again looked extremely surprised, as if nobody else had ever wanted to hug her.
“I’ll come and visit you in the mythosphere,” Hayley called as she too climbed down. She ran over and took hold of both her parents’ hands. I can live with them now! she thought blissfully. No more Grandma. And, whenever I want to, I can go and be a comet.
“We shall be leaving now,” Flute said to her. “This phase is over, so my brother and I change places again.”
“I’ve always wondered when you did that,” Harmony said. “Is it often?”
“Whenever we complete a new strand in the mythosphere,” Fiddle told her. His sober dark suit, as he stood there, was slowly flushing green in the grey evening light. But his eyes still shone blue. Flute’s baggy green clothes were fading to a severe grey, although they remained baggy and his white hair still blew about on his shoulders.
Hayley thought, I’ll still be able to tell them apart in future. She watched the brothers smile at each other and then walk past one another, Fiddle striding to the left and Flute going to the right. A moment later, they were gone.
Everyone let the hut stride away too and began to walk, rather aimlessly, down the mountain.
“Where would you like the three of us to live?” Hayley’s father said to Merope. “I fancy going back to Greece myself.”
“Greece will have changed quite a lot since you were last there,” Merope said. “I don’t think you’ll be a king there any more. Let’s go to Cyprus again.” She shivered in the quiet evening air. “It’s just as warm as Greece there.”
“Oh, but!” Hayley cried out. “If we live abroad, how can I see Troy and Harmony?”
Troy laughed. “Don’t worry. You’ll always find me in the mythosphere. I shall be working on my city there and I’ll need you to design the gardens. And you’ll run into Harmony all the time. She goes everywhere.”
“All the same,” Harmony said, watching Merope shiver, “I think we should go home first. Mother will be fussing, and Merope needs a bath and some better clothes.”
“Oh, yes,” said Troy. “And we never even started on that chocolate cake.” He began to run downhill, but stopped at the next bend in the path, pointing downwards and laughing. When Hayley nosily ran along to see what was amusing him so, she found she could see down into the main street of the town. Strolling down the middle of it was the enormous Highlander, with Aunt Aster clinging lovingly to his arm.
“See that?” Troy said. “This is what happens now you’ve pinned Uncle Jolyon to the sky. We can all do what we want to do. At last!”
More than a story © HarperCollins Children’s Books 2008
Author’s Note
ABOUT THE CHARACTERS
The aunts are THE PLEIADES, often known as The Seven Sisters, a star cluster in the general region of The Great Bear. It is possible to count seven of them only out of the corner of your eye. In Ancient Greece, The Pleiades seemed to mingle freely with both mortals and gods, and at least three of them had a love affair with Zeus (Jupiter), chief of the gods of both Greece and Ancient Rome. Uncle Jolyon is JUPITER.
The Pleiades are:
MAIA, whose son by Jupiter is MERCURY (Mercer), the messenger of the gods
ELECTRA, whose children by Jupiter are Harmonia (Harmony) and the man who built and founded the great city of Troy and became its first king
ALCYONE, known to astronomers as Beta Tauri, who seems to have been too lofty to have a love affair with anyone
TAYGETA, whose children by Jupiter became the Spartans
CELAENO, one of the fainter stars, whose children by Jupiter became many of the other peoples of Ancient Greece
ASTEROPE, very much fainter than her sister stars
MEROPE, who married SISYPHUS, a mortal king in Ancient Greece. Sisyphus was later punished by having to roll a stone eternally up a hill. As soon as he got near the top, the stone would roll back down to the bottom of the hill again.
The parents of the Pleiades are PLEONE (known to astronomers as “a shell star”) and ATLAS. Atlas was the last of the race of Titans, gigantic beings whom Jupiter defeated when he first came to power as chief of the gods. Some of the Titans were once gods themselves until Jupiter destroyed them. Atlas was spared on condition that he held the world up on his shoulders (although some versions say it was the sky he carries).
In spite of his mighty task, Atlas seems to have had time to fall in love with the nymph Hespera, by whom he had five daughters, known together as the HESPERIDES. These ladies guarded the golden apples in the Western Isles.
AUTOLYCUS (Tollie) is the son of Mercury by a mortal woman. He grew up to be a thief, trickster, cattle rustler and general bad man. Some of the cattle he stole belonged to Sisyphus.
ORION was a mighty hunter in Ancient Greece, who chased women as often as he chased animals. He seems to have gone after both the Pleiades and the Hesperides, and ended up by being placed in the heavens as a constellation which, to this day, is one of the most notable in the winter skies.
As for HAYLEY (Halley’s Comet), it seems to me that the child of a star and a mortal king would almost certainly be a comet.
