She thought of her mother, sitting behind her desk at Zeus's Athens temple... or as Pandy called it, "Supreme Ruler, Inc., Athens Branch." Why Zeus had hired her mother was another thing that was totally beyond her understanding. Sure, her mother could organize things and her handwriting was nice, but she wasn't very easy to talk to. Not lately anyway. Maybe, as Zeus's chief personal aide, her mother didn't have to say anything; maybe she just filed stuff and took messages for the temple's high priestess.
That thought brought her back to her long overdue assignment: what to bring for the school project. She knew that some classes had actually worked together on their presentations, but her teacher had allowed everyone in her class to "do their own thing."
What would illustrate the enduring presence of the great gods of Greece in her life? She considered taking the statue of Athena from its niche in the stairwell, but it was heavy and every home had one of Athena or one of the other great gods, nothing special there. She could take one of her mother's many paycheck presents from Zeus: golden bracelets, silver toga clasps, hairpins of mother-of-pearl. But as Zeus liked to employ many, many women at his various temples, these were also common throughout Athens.
Perhaps if she had a small nap, she thought, she'd have more energy to think of something. Her room was chilled; the embers in her grate were stone cold from the morning fire.
Time for the trick. The trick her father had taught her when she was very small and made her promise not to show anyone else. "Not everyone can do this, Pandora, and we don't want people getting resentful." So she'd kept it to herself, but she didn't think it was anything special.
She knelt down by the grate and blew gently on the dark ashes. Only a few seconds later a thin wisp of smoke began to drift up and the larger cinders glowed a dull red. She kept blowing until the dull red color became bright, bright orange and the ashes started giving off a soothing warmth.
She lay back down, the heat now circling around her. She closed her eyes and . . . oh, her pallet was so comfy. Maybe she could pluck a tail feather from her brother for the project, she thought, as she drifted off. Would only hurt him for a second . . . and if no one was around to see it. . .
And she was fast asleep.
She woke a few hours later and realized the house was silent. Groggy, she clomped to her parents' room to check on her brother. She parted the curtain and saw Sabina, fast asleep and snoring, on her parents' day pallet, her hand still clutching the shiny object. It was her mother's favorite Zeus present, a gold bangle with three large emeralds in it. Her mother would be furious if she knew Xander had been allowed to play with it, so Pandy gingerly pried it out of Sabina's gnarled hand. Then she realized her baby brother was nowhere to be seen.
Okay, she thought, she would casually put the bracelet back first and then panic. She knelt down beside her parents' sleeping pallet, which was raised a good meter off the floor. Reaching underneath for the box where her mother kept Zeus's gifts, her fingers touched the top of a tiny feathered rump. She shrieked and pulled her hand back. Xander, laughing uproariously, crawled out from under the pallet, his mother's pearl earrings hanging from his mouth.
Oh fine, she thought, my little brother could have choked and somehow, some way, everyone would have blamed it on me.
"Come on you little satyr, give those to me!" she said.
"No!" he giggled over the earrings and retreated under the bed.
"Xander! Give those to me right now!"
She started to crawl in after him and, grabbing hold of one of his chubby legs, pulled him back close to her. He squealed with delight and kicked her square in the forehead, dropping the pearls.
"Ahh! You little goat!"
She watched Xander's tiny legs dash around the pallet and out of her parents' room. A moment later, he was gleefully throwing stuffed skins around in his own room. Pandy heard Sabina gnashing her teeth as the old woman shifted position.
Gods, she thought, Hades could drive his chariot out of the underworld right now and Sabina wouldn't wake up.
Pandy reached for the earrings and looked around for her mother's jewelry box. Xander had pushed it back against the far wall, behind a pile of small rolled floor rugs that her mother kept stored for "good company" Pandy pushed the rugs aside . . . and felt something underneath. Thrusting her hand into the rolls, she scratched it on a metal edge.
"Ow!"
Feeling along its shape, she pulled out an odd metal case with a small bronze lock.
The lid was made of gold with faint streaks of a white and red metal blended in. The sides and back were of black onyx, blue lapis, and pink marble, each length intricately carved to depict scenes of the family On one side, her mother was shown reclining on a sofa. On the back, Pandy saw herself as a much younger girl, walking with her parents in an olive grove. Her father and mother were shown on another side facing each other in profile, smiling. There was something familiar about it, but she couldn't think what it was. Curiosity began to rise up inside her like cream left too long to boil, and suddenly all she knew was that she really, really wanted to look inside.
But the old lock was thick and she couldn't get it to release just by shaking or tugging on it. Her fingernails weren't long enough (because she kept biting them) to pick it, so she crawled back to her mother's jewel case and found a straight silver hairpin. She pushed and jiggled and wedged the end of the pin into the bottom of the lock. At first it refused to release, but finally the lock started to give, and the clasp released with a tiny click.
Lifting the lid slowly, Pandy made out the shape of another smaller box inside: plain dark wood, very simple with slight curves at each of its corners. She brought it out from under the pallet and into the fading afternoon sunlight.
"Gods," she said softly.
This box she remembered. She hadn't seen it in so many moons she couldn't even recollect the last time; but she knew instantly what it was and what was inside.
Pandy set it down gently on the pallet. The wood was old but smooth; the hinges and clasp made of adamant, the same metal that had once chained her father to a rock as punishment for giving fire to mankind, a metal only Hercules could break. But there was no lock on the clasp, only a large circle of red wax stamped with the great seal of Zeus.
She shivered. "They" were all still in there. She even imagined she saw the box jiggle a little, as if what was inside was trying to get out.
Her father didn't often tell this part of his story and when he did, it was usually late at night, after a few glasses of wine. His voice would drop so low that Pandy would have trouble eavesdropping from the staircase, but she knew he was reliving the moment when Zeus had entrusted the box to him, to be kept a secret forever.
After Prometheus had brought it back home and hidden it away, he'd forgotten it was even in his keeping most of the time. But Pandy remembered first finding it when she was six and running carelessly through the house with it. She had never seen her father so scared. When he finally caught up with her, he grabbed the box and started to shake her hard. It was only after she started to sob did he stop and hold her close for so long that she thought she would stop breathing.
Prometheus sat her down and after a long moment he turned to her. He slowly explained to her, in terms he struggled to make her understand, that she must never, ever touch the box. What was inside, if it ever got out, would make mankind very, very sad.
"I promise, Daddy."
"Good girl, Pandora. Now, go . . . play outside, or something," he said.
"With what?" she asked.
"I don't know. With the goat. With anything."
At the entry way, she watched him slowly get up, still trembling, and take the box back upstairs.
Over the years, Pandy had come to know, by listening in the stairwell when she should have been asleep, the exact story of why the box was so important and why her father decided that simply storing the thing underneath a pile of rugs wasn't precaution enough. He'd had a strong metal case and lock for
ged to keep it safe.
What she didn't know was that since then he had looked in the case so many times simply to reassure himself, that the lock had become weak and simple to break . . . with a straight silver hairpin.
All the evils of the world were in this box.
Pandy shook it.
It really didn't look all that terrifying.
And then, the idea flew into her head.
What if she took the box to school for the big project?
Of course, she wouldn't open it.
Duh.
No, there was no way . . . what if she dropped it? Or accidentally left it in her school cupboard? Or left it in the sun and the great seal started to melt?
She looked at the box again. It was a neato example of the gods' enduring presence and nobody—nobody-would have anything else like it. She would be so careful. She would wrap it in a large sheet of papyrus, or a pallet linen or something, and tie it tightly with a strand of strong hemp.
"Gods!" she whispered. "I might even get an alpha on the project! And that would bring my overall grade up to beta!"
She looked at Sabina, still snoring.
Pandy clasped the box tight, careful not to touch the seal, and carried it into her room. She was placing it under her pallet when she heard her father downstairs. She stood up fast, her breath caught in her throat.
"Pandora!" he called. "Honey, your mom's not home yet, so come help me with the evening meal."
Shaking off a twinge of shame, she called back, "Okay, Dad . . . what are we having?"
"Leftover sacrificial lamb and rice. I'm getting the fire started now."
Pandy visualized the tip of his right forefinger glowing orange as it always did when he touched the dried kindling twigs.
She walked out into the hallway. Sabina was stumbling out from her parents' room.
"Whazz happen? Wherz yer baby brothuh?" she slurred, still sleepy.
"Oh, he fell down the stairs and broke his arm, but it's okay because Apollo stopped by and fixed it so he's fine now. Go back to sleep."
"Wha . . . ?"
"I'm kidding, Sabina. He's in his room."
Leaving the old woman speechless, Pandy went downstairs.
CHAPTER THREE
Dear Diary
That night, Pandy spent a long time on her hands and knees staring at the box under her pallet. She had no idea what she expected to see, but she now wanted almost any excuse not to take the thing to school. There was a strange pressure, like a soft ache, in her stomach. Dido, curled up by the fire grate, occasionally opened one white eye to gaze at his mistress.
Finally Pandy stood up, took off her school toga, and put on her sleeping garments. Now that she was a maiden, she was beginning to detest her combed cotton night-robes with the face of Iris, Goddess of the Rainbow, and the little multicolored arches splashed all over them. She pulled her lavender-colored privacy curtain closed and moved her footstool to the base of her tall wooden shelves and, reaching up high, pulled down a small brown wolfskin; the head with its two huge ears still attached.
"Come on, Dido, move," she said, walking to the fire grate and nudging him with her foot. "You can lay down again once it's on the floor."
Dido padded off a few meters to wait while Pandy spread the wolfskin in front of the grate. Pandy lay down on top of it with her face close to the wolf head and beckoned to Dido, then she closed her eyes.
"Dear Diary," she said quietly into one of the wolf ears.
The dark, lifeless eyes of the wolf flared with a greenish yellow spark. This was a diary unlike any other, a present to Pandy on her eighth birthday from Artemis, Goddess of the Moon and lover of wild things. Other girls had common diaries made of papyrus pages, needing India ink. But because of Artemis's great affection for her friend Prometheus, his daughter Pandy had a diary that talked to her.
"Blessed you are among mortals. Good evening, Pandora. What do you have to tell me?" said the wolf head, its voice soft and high, yet. . . crunchy. Like someone walking on a pile of rough pebbles.
"Oh . . . nothing much." She hesitated. "I saw a boy I liked today . . ."
"The same one you told me about two weeks ago?" said the wolf.
"Yes . . . Tiresias the Younger."
"Fine. Just keeping track. Go on."
"Yeah. Well, that's about all. Oh, Helen and Hippia were ragging on Dad again today Iole said that they'd better be careful because I'm probably getting my powers or something and I have no idea what powers she's talking about. Do you know anything about—"
"Pandora, we've been through this before: I record what you say only as a source of reference and remembrance. I will tell you everything you've ever done, or said, or thought, provided you told me, but I cannot advise you regarding what is to come."
"Yeah, yeah . . .fine," Pandy said.
"Oh, we're in a mood tonight, are we? I don't think that tone is actually necessary, Pandora," said the wolf.
"Okay . . . well then, that's about it."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Very good then," the skin said.
Pandy paused.
"Why?" she asked.
"Nothing," said the wolf.
"No, what?"
"I just thought you might want to tell me about that thing under the pallet."
"What thing? I don't. . ."
"Pandora! Shall I take you back to that day when you told me, 'Today is the day I stop lying forever'? I've got that entry right on the tip of my tongue, little one. Besides, I can see the thing from here. I won't ask you, but if you want to tell me, I'm all ears."
"It's just a box." Pandy tried to sound casual. "A box that Zeus gave Dad. And I'm just gonna take it to school tomorrow and show it off and . . . and . . . that's it. No biggie."
There was a long pause.
"I see," said the wolf. "Curiosity killed the Caledonian Boar, you know."
"Yeah . . . huh?"
There was a long, long silence.
"Is that all, Pandora?"
"Yes," Pandy muttered, "that's all. Except if Dido has anything to tell me."
Dido immediately opened his eyes and stared straight at the wolf, whining softly and every so often glancing at Pandy. After about two minutes, during which the wolf mumbled things like "Oh!" and "Uh-huh," Dido put his head down again and closed his eyes.
"Pandora," said the wolf. "Dido is fine. But he asks that you let him sleep on the end of your pallet tonight because he's a little chilled, that you put a little more meat and not so many entrails in his food bowl, and that you stop lying]"
"Yeah, okay . . . okay . . . wait, whatl"
"Good night, daughter of Prometheus. Sleep well in the arms of Morpheus. Blessed are you among mortals."
And with that, the wolf head was silent.
"I'm not lying. I'm not" Pandy said.
Pandy got to her feet, rolled the skin up, and placed it back on the shelf. After using her tooth-rake, she climbed in between the pallet linens. She turned onto her side only to find Dido, wide-awake and staring her in the face.
"Oh, okay, c'mon," she said.
Dido immediately jumped onto the end of her pallet, turned around three times, and settled down.
Pandy just lay there with her arms folded across her chest.
"And I don't lie."
Dido, almost asleep, gave a teeny little snort.
CHAPTER FOUR
School
The next morning, Pandy had a vague feeling that her dreams had all been miserable, and she was thankful she couldn't really remember them. She stood in front of her fire grate for a bit, then dressed in her undergarments and put on her plain brown cotton-linen school toga. She studied herself in her looking glass. The pimple that was on its way to the size of a volcano only the day before had thankfully decided not to poke out of her nose, and now it was just a tiny red dot, but the kick from Xander had turned into a nice purple bruise on her forehead.
She looked at her brown eyes, which she hated
because they weren't blue, and straight brown hair, which she hated because it wasn't curly, and her teeth, which she hated because of her slight overbite.
"Great Aphrodite," she whispered, "just let me be pretty for one day"
She thought of Helen and Hippia, and how the youths went out of their way to walk close to them and leave narcissus blossoms in their paths. She couldn't understand how the gods could bestow so many favors on the two meanest girls in school.
Sabina called from below.
"First meal!"
"Be right there."
She fastened her hair back off her face with a tortoiseshell pin, one of her "You're a Maiden Now!" presents from her parents.
Coming downstairs, she saw her father at the drainage counter, packing her school meal as usual, while Sabina stood next to him sniffing vegetables for the evening meal.
Her mother sat at the table, teasing her little brother with spoonfuls of creamed oats as she tried to get him to eat.
"Where does the Nemean Lion live? Huh? Come on honey, open up. Just one bite for Mother? Where does he live? In his caaave!"
Sybilline wore another new bracelet on her wrist; Zeus had obviously been very generous with her pay the day before. It was twisted silver with a yellow stone the size of an olive sitting in the middle, and it made Sybilline's wrist and fingers look all the more perfectly sculpted. Her mother actually could have been a statue, Pandy thought. Her hair, the color of gold coins, with never a curl out of place; her aquiline nose and almond-shaped eyes were subjects of discussion in market stalls whenever Sybilline went shopping. But it was her skin that was really perfect: porcelain smooth with not a freckle or hint of a wrinkle. Pandy had lost count of the times she'd gazed at her own reflection, trying to pray away the sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks.
"Apollo-dots," her dad had said, catching her crying over her looking glass one night. "It just means that the Sun-God loves you more than most."
Pandy didn't believe it. She thought her mother had made some sort of deal with the "god of ugliness" (although she knew no such god existed) to give her the most hideous daughter ever so everyone would always find Sybilline more beautiful.
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