"That's more for his life. What about your life?" said Iole.
"Believe me, the whole family feels the enduring presence . . . like, all the time."
"I've decided to go with my original plan," said Iole.
"You? You're presenting you?" asked Alcie.
"I'm the best example I could think of. I was so sick once on Crete that everyone had pretty much given up on me. Except my mom. She kept the altar to Apollo burning all the time. She never left my side and said prayer after prayer. One night, when I was almost dead, I mean actually about to cross the river Styx, she swears she saw Apollo in my room, touching my cheek. The next day my fever was down, and I was fine two weeks later. I'm the enduring presence."
"Where's the proof?" asked Pandy.
"I'm here, aren't I? It's just classic god stuff," she said softly. "They just have to take my mom's word . . . or not."
"Well, I gotta have something great to show," Pandy muttered.
"Please don't bring your dad's liver again. Master Epeus will absolutely give you a delta. You're not, are you?" asked Iole.
"Gods no! I've brought it so many times . . . plus everybody already knows the whole stupid story: '. . . and Zeus gave Dad a big piece of his liver in ajar so that he would always be reminded, blah, blah, blah,'" said Pandy. "It's dumb."
"And it's totally and completely gross," sniggered Alcie.
"Yeah, well," Pandy said offhandedly, "at least people can look at stuff from my family and not turn to stone."
Alcie stepped back, looking like Pandy had struck her. She hung her head, her jaw clenched tight.
Iole looked nervously from one to the other.
"I can't help it if . . . ," Alcie began, then stopped. She hoisted her schoolbag over her shoulder and walked away down the chariot road.
"Pandy," whispered Iole, "that was mean."
"Oh, Gods," Pandy said. She ran off after Alcie, wedging a stone in her sandal. "Alcie! Ow! Wait. . . Ow! Wait!"
Alcie stopped, her back still turned.
Alcestis Artemisia Medusa had turned thirteen only a few weeks before Pandy. With her red hair and brown-green eyes she was prettier than most and was having a much easier time with all the maiden stuff. Alcie's father, a wealthy man with his own business that specialized in building private backyard ruins that looked "exactly like the real thing," bought all the latest toga clasps, hair irons, and ankle bracelets for his daughter, so she always looked rather lovely . . . on the outside.
However, Alcie was also a distant niece of the great Gorgon Medusa, a creature so hideous that anyone who looked into its eyes would immediately turn to stone. Even looking at a piece of Medusa would turn the strongest man into a rock. A young hero, Perseus, had cut off Medusa's head some years earlier, so at least all the relatives didn't have to worry about Medusa showing up for feast days, but Alcie was still embarrassed by the blot on the family name.
Pandy clomped over to her.
"I'm sorry I'm so sorry. I keep thinking that my family is so much more messed up than anyone else's that it doesn't matter . . . but I'm sorry"
"Your family? Oh . . . may all your figs have worms! At least you have a family! Aunt Medusa turned everyone to stone. Half of my family is still sitting in our garden as birdbaths!" cried Alcie.
Pandy paused, a smile starting to form; she bit her lip hard to hide it.
"Maybe your dad can sell them as part of his business," she said, cleaning out her sandal.
"That's not funny!" said Alcie, breaking into a grin.
"Yes it is."
"Yes it is!" said Iole, finally joining them.
"You didn't even hear it, plebe-o!" said Alcie over her shoulder.
"Yes, well, I heard it and it's absolutely true!" said a fourth voice.
From behind a nearby cypress tree came the sound of uncontrollable laughter. Helen and Hippia, the two prettiest and most popular girls at the Athena Maiden Middle School, tumbled out of the tree's shadow.
"Well, well. Hi, maidens!" said Helen, standing straight and tossing her long blond hair back over her shoulder. "Look, Hippia . . . it's the three losers doing what they do best. Being losers. Talking about their loser families."
"Why aren't you cheerleading, Helen?" asked Pandy.
"The coach cancelled wrestling, duh. It was nailed on flyers all over school."
"So you couldn't think of anything better to do than follow us? Wow, we must be really interesting," said Alcie.
"I so don't think so," said Hippia. "We're going to Metis's house to plan the pre-Bacchanalia party. It's by invitation only, but I wouldn't be looking for any runners with invites if I were you."
"Oh, Hippia, don't be so mean!" said Helen. "They probably aren't even going to the Bacchanalia. So many more exciting things to do, right, guys? Like squeezing your pimples and offering up sacrifices to Aphrodite. 'Oh please, Aphrodite . . . just let me be pretty for one day!' Pandy, has any youth even asked you to go yet?"
Pandy stood silent, a mixture of hatred and humiliation in her brown eyes. It was true enough . . . no one had asked her. The Bacchanalia was the big school social event of the year, a ritual sacrifice, bonfire and refreshments, and then circle dancing . . . with youths! Now that she was a maiden, she didn't have to stand with the young girls off to the side; she could actually have an escort.
But not one of the young boys from the nearby Apollo Youth Academy had so much as glanced at her during intra-academy sports days. She had even smeared her neck with orange blossoms and let one strap of her toga fall ever so slightly off her shoulder when she realized she would be standing next to Tiresias the Younger during mandatory tragic chorus practice. But he just continued to sing the story of Oedipus the king: "Don't kill your father, don't marry your mother, don't poke out your eye." He didn't even notice her.
Helen sauntered up to Pandy.
"Hey, Pandy, know what everyone's saying about your dad? They say that because he's missing so much of his liver, he can't digest his food like normal people and hasn't been to the lavatorium in years. They say he's gonna blow like a volcano."
"Helen," said Pandy, "my father did something for mankind. Not like . . . oh, let me think . . . your father, who hid in the sewage pits during the last war."
"Take it back!"
"Helen," said Iole quietly "Aren't you forgetting something?"
Helen whirled on Iole.
"Oh, the little dummy speaks! What, dummy?"
Iole slowly walked up to Helen.
'Pandy's father is an immortal. Which means that Pandy is a demigod. Since she became a maiden, she's started acquiring her powers. And you don't know what she can do."
Helen and Hippia looked at Pandy in silence. Pandora looked back at the two of them and tried to furrow her brow like she was going to give them flaming warts or something. Secretly, she had no idea if she even had any powers, but she wanted to give Iole a big kiss on the cheek.
Helen and Hippia started backing away.
"You'd better not try anything. My dad is on the Athens High Council," said Helen.
Alcie rummaged through her school sack. "Hey, look what I just found! A piece of my aunt Medusa. I think it's her toenail! You guys want to see it?" And she pretended to throw a piece of the Gorgon at the two retreating girls.
Helen and Hippia ran squealing for at least a hundred paces till they were out of sight.
"Nice one, Iole," said Alcie.
"Yeah, good save," said Pandy.
"I wasn't saving. You don't know what you're gonna be able to do," Iole said. "I've been reading and listening to the traveling storytellers. Demigods can be enormously powerful. Hercules is only half god and look at him! Hey, can we take a walk through the market? My mom gave me some extra drachmas to buy figs on the way home."
The three girls turned from the chariot road, climbed up a gentle slope to another low wall, scrambled over, and entered the agora, the main Athens marketplace.
Pandy loved the marketplace and wished she didn't usu
ally have to hurry home to help babysit. She could stroll (these days, it was more like disappear) for hours among the brilliantly woven tapestries from Persia, glass jars filled with beads from Namibia and rare spices from China, and baskets of dried Macedonian figs, Turkish apricots, and Arabian dates.
"How are my favorite girls?" said the fruit vendor, when they entered his stall. "Why haven't you troublemakers been to see me lately?"
"Hi, Glaucus," said the girls in unison.
"We've been inundated with this huge school project; pretty much working on it every day. Well, some of us have," said Iole, specifically not glancing at Pandy.
"Ah, yes," said Glaucus, "the big Gods' project. A few maidens have been in buying dried grapes, apples, and whatnot. Making big dioramas and mini battle scenes, sticking things up on papyrus boards, making little gods-on-a-stick."
"With fruit*" said Alcie.
"Some kids were very creative," said Glaucus.
"I'm toast!" whispered Pandy to Alcie. "If I don't at least get a passing mark on this project, I'll get held back a whole year. I'd be the only maiden in a class full of little girls! I'd rather be sent to the underworld. Gods, I can't think about this right now, come on!"
While Iole wasted long minutes choosing just the right figs, Pandy drew Alcie to the vendor with rainbows of colored silk fluttering above his stall; the girls walked among bolts of gauze, linen, and cotton piled high all over his stand. Pandy imagined herself dressed in beautiful togas made of these fabrics, each one more dazzling than the last. She wondered what color Tiresias the Younger liked.
"All right, I'm done," said Iole, joining them. "Let's go."
A few minutes later they reached the crossroad that led to their homes.
"Hey, why don't you guys come over?" said Pandy. "You can help me figure out what I'm gonna bring tomorrow."
"And help you babysit? I don't think so, thank you very much," said Alcie. "I have geometry and civics homework."
"I have to help my dad feed the animals," said Iole. "Catallus, our stable slave, just got his results back from his session with our seer and it turns out he's got Castor's Contagious Cough, so he's living in the toolshed now and we're a little shorthanded."
"Okay . . . I'll see you guys tomorrow"
The three friends started to walk away.
"Pandy!" called Alcie.
"What?"
"I'm sorry, too."
Pandy turned and waved. They waved back and disappeared over a crest.
She felt something cool and wet touch her knee. Dido, her shepherd dog, was at her heels, meeting her as he did every day when she returned home from school. She bent down and put her arms around his thick neck. No matter how disastrously, devastatingly crushing her life was, Dido had never disappointed her.
"Hey, Dido. How are you, huh? You big ghost dog."
She called him that because Dido was white. Ghost white. His fur, skin, nose, eyes, everything about Dido was the color of snow. Only a small circle of pure blue around the iris with a tiny dot of black in the middle of each eye let her know where Dido was looking at any moment. He licked her face with his big white tongue, and trotted on ahead of her toward the house.
She followed him, certain in her heart that the rest of her days would be crushing, horrible, and devastating, just like this one.
CHAPTER TWO
At Home
Pandy's house sat on top of a small hill in a quiet Athens suburb. Her father had built it from his own design, and it was modest but spacious, with a large front courtyard surrounded by a stone wall. From her sleeping room upstairs, she could see right across the whole valley, and could just make out the edges of the agora and the top of the new Parthenon.
Turning into her courtyard, she spotted half a dozen dryads, tiny multiwinged moss green tree nymphs busily knocking the heads off of her mother's narcissus blossoms. One was eating single bites out of every vegetable in the garden and promptly spitting them out. Another was building a small fortress out of artichoke leaves and still another was painting a rude fresco of Pandy's entire family standing on their heads under the words "Dryads WAS here!" in blue cloudberry juice on the courtyard wall.
"Scat!" Pandy yelled.
Dido raced amongst them, scattering the tiny creatures, who shook their fists at the snarling white furball, swearing as they fled that they would be back.
Inside, the house was still. Pandy headed for the food cupboards. There was a note nailed to a shelf just above the olive jars.
Pandora,
The tooth physician sent a runner; he's overbooked today and wants to see you tomorrow instead- Your mom is working late at Zeus's temple. I'm installing an atrium in the city and should be back by six. Sabina is watching your brother. Try to play with him just a little. Thanks.
Lots and lots of phileo,
Daddy
Well, at least she didn't have to see the tooth physician, but Gods, now she had to play with Xander. It wasn't that she didn't love Xander, she just didn't like him. Well, she could sorta tolerate most things about him, but there was one thing she just couldn't stand anymore: his tail. It was a stubby nubbin when he'd been an infant, so no one knew exactly what kind of a tail it was, but as he grew older it was obvious that Xander, only son of the House of Prometheus, was part peacock.
Pandy remembered creeping down the hall late at night, listening to her parents speaking in their room just after he was born; her dad whispering and yelling at the same time and her mother, Sybilline, saying she simply didn't know how it happened.
"Well I'll tell you how it happened," Prometheus had said. "You scrimped . . . and you know you did, Syb . . . on your offering to Hera the day before Xander was born. What were you thinking? The most vicious and vindictive of all the immortals and you take chicken eggs, not the quail eggs she prefers, to Hera's temple. And now our son has a tail!"
Hera, Queen of the Gods, had two symbols, two animals that she protected, the cow and the peacock.
"Worry and complain, worry and complain," Sybilline said calmly. "I choose to believe that the boy is clearly going to be a favorite of Hera's."
"I'm just thankful he doesn't have an udder," Prometheus mumbled.
Funny thing was, Pandy could remember actually liking her little brother at one time, tail and all. But now his constant three-year-old laughter, energy, and need for his big sister just wore on her like an ox yoke.
Pandy grabbed a handful of dried grapes and headed upstairs, pausing on the stairway just long enough to bow to the small statue of Athena sitting in her altar niche.
She knew she could just slip by her brother's room without even looking in. He probably wouldn't see her and she could get right to her homework, but she poked her head in anyway. Empty. His stuffed animal skins were untouched on his little sleeping pallet. Suddenly, Pandy heard a squeal coming from her parents' room.
Tossing her book sack into her own room as she passed, she pulled aside her parents' filmy red privacy curtain and saw Xander and the old house-slave, Sabina, playing on the floor with something shiny. Sabina's white hair was pinned back in a style Pandy only saw painted on antique ceramic urns, and her skin was so thin it was glimmering, almost translucent, even in the darkened sleeping room.
Sabina had been with the family since before Pandy had been born, but she never knew exactly where Sabina had come from. Her mother had told her Sabina used to be a cook or something, which made Pandy laugh since Sabina couldn't even dip a piece of bread in olive oil and make it taste good. All Prometheus would say was that Sabina had done a wonderful job helping to raise Pandy and that she was a fine woman, period.
But through the years, with her growing curiosity propelling her toward drawn curtains and listening to whispered conversations, Pandy had come to know the truth.
Sabina was a Fate.
The lost Fate. The hapless Fate. The Fate nobody talked about.
Pandy knew all about the Fates: three immortal sisters, old as the stars, who sat around a h
uge spinning wheel and plotted the course of every person's life. Clotho, the Spinner, would spin out a thread every time someone was born. Lachesis, the Disposer of Lots, would assign their destiny; a stable boy here, a hero there. And Atropos, the most feared of all, was the Fate who cut the thread when someone was supposed to die.
But there was a fourth Fate. A younger sister who, from the first, was just a little too scattered and unfocused for proper "fating." Her sisters had tried putting her at the spinning wheel, but the thread she spun was very lumpy, and she created a whole series of people who weighed over five hundred pounds. When she tried to assign destinies she felt sorry for everyone and created a world of happy heroes with nothing to do. Finally, they gave Sabina the "abhorred shears," but she kept getting distracted and not cutting the thread in time, letting hundreds of people live past the age of 250.
Since there was obviously no place for Sabina around the wheel, her sisters sent her to Mount Olympus and Zeus put her to work in the kitchen. But she wasn't any good there either and the food of the gods, nectar and ambrosia, would arrive either too hot, too cold, or too late at Zeus's table. The only time that Sabina seemed to be really happy was when she was with children. So, when the Great House of Prometheus was expecting a little girl, Zeus sent Sabina to earth to help out with Pandy.
But now that Pandy was older, Sabina spent most of her time doing the thing she loved most: playing with Xander.
Pandy flattened herself against the entryway, trying not to make a sound.
Good, Pandy thought, Sabina has everything under control and I am so not necessary here. She tiptoed past the curtain and slipped into her own room.
Kicking off her sandals, she sat down on her sleeping pallet, examining the bruise left on her heel by the rock earlier. It was small, no big deal. But she rubbed it stubbornly until it actually started to hurt. She took off the training girdle for her toga. She'd seen beautiful girdles on other girls, cinching in their togas at the waist, making their figures look slim. But hers was small and leather and stupid. She was a maiden now, so why couldn't she wear a large, silver girdle like her mother?
Pandora Gets Jealous Page 2
