“It’s too late to get to the back door,” Troy said. “He’ll see us coming downstairs.”
“I know what,” Harmony said. “We need a science fiction strand. Find me one, Troy, quickly.”
“The one I came back on just now,” Troy said. “It was all futuristic stuff. Some of it’s out on the upstairs landing.”
Harmony said, “Right!” and seized Hayley’s hand. Troy heaved up the duffel bag and they all three scurried out of the room and up the next flight of stairs. There at the top, almost exactly where the waterfall had started the night Hayley had arrived, stood a tall glass thing like a telephone box – or, even more, like a shower stall. Harmony pulled open its door and helped the other two to cram themselves and their luggage inside with her.
“A transportation booth?” Troy said. “Clever!”
“More than that,” Harmony said, pressing away at a set of buttons beside the glass door. “It’s a time booth too. I hope neither of you mind missing two days. We’re going to catch the plane we were going to catch anyway and I hope we can do it before Uncle Jolyon realises. I’m hoping he doesn’t know how good I am with the mythosphere and spends the next two days hunting for us. There!” Harmony said, pressing the large green button marked ENTER.
Without any feeling of change or movement, the view outside the glass door became the busy airport concourse that Hayley remembered from when she came to Ireland with Cousin Mercer. Troy slammed the door open and they ran. From then on it was all running, to the check-in, then up to Security and through the X-ray machine, on into the departure lounges and from there a race to the gates. As Harmony explained, waving their boarding passes as they pelted to where a loudspeaker was telling them that the flight to Edinburgh was now boarding, she had brought them here at the last minute to give Uncle Jolyon the smallest possible chance of finding them.
“And let’s hope he’s not waiting at the gate,” she panted.
Hayley was terrified. Though she didn’t at all understand why, it was clear to her that she was the one Uncle Jolyon wanted to catch. She was so frightened that she somehow put on comet speed and arrived at the desk in front of the gate long before the other two.
“They’re coming! They’re just coming!” she told the man behind the desk. Then she was forced to wait, hopping from one leg to the other and anxiously scanning the little rows of seats and the wine shop opposite, in case Uncle Jolyon came storming along to get her. She was not happy until Harmony and Troy arrived and they were all allowed to hurry through a gangway and on to the plane itself. Then she did not dare move from the doorway until she had looked along the length of the plane and made sure that Uncle Jolyon was not sitting in one of the seats, waiting.
An embittered-looking stewardess hurried them along to the front, where there were two pairs of seats facing one another. Harmony and Troy sat together with their backs to the pilot’s cabin. Hayley sat opposite them, next to the empty seat, beside the tiny window. While the plane thrummed and hummed and started slowly rumbling out towards the runway, Hayley kept looking at that empty seat, expecting any moment to see Uncle Jolyon sitting in it. While the pilot spoke to them – something about going north to avoid a thunderstorm over the Irish Sea – Hayley could hardly listen.
Then, to Hayley’s terror, the plane stopped, waltzing in place somewhere out in the middle of the airport. The stewardess came and stood by their seats and told everyone how to use the oxygen and the life jackets. Oh, go, go, go! Hayley thought, clenching her hands so that her nails dug in. She craned backwards out of the tiny window, expecting any second to see a taxi with Uncle Jolyon in it racing after the plane. She was still craning when the plane started to move again, rushing along the widest strip of concrete. It took her quite by surprise when she found she was looking down at the concrete and down at trees and tiny fields, and realised they were in the air.
“So far so good,” Harmony said, unbuckling her safety belt.
The stewardess came round and contemptuously gave them each a cup of orange juice and a bun.
“I wish I could have wine,” Troy said, looking at the bottles on the stewardess’s trolley.
“Don’t provoke her,” Harmony said. “She’ll say we’re all too young.”
Troy bit into his bun, grumbling, “I’m a thousand times older than she is.”
“Hush,” Harmony said. “Are you all right, Hayley?”
“Scared,” said Hayley. She did not feel like eating her bun. “Why is Uncle Jolyon so angry about me?”
“Because you were supposed to stay with our grandparents,” Harmony said.
“For ever, I think,” Troy said. “Can I have your bun if you don’t want it?”
Hayley handed it to him. “Why?” she asked. “Really for ever?”
Harmony nodded, with her smooth pretty face screwed up in distaste. “A long time ago,” she said, “thousands of years ago, in fact, around the time your parents decided to get married, Uncle Jolyon went to a seer called the Pythoness and asked what would happen if they did get married. He disapproved, you see, because your father was a mortal man—”
“Just as if he wasn’t having love affairs with mortal women all the time!” Troy said, tearing the wrapper off the bun as if he were skinning it alive. “Old hypocrite! He has love affairs all over the place, mortals, immortals, you name them! He’s my father, you know, and Harmony’s, and the father of all the cousins – old goat!”
“Yes, well,” said Harmony. “Let me tell her the story. The Pythoness said that if Merope – your mother – ever married a mortal man, their offspring would strip Jolyon of his power. Jolyon was horrified and went storming back to stop the wedding. But he was too late. Your parents had been married while he was away seeing the Pythoness and gone to Cyprus for their honeymoon. Jolyon couldn’t get at them there—”
“Cyprus belongs to Aunt Venus,” Troy put in, munching.
“So he had to wait until they came home to Greece,” Harmony said. “And while he waited, he made plans. He knew that nine-tenths of his power came from the mythosphere, but he also knew that our power comes from the mythosphere too, and he knew that we were all going to be on Merope’s side, all Merope’s sisters and their children and our grandfather, Atlas. Between us, we have almost as much power as Jolyon does. So the first thing he did was to order all of us to leave the mythosphere and live the way we do now, as ordinary people, and we obeyed him, because we didn’t understand what he was after—”
“Jupiter, bringer of joy!” Troy said bitterly. “We’ve been pinned down like this for more than two thousand years now. And all because he was afraid of a baby!” He crunched the bun paper up savagely.
“Well, he was head god in those days,” Harmony said. She sighed. “Nowadays, his power is in money as much as in the mythosphere. Grandpa has to hold up the world economy for him and Jolyon makes sure we’re all in debt to him.”
“But what about me?” Hayley demanded.
“The moment your parents came home with you,” Harmony said, “he took you and planted you on your grandparents, with orders that you were not to grow up and not to know anything about your family. Grandma always does what Jolyon says – it’s part of her strict outlook. And at the same time, he shoved Merope and your father off into the mythosphere and told everyone they were being punished for disobedience.”
“Though,