Pandora Gets Vain (Pandora (Hardback)) (8 page)
“Take me where you will.”
“Oh, the sights you’ll see . . . ,” Hermes joked.
But as Prometheus grabbed Hermes’ arm, the instant, violent rush of their departure shook loose the little conch from the folds of fabric. It arced unseen into the air, landing with a soft thud on one of the floor cushions.
Where it lay. Waiting to vibrate.
4:00 p.m. (exactly)
Pandora Atheneus Andromaeche Helena, who, only less than a few weeks before, had never ventured farther than the Athens city limits, stepped out of the Nile River and onto the sandy soil of Egypt. There was lush greenery far off to her right and left; plants and trees drinking in the Nile. But straight ahead of her lay a large deserted stretch of sand, leading to a huge abandoned temple about two hundred meters away. Beyond that there was nothing but the open desert.
“I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but it feels good to walk,” Alcie said.
“Is everyone all right? Everybody have everything?” Pandy asked.
Homer wrung the river water from his garments.
“I’m good.”
“I’m excellent,” said Iole. “But a little tired. I have never talked so much in my life. Quite stimulating.”
“Yeah, you and Omega One were blabbing the entire time. My dolphin made me be quiet,” said Alcie.
“I have to talk to my dad,” said Pandora, retrieving the conch shell. “He was trying to tell me something.”
She traced her forefinger down the lip, which she knew would activate her father’s shell.
“Dad?” she said quietly. Even hundreds of kilometers from Greece, she knew that Zeus and Hera might be gazing down upon her at any time. Alcie and Iole raised their voices to cover Pandy’s whisperings. They knew there would be big trouble for everyone if the two most powerful gods caught Pandy getting help from her father.
“Say . . . um,” Alcie yelled to Homer, “this is a very . . . uh . . . brown country, don’t you think?”
“Uh-huh,” said Homer. Then he just stared blankly at Alcie.
“Thank you, Homer! Iole, your thoughts?” Alcie called.
“I believe the word you’re looking for is ‘ecru,’ Alcie,” said Iole, loudly.
“Yes, of course, ecru . . . that’s it!” Alcie replied.
In Pandy’s home in Athens, her father’s conch shell lay on the floor cushion where it had landed, vibrating furiously.
“Ah, yes. Ecru. Of course now that I really look at that temple, for instance, I think it’s more of a dirt color,” Alcie cried.
“It’s umber, mixed with taupe!” said Iole.
“It’s an umber-y, taupe-y dirt!” Alcie was getting so loud, Pandy was certain that if the gods weren’t already looking in their direction, Alcie’s voice would make sure they did.
“Guys . . . guys! You can stop yelling,” Pandy said, replacing the conch shell in her pouch. “He’s not answering.”
“Well, couldn’t have been anything too important then, right?” said Alcie.
“I don’t know. But he wouldn’t call in the middle of the day for no reason. My curiosity is tingling,” Pandy said.
“He’ll call again, I’m sure,” said Iole.
“Right!” said Pandy, surveying her new surroundings. “Okay . . . I’ve been thinking. Three hours ago, we were almost to Alexandria and the sun was overhead.”
She began to pace forward and backward. Walking toward the ruined temple and back again.
“Then the storm flung us that way and the DIASOZO picked us up and carried us
that
way. And the sun was there,” indicating a point overhead.
“And we traveled this way and the sun is now there . . . which means that Alexandria is . . . is . . .”
She paused, walking just a little closer to the temple, then Pandy turned back toward her friends.
“Go on, Pandy, you’re doing great!” said Iole.
“Thank you. Which means that Alexandria is . . . that way!”
She flung her left arm defiantly (and with great flourish) off to one side.
She seemed so confident in her decision that all eyes, even Dido’s, turned obediently toward the direction in which she pointed, as if the rooftops of the great Egyptian city would somehow be visible.
“Way to go, Pandy!” said Alcie. “That’s the way I would have . . .”
Alcie turned back.
“Pandy?”
“Pandy?” said Iole.
Dido gave a series of short, sharp yelps.
Pandy was gone.
“Pandy!” Iole screamed.
“Where did she go?” asked Homer.
“Oh, Gods! Pandy!” yelled Alcie.
Dido shot like an arrow toward the spot where, not one second before, Pandy had stood. But before he reached the precise spot, he skidded to a stop and began to whimper, as if there were a snake in the sand in front of him.
Iole ran to his side.
“Where is she, boy?” she asked, half hoping that Dido would be able to tell her. She looked hard at the place where Pandy had been. And then she saw something.
“Do you think she’s playing a game? Pandy! It’s not funny!” Alcie bumped softly into Iole as she came to stand alongside.
“Shh!” Iole said. “Don’t move. Look.”
“Where?”
“There.”
Sure enough, there was a gently sloping indentation in the sand, like a shallow funnel. Grains of sand were still flowing down into the center as if something had reached up and sucked Pandy down into the desert floor.
“Oh, great Zeus, she’s drowning!” shrieked Alcie. “Get her rope!”
“She’s got the rope!” said Iole.
Alcie spun around.
“Homer! Homer—help!”
But Homer was crossing the barren sand with the speed of a chariot stallion. Alcie watched, mouth agape, as he raced up the broken steps of the temple three at a time.
“Where are you going?” she shouted.
“Come on!” he cried, his voice lost as he reached the top step.
Of all the new sensations Pandy had experienced in the last few weeks, this was definitely one of the worst. The desert floor had simply given way under her feet. But unlike the momentary sensation of falling through thin air that she had felt up on Olympus, she was immediately surrounded by heaps of sand closing in on her. She’d heard of quicksand, but in real quicksand, one was actually drowned, suffocated slowly. Now, as she fell fast through the earth, the sand clogged her nose and scraped her skin. Inadvertently, she opened her mouth to scream as the last of the daylight disappeared and sand poured into her mouth. And still she was falling.
Suddenly, instantly, the sand thinned around her and she was hurtling downward into blackness. In spite of her terror, she became aware of a putrid stench.
Then she heard a loud rip of fabric and felt something solid pushing against her left hip as she fell, grating her skin.
She crashed into something hard but brittle, slowing her fall as it shattered.
And then she hit the ground. She hoped. Whatever she had landed on was sharp and jagged, like a pile of rough pieces of wood or rock. She lay there, drifting in and out of consciousness, fighting to stay awake. The stench was helping; it reminded her of the oil her mother would inhale whenever she felt “faint.” Pandy began to move slowly, lifting her head in the darkness and laying it down again. She moved her arms and legs, checking for any jolts of pain. There were none, which she knew meant that nothing was broken. She felt her hip; there was a stinging that made her gasp and it was wet. She brought her hand to her mouth and inhaled: blood. She spat out the last of the sand and tasted the wetness. She was bleeding, all right. Then her hand brushed again something hard, circular, and sticking straight up in the air. A pole? A thin column?
Just as she began to sit up, she was aware of a flash of light behind her, which lit the chamber in which she lay. She turned her body slowly.
An enormous object floated about twenty-five meters away. A glowing blue sphere surrounded a strange symbol of curved black lines in the shape of a terrible eye, almost like the eye of a bird, the whites on either sides of the black iris gleaming with pure energy.
Then she heard a voice.
“
Ah . . . fresh blood!
”
Dido was already on the move as Alcie and Iole ran to follow Homer. They crossed the fifty or so meters in seconds and hurried up the steps. On top of the large front terrace, past thick carved stone columns, four enormous seated, decaying statues gazed out over the cracked flagstones onto the desert. Each had a strange headdress and a square stone beard. There was an opening in the wall between the ankles of each statue. Homer was darting back and forth between the four entryways, talking to himself.
“Here—that goes into the temple. Or does this one go into . . . ? This might lead . . .”
“Homer?” said Alcie.
“Quiet please,” he replied. Then he raced forward into one of the two middle entryways. “Here!”
Iole and Alcie and Dido followed silently. Shortly inside the passageway, Iole saw Homer waiting for them.
“Hold my cloak; we don’t want to get separated.”
Iole clenched a fistful of cloak in one hand and Alcie’s wrist in the other.
Homer moved quickly in the growing dark, feeling his way along the wall, which sloped down at a sharp angle.