“Just a nap?”
“No.”
“A tiny one? I’m so tired. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease!”
“No. Can’t hear you. Not listening. Lalalalalalalalala,” Morpheus began to sing.
Ismailil, who’d been slapping himself on his arms to keep from sleeping, gave Pandy a swat. Her eyes flew wide open.
“Please stay awake!” he whispered.
“Good boy!” said Morpheus, his laughter fading in Pandy’s mind.
“I’m awake. I’m awake,” she said.
Amri, however, had finally given up and was out cold, propped against Pandy’s hip. Throwing her arm about his little shoulder, she slumped back and found herself leaning against two huge, pinkish, fuzzy logs stacked on top of each other. She had no idea what they were and didn’t much care; all she felt was soft. Even the strands of thin black fuzz protruding from all over the log, like black strings, were kinda soft.
It was the most comfortable anything she’d felt in weeks. She nestled in and was just letting her eyelids sag again as her fingers wound in and out of the black strings. Without thinking, she tugged on one, noticing how the substance around it moved outward as she pulled. Suddenly, she tugged the black string right out of the log.
Immediately, the log jerked back and a small red blotch appeared where the string had been.
With a muffled shriek, Pandy sprang away, still holding the string but now staring at it . . . realizing that it was a big hair and she’d been leaning against a ginormous pair of legs.
The incredibly oversized legs (and the wide hem of a man’s toga) were sticking horizontally out of an opening in the hut. She’d missed seeing it at first because this larger opening was hidden by some broken and discarded sections of column. Suddenly the legs (whoever they belonged to had obviously been reclining) were drawn up and into the opening and then Pandy saw a seated figure many meters tall—too tall to really see the face, but she could easily make out the bottom of a long, swishy black beard.
She was thrown off balance as Amri was roughly shoved forward. Another group of prisoners had joined the end of the line. This time, however, there was an immediate commotion back in the food hut.
“Just let me finish this . . . soup, stew . . . whatever it is!” A woman’s voice rose above the din.
“It’s your turn,” called another, angrier than the first. “Water the line!”
In the distance, the side door to the hut flew open, and two women emerged: a redheaded woman with a plate of meat and a woman with a water-skin, black hair falling around her face. Beginning at the new end of the line, the woman with the meat took only minutes to reach the man now standing behind Amri. The water-skin was passed more slowly. The dark-haired woman wasn’t looking at anyone, and her impatience was clear.
“Excuse me,” Pandy called as the man behind Amri finished a giant swig. “Could these boys get just a little more water?”
The woman, her back to Pandy, jutted her hip out as she slouched on one leg and shook her head.
“If I give it to them,” she said, turning to look Pandy in the eye, “then I have to give . . . oh . . . oh! Ahhhh! Amri!”
Dropping the skin, she took a giant step and scooped the little boy up in her arms.
Amri, who had been sleeping peacefully against Pandy, woke up and, at first, feeling a fresh set of arms upon him, struggled with his new captor. Then he looked the woman in the face.
“Mother!”
“Mother!” yelled Ismailil.
“My sons!” she cried, rushing to Ismailil, the three of them holding on to one another in a tight huddle, which naturally included Pandy. There was so much clamor that several of the women in the food hut gathered at the door, and prisoners in line, strangers to each other, strained for a glimpse of the commotion. Suddenly, people who didn’t know the person next to them were clasping hands and smiling to one another.
After many tears and many kisses, the boys introduced Pandy.
“She saved us, Mother!” Ismailil said.
“She saved my leg!” cried Amri. “She thinks she’s a snake. And she can talk to squirrels!”
Looking at the food hut, Pandy saw that the redheaded woman was moving back toward the boys’ mother. Suddenly, one of the gray-haired women called out of the doorway.
“Let her be!”
“She’s slacking!” the redhead spat.
“I said, let her be! She’s found her children. That’s cause enough to rejoice.”
The boys’ mother stood to face Pandy.
“I’m Ghida,” she said. Then she paused, shaking slightly. “I . . . I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything. We had fun, right guys?”
“We were in the heavens!” Ismailil said.
“We touched the stars.” Amri nodded.
“What?” Ghida cried.
“Uh, there was, like, an accident,” Pandy said quickly. “A woman tried to escape, but believe me, your boys are fine.”
“We did something that even her gods never do!” said Amri.
“Knowing you two,” Ghida said, tenderly touching Amri’s face, “I don’t doubt it.”
The next instant, Pandy and the boys were yanked forward.
“Oh, no,” Ghida said. “You’re going in.”
“Mother!” shouted the boys at once.
“It’s all right.” Ghida kept pace with the line as it moved toward the second hut. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. And I will find you . . . both of you. All right? Amri, look at me! I will come to you!”
Ghida stopped short as a guard brandished his sword in her face.
“Move back!”
“Don’t worry,” Pandy called, just as Ismailil disappeared behind the cloth curtain. “I’ll take care of them.”
Suddenly, Ghida was gone from view and Pandy’s head was forced to her chest.
“Keep it that way!” someone commanded.
Eyes down, the entire line was herded into rows facing one end of the hut. Off to one side, Pandy caught sight of a group of guards, just waiting. After the captives had settled, no one so much as flinched for a long time.
After several minutes of silence, they suddenly noticed a new sound: a light snoring was coming from the warm end of the room. There was a muffled conversation between two head guards.
“Just wake him,” said one finally.
There was a sound of footsteps, someone saying, “Sir, the new line is ready,” and then an enormous volley of harrumphing and sputtering.
“Oh, and I was having the nicest dream—something about clouds, and there was a duck, and then my mother was there, only she wasn’t my mother but a green skink.”
“Sir, the prisoners?” the guard reiterated.
“Ah, yes. Oh, goody . . . newbies! Yeah!”
“Eyes up, all of you,” said the guard.
Pandy looked up with everyone else, into the enormous, sleepy-eyed face of her uncle Atlas, Bearer of the Heavens.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Just a Trim
He had to be, Pandy thought, at least fifteen times the size of a normal man, maybe twenty. Gods, she realized, Atlas was larger than Zeus! His arms were like tree trunks and his chest was shaped like a wine vat. His muscles had muscles. He could only sit or recline; standing would have torn the roof off the building. His skin was whitish pink from having the dark heavens so close to him for eternity and never really seeing the sun. His teeth, she saw when he yawned, were rounded and bulbous, like large onions. But it was his hair that caused Pandy’s skin to prickle. It was everywhere. The thick black hairs on his legs were only the start. The hair on his head stuck out at least half a meter on all sides; his eyebrows were one black snake across his forehead. His arms were covered with thick patches of hair protruding at odd angles, and his black beard, braided and beaded in some places, which Pandy had only glimpsed outside, hung down almost a full meter. Then Pandy saw his tusk.
Tusk?
She
waited for him to move his head, even a little. When he did, to yawn yet again, she saw that it wasn’t a tusk at all but a giant yellowish gray hair, twice as thick as any other, about as big around as a big squash and at least a meter in length, growing straight out of one nostril.
“Very well, newbies,” Atlas said. “Where, oh where, shall I put you all, hmmm?”
One by one, he assigned tasks.
“You: fire pit number 8 . . . you, nice arms: bearer . . . bearer . . . bearer, northern mountain . . . feeder, eastern mountain . . .”
Pandy realized the surrounding mountains also had slaves in columns on their tops. Atlas probably intended to cover the mountains of the known world with millions of columns, all to do his job.
“. . . bearer . . . water-well number 37 . . . feeder . . . feeder, northern mountain . . . you, can you climb a ladder? Good: used-man retrieval . . . um, oven number 5 . . . you, good arms, but you’re a kid: pulleys . . . for you: main mixing pit . . . bearer . . . bearer, southern mountain . . . you: perimeter sentry . . .”
Then, about halfway through the line, Atlas just closed his eyes and dozed. When the head guards woke him gently several moments later, he harrumphed and gazed around as if he didn’t know exactly where he was. He stretched, yawning, and ran his giant hands through his hair.
“Oh, my. I need another haircut,” he said to no one in particular.
“Barbers!” called a guard. The call was echoed outside.
“Would you like to continue?” the guard asked Atlas.
“After my haircut.”
“Yes, sir.”
The rest of the line waited as two young Persian barbers entered the hut through an opening at the back, followed by a single assistant, a girl, carrying a large cloth sack. Quickly, the assistant opened the sack and handed one barber a pair of heavy shears. The other barber stamped his foot and clomped back to the opening.
“Hurry it up!” Pandy heard him yell.
“I’m sorry,” came a small voice, growing nearer. “I’m sorry.”
And there, suddenly, barely managing two big ladders and a long broom, was Iole.
“Ahhh.” Pandy choked loudly and gripped the boys so hard that they both cried out. As those closest to her turned to look, she quickly put her head down.
Her mind reeled. She was shocked—stunned, certainly, but she realized that she was happier at that moment than she’d ever been before in her life. Nothing was wrong, everything was right. Iole was alive. And if Iole was alive, then Alcie had to be . . . she just had to be.
“What’s going on back there?” yelled one head guard.
Another guard, in the group, smacked Pandy with the flat side of his sword.
“What?” he barked.
“I’m sorry,” Pandy said loudly, looking up and craning her head high. “Leg cramp. It was me. My bad.”
Then she locked eyes with Iole, who dropped the ladders on one barber’s foot.
“Sorry! Sorry,” Iole said, trying to get a good hold on them again.
“Shut it,” said the first guard to Pandy.
“You bet,” Pandy replied, settling back.
“Let’s make this a full body trim,” Atlas was saying to the barbers. “I’m feeling all-over fuzzy.”
Iole and the other girl positioned the ladders against Atlas. As one barber unbraided and debeaded the long beard, the other went to work trimming the leg hairs. Pandy pretended to simply look around, her eyes always coming back to Iole. Iole tried to look like she was concentrating, but she was shaking badly and she kept handing the wrong implements to her barber.
“I said ‘straight razor’!” he cried.
“Sorry,” she sputtered, handing him the right tool, her gaze drifting out to Pandy.
From the legs to the arms to the massive barrel chest, climbing up and down the ladder, the barber razored each and every black hair. Iole would step forward every few seconds to sweep away the cut hairs with the broom.
“You’re giving me nice points, right?” Atlas asked the barber, semidozing. “You’re not making them blunt?”
“Beautiful points, sir, absolutely.”
“And you,” Atlas said to the other, “when you’re done trimming, I want ruby and ivory beads this time.”
“Excellent choice, sir,” said the barber, slowly scissoring each beard hair individually.
After twenty minutes, Pandy locked eyes with Iole for the hundredth time and finally got up the courage to mouth the word “Alcie.”
Iole gave an almost imperceptible nod of her head.
Pandy pursed her lips in a tight smile, then she mouthed the word “Homer.”
Iole nodded again, but her brow furrowed deeply.
Something was wrong with Homer.
As Pandy watched, Iole leaned the broom against the far wall and casually raised both arms above her head and turned her palms up, squatting for a split second. Then she lowered her arms as if it had only been a momentary stretch.
But Pandy understood.
Somewhere on the mountain, buried to his waist in a column, Homer was a bearer.
“Are we boring you, Iole?” asked her barber.
“No, sir,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Problem?” asked Atlas.
“Oh . . . no, sir,” said the barber. “It’s just my assistant. If it would please you, I could use another.”
“Fine,” Atlas said, then promptly dozed off again.
The two barbers, moving at lightning speed, were almost done cutting and shaping the huge mane on Atlas’s head. Then they stopped abruptly. One of the guards woke Atlas.
“Sir,” one barber said, stepping forward, “we are about to begin your face.”
Suddenly, Atlas sat bolt upright, which startled everyone in the room. Pandy immediately looked at Iole, who met her gaze with an expression that Pandy read as “pay attention.”
Working first on the ears, then the heavy brow, then the cheeks, the two men slowly moved inward toward the nose. Pausing for a second to breathe deeply, one barber used both hands to grab the thick, yellow gray hair and lightly move it out of the way as his partner set about snipping the other nostril hairs.
“Would you like points, sir?” he asked.
“Just do it!” Atlas growled.
Pandy had all but forgotten about the strange hair, so different from all the others. In fact, if she completely ignored the fact that he was gargantuan, it was the only odd thing about her uncle. Now she watched Atlas clenching his hands tightly, his knuckles snow white, his teeth set, breath issuing forth in short spurts.
“Don’t nick it!” he hissed.
“Nowhere near it, sir,” the barber replied, but he had to stop every so often and un-tense his hands.
Why wouldn’t her uncle want that horrible hair gone?
Atlas couldn’t be in pain, she thought. Then it dawned on her—he was nervous.
She looked at Iole, who cocked her head slightly.
Suddenly, she understood.
“Oh,” she said softly.
“What?” whispered Amri.
“Nothing,” Pandy whispered back.
All at once, the barbers backed away from Atlas’s face like it was white hot and scuttled down their ladders. Now, with all the rest of his hair shorn, the giant yellow gray nose hair was even more prominent.
“All done, sir,” one barber said.
“Ah, the Persians.” Atlas laughed, once again completely relaxed and slightly jovial. “No one cuts hair like the Persians. Now where were we?”
And, as the barbers began to collect their tools, dumping them into the bag Iole held open, Atlas continued with his assignment delegation.
“You: oven number 18 . . . you, can you cook? Excellent: kitchen . . . bearer . . . feeder, western mountain . . . bearer . . .”
Next was Ismailil.
“Wow, you’re puny: mixing pit number two.”
Suddenly, Ismailil was unchained and about to be pulled away. Frantic, Amri called out to
his brother.
“What gives?” said Atlas.
“They’re brothers,” Pandy spoke up. “Sir, if it would please you, they are brothers.”
“Aw, that’s cute,” Atlas said, looking at Amri. “And you’re even punier! Puny is cute. Okay, put ’em together.”
As Amri was unchained he looked up at Pandy.
“But, Pan—!”
“No!” She silenced him, not wanting her name to be revealed. “This is good. You just go.”
She bent down.
“Go,” she whispered to the little boys she now considered to be like her own brothers. “I’ll find you. Just go and do what they say.”
She quickly kissed each boy on top of his head and they were led away.
Then she was alone.
“You,” Atlas began, and Iole dropped the bag, spilling all the shears and razors.
“Oh.” She looked up, innocent, trying to make her eyes impossibly large. “I am so terribly sorry.”
“I do need a new assistant,” said her master.
“I could use some help,” Iole agreed, looking directly at Atlas.
“Bold girl!” the barber cried. “I meant to get rid of—”
“Fine,” Atlas interrupted, glancing at Pandy. “You . . . with her.”
Pandy was unchained and shoved to the end of the room. Iole’s barber barely glanced at her.
“Clean up and bring her to the tent,” he muttered to Iole as the two men exited, backward, with the other assistant.
“Um,” Iole said to Pandy, grabbing one ladder, “could you get the other one?”
“Sure,” Pandy said.
Pandy was moving toward the opening at the rear when Iole caught her by the arm and secretly gave Pandy a tight squeeze.
“You have to back out,” she said.
“Oh, okay.” Pandy stifled an unexpected sob. The two ladders kept colliding and getting stuck in each other as the girls left the large room.
Pandy was very busy trying to decide which piece of information was greater: the knowledge that her best friends were alive and right there, or the fact that Laziness was hiding in her uncle’s big, ugly nose hair.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Old Men
“She’s here!” Prometheus all but screamed. He tried to straighten up, but in disguising them both as old men, Hermes had given Prometheus such a hunch to his back that, as he practically danced with excitement and joy, he looked like a deranged crab.
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