Pandora Gets Vain (Pandora (Hardback)) (18 page)

Olaf, the Viking, the “fierce man of the north,” rode in standing on the backs of two oversized horses waving his double-headed ax—which flew off its shaft halfway through his act of ax-throwing marksmanship and, narrowly missing a terrified servant, split one of the smaller tent poles in two.

The Ethiopian sisters, joined at the hip, brought forth ferocious, brightly colored cats on long chains. With one sister singing a haunting African melody and the other accompanying on a crude clay flute, the animals were supposedly kept from attacking either their trainers or the unsuspecting audience. The act went well, with the sisters moving gracefully around the center of the tent, until the cats got bored, curled up, and went to sleep.

Then a cage was lowered into the tent through the hole at the top. Inside a man was battling the red snake Pandy had seen in the makeshift corral. As the cage hit the floor, its door flew open and the man and snake burst from inside to begin dueling in the ring of light. Sometimes rising to a height of almost two meters, the snake slinked and slithered as it pretended to bite in what was, to all appearances, a deadly battle. Finally, after subduing the snake, the man coaxed it to coil itself around his body; he was completely encased within seconds, and proceeded to roll around the tent, with the snake, in a wide circle. When it came time for the snake to release him, however, the snake only coiled tighter and the man had to be carried from the tent, his face turning purple, with several servants trying to pull the serpent off him.

“Do you notice how the servants know exactly what to do?” asked Iole.

“They’re the real stars of the show,” said Pandy.

Alcie said nothing. Only a moment earlier she had felt a slight shift on a cushion close by and realized that Homer had slipped back into the tent and was watching the show.

They saw the “strange” two-eyed Cyclops, the giant dwarf, and the thousand-year-old man with the face of a boy.

“Figs! Those are just plain men,” whispered Alcie, in the dark.

“You are an unbelie-e-e-ever,” giggled Iole.

Pandy wondered for an instant if any of them were the key for which she should be hunting.

There were Balinese shadow puppets, one of which lost its head in the middle of the act. Scylla and Charybdis did a routine full of bad jokes in Greek. The strange animals, the goats with long horns, and the half-horse, half-dog beasts were brought in, to the special delight of Iole.

Suddenly, all of the oil lamps were relit and the four beautiful Arabian girls entered the tent with a
swoosh
of brightly colored silk scarves and a light tinkling of metal. The black-garbed servants shed their dark covering to reveal gold pantaloons and silver vests. They sat and took up stringed instruments, drums, and flutes. One of the girls shook a small, flat drum with metal discs high over her head. The others had these same metal discs attached to their fingers. They struck a dramatic pose and there was silence in the tent. Pandy, Alcie, and Iole held their breath at the sight, but Alcie managed to notice that Homer had silently slipped out yet again.

In a rush of sound and color, the musicians began to play and the girls to dance. Whirling skirts in green, blue, pink, and red, black hair flying in all directions, fingers clinking, and lovely faces hidden by opaque silks—then revealed again and again as they spun in fast circles. Then there were different movements as the girls undulated in unison like tall reeds, forcing their bellies in and out, shaking their hips, the coins sewn to their garments jingling.

As the music grew faster, the four girls began a series of highly intricate steps then finished with a set of furious whirls, with both musicians and girls stopping with a flourish at precisely the same moment.

“What went wrong?” asked Alcie, as Pandy and Iole beat their hands together.

“Nothing!” cried Pandy. “Not one thing!”

“Okay . . . then, whoo-hoo!” yelled Alcie.

The tent was plunged into blackness once more. The air shifted almost imperceptibly and the small hairs on Pandy’s arms stood straight up as she strained to see in the dark.

One by one, the lamps illuminating the center flickered back on. On the floor was the empty cage of carved ivory that Pandy had seen the day before. Seven servants entered carrying five very large rectangular panels of a hard, clear substance and small stands on which the panels were placed to stand upright, forming a semicircle around the cage.

Pandy remembered a set of crystals she’d seen once in a market stall in Athens. These panels looked exactly like those hard stones, the same fine cracks running through them, barely perceptible, only these panels had been cut from crystals that were enormous.

The servants departed and there was silence.

Slowly, the clear crystal began to cloud; a fine, white smoke passing through each panel. Then muted colors began to appear, then general shapes: a hillside, the corner of a building, a tall column. Pictures were drawing themselves inside the crystal and the shapes became more distinct. The hillside now had fruit trees and bushes with a road passing through. The corner of the building had a flowing fountain carved into its side. And the tall column was part of a temple where people walked up and down a series of nearby steps and a man sold incense and oranges from a rickety cart. A scene of a field had cows grazing and a picture of snow-covered flatlands had small, crude homes with lights in their windows.

All at once, Pandy, Alcie, and Iole saw Wang Chun Lo descend the steps of the temple in the crystal. He stopped only for a moment to take a stick of incense from the vendor. Then, looking directly ahead, he walked right up to the panel and passed through into the center of the tent.

“Huh?” said Alcie.

Wang Chun Lo bowed deeply from side to side as if he were in front of a large audience. He held the stick of incense high and with a snap of his fingers, lit it on fire. He placed it in the ivory cage, where it smoked lightly, filling the tent with the aroma of sandalwood.

Then Wang Chun Lo stepped into the panel with the building and its fountain. Taking a piece of cloth from the folds of his robe, he soaked the fabric in the water, then crossed out of view and immediately reappeared in the snow scene. He placed the cloth on the frozen ground, walked around the crude house, then he picked up the piece of cloth, which had now frozen solid. Again, he walked back through the crystal and into the tent. He tapped the frozen cloth against the ivory cage where it made a tinny, clinking sound. With another snap, he lit another fire at his fingertips and held it to the cloth. As the ice melted, the water dripped off the cloth and it became pliable once more. This too Wang Chun Lo put into the ivory cage.

Once more he stepped through a panel, this time onto the hillside with its fruit trees. He swiftly plucked two apples from a tree, took a bite out of one, and left the picture. Suddenly, he was walking up to a bewildered cow in the pasture and holding out the other apple in his hand. The cow took one bite before Wang Chun Lo whisked it away and began to stride toward the panel. As he stepped again into the tent, holding the two apples up high, everyone heard a soft thud as the cow tried to follow Wang Chun Lo, only to bump its nose against the strange barrier. Alcie and Iole began to laugh through their astonishment at the cow’s bewilderment, its large pink nose smearing the crystal. Pandy, however, was silent.

As the cow wandered away, Wang Chun Lo placed both apples into the ivory cage. Then he swung the cage slowly from one side of the tent to the other, displaying the contents for all to see.

He closed the small cage door and passed it once behind his back. When he held the cage up again, the contents were gone and there was something new inside. He opened the cage door and withdrew a snow white dove.

“Gods!” said Iole.

Wang Chun Lo held the bird high, then quickly released it into the scene of the hillside, where the bird flew up and landed on a high branch of the nearest apple tree.

Wang Chun Lo turned, waved his hand past the five panels causing them all to go completely clear once more, then bowed very low to his audience.

Alcie and Iole were on their feet, whooping and cheering. Even the servants and a few of the other performers who had snuck in were clapping wildly.

Only Pandy sat stock-still.

Her brain had locked onto one thought as soon as she’d seen the wondrous panels and her mind was racing with possibilities. This had to be the “interesting force” to which Artemis had guided her! Pandy became more and more excited. If this were nothing more than a trick then her idea was out of the question. But if it was as she suspected, that Wang Chun Lo actually had the ability to easily move through different parts of the world, then . . .

Suddenly, Pandy was jolted by Iole’s firm tug on her arm.

“Pandy,” Iole was saying. “Didn’t you like it?”

“What?” she mumbled.

Snapping out of her daydream, she saw much commotion at the center of the tent. The last of the panels was being carried out of the tent as the musicians took to their instruments once again. One by one the performers were entering to take their bows. Pandy began to clap, but she thought only of her plan. She was trying to think of how she could best explain her idea to Wang Chun Lo when the four Arabian dancers entered. Instead of bowing, they began their dance again, everyone joining in the celebration. All except Wang Chun Lo, who was nowhere to be seen.

Even though most of the performers were somewhat worse for wear, the music was lively and the dancing was infectious, and soon everyone was doing his or her own version of a belly dance. Then Almase, Mahfouza, Nabile, and Sabahat danced their way over to Pandy, Alcie, and Iole, beckoning them.

All three froze, and Pandy forgot her plan altogether.

Almase took hold of Iole’s hand while Mahfouza led Pandy into the circle. But it required both Nabile and Sabahat to tackle Alcie as she tried to crawl away over the orange cushions.

“I can’t dance!” she wailed, unheard in the din. “I can barely walk!”

On the floor, Mahfouza smiled down at Pandy, circling her with a series of quick turns. From far away, these girls seemed to be rare birds, not really girls at all; surely nothing human could move like that. Up close, Pandy saw they were even lovelier than she imagined. A picture of her mother flashed again in her mind. These girls were just as beautiful, perhaps even more so. And then, even though Jealousy was trapped securely in the wooden box in her leather carrying pouch, Pandy remembered what it had felt like when it consumed her so completely in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Was she experiencing it again? Jealousy of these girls, whom she could never be like in a million moons? She stood like stone in the center of the tent, too petrified to move no matter how much the music enticed her.

If she didn’t move, she thought, she would never know exactly how embarrassed she could be; how her clumsy body might betray her in front of these girls who were . . . perfect. If she stayed still, she could avoid at least some humiliation and try to concentrate on explaining her plan to Wang Chun Lo.

But Mahfouza would have none of it. She stopped whirling and, gently, took Pandy’s hands in hers, swaying slowly from side to side. Pandy had almost no choice but to follow. She looked at Iole, who was moving with Almase and smiling broadly, and Alcie, who appeared to be laughing with Nabile and Sabahat, but still remained motionless, her arms folded defiantly across her chest.

Pandy looked back at Mahfouza and, abandoning her own thoughts for a moment, tried to keep up. She felt so foolish. And then, as if she had drunk a strange elixir, the music found its way into her bones. Her head cleared of everything and she thought of nothing but the rhythms around her. Suddenly her feet were moving on their own. Her arms found a new energy and they mirrored Mahfouza’s movements exactly. She swayed back and forth, watching Mahfouza’s feet, trying each new step, every little variation. Then Mahfouza spun around several times and Pandy’s jaw dropped. Mahfouza laughed and did it again. It was only after the third time that Pandy just let herself go. She spun and stopped. Perfect. She spun again and again and again. Then she fell down.

Laughing hard, Mahfouza helped Pandy up, then taught her how to look at a certain point in the tent every time she whirled to keep from getting dizzy. Soon Pandy was spinning almost as fast as the “rare birds” she thought so lovely. Her arms were swaying and she was perfectly in step.

And a new feeling crept into her soul. The tiniest hint of a notion. That on this night she just might be feeling what it’s like to be a full-grown woman. Pretty. Attractive. Feminine. No longer awkward in her own skin, but graceful, comfortable, and strong. How her beautiful mother must feel every moment of her life . . . when she isn’t in a jar. She began to really smile, which only made Mahfouza laugh all the more.

Pandy looked at Iole to see if she was feeling the same. Iole’s dancing was anything but graceful—her legs and arms seemed to be about a beat behind the music—but it was plain from the look in her eyes that she was having the time of her life.

Then Pandy turned to find Alcie.

Because of her two left feet, Alcie couldn’t manage the basic steps no matter how hard she tried. However, in the few moments they had been learning to dance, she had become a master spinner—to the right. Nabile and Sabahat were dancing again themselves, Iole was enjoying herself too much, as was everyone else, so it was only Pandy who watched Alcie, giggling wildly, spin herself through a loose flap in the tent wall and out into the desert night.