Aunt Ellie swivelled round on her knees to look up at her. “Of course I have. That’s why I brought my handbag.”
“Then couldn’t you let yourself in?” Harmony suggested.
Aunt Ellie came out of her frenzy a little, enough to climb to her feet and open her handbag. “Yes, yes indeed,” she said. “I can go in and drag her away, can’t I?”
“If you think this Ryan will let you,” Troy muttered.
Ryan! Hayley thought. That’s it! “Not Ryan,” she said. “His name’s Orion.”
Troy and Harmony stared at Hayley. Aunt Ellie fumbled up a jingling bunch of keys and found the one that fitted Aunt Aster’s door. “There!” she said turning it in the lock. “Now we shall see!” With her grey hair standing wildly out all over her head and almost seeming to give off electric sparks, Aunt Ellie barged the door open and dived inside the house. “Come along!” her voice came back to them.
Rather hesitantly, Troy, Harmony and Hayley followed her indoors, into a tiny dark hallway. Harmony said, “Then you need to find his bow, don’t you? I wonder if it’s—”
A door slammed further inside the house. Uproar broke out. They could hear Aunt Ellie shrieking, Aunt Aster yelling and huge, rumbling shouts from the Highlander.
“Do you think we can do any good in there?” Troy asked.
“We’d only add to the noise,” Harmony said. “Let’s go home. We left supper on the table and the front door wide open.”
“Poor old Aster,” said Troy. “Why hasn’t she the right to be happy? Yes, let’s go.”
“But his bow—” Hayley began as she turned unwillingly to go outside again. And stopped.
The front door had swung almost shut after they came in. Propped behind it, beside the hinges, where anyone might leave an umbrella or a walking stick – or even a gun, Hayley supposed – was a six-foot-tall thing. All she could see of it in the dim light was that it was very slightly bent and most beautifully made, with elaborate decorations down the flatter side, leading into the silver wire of the handgrip in the middle. But the advantage of the dim light was that Hayley could see that the middle of each coiled decoration held a small twinkling light, making a whole row of tiny twinkles.
“Look!” she said.
“Quick!” said Troy. “Get one off.”
He and Harmony held the tall longbow steady while Hayley picked and peeled at one of the lower twinkles. To her relief, it came free quite easily and rolled into her palm like a small loose diamond. Very carefully, she zipped it away into the smallest of her trouser pockets.
“Now let’s get out,” Harmony said, whispering even though the shouting in the back part of the house was louder than ever.
One by one, they slid themselves round the edge of the front door and out into the street.
As Troy slid out after Hayley, a taxi thundered to a stop in the road beside them. Its rear door burst open and Uncle Jolyon climbed swiftly out, glaring with anger. His belly heaved, his white beard bristled sparks like Aunt Ellie’s hair, and his eyes were blue pits you did not like to look into.
All three of them backed against the wall of the house, where Harmony somehow managed a faint smile. “Hallo, Jolyon,” she said.
The blue eye-pits blazed at her. “I’ll deal with you in a moment,” Uncle Jolyon said. “All of you.” His head bent sideways to listen to the yelling from inside the house. “Orion’s in there now with her, isn’t he?” he said, and to the taxi, “Wait.” To Hayley’s extreme relief, he marched straight past her into the house, ducking his head to get through the door, and the door slammed shut after him.
“Run!” said Harmony. “Run for your lives to the mythosphere!”
They ran. Harmony took the lead at first, across the road and up along the other side, until she came to a steep alley between the houses that plainly led upwards to the mountains. Hayley was so terrified that, as soon as the alley led them among moist slabs of granite and tufts of heather, she put on comet speed and sprinted ahead, with Troy and Harmony pelting to catch up.
“Wait!” Harmony panted. “Look where you’re going, Hayley!”
Hayley did not care where she was going. All she wanted was somewhere to hide from Uncle Jolyon. She fled up a steep stony path and round several sharp bends until blessedly, blindingly, damp white fog began to blow around her. She slowed down a little so as not to lose the others. “Trees!” she said frantically, more or less to herself. “I want trees to hide in.”
“He can blast trees,” Troy panted.
“Trees – somewhere where Flute and Fiddle are,” Hayley insisted, and ran on.
The fog, very thick now, and still blowing in gusts around her, began to grow darker, as if night was coming on. Well, I suppose we did just have supper, Hayley thought. She ran on upwards into increasingly blue-dark mist, where she thought she could just glimpse streaks and flickers of sunset up ahead.
In her terror, she almost didn’t notice the trees when she did find some. What came to her first was their smell. Pine trees, she thought. A tarry, spicy smell. Thank goodness! Oddly enough, the streaks and flickers of red light were brighter now, and they had a smell too. Wood smoke.
Here Harmony stopped her by grabbing both her shoulders. “Slow down, Hayley! I think we’re on a really dangerous strand here. We have to be careful!”
Hayley found that they were standing on dry grass in a thick forest of pine trees. In the misty near-dark it was hard to see the pines except as great black cone shapes in all directions. Most of them had wide lower branches that swept right to the ground. But something was definitely burning up ahead and it gave enough light for Hayley to see just how dense and green and prickly those lower branches were.
Several long-legged dog shapes went trotting lightly and springily across the path ahead.
Wolves! Hayley thought. Unless they’re something worse! She hardly dared move.
“See what I mean?” Harmony whispered.
“What’s that noise?” said Troy.
It was screaming, but it was singing too – very bad, discordant singing, as if a large choir of ladies had each decided to sing a different song as loudly as they could. It seemed to be coming down the slope towards them. There were shrieks of joy and shrieks of something worse. “Eye-oh, eye-oh,” sang the choirs.
“Oh dear,” Harmony said. “I think these are the Maenads.”
For some reason, Grandpa had never told Hayley anything about the Maenads, but she had no need to ask what they were. They arrived as Harmony spoke, under a blinding mass of crackling pine torches.
