Contents
Chapter One Cliffhanger
Chapter Two Turning Up the Heat
Chapter Three They Met a Man …
Chapter Four Swimming in the Styx
Chapter Five Good Dog
Chapter Six Lethe
Chapter Seven Mnemosyne
Chapter Eight Tantalized
Chapter Nine Hygiene
Chapter Ten Truth
Chapter Eleven The Puppet Show
Chapter Twelve The Palace: Garden … and Ovens
Chapter Thirteen Preparations
Chapter Fourteen The Throne Room (and an Unexpected Encounter)
Chapter Fifteen Persephone
Chapter Sixteen The Lesser Evil of Slavery
Chapter Seventeen Achilles
Chapter Eighteen Cold
Chapter Nineteen Fifty Heads and One Hundred Arms
Chapter Twenty Tartarus
Chapter Twenty-One Fear
Chapter Twenty-Two Olympus
Chapter Twenty-Three Punishment
Chapter Twenty-Four On the Terrace
Epilogue … The First
Epilogue … The Second
Acknowledgments
Mythic Misadventures by Carolyn Hennesy
For Donald
Τα καταφέραμε!
Chapter One
Cliffhanger
“Iole?”
“Mmmmm?”
“You gonna open your eyes?”
“Let me think a moment … right … that would be an unequivocal negative.”
“In Greek, please.”
“No.”
Pandy laughed in spite of herself—and their situation.
“But we’re almost to the top of the cliff already,” she said, looking down at the treetops, now at least eighty meters below, the green-and-brown countryside rolling away as far as her eyes could see. Except for a line of the blue Aegean due south and a thin ribbon of smoke, which indicated a fire somewhere to her left, there was nothing but tree-covered hillsides.
“All right, I’m going to correct you on this one,” Iole said, her long eyelashes barely visible as she scrunched her lids tight. “We are not almost to the top of anywhere; Homer is almost to the top, and I’m just going to have to take your word for it because I have no intention of opening my eyes. We are simply along for the ride, as it were. Like sacks of cabbage. Or sacrificial goats. You want to find Fear, Pandy? You want to recapture the biggest, most important evil of them all, Pandora Atheneus Andromaeche Helena of Athens, only daughter of the great house of Prometheus? Then look no further: fear is trussed up like a festival-day pheasant and is swinging not half a meter from your nose in the shape of your best friend!”
“Second-best friend!” came Alcie’s voice from above.
Pandy stared at the length of rope carefully wound around their waists and legs. She followed the single strand as it straightened out taut against the side of the sheer rock wall. Roughly five meters over her head, she saw the bottom edge of Homer’s cloak and his bare feet searching out crevices in the cliff for a solid hold.
“If we plummet to our deaths, it won’t make much difference if your eyes are open or …”
“Cease and desist your incessant chatter!” Iole yelled at Pandy.
“What’s happening down there?” Alcie cried.
“Nothing, Alce,” Pandy called back. “We’re just looking at the sunset, glad to be back in Greece.”
“Thrace, to be specific,” Iole said, tightening her grip on the rope. “We’re in Thrace, and stop talking!”
“Iole’s opened her eyes?” Alcie asked.
“Not yet,” Pandy yelled.
Just then, Homer’s left foot lost its purchase in the rock, and the girls were jolted downward for a moment.
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Iole screamed, her eyelids flying open.
Pandy’s own scream caught in her throat as the rope tightened again.
“Sorry!” Homer called, finding his toehold, relaxing all the weight off his fingers. “I’m sorry! We’re good. I’m good.”
“Stop talking to him, Alcie!” Iole ordered. “Stop distracting him, or, by all the Olympians, I’m gonna give you such a wallop! If we live, that is.”
“You and what Assyrian army?” Alcie laughed.
Pandy reached out to Dido, hanging in his own rope harness, and patted his nose to comfort him. He looked at her with love as his backside grazed the rock wall, as if to say that he forgave her for the precarious position she’d put him in. Pandy desperately wished the cliff she was hanging against, bumping her knees and bruising her arms, was the Acropolis back in her beloved Athens and that they were on their way, no matter how crazy a way it was, up to the Parthenon. The Thracian terrain was somewhat similar to the part of Greece she knew, and her heart ached, knowing she was again so close to—yet still so far from—home. It had been two days of intense walking from the harbor of Abdera where they had disembarked off the ship from Rome. “North. Go north. You can’t miss the mountain,” the town’s innkeeper had said, and he was right. Now the ledge he’d also mentioned was in sight, which meant the famous cave of Orpheus was close by.
“You okay?” Pandy asked Iole, lifting the flap of her carrying pouch as she tried to regain a steady beat to her own heart.
Iole said nothing for a long time; she just stared reproachfully at Pandy.
“I think this is the most incredulously insane thing we have done on this quest thus far,” she said finally. “And that, as you know, is saying something. This is more ludicrous than you becoming an old woman in Egypt, crazier than you trying to make it through the Atlas mountains with two little boys in tow—”
“I couldn’t just leave them,” Pandy cut in softly.
“—Crazier than all of us trying to keep the golden apple away from Aphrodite, crazier even than roaming the sewers of Rome after curfew. Right now, in your pouch, you have a perfectly good magic rope to be used on occasions such as this, yet you acquiesced when Homer insisted on climbing this vertical death trap on his own.”
“It’s not that far up, Iole,” Pandy countered, fumbling in the pouch. “And he begged. Said he needed the exercise. You heard him, he said it would be easy as oatie cakes. Said he needed to work his muscles in case we needed serious help in the underworld.”
“But did he really need Alcie to sit on his shoulders on the way up?”
“He said it provided a good balance,” Pandy said, her hand finally latching onto the sought item in her pouch. “Besides, you know she and Homer went weeks without seeing each other in Rome. This is giving them a chance to talk.”
“He’s not supposed to be talking,” Iole said through clenched teeth, at last taking her eyes from Pandy’s face and looking up for a moment at Homer’s backside. “He’s supposed to be climbing silently and with focus. What are you rummaging for? Stop rummaging! You’re jostling us … you’re gonna slip … stop!”
Pandy raised her finger to her lips for Iole to be silent, then she held up the end of the magic rope.
“You do have a point,” she mouthed. “Just in case he actually does lose his grip, I want this ready. But I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”
“Oh, by all means. Indubitably. As we drop like stones, let’s do worry about Homer’s feelings,” Iole mouthed back, as Pandy began to whisper precautionary commands to her rope.
As unbearable as the climb had been, they suddenly found themselves on solid ground as Homer lifted them, one by one, from the side of the mountain onto a large ledge.
“This ledge is bigger than it looked on the way up. It’s actually more of a plateau,” said Homer, as he hauled first Iole, then Pandy out of midair.
“‘Platea
u’? Nice word,” Iole replied, a little snark in her voice.
Homer looked at her evenly.
“Iole, I’m not stupid.”
Instantly, Iole was ashamed; it was true, throughout the many weeks that the four of them had been together, no matter how valiantly he proved himself or how clearly he spoke, no matter how much he cared not only for Alcie but for all of them, no matter how sometimes brilliant his ideas and suggestions were, she’d never quite gotten past her image of Homer as … simple. In a flash, that notion was gone. And, even if he wasn’t the absolute sharpest arrow in the quiver, she was being rude—and that wasn’t the way she’d been brought up.
“I’m truly, sincerely, and wholly sorry, Homer,” she said, choosing her words carefully. She paused and thought for a moment. “I know exactly what it is: I’m still scared from the climb and I’m taking it out on you, even after you did all the hard work. I feel like I have all this energy, and yet I want to stay perfectly still at the same time. But that’s no excuse for my behavior and I know better; I promise, it won’t happen again.”
“Thanks,” he said, with a small bow.
“Why is Alcie dancing around like my little brother with an ant in his poop cloth?” Pandy asked, watching as Alcie kicked up her heels in the twilight, Dido prancing around her. Behind Alcie, perhaps fifteen meters away, Pandy saw what should have been the cave opening; more precisely, she saw where the cave opening would have been, had it not been sealed with gray rock.
“We had what my fight master back in gladiator school used to call ‘a full and frank exchange of views.’ ”
“A full and frank …?” Iole said.
“Yeah. Right before he’d hack your little finger off, he’d tell you what he wanted to do and how he was planning do it. He’d say we were having a full and frank …”
“Got it,” Pandy said, pulling her cloak tight around her shoulders. The wind had come up briskly since they landed and was blowing cold at such a great height; her own hair was stinging her eyes as it flew back and forth. “I would ask what views you two exchanged, but …”
“I told her that, like, if we lived and all, I was going to leave the import/export business and my dad in Crisa and move to Athens. And that I was going to get a nice steady job, maybe something in temple construction. Something that could support a family. I sort of asked her to be my ‘girl.’ ”
“What has she been all this time if not your ‘girl’?” Iole asked.
“I meant my real ‘girl.’ ”
“You mean you asked her to marry you?” Iole said, her voice rising.
“Well … I asked her to be … engaged.”
“Engaged to be married?” Iole nearly shrieked.
“Well, engaged to be engaged,” Homer responded.
“You do mean, of course, when she’s not thirteen years old?”
“She’s not thirteen,” Homer said matter-of-factly.
“What do you mean she’s not thirteen?” Pandy said, the comment drawing her attention away from her surroundings.
“Today’s her birthday, and I thought that in four years or so, we could …”
“Oh, great Aphrodite!” Iole said, turning to Pandy. “We forgot!”
“What do we do?” Pandy asked.
“Uh … come on,” Iole answered, walking toward the dancing redhead.
Approaching Alcie, Iole began to sing and Pandy quickly joined in:
Happy Maiden Day to you!
Happy Maiden Day to you!
Homer joined in, completely off-key, which made Iole and Pandy wince—but they didn’t show it.
Happy Maiden Day, dear Alcie,
Happy Maiden Day to you!
Homer went on in a quick monotone finish: “IhopeyouenjoybeingwifeofHomerofCrisainfourorfiveyeeeeears!”
“I’msureIwiiiiiill!” Alcie giggled as she stopped whirling and took a celebratory bow, an insane grin plastered all over her face. “Thanks, guys. I know you forgot and it’s fine. I almost forgot myself until Homer reminded me. I told him the date once, months ago, and he remembered!”
“We have no gifts,” Pandy said, throwing her arms around Alcie.
“You’ll owe me,” Alcie said, hugging back hard, as Iole hugged them both.
“Okay,” Pandy babbled, breaking apart after a long moment. “We have to get moving. We have to find the cave and get inside—and there’s no cave!”
“There has to be,” Iole said. “This is the spot.”
Pandy crossed the fifteen or so meters of plateau and began to search at the edges of the gray semicircle of rock.
“It should be right here. This is an archway, but it’s sealed up! There has to be a clue. A way in, somehow.”
“I smell smoke,” Alcie said, turning her nose to the east.
“Is there anything in the story of Orpheus that might help?” asked Pandy.
“Nothing,” answered Iole, ignoring Alcie as she sniffed the air and walked slowly toward the edge of the plateau. “Only that when his wife Eurydice was bitten by a snake and died, he came to a cave on the side of this mountain and walked down into the underworld.”
“Guys, I smell smoke.”
“Maybe there’s another entrance,” Iole said, turning to her right and walking to one far side of the plateau.
“Anything?” Pandy called.
“Nothing,” Iole said, hurrying back. “Just a long drop into darkness.”
“Same on the opposite side,” Homer said, joining them in front of the grayish rock.
“I’m seeing lights,” Alcie said, standing at the edge of the plateau. “Guys, I got lights.”
All at once, Dido began to bark ferociously at the gray semicircle. There was a squeal and a crunch of rock scraping against rock, and the gray stone that sealed the cave opening began to move, becoming almost liquid. Slowly it began to swirl outward from the center into a large spiral. Then that swirl broke into several smaller swirls, which wound back on themselves. Then a large hole appeared in the middle, surrounded by large, black stone hairs. The swirling slowed slightly, then stopped abruptly. Pandy, Iole, and Homer suddenly found themselves staring at a giant ear.
“Guys, I think the lights are getting closer.”
“Three questions,” said a voice that came out of nowhere.
“Look,” Pandy said, discovering the source of the voice.
Above the stone ear, a little to the right, was a tiny stone mouth.
“Three questions,” the mouth repeated. “Three to enter.”
“Guys?” Alcie called, her voice thin above the wind.
“Homer …,” Pandy said.
“Yeah. I’ll go see,” Homer said, looking at the large earhole and backing toward Alcie.
“Are you ready?” the mouth asked.
“Ready,” said Pandy.
“What is the color of flesh when it has rotted away?”
Pandy looked at Iole.
“Black?” she asked.
“Is that your final answer?” asked the mouth.
“No! Wait! We’re thinking,” Pandy yelled, the volume of her voice causing the ear hairs to shake.
Suddenly Iole snapped her fingers and whispered something to Pandy. Pandy nodded her head.
“There is no color,” Pandy said. “When flesh is rotted away, there is no flesh, therefore, no color.”
At once, the earhole expanded to twice its size.
“Uh,” Homer said coming back from the edge. “Like, I think you may want to see this.”
“Can’t,” Pandy said. “Iole’s brain is getting us inside.”
“What is the significance of yellow?” asked the mouth.
Iole’s own mouth went slack and, a moment later, her shoulders dropped. She turned to Pandy and shook her head.
“I’ve got nothing,” she said.
Pandy turned to look at the ear. This was the way down into the realm of death. The first question had been about death, so maybe all the questions would be related somehow. Yellow. Yellow? What was
yellow? The sun that Apollo pulled. No, that was life-giving. The stuff she caught in her little brother’s poop cloth. No, that was watery and gross and had nothing to do with death, except that she sometimes wanted to kill her mother for making her change Xander’s underclothes. Yellow. And then there was that one time, just a few days before she’d found the box of evil and started this whole mess. Her mother had told her to clean up after Xander, and she ran out of the house only to find her father standing underneath his favorite fig tree, gathering a small pile of brown leaves and complaining about all the yellow ones yet to fall …
Yellow leaves.
“Uh!” Pandy started.
“Yes?” said the mouth.
“You have it?” Iole whispered.
Pandy nodded, sure that she was right—but how to phrase it?
“Yellow signifies—uh—the state of something—that is between life and death,” she began, looking at Iole, who stared back with growing awe. “Such as a leaf. It—is green when it is attached—part of the tree. Which is alive. It is brown when it falls and is dead. When it is yellow, it’s not part of the tree—anymore—but it’s also not part of the—dead part, uh, place. It’s not dead yet.”
The earhole expanded again; now, it was just large enough for a small child to pass through. Pandy jumped up and punched the air with joy as Iole went to hug her.
“Brilliant.”
“GUYS!” came Alcie’s voice from the edge.
“The final question,” said the mouth. “How will you die?”
“Whoa,” said Homer softly.
Pandy was stunned into silence. Iole was so horrified that she grabbed Pandy’s arm. Suddenly Alcie came racing up and took Iole’s other hand, dragging her to the edge of the cliff. Iole was nearly there when she broke away from Alcie with a huff and started back to the ear and Pandy, who hadn’t moved.
“No!” Alcie said, catching her again and pointing down into the night. “Look!”
Iole peered down the steep side of the tall mountain and, at first, didn’t register the hundred or so single flames that formed a line stretching into the distance, nor did she really smell the smoke wafting upward. What shook her out of her amazement at Pandy’s final question was the singing. Hearty singing, far away, but getting closer. Women’s voices. Getting closer. On their way up.
Pandora Gets Frightened Page 1
