“Flatbread points with yogurt and fish eggs, grape leaves stuffed with minced pheasant, and wild boar meatballs. What’d they give you?”
The girls were marching from Chiron’s cave toward the palace in a long line of servants, each carrying silver trays of tasty hot and cold tidbits.
“Soup,” Alcie said, trying to keep her covered tray steady. “I have lots of tiny bowls of egg-and-lemon soup. And I think I’ve spilled most of it.”
Coming out of a dense thicket on either side of the path, they walked alongside a high wall for many meters, turned to the left, flanked another wall, passed a small bronze plaque that read SERVANT’S ENTRANCE, then finally ascended a wide set of marble stairs to a back terrace.
“Blood oranges!” whispered Alcie.
The enormous white marble palace of King Peleus towered above them, gleaming in the sunlight. There were so many levels Pandy quickly lost count. There were at least thirty terraces and balconies; hundreds of hanging plants; dozens of long porticos; gold tiles on many of the roofs; grassy walkways; brilliantly colored gardens; and fountains and statues featuring heroes, gods, and goddesses everywhere. On this day, every statue was adorned with a laurel wreath, and huge garlands of wildflowers hung over every entrance. As Pandy and Alcie walked along an outer path on the western side, they saw little children wearing crowns of acorns and nuts, standing along a center path with baskets of bread, ready to hand out pieces to the arriving guests as symbols of the offspring Thetis and Peleus would have. In unison, the children were uttering the traditional words, “I fled worse and found better.”
Pandy and Alcie entered a small service room being used as a final food staging area. Several warming ovens had been installed with small fires glowing to keep the silver trays warm. Large open chests of ice kept the trays of cold food from souring and spoiling.
Echidna was waiting, standing on a box and shouting to be heard as the room overflowed with servants. She immediately formed all of the temporary servants into groups and delegated responsibility for each group to one of the official palace staff. Pandy and Alcie were fussed with and primped, told to stand straight, smile brightly, and say nothing. Then they were sent with their trays through a series of corridors and into the vast main hall.
“I can’t even think of anything to say,” Alcie said, stopping for a moment, completely taken aback. Her voice resonated throughout the room. “Zeus’s home on Mount Olympus could not have been bigger than this!”
“It was,” Pandy replied. “But not by much.”
Actually, neither could tell just how big the hall was, because there were flowers everywhere, with the biggest blooms the girls could have imagined. Enormous vases with hundreds of oversized roses and irises were at the four corners of the hall. Special oil lamps had been brought in and filled with garlands of hydrangeas. Gigantic hyacinths, narcissi, and lilies were intertwined into massive wreaths that hung over every window. Whole cedar trees had been transplanted into pots and placed at various points on the floor, which was not the standard palace white but had been newly retiled in an ocean blue. And there were other flowers blended in that Pandy had never seen before. They looked like they were from another world entirely.
Suddenly, Pandy’s left foot collided with something hard, and she nearly went tumbling into Alcie.
“Easy!”
“Sorry, sorry,” Pandy said. Then she turned to see what she’d hit and instantly realized it was one leg of Zeus’s throne. The very same one she’d seen on Olympus only a few months earlier. Now it was placed at the back of the hall next to Hera’s smaller throne so that both would have an unobstructed view of the proceedings. Pandy was about to tell all of this to Alcie when she noticed something else.
“Oh, Gods . . . oh Alcie, look!”
Pandy nodded her head toward the eastern wall.
“No! Grape seeds, you’ve got to be kidding me!” Alcie said, following Pandy’s gaze.
Set on a tiered platform underneath a great bank of open windows were three rows of chairs for the musicians, perhaps twenty in all. The musicians themselves were nowhere to be seen, but their instruments were lying close at hand. There were many lyres of varying sizes, two sets of panpipes, a three-cornered trigonon harp, four bone flutes, a trumpet, and a host of other strange and beautiful musical devices.
But what caught the girls’ attention was the oversized chelys lyre with gold accents lying close to the first chair, and a small sign on the floor in front of the platform.
ORPHEUS!
Master of Lyre and Song
and his orchestra
With special guests:
Pan and the Pan-Tones
“Orpheus!” Alcie sighed. “He’s just the dreamiest!”
“And we’re gonna hear him siiiiiiing! Oh, Alce . . . he is so cute! My dad got two tickets once to hear him in a special concert in front of the Parthenon, but Xander had just been born and Mom didn’t want to leave him, so Dad took me! Oh, I almost died!”
“Wait!” Alcie said, confused for a moment. “Pandy . . . this is, like, thirteen hundred years before that.”
“Yeah, but his mother is Calliope and his father was some sort of Thracian river god. Immortal plus immortal equals immortal. And my father always said that Orpheus was greatest as a rising star, that his early stuff was the best . . . and now we get to hear it live!”
Suddenly all of the musicians filed back in from a side terrace. As each began tuning his own instrument, Pandy noted that they all looked bored and rather tired.
“Dad said that musicians are not a happy group,” Pandy whispered.
“Hi, Homie!” Alcie called out, seeing Homer behind the wine bar; then she slapped her hand over her mouth. She waved a tiny wave, and Homer waved back.
“You two maidens, quiet . . . now!” said a palace servant in a raised whisper. Then a soft whistle was heard just outside the huge doors at the far end of the hall. One by one, the palace servants answered the whistle. The combined sounds echoed throughout the hall, making the room sound, for just a moment, like an enormous birdcage.
“All right,” said the palace servant. “Honored guests are arriving even now. Speak only when spoken to, don’t dare to look anyone in the eye, cater to everyone’s desires, and appear cheerful at all times or you will be flogged.”
The palace servants then placed all of the temporary servants in prime locations around the room. Alcie was told to stand at the back of the hall, close to a terrace exit, and Pandy was placed at the very foot of the grand stairs leading from the hall floor up to the main doors.
Echidna entered from a side hall in heated conversation with a tall, dashing brown-haired man clothed in rich purple and gold and wearing a laurel wreath: “King Peleus,” Pandy mused, “the happy groom.” Yet, to Pandy, King Peleus seemed agitated, shaking his hands slightly and wiping them on the hem of his golden robe. Echidna began gesturing as if to calm him down, then she finally threw up her hands and said, too sweetly and too loud, “Well, it’s a little too late to change the floral color scheme now, Your Highness! And yes, the ‘bunches of flowers’ as you call them are supposed to be that big . . . they’re ‘statement displays’! You’ll forgive me, Your Highness, but you really should remember: this is her day. You’re just sort of a delightful . . . ornament, if you will. Excuse me.” Then she walked away brusquely, leaving Peleus looking around the hall nervous ly, reminding Pandy of a little boy lost in a room full of adults. He gazed at the massive floral arrangements, potted trees, garlands, and hanging wreaths, each one more stunning than the last. Finally he plastered a huge smile on his face, then walked over to the center of the room and stood to receive his guests.
A moment after everyone was in place, Echidna, standing at the back of the hall and checking each last detail, gave a nod; two large youths drew back the heavy bolt and opened the doors.
At once, the musicians struck up a delightful background melody and the guests began to enter.
Nymphs, dryads, and na
iads began to fill the hall by the dozens. Next came the remaining seven of the nine muses—gorgeous goddesses of the arts, each an inspiration for a different type of dance, poetry, or song. They were followed by Aeolus, Iris, and Eos. There was a moment’s pause, then the three Graces came, almost tumbling, down the stairs: Aglaia (Splendor), Euphrosyne (Mirth), and Thalia (Good Cheer) were literally beside themselves with laughter. Then Pandy saw Hebe, the Goddess of Youth, on the arm of Triton, the Trumpeter of the Sea. She was smiling brightly, although she kept wringing out the sleeve of her robe where it touched the soggy Triton. Persephone came next, followed by Nereus, the Old Man of the Sea, and his wife, Doris. Then Pandy saw Ocean, Lord of the River Ocean, which encircled the earth.
Seeing Ocean, Pandy gasped. She recognized him as a Titan and, therefore, family, although she didn’t know exactly where to place him in the family tree.
“But,” Pandy thought, “if he’s here, that means at least some of the Titans were invited. I wonder . . .”
She only had to wonder a split second.
Prometheus came striding through the door, surrounded by the Oceanids, nymphs of the great river . . . all of whom were giggling and flirting madly.
He passed Pandy without a glance.
Her heart dropped out of her chest, until she suddenly remembered she hadn’t been born yet. At that moment, she wasn’t his daughter; she was just another servant with a plate of wild boar meatballs.
After Prometheus, there was a pause, then a single-file line of stunning young goddesses, dressed exactly alike, slowly entered the hall in perfect step. Each wore an amethyst circlet about her head and a royal purple sash at the waist and each carried an enormous clamshell that contained something dark, dried, and leafy. As they walked they gracefully scattered small handfuls of leaves from side to side. Pandy racked her brain trying to figure out who these women could be. Then she was hit by the acrid, pungent smell wafting from the shells.
Seaweed.
At once, Pandy knew, but just to be certain, she started counting.
“Forty-seven, forty-eight . . . forty-nine . . . and one missing,” she thought.
They were Thetis’s sisters, the Nereids. Pandy looked at their parents, Nereus and Doris, marveling that Doris had, it was said, bore all fifty of the beautiful sea-nymphs at once.
Suddenly, the strange flowers made sense. And the blue-tiled floor. Thetis, the sea-nymph, and Peleus, the mortal man . . . the whole theme of the wedding was clear: two worlds colliding, a union of earth and sea. The cedar trees meeting the ocean. And Pandy was certain that if she looked closely at the “statement displays,” she’d see that the roses, hydrangeas, and hyacinths were mixed with exotic blossoms plucked directly from Poseidon’s underwater gardens.
“Wow,” she murmured.
In only a matter of minutes, the great hall of the palace of King Peleus was filled with lesser immortals of every shape and size.
Then, after several moments, the music took on a more royal tone and in came the Olympians.
Artemis, Athena, Apollo, Hephaestus, Aphrodite, Poseidon (in a traveling tank, hoisted by several lesser sea-gods), Ares, and a goddess Pandy had not seen when she was on Olympus—Hestia, Goddess of the Hearth—all came strolling in one at a time, to the cheers of those assembled. They were followed shortly afterward by Hermes, helping Dionysus to walk. Pandy marked that the God of Wine had started celebrating way early.
“Like, maybe, last week,” she thought. Again, she noticed that Hades was conspicuously absent.
Suddenly, the hall went quiet and every eye turned toward the doors. In a blinding flash of light, Zeus and Hera stepped through the entryway to tremendous applause. Hera, perfect in every way, was smiling like a cat that’d just eaten a lizard, but Zeus’s face was a little more somber. With Hera literally clutching his arm, he made his way directly to King Peleus. The king bowed deeply. Zeus looked at Peleus, and Peleus stared back at Zeus.
“Wow. Zeus has to watch the king marry somebody he really cared for,” Pandy thought. “Awkward.”
“Sky-Lord. Uh,” Peleus said.
“Yes,” Zeus replied. “Yes. Well, I . . . we . . . wish you every happiness.”
“You already said that to Peleus.” Hera smiled at her husband.
“I did?” Zeus looked quizzically at Peleus.
“Earlier, Mighty Zeus, at the formal feast,” Peleus answered. “But I thank you, again.”
“Ah, yes,” Zeus said distractedly.
“And how is the bride holding up?” Hera asked, a conspiratorial tone in her voice. “I know when my hubby here and I were married, I was just a shambles! All over the place! I was so scattered, you could have diced me up for gorgon food!”
“Now you tell me,” Zeus said. Then he laughed, Peleus laughed, and Hera smiled tightly.
“I assume Thetis is doing well, Queen of Heaven,” Peleus replied. “I haven’t heard any screaming for a bit, so I think everything is fine. I don’t really know. I’m not allowed to see her now until the unveiling.”
“Oh, right, right. Quaint mortal custom,” Hera said. “Well, I’m off to the wine bar.”
Hera turned to walk away.
“Coming, dearest?”
“I shall attend in a moment, light of my life,” Zeus said to her without taking his eyes off Peleus. Then softly he said to the king, “She is yours because I trust you, my friend.”
“Thank you,” Peleus said. “I’ll make her a fine husband.”
“And she will be a wonderful wife . . . once she calms down.”
“ZEEEEEUUUUUSSSS!”
Zeus closed his eyes and sighed.
“My throne arrived?”
“It’s waiting for you, Mighty Zeus,” Peleus replied.
“Good, because I need to sit.”
Then he turned toward Hera.
“Right there, my dove of love.”
He walked away, following his wife dejectedly.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Ceremony
Twenty minutes later, Pandy stepped into the small staging room and found Alcie holding out her tray while a young cook loaded it with more tiny cups of soup.
Alcie tilted her head, indicating that Pandy should meet her outside. After piling more grape leaves and meatballs on her tray, Pandy met Alcie on an adjoining terrace.
“What?” Pandy asked. “Did you see something? A clue? Lust? Did you find it?”
“Apples, no. I just wanted to say, wow! These immortals can eat!” Alcie said.
“I know! I didn’t think the gods ate anything other than ambrosia and nectar,” Pandy said. “And you know who eats the most? Aphrodite! She’s got the most amazing voice when she talks to you, makes you feel really good, but basically, she’s cleaned off my entire tray, like, three times. This is my sixth refill!”
“It’s not like she has to exercise,” Alcie said. “But how about those tips, huh? I am raking in some serious coinage just for walking around! Who knew? I may have found a new career path.”
“And some of it’s gold, Alce. I had to wipe yogurt and boar sauce off of my coins, but I’m certain that some of them are pure gold,” Pandy said. “Alcie, if this party lasts all night, we could be set for a while, no matter where we go.”
“That is, if Echidna doesn’t try to take it.”
“Oh, I’d like to see her try. Where are you putting yours?”
“Everywhere. Girdle, between my toes, behind my ears,” Alcie said.
“Me too, but that’s not gonna work after a while,” Pandy mused. Thinking fast, she handed Alcie her tray and crept back into the staging room. Taking the covering cloths off two trays of zucchini blossoms stuffed with cracked wheat, she gave one cloth to Alcie and they quickly wrapped their coins in small bundles and hid them behind a stone bench.
“If you find a better hiding place, let me know,” Pandy said as the two girls walked back into the storage room.
“There are my slackers,” Echidna sighed as they entered. She cupped her
face in both hands. “You two should have signs over your heads that say ‘Just flog me, flog me please . . . I am begging you to flog me.’ You have been hired to serve, not stand about and chat. The ceremony is about to start. Now get back out there for anyone who wants a last nibble. Then, once Thetis enters the room, I want you both to stand at the top of the stairs just in case any centaurs try to break in and carry off the bride.
“You’re so tangerine kidding, right?” Alcie choked.
“Excuse me, but how are we going to stop centaurs?” Pandy asked. “That’s like using a feather to stop a sword.”
“You’re not supposed to fight them,” Echidna said. “You’re supposed to distract them. Let them take you instead.”
“Like Hades!” Alcie yelled.
“As if!” Pandy yelled at the same time.
“Well, it was all in the contract you signed with the Midas company,” Echidna said, pushing them out into the main hall. “So, if you want to be paid and don’t want to be flogged . . .”
“I am adding her to the list of things I hate,” Alcie whispered as she and Pandy moved into the crowd. “And what’s with all the flogging?”
“Look, it’s . . . it’s not gonna happen,” Pandy reassured her, a few notes from Orpheus’s lyre catching her ear. “Zeus is here. No centaurs are going to break in. I’ll see you in a few.”
Alcie headed toward the staircase while Pandy wove her way across the hall to get an up-close glimpse of Orpheus at work. Pandy recognized the melody he was playing as one her father hummed all the time around the house: “Gimme Goat!” (Also known as “Two Lentils and a String Bean Don’t Make a Meal.”) Involuntarily, she felt her head bobbing up and down and she put a little dance step into her walk. She caught sight of Alcie, now at the top of the stairs, swaying back and forth with the music. Suddenly, the crowd parted in front of her and Pandy found herself face-to-face with Orpheus (or, as she would call him from then on, the dreamiest man alive in any century). He smiled down at her as he snatched a grape leaf off her tray without missing a beat, and she gurgled. She didn’t even care what he was playing. Pandy, although she was very sorry that he’d been turned into a girl, couldn’t for the life of her remember what she’d ever seen in Tiresias the Younger.
Pandora Gets Heart Page 6
