“Great,” Alcie said, looking down at Homer. “We have no brains and no … no … what’s the word?”
“Brawn,” Iole said, her nose buried deep in her pouch. “The word you’re looking for is ‘brawn,’ and you haven’t lost either of us. I need fruit. Athena’s enchantment gives us all unlimited supplies of dried fruit and flatbread, but ever since my bag lost its magic in Persia, it only gives me incalculable quantities of dried apples and grapes. I need a variety.”
“What in Artemis’s name are you doing?” Pandy asked.
“You’ll see. Fruit, please … you too, Alcie. I need figs and apricots … something very sweet. And I need a little water; my water-skin is nearly dry. Oh, and I need the map.”
Alcie called to Dido, had him lie on his side, and gently placed Homer’s head on the dog’s tummy. Then she and Pandy handed over mounds of dried figs, plums, cherries, apricots, peaches, nectarines, and berries. Alcie handed her water-skin to Iole while Pandy gave her the blue bowl that was their map.
“Pandy, help me mince these pieces of fruit,” Iole said rather forcefully, tearing the sticky morsels to bits. “Alcie, grab some flatbread and crush it into meal, the finer the better. Do it over the bowl.”
As Alcie made flour of the bread, and Pandy continued shredding the fruit, Iole poured water from the skin into the bowl. When the bowl was full to the brim, Iole dug in her hands and began to mix and mash everything together. Suddenly she realized there was silence in the tiny chamber. She looked up and saw Pandy and Alcie staring at her as if she were as mad as a Maenad.
“I’m making a cake.”
“Oh, Iole!” Alcie cried, genuinely touched. “That is so sweet! But really, I don’t need it. You can make it up to me when we get back to Athens. Or—tell you what—you can give me an extra-big Maiden Day cake next year!”
“Iole,” Pandy said, “we don’t have the time for this. As soon as Homer wakes, we’re gonna …”
“It’s not for you,” Iole heaved, glancing up at Alcie. “Okay … all mashed together into a heavy batter-y consistency. Good. I think.”
Then she dumped the contents of the bowl onto the ground and formed the lump into a round cake.
“He won’t mind a little dirt. Very well. Pandy … blow.”
“Huh?
“It needs to bake. We need heat. You can bake it with your hands or your breath or your feet. Anything. Only, please, bake the cake.”
“You’re a—genius,” Homer said quietly, still lying flat on the ground, his eyes closed. His words were labored but clear.
“Homie!” Alcie squealed. “You’re awake!”
“Thank you, Homer,” Iole said. Then realizing that Homer knew exactly what she was doing and why, she smiled. “You’re not so bad yourself. Pandy … please?”
Pandy shook her head, clearly not understanding. But she filled her lungs to capacity and held her breath as she superheated the air inside her. She bent, getting close to the lumpy, mushy round and blew softly but steadily all around the cake.
“Oh, careful!” Iole said, wrapping her hands in her cloak to turn it. “Don’t burn this side.”
It took two more breaths to fully bake the cake to a golden brown. While it was cooling, the three girls helped Homer to sit more comfortably; Alcie petted and patted him like he were made of glass. Homer felt himself growing more and more uneasy with all the attention; now that his wound has been treated he wanted the focus somewhere else.
“So, like, what’s with the ear?” he asked.
“Yeah? No one’s gonna tell me that Orpheus had to get through this,” Alcie said, pounding on the rock where the earhole had been.
“It’s not in the legend,” said Iole.
“My guess,” Pandy mused, “is that after Orpheus came back up and was killed, Hades put this in place to keep the Maenads—and anyone else who didn’t have a really good reason—from getting in.”
“You mean anyone who isn’t clever enough to answer three obscure, obtuse, and obfuscatory questions,” Iole remarked.
“Obviously,” Alcie answered. “What you said.”
Iole poked her finger into the top of the cake.
“Right then, cake’s cooled,” she announced, stowing it inside her pouch. “Hard on the outside, soft on the inside.”
“And you’re not going to tell us who it’s for?” Pandy asked.
“Nope,” Iole said, squeezing Homer’s arm. “The brains and the—brains of the operation know. For now.”
“Okay,” said Pandy, rising to her feet but tamping down her curiosity. “We’ll play it your way, brains. So, we start moving.”
“Agreed, provided Homer can move,” Iole said.
“Homer can move,” he said, picking himself up off the floor.
They moved toward a pitch-black opening in the chamber directly opposite the ear—the only space not illuminated by flame. Without any warning, they were descending on a fairly steep pathway.
“Stop,” Pandy cried. “Rope, tie yourself around my waist and light at least one meter ahead and to the sides.”
Instantly, they saw a rock wall to their left, a narrow path in front, and nothing to their right. There was only the black space of an abyss. Iole was closest to the edge; one more step and she would have plummeted into Zeus-only-knew-what. Pandy reached into her pouch and brought out a walnut. She tossed it into the darkness. No one heard it land.
“I think I’ll walk over here,” she said, falling behind Alcie and Dido.
“Nice going, P,” Alcie said. “Good call.”
“Blackness I can handle,” Pandy said. “But that just looked too black.”
Chapter Three
They Met a Man …
They walked downward for what, to Pandy, seemed like a week. She knew, because they weren’t actually in Hades’ realm (and according to Alcie, time had no meaning in the underworld), that the day counter on the map was still operating. But how many days could have passed while they were walking? The flame at the end of the magic rope was still burning brightly, but there was no char … nothing to indicate any time passage at all. The right side of the path, which had started out as the edge of a bottomless abyss, had become a vertical wall of smooth rock that went up into the darkness, just like the opposite side. Pandy felt the walls closing in every once in while, then forcefully willed herself not to be claustrophobic.
“We have to be getting close,” she sighed during a momentary lull in the conversation during which Iole was trying to explain to Alcie why Socrates had decided to drink the hemlock while Alcie argued that the scholar was simply a doofus for not turning around and running at his first opportunity.
“… because he was a dummy, that’s how I see it!” Alcie was saying. “And yeah, I think you’re right, P. I’ll bet you a carob-covered mint-leaf oatie cake we’ve been walking for at least eight of the nine days it takes to get down to the underworld. But I’m just goin’ by the blisters on my feet.”
“No,” said Homer, who’d been nearly silent during their walk—no one could blame him; talking with his left cheek gone wouldn’t have been an easy prospect. But now he spoke up. “Not eight. Only three.”
“You sure about that?” Pandy asked, stopping in her tracks, the flame on the end of the rope swinging in the air like a tiny lantern.
Homer nodded.
“But how can you be certain?” asked Iole.
“Because this is what my face feels like with a three-day-old beard—the right side of it anyway. I know exactly because every time I try to grow it, I can only last three days before I go nuts and have to shave—and I just realized I’m starting to go a little nuts. Also, I’ve had you change my wrappings once a day, Alce. And you just changed them a little while ago. Three changes, three days.”
“My Homie’s beard doesn’t lie!”
“Brilliant,” said Iole, her respect for Homer growing exponentially. “And that would mean that it’s some time before midnight—and three twenty-four-hour periods have p
assed. So the day counter on the map would read seventeen days left. About to be sixteen. Flawless deduction. Nice going, Homer.”
“That’s my guy,” Alcie said.
“Yeah, it’s smart.” Pandy sighed again, slumping against the rock wall. “But that means six more days of walking. I’m gonna have ten days to find Fear.”
“I’ll take the lead,” Homer said, moving forward.
“But I have the light,” Pandy countered. “You can’t see where you’re …”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. The path has only gone straight down, no twists or …”
Thump!
At that instant, Homer smacked his forehead into something hard and fell backward, landing at their feet, again completely unconscious. As Alcie rushed to Homer, Pandy held up the flaming end of the rope and saw a smooth, rounded wall. A dead end.
Suddenly, from the other side of the wall, Pandy, Alcie, and Iole heard a voice.
“Stop! No! Oh, seriously? Seriously? NO!”
And then the curved wall began to move backward; Pandy realized it was rolling. It was a giant stone, perfectly round.
“Aw, c’mon!” said the voice. “NOOOOOOOO! No … nupf … pffff.”
There was silence as the stone picked up speed and rolled away, down into the darkness.
“Alcie, stay with Homer. Dido, sit. Iole?”
“Right with you.”
The two girls moved farther down the path, the stone gone but the grinding sound it made as it scraped the walls echoing all around them as it faded. They had only walked perhaps two meters; Pandy took her next step forward …
“Oooof!”
Pandy jumped backward and held her flame higher.
“Not up there. Down here, silly.”
Bending to the ground, Pandy and Iole saw first the legs, then torso, then arms and head of a man completely flattened into the dirt. It reminded Pandy of Sabina’s tart crust after the old house slave had mashed and thinned it out with her rolling stone. But as the girls watched and Dido barked, the man’s lips plumped back into fullness with a tiny audible pop, then his cheeks puffed out with two bigger pops, then his chest—pop—arms, legs—pop pop—and so forth until finally, after sounding like corn popping in a pan on a fire, his belly rose up with a boing and he was fully fleshed out.
“That always hurts. And I’m always surprised just how much that hurts.” He sighed. “Okay, a little help getting up maybe? Don’t need any help from the dog, thanks—but girls? Maidens? A little help?”
Pandy began to extend her arm, but Iole held her back.
“We don’t know who—or what—this is!” she said.
“Oh, seriously?” the man said, raising his head a little. “‘What’? You call me a ‘what’? I know I haven’t seen myself in a glass for ages, but when I was alive I was accounted as a rather handsome fellow. Nothing to frighten anyone, at any rate. C’mon! Look, I know I just got the big smasheroo by my stone and it might be a little disconcerting to see me still talking and all, but if you help me, I could put in a good word for you with some very high-ups below. I know people—gods even.”
“Your stone?” Iole said.
“Yeah, my stone, oh, she-who-is-hard-of-hearing. My little burden. My little curse. I’ve been pushing that baby up the same stupid hill for I don’t know how long now. I’m even thinking about giving her a name; something short—like Sue or Sal. Sal Stone—the one that always gets away.”
As Pandy and Iole each realized with a jolt exactly who they were talking to, Alcie and Homer walked up; a nice bump was forming on Homer’s forehead.
“Who’s this?” Alcie asked.
“Sisyphus,” Iole and Pandy answered together.
“No way!” Homer said.
“Ta-da!” Sisyphus said, raising himself up on his elbows. “In the flesh! Kinda.”
“The guy who was punished in death by always having to roll a big rock up a hill …?” Alcie began.
“… only to have it roll back on me whenever I get close to the top,” Sisyphus finished. “Yes, and thank you, Miss Rub-It-In. But let that be a lesson to you, young ones: when Zeus tells you to keep a secret, best to keep those hummus-holes closed! It’s all I’m sayin’.”
“But the entrance to the underworld is six days away,” Pandy said. “How did you escape?”
“Yeah? Figs!” Alcie exclaimed, forgetting her promise not to swear. “What are you doing up here?”
“Are you kidding? It’s complete chaos down there, you’ll pardon the pun. The gates of Hades were wide open. Cerberus was busy chasing other spirits who’re trying to leave, and Charon was napping by the Styx. So it was a very simple matter to roll old Sue onto his boat and ferry myself across the river. Nearly sank that rickety pile of wood, but I made it. I got the Hades out of Hades.”
“Something’s really wrong down there,” Pandy said.
“Yeah, well, if you all hadn’t been standing in my way, that wrong coulda been my right,” Sisyphus said. “And now if you’ll pardon me, I gotta go find my rock.”
He started off down the path toward the underworld, then he turned back.
“Just outta sheer curiosity,” he said, “how far away am I? Y’know—from the top? From fresh air—and living trees—and pretty … people. How far?”
“Three days,” Alcie answered.
Sisyphus heaved an enormous sigh.
“Three days from a clean getaway. Ach—maybe next time.”
He turned and strode quickly downward, following his stone into the blackness. Amazed, Pandy, Alcie, Iole, and Homer looked at each other.
“Well, he’s creepy!” Alcie said at last. “Reminds me of those men who used to visit the house a few days after the Olympiads if my father lost a wager.”
“I concur,” Iole said. “But it’s what he said that concerns me.”
“The gates are open and it’s crazy inside,” Pandy said. “What do you think has happened?”
“No idea,” Iole said.
Alcie took a step down toward the underworld, then thought better of it when she remembered that Pandy had the flame. She stood aside as Pandy moved forward.
“Lemons!” Alcie said, fully aware that she’d just uttered a swear word. “We better get our backsides down there and find out!”
Chapter Four
Swimming in the Styx
The flame at the end of the rope had grown much smaller—evidence that the air around them was becoming thick with death. Evidence that they were getting closer to the end of the path. Six more times Alcie had changed Homer’s wrappings and six more times she, Pandy, and Iole had looked, with sinking hearts, at the wound. Even though Pandy had cauterized the flesh surrounding the gaping hole, even though they had tried to keep it clean and covered; certain sections were now black, as if the flesh was dying (“rotting away,” Pandy remembered from the first question of the gate-keeping ear), and other sections were oozing a greenish-white gooey substance. Dido had stopped licking days earlier and no one blamed him. No one had said a word to Homer, but he knew something was terribly wrong; he’d resisted the urge to touch his cheek to find out for himself how bad it was. Over the last two days, he’d grown silent and pensive; even Alcie knew better than to try to jolly him out of his depression and pain. Then, somewhere in the middle of their ninth day walking, Iole’s legs simply gave out. Walking beside Pandy, she groaned as her legs buckled from underneath her. She sat in the middle of the path and started crying.
“I can’t take another step,” she sobbed, laying her head on Dido as he sat next to her. “I’m so sorry, Pandy. My legs … they’re numb. Can’t we just rest for a moment?”
Pandy was about to sit down next to Iole and give her a big hug. Once again, Pandy realized how much her friends were sacrificing, how much was being asked of them, and how great their efforts were—and all to help her. Before she could sit, however, Homer swiftly scooped Iole up and onto his shoulders. That single act of selflessness, knowing he was already in agony, made Alcie we
ep, which in turn made Pandy cry. At last, Dido began to howl. They continued along the path—the only one not bawling was Homer.
Then—only a short time later and without any warning—the flame flared up, growing twice as bright as it had been, as a very soft breeze blew across their faces and they heard the unmistakable sound of rushing water. Up ahead, the blackness was pierced by a dim light.
They emerged from between the rock walls of the path and out onto a long, shallow beach bordered by a flowing river. It did seem as if there were a sky overhead; Pandy could swear she saw the faintest hint of clouds against the night. She knew they were thousands of meters underground, yet the terrain was the same as it was topside: rocks, a river, scrubby bushes, a beach, cliffs—only completely lacking color. On the opposite shore, they saw a huge, black wall with an enormous gate lit by four blazing sconces, each one as big as Sisyphus’s stone.
“Rope,” Pandy said, as Homer set Iole on the ground, “thank you for your service. No more flame.”
The rope extinguished itself without even a puff of smoke, and Pandy tucked it neatly away in her carrying pouch.
“Ah, I remember this all so fondly. Not!” Alcie said, then she pointed to a rather rocky section of the beach. “Right over there—that pile of rocks? That’s where I regained el conscioso right after Hera killed me. Hey, where’s Cap’n Charon?”
“Look!” Iole said, pointing.
Farther up, they all saw two other mighty rivers flowing into the one that lay before them.
“One is the Acheron, the river of woe,” said Iole, almost reverently. “And the other is the Cocytus, the river of lamentation.”
“Did not know that when I was here before, but then, I was having too much fun. Fun, fun times,” said Alcie sarcastically. “Where’s Charon? Where’s the boat bully, I wanna know.”
“And this … this is the Styx,” Iole said in awe, looking at the flowing water only three meters away. “Pandy—it’s the Styx. We’ve seen some amazing things—but this! Into this river Thetis dipped her son, Achilles—whom you will all remember I helped her to name—to make him invulnerable; holding him by his heel so that that was the only place on his body where he could be killed. The Styx is that powerful. This is the river of unbreakable oath by which the gods themselves swear! If Zeus himself made a promise and swore by this river, even he couldn’t break it no matter what it was.”
Pandora Gets Frightened Page 3
