Brian Jacques - The Ribbajack

“Come to me, Jason, hurry, I am waiting, Jason, waiting!” He increased his pace through the hushed neighbourhood, his muscular legs performing like a well-oiled machine. The eyes floated before him, unblinking, mysterious, twin beacons guiding him to his destination.

Now he was leaping a low fence, weaving through flower beds, skirting a miniature fountain. Jason’s dreamlike stride took him past a patch of white rhododendrons, across an area of ornamental ferns, beyond a final screen of high-trimmed privets, to a large, old-fashioned house, silent and gloomy in the moonless night. Without any conscious knowledge of whither his feet were taking him, he loped up the broad stone steps.

Jason passed through a black lacquered front door, which stood ajar. Making his way across a vestibule with windowpanes of lilac and pale blue glass, he padded heedlessly along a high-ceilinged entrance hall. On the weaving patterns of its terrazo floor stood several tables of skeletal delicacy, each one graced with urns containing verbena, aspidistra and miniature parlour palms. The huge grey eyes guided him onward to a rich curtain of Tyrrhenian velvet, then into a vast circular room.

She occupied a white stone throne, which stood on a dais in the centre of the chamber. Clad from neck to ankle in a gown of carmine silk, her feet encased in dainty golden sandals, and her brow circled by a slim coronet of burnished silver. The tall girl resembled some priestess out of ancient legend. Her eyes stared down at him, framed by alabaster skin and raven hair. Not knowing why he did it, Jason knelt down on one knee and spoke her name in hushed tones. “Huma D’Este!”

The regal gaze never wavered. “That is a name I permit those who do not know me to use. I will reveal my real name to you in a while, should you wish to hear it, but beware, Jason Hunter. Look around you, is my temple not beautiful?”

The chamber was ringed with alcoves. In each was a stone plinth, like a small Grecian column. A lifesize marble statue had been mounted on every one. They were of young men wearing little save loincloths. Every figure was superbly sculptured, looking either heroic or sporting in turn. Classical Greek titles were graven on the plinth of each statue. Huma D’Este named them.

“Here is the mighty Hercules, there, Orpheus, the poet. Next to him stands Paris, son of King Priam. See, Achilles the warrior, Odysseus the wanderer, Narcissus the beautiful and Arion the musician.”

She reeled off one name after another as Jason gazed, awestruck, at the beautiful lifelike details of the works. “Theseus, son of the god Poseidon, Ganymede, the handsome cupbearer, Bellerophon, rider of the winged Pegasus, and Leander, who swam the Hellespont to woo the maid Hero. These are my wonderful collection, the males of legend, whose names the ages have not dimmed!”

Jason scanned the statues, eleven of them in all. The only one he had ever heard of was Hercules, and that was via movies and television. However, being no student of classical mythology was not a bar to his admiration of the amazing sculptures.

“They look great, but I counted eleven. That’s an odd number . . . is there one missing?”

Huma closed her eyes, the ghost of a smile creasing her lips. “Ah, you’ve noticed. The empty plinth is right behind you. One of the curtain folds is obscuring it. Go and see.”

Jason turned to the curtain, then folded it aside, revealing the empty plinth. Peering at it, he tried to decipher the name carved there in Greek characters. “I can’t make out this funny writing . . . suppose you can, though.”

Huma sat back and sighed blissfully. “Ah, yes, I know who will stand there for eternity. He will be the son of Aeson, rightful king of Iolcus, the one who was reared by the centaur Chiron. Do you know of him?”

Jason shrugged. “I don’t know any of those foreign names.”

Huma spoke teasingly. “No, I didn’t suppose you would. Some of the most beautiful bodies are seldom endowed with the keenest of minds. Let me give you a clue. This young man was captain of a ship named the Argo, he stole the fabulous Golden Fleece of Colchis. Now do you know him?”

Jason was awake now, the dreamlike trance seeming to have left him. He felt silly, standing here in the dead of night, clad only in a towel and his briefs. And there was the girl whom he had known for only a day, sitting on a throne, all dressed up and surrounded by statues. Now she was starting to mock him again. The fact that her eyes were closed made him bold. He spoke insolently. “No, I don’t know him, and I couldn’t care less. I’m getting out of this stupid old place!”

He was about to run off when the eyes of Huma D’Este sprang open, riveting him with their piercing stare. Her voice was harsh and commanding. “Fool, you should know the one I speak of. His name is the same as yours. Jason! When I saw you yesterday, I knew that you were the final piece of my collection!”

The towel was wet and clammy about his waist. Jason felt frightened and helpless in her presence. He could not tear his gaze from the girl’s eyes. They were growing larger, more overpowering, ugly red veins threading out from their corners.

He could hear his own voice, a fearful whisper. “How would you know what this Jason looked like? He must have died hundreds of years ago.”

Huma’s face was changing, the skin taking on a purplish hue. Cracks began pitting it, things were moving beneath her eyebrows, down the sides of her nostrils and along her jawline. The luxurious black hair weaved itself together into a nest of writhing snakes. Jason watched in horrified fascination, as if his eyelids had been frozen—he could not shut them. Now her mouth opened, a thin forked tongue sliding out.

“We of the Immortals have seen many things in the centuries which are dead and gone. Nothing escapes us.”

Jason’s limbs began trembling uncontrollably. “Wh-Who . . . are y-you?”

Two black scorpions emerged, framing her eyebrows. She leaned forward, spitting viciously, “My name is the same as that of my mother, Huma D’Este. That is the name I use for ordinary mortals who have not the wit to unravel it. You are too stupid to realise, but if you changed the letters of Huma D’Este around, you would know that I am called The Medusa! Look upon me, my Jason. I am nightmare come to life, my gaze is sent from the dark regions of Hades to turn living men into stone. Gaze on me and attain eternity, my Jason!”

The eyes of The Medusa became twin pools of evil. Winds like the searing heat from a furnace blasted the chamber, scorching the entrance curtain to ashes, behind which the wall was sealed tight as a tomb. Screams of lost souls ripped through Jason’s eardrums. With the terrifying vision of The Medusa robbing him of his sanity, he turned and ran. Round, round and round the exitless room he sped, spurred on by her brain-splitting laughter. Trapped like a moth in a cage with a hawk.

Then he froze! There was no more Jason; the hunter had been well hunted. All that remained was a cold, beautiful statue of Jason, caught in the act of running, every detail captured in lifeless white marble.

It had been many years since Carlene and Mal Blake were teenage sweethearts at school. They had remained together, happily married now for fifty years. Their three children had children of their own, who called Carlene and Mal “Nanna” and “Grandad.” The family got together to present the old couple with a wonderful golden anniversary gift, the vacation of a lifetime. One month’s cruise of the Greek islands. Blue sky, warm sun and an even bluer sea, with every luxury that the SS Hellenica could provide for American tourists.

Two weeks into the cruise, it was a glorious afternoon on one of the old Mediterranean islands. Passengers clicked cameras and zoomed in through video lenses on lined peasant faces, olive trees, whitewashed houses and a small village square with sunlight bouncing off the hosed-down cobblestones. After a fine alfresco meal, complete with glasses of the local wine and a bouzouki music serenade, they boarded a bus, which took them up into the mountains to explore an ancient villa and its grounds. It was a walled edifice comprised of timelessly beautiful gardens and an imposing house, which had once been a fortress in the fifteenth century. The guidebook reliably informed tourists that the building contained an art collection.