along the coaly path with Hayley. He said he wanted to make sure she didn’t miss the way, but Hayley was fairly sure he was being kinder than that. There seemed to be horrible things going on on either side of the path. There were screams and groans, and somewhere someone who sounded to be dying kept saying, “Water! Water! Oh, please, water!” Fiddle hurried Hayley along and Hayley tried not to look, until they came to a place where the air was full of desperate panting and a sort of grinding sound. Hayley could not help looking here.

  There was a hill to one side and she could dimly see someone trying to heave a boulder up it. All she could really see was a pair of straining legs in ragged trousers, some way above her head. But just as she looked, the person lost control of the boulder and it came rolling and crashing down, bringing the man with it. “Oh, curses!” he cried out, ending up in a heap, half under the boulder, almost at Hayley’s feet.

  “Is he all right?” Hayley said to Fiddle. She thought the man might be crying.

  Fiddle pushed her on. “Not really,” he said. “But there are no bones broken. He has to get up and push the stone again until he gets it to the top of the hill.”

  “Why?” said Hayley.

  “Because your uncle Jolyon says so,” Fiddle said. “He’s in charge here. This is what happens to people who offend him.”

  Hayley was glad to think she had never liked Uncle Jolyon. “Can’t anyone stop him?” she said.

  “Not very easily,” Fiddle said, “though they tell me that a seer called the Pythoness said it could be done. We’re trying to find a way. Now this is where I have to leave you. You’ll find things become more and more normal from here on, but do try to keep going whatever you see.”

  “Will I see you again?” Hayley said.

  “Quite probably,” Fiddle answered. He waved to her and turned back up the path.

  Hayley sadly watched him go. Even though she had only talked to him once and nodded to him with Martya, she always thought of Fiddle as her first real friend. She sighed and walked on.

  The path became a passage with barred prison cells on either side of it. Behind one of the thick doors, someone was yelling out, “I hate the lot of you! The whole lot of you!” From behind other doors, chains clinked.

  I suppose this is more normal, Hayley thought, shivering.

  She marched on. The passage went from arched stone to dingy brick and then to modern-looking concrete with strip lights in the ceiling, but there were still prison cells on either side. She came to a squarer part, where soldiers with guns were kicking someone who was writhing about on the floor. This was more normal, Hayley supposed. There had been scenes like this on Grandpa’s telly. But seen up close it was very nasty.

  “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!” she told the soldiers.

  Only one of them took any notice. He swivelled his gun round to point at Hayley. “Get out!” he said to her. And the woman soldier who seemed to be in charge snapped, “Shoot her,” without looking up from kicking.

  Hayley moved on in a hurry. There seemed to be nothing else she could do. Next moment, she was in a huge office, very brightly lighted, where people sat at desks in rows, all hard at work with computers and telephones. Hayley pattered quickly down the space at the side of the desks, hoping not to be noticed, until she came to the desk at the very end, where there was a man who seemed to be working harder than all the others put together.

  Here something made Hayley stop and look. This man had a large tray marked IN o
n one side of his desk, piled with papers, forms and plastic files. He was snatching these out at the rate of two a minute, studying them swiftly, marking some with a pen, putting some in a copier and then snatching them out, making notes about them on his computer, signing both copies and slapping them into a smaller tray marked OUT. Then he snatched up another set. He was going so quickly that Hayley was sure that he was going to get the IN-tray empty any second. But, just as he was down to one file and two forms, someone came along and dumped another huge pile on top of them. The man groaned and started working on those.

  What had made Hayley stop and stare, however, was not how hard the man was working: it was the look of him. He had black curly hair and a brownish skin. The curly hair was receding from his wrinkled forehead and there were rays of further wrinkles fanning from the sides of his big black eyes. He looked familiar. The way he moved was a way Hayley knew. In fact, although he was not young, he looked extraordinarily like the young man in the wedding photo that Grandma kept on Hayley’s mantelpiece.

  “Excuse me,” she said to him. The man looked up. The moment he did, Hayley was absolutely sure who he was. “What’s your name?” she asked him.

  “Foss,” he said. “Cyrus Foss. Forgive me – I’ve got so much work—”

  “Then you’re my dad!” Hayley said. “I’m Hayley Foss.”

  The man had bent over his papers again, but now he put them down and stared. “Hayley?” he said. “We had a baby girl called Hayley.”

  “That’s me!” Hayley said delightedly. They stared at one another wonderingly. “Why are you here?” Hayley asked.

  “Being punished,” her father said glumly, “for marrying Merope. It was forbidden. I never understood why, but I knew there was some kind of prophecy. So you’re Hayley? You don’t look much like your mother, but you’ve grown up very pretty. Where have you been all this time? Were you being punished too?”