The Orchard of the Hesperides
‘This is it! The Garden of the Hesperides! Home of the golden apple!’ said Jacques. He sneezed. ‘It smells of pollen.’
The walled garden was in the middle of a clearing in the woods. The structure rose up ahead of them: rough bricks, twenty feet high.
‘There’s no spikes or anything though,’ said Anya. ‘Looks pretty easy to climb in.’
They walked around the whole of it. In the middle of one wall there was a simple wooden door, resting on a latch.
‘Do we just … open it?’ said Christopher.
‘I thought the door would have a snake in front of it! I thought the golden apples were supposed to be famously hard to steal? Didn’t Hercules nearly die?’ said Anya.
‘Well … maybe it’s got simpler since his day. Old people are always saying exams have got easier.’
‘Go on then.’
Christopher put his hand on the latch and pulled open the door.
And Ratwin screamed a high squirrel scream.
The snake was just inches from Christopher’s face.
It was blood red and its body was looped with black spirals.
It reared up, its head five feet off the ground.
For one second Christopher and the snake stared at each other.
Then Christopher roared and slammed the door shut, just as the snake struck.
The snake fangs that were aimed at his face hit the door and the wood shook.
Feverishly Christopher pulled out the Bestiary.
‘You know what it is?’ said Anya.
‘Yes! I think I’ve seen it in here! But I really hope I’m wrong.’ He stopped flipping the pages, and exhaled. ‘I’m not wrong. It’s a Lotan serpent.’
Anya read over his shoulder. ‘The Lotan is always famished. It never ceases to hunger. It craves the apples which it guards, but is forbidden to pluck them. It eats instead rats, lizards, birds, which it strikes from the sky …’
‘… human flesh,’ finished Christopher, ‘and ratatoskas.’
‘Not so sublime-excellentings,’ said Ratwin.
‘Could you … speak with it?’ Anya asked Christopher. ‘Could you use the Light? Like with the dog?’
‘If I open that door it’ll kill me before I can try.’ He looked up at the wall of the garden. ‘But I could climb the wall.’ Anya made her hands into a stirrup, and he scrambled to the top. The serpent coiled and uncoiled on the ground directly below him.
Christopher drew breath. He tried to bend his mind towards it, tried to summon the feeling of reaching across a great expanse towards something unknown and vivid with life.
‘Agh!’ He nearly fell off the wall. It was not the flash of green-gold light but something else, like running full tilt against a grey rock face. It was a great and violent no – utterly cold, utterly black.
Christopher half dropped, half fell back down to earth.
‘I can’t do it,’ he said in answer to Anya’s concerned look. ‘It threw me back. It was furious.’
‘Too dark a creature,’ said Jacques. ‘They do not share their thoughts.’
Ratwin was glaring at the door; then suddenly her stump of horn lifted. ‘I haves an inklingification! Anya, gives me yours secret-under-skirting.’
‘My what?’
‘Yours petticoats!’
Frowning, Anya did as she was bid. She stepped out of the circle of cloth and handed it to Ratwin.
‘What now?’
‘Jacques flies it over the serpenting, and drops it over its head. Serpents hates to have theirs eyes covered; it confustulates them. And while it is strugglings, you steals in and ties it up with the ropes.’
There was a pause. ‘Capture by archaic underwear?’ said Christopher. ‘It’s not really a classic move, is it?’
‘Does you haves a more smoothly plan?’
‘No,’ said Christopher.
‘Then, Jacques – go!’
Jacques seized the petticoat in his claws and flew over the wall.
‘Now!’ he cried.
Christopher and Anya burst into the garden. Ahead of them was a lashing, hissing ball of cloth. Christopher sent up thanks for the thickness of the rope as he flung a loop around the writhing mass, lassoing it round and round until they had a bundle that was half rope and half cloth.
Finally he drew breath. ‘I don’t know how long that will hold,’ he said. ‘We’ll need to be quick. Where’s the golden apple?’
For the first time, Christopher looked around. It was an orchard of hundreds of trees, and each tree was rich with apples, green and yellow and deep russet red.
‘That’s a lot of apples,’ said Anya.
‘Well observed,’ said Jacques. ‘It is every apple species in Glimouria.’
‘How are we supposed to know which is which?’ Christopher said.
‘The golden apple of the Hesperides looks like fruit,’ said Jacques. ‘All dragons know that. Until you taste it; then it turns to solid metal.’
‘Then we’ll have to taste them all,’ said Christopher. ‘And fast.’