Pandora Gets Angry (11 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
We Meet Again

“Well, well,” Hera said, her eyes narrow but bright, her mouth set in a fierce fake grin. “You know I was just thinking, being so far from familiar faces and places, how much fun it would be to run into someone I know—and here you are! How thrilling to see you, Pandora. Quite a way from home but looking well. And I see you've made some new friends.”

Hera leaned in as if sharing a sacred truth.

“But they can't ever replace the ones we lose, am I correct?”

Mahfouza shrieked, then quickly covered her mouth.

“Oh,” said Hera, turning and reading her thoughts. “Do you like my earrings? They slosh a little, but they're a tremendous help. As if I need to tell you—you live in these parts, right? So you know all about the
power
I now have!”

Then she turned back to Pandora, glaring.

“How shall I do it? How
shall
I do it? Now that I have you, what's the best way to
kill
you?”

“You have no power here, Hera,” Pandy piped up, surprised at her own audacity, although there was panic in her voice. How did Hera know where she would be? How did she get out of Zeus's sight long enough to get to Baghdad? What did she think she could do with her powers limited or gone?

Hera could barely contain her laughter. She shook her head from side to side, earrings bouncing off her puffy cheeks.

“Oh, don't I? I have no power? What do you think these are, sweeting? Candy?”

“What are they?” Pandy asked out of the side of her mouth.

“She's wearing the egg of an unborn roc,” Mahfouza said.

“Two,” said young Douban.

“That's right, my little oatie cakes. Not one but
two
!”

Pandy had no idea what the significance of the eggs was, but their tone was enough to make Pandy's stomach drop. This was a moment like several others on her quest, where Hera was literally threatening to kill her. In the past, like the most recent time in the temple of Aphrodite in Aphrodisias, Aphrodite herself had intervened, and then Zeus. This time, however, Pandy was certain that Aphrodite or Hermes or Athena or anyone else who might help her was far, far away. This time, Hera was actually going to do it.

“Put my head on the ground,” Douban the Physician said softly to his son. Slowly, young Douban removed his father's head from the sack and set it down.

“Step away,” said the head.

“Father?” his son whispered.

“My studies and powers were not limited to the physical. I advise you to be learned in all things. Distract the goddess Hera for but a moment. This is good-bye, my son. Tell your mother I love her and always do right by the world.”

The younger Douban slowly walked around the back of the group now under attack by Hera. He grabbed Pandy's cloak, forcing her to sidestep a little, which in turn forced Hera to turn her back on the head sitting on the ground only a meter from her right foot. For the moment Hera was looking at Iole, trying to read her thoughts about Alcie, who naturally had sprung into Iole's mind at the mention of lost friends.

“My father says to distract her,” Douban whispered to Pandy. “Keep her talking.”

“Why?” Pandy asked, but there was no time for an answer. Hera whirled on them.

“Private conversations? Those don't please me. Not so much. Back to business; yes, I have two, count 'em, two eggs. I thought just having one would be fine, but I can do anything with these. Eyes here, please.”

Suddenly, no one could look away from Hera. Their bodies from the neck down could move freely, but their heads were immobilized in space and all eyes were forcibly trained on her malevolent face.

“So, she has eggs on her ears. What does that
mean
?” Pandy asked aloud, brazenly stalling and honestly curious at the same time.

“Roc eggs give visiting immortals their powers to use while in Persia,” said Douban.

“Smart lad,” said Hera. “Don't believe me?”

Without a moment's hesitation, Hera sent a ball of fire directly into the shop of the silver merchant behind them. The merchant barely had time to escape with his life. Although they couldn't actually see the destruction, within seconds, all the silver was liquified into one large pool and the precious metal was flowing in a shiny river into the street.

Boom!

She set a milk stand ablaze over her left shoulder, which everyone saw.

Crash!

She leveled a tavern, a jeweler's, and a spice shop, all crowded close together nearby.

BANG!

Over her right shoulder, she destroyed a lamp shop and all the lamp oil stored in the back.

“Oooops.” Hera giggled like a fat baby. “Sometimes I get carried away.”

“All right! All right,” Pandy said, putting her hands up, still unable to look away. “I believe you! We all do. You can do anything here, Mighty Hera, just like you could do anything back home. But—but you don't want anyone else but me, so please, let them all—”

“Wrong!” Hera shouted, loudly enough that the desperate, terrified customers and merchants trying to flee the devastation stopped for a moment at the sound of her terrible voice.

“Wrong I say!” Hera screamed even louder at Pandy, who realized that this was the final moment. This was where it was all going to end, in a dirty street of a marketplace far from home.

“Now everyone dies!” Hera spat. “You, of course. But now the two miserable friends who still remain will get to accompany you on that long walk to the underworld, where you can be reunited with the other brat—the gimpy, blind one. Won't that be fun? The question is, how to do it? Boiling, roasting, wild dogs tearing you apart. All boring. And who gets to go first? Who gets to watch?”

At that moment, a giant shadow fell across a portion of the marketplace and Hera, surprised, lost focus on her enchantment. Everyone's head and eyes could move freely, and they saw that, where once Hera had been silhouetted in the afternoon sunlight, now a mammoth figure rose up behind her and blocked the sun.

At first Pandy thought it was some type of creature, a beast of some sort. Or a series of animal skins sewed together and inflated. Then she saw the enormous eyes ringed in a brown crust, and the lips, huge but still tinted blue. The turban itself was also oversized, along with the severed stump of the neck.

The head of Douban the Physician was now the size of a small temple. Everything was in proportion but the skin was stretched tight and shafts of sunlight penetrated inside, indicating that the skull was gone. For an instant, Pandy thought of the large, translucent slug tent that circled the perimeter of Wang Chun Lo's caravan, and the sentries that could be seen moving about inside.

The huge mouth now in front of her opened wide, showing teeth the size of writing tablets.

“What I have always enjoyed most about wrongdoers,” bellowed Douban the Physician in a voice that caught Hera so off guard that she nearly stumbled forward, “is that before they act, they
talk
about what they are going to do! And talk and talk and talk.”

Hera spun to face the head as the mouth opened wider and wider. The head tilted forward on the cleanly sliced neck and Hera could only stand, stupefied, as the mouth surrounded her, sucked her in, and swallowed her whole.

Pandy and the others watched as Hera slipped over the tongue and down the throat, but instead of passing out through the severed neck, she took a strange turn and ended up, head over heels, where the Physician's mighty brain would have been. Suddenly realizing what had happened, Hera could be seen getting to her feet and pounding relentlessly on the inside of the Physician's head.

“Which gives plenty of time for the heroes to act,” said the head with a huge smile. Douban the Physician forced a violent gulp, which threw Hera completely off balance and sent her robes flying over her head, threatening to reveal more of the goddess than anyone wanted to see. At that moment, the head began to lift into the air. “Although I have learned to communicate with unborn rocs—a skill you should cultivate, my son—and the ones she possesses are currently cooperating, I don't know how long I can hold her. And I don't know how long I shall want to because, if I may add, she tastes foul.”

Pandy and Iole smiled in spite of themselves.

“Hurry, my children. The sun is sinking fast,” said the head as it floated over the rooftops. “Good thoughts to you in all that you do.”

After only a few steps Mahfouza, with a squeeze of Pandy's arm, ducked down a side street as Pandy, Iole, Homer, and Douban—now, truly, Douban the Physician—rushed headlong toward the edge of Baghdad, each of them looking back every so often to see the giant head, with the Queen of Heaven furiously stomping about inside, gently gliding on a southbound breeze.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Three Rooms

In almost no time, Pandy spotted the two palms and even though her breath was catching hot in her throat, she ran across the cracked tiles of the courtyard toward the dry fountain. The sun had just begun to dip below the horizon. Douban was the first to reach her as she paced back and forth by the fountain, trying to find the ring in the slab. Homer helped Iole to sit on a large stone, patting her back as she struggled for breath.

“With all the running we do,” Iole panted, “you would think I'd have just a little more stamina.”

“It was only a few days ago,” Pandy said, still searching the ground and heaving a little herself, “that you were so sick you couldn't move. I think you're doing great.”

She kicked at a spot and sent up a cloud of dust. All of a sudden, the faint jingle of a tambourine caught her ear. She looked up quickly.

“I heard it too,” said Douban.

Almost imperceptible shimmers of heat and color were starting to flicker off in the desert. Pandy would focus on one color or a movement, and the next instant it would disappear. Then the flickers would hold steady for just a little longer and everyone knew, as Douban's father had foretold, the spirits of the palace were moving in for the evening.

“Here they come,” said Iole, watching several young boys, nearly transparent, dash onto the courtyard, tossing about a small black ball.

“Don't pay any attention,” cautioned Pandy. “Don't even look at them.”

But the sounds and color of the musicians, the filmy beauty of the women and young girls dancing passionately, the troop of horses and the flash of scimitars clanking about in mock duels was so enticing. The courtyard even smelled wonderful as some cooking stoves appeared with spits of meat and pots of many different kinds of food bubbled away.

“Mmmm,” Homer said, inhaling the spicy scents. “I'm hungry.”

“No, you're not,” Pandy said.

“Right, I'm not,” he agreed completely.

Within moments, however, as the sun dipped lower, the spirits of the ruined palace were approaching the four friends, encircling them, and beckoning them to join in the dancing and fun. There was no language, exactly, only laughter and strange sounds that emanated from open mouths. As if the spirit's speech had been reduced to rounded, lopped-off words. Douban forced himself to turn away from the marvelous spectacle. He closed his eyes and sat on the ground next to Iole. Iole followed his lead and closed her eyes as well. Pandy was still busy glancing between the setting sun and the ground between the palms, hunting for the ring and waving away the outstretched arms of the tittering girls who tried to get her attention.

Without warning, Iole thought of Homer. Her eyelids flew open just in time to see Homer only one tick away from taking the hand of a lovely dancer whose black hair was so long that the very tips trailed on the ground.

“Homer!” she screamed, startling him, his hand dropping to his side. “Don't look at her. You don't like her and you don't like dancing!”

“I don't?” Homer asked. Then he nodded his head. “That's right. I don't.”

“Come sit by me,” Iole commanded. “That's what you want to do.”

Without another word, Homer plopped down on the other side of Iole. She draped her arm around one broad shoulder and let her fingers loosely enclose the back of his neck. If he moved again, she'd know it.

The pitch of the celebration had nearly reached its peak and Pandy, who knew she couldn't close her eyes for fear of missing the one flash of light that would reveal the ring, was having difficulty avoiding the myriad hands and arms that wanted to pull her into the crowd. She found a path in the throng of spirits and darted to one of the palms, throwing her arms around the trunk and holding tight. Then she realized that the spirits weren't actually making contact with her, merely tempting her to join in. They had plenty of opportunity to try to pry her from the palm; yet all they were doing was beckoning. She walked away from the tree, directly into the crowd—and it parted in front of her.

“Hey,” she called to the others. “If you don't touch them, they can't—or won't—touch you. It's okay to move around.”

Iole opened her eyes and turned to look at Pandy. The sun was forming a soft red crescent as it started to slide from view and a shaft of light flew across the desert, piercing through any spirits in its path.

“Guys! Hey, guys!” Pandy called. “It's time!”

Iole, Homer, and Douban leapt to their feet, making their way around the ruined fountain. The sunbeam marked a spot on the ground and there suddenly appeared a large bronze ring.

“Everybody!” Pandy cried, and the four friends fell upon the ring. Homer and Douban each got a firm grasp and shooed Pandy and Iole back. They tugged hard and the slab lifted easily out of the ground, as if it were made of feathers, revealing a dark hole and the topmost steps of a narrow staircase leading into the earth. The spirits now lost all interest and wandered away to other activities.

Pandy led the way but paused only a few meters down.

“We need light,” she said, looking backward, up past the others to the darkening sky.

“Can you set something on fire?” asked Iole.

“I don't have anything.”

“It cannot be too much farther,” Douban said. “If it were so far underground, my father would have told us.”

In almost pitch-black, Pandy made her way down the stairs, her hands feeling the narrow walls on either side. Soon, she saw a dim light ahead and a glint of light on metal. She headed straight for it, but cautiously.

The dark pathway leveled out, and within moments, Pandy and the others found themselves in a little alcove lit by a tiny lamp in a niche above a golden door with no handle or knob. She stared at it intently. Then she pushed on the door with all her might.

“Homer,” Pandy said with a bit of authority.

Homer threw all of his considerable weight against the gleaming metal, using every ounce of his strength. When he couldn't budge the door even a millimeter, Douban joined him and together they strained for several minutes before they fell forward, spent.

“I don't see any way of getting in,” Pandy said, now slightly frantic, acutely aware that Alcie was on the other side.

“Nor would you,” came a thin, raspy voice from her left. Everyone turned to see a small, old, impossibly thin man clad only in a tattered undergarment. He was sitting cross-legged on a large stone.

“I am the only one who knows the secret of the door,” he said. “I am the only one who may open it, besides the jinn to whom the garden belongs. Who are you and why should I let you enter?”

Pandy began to approach him but faltered after her first step as she saw something slither out of a hole in the wall just above the man's head. She stared as a thin black snake disappeared behind the man's shoulder, then reappeared as it wrapped around the man's neck and climbed over his head. Then another snake, white this time, caught her eye as it popped its head out of another hole. Pandy looked around, her legs frozen, as she realized that most of the room—the uneven walls, part of the ceiling, and much of the floor—was crawling with hundreds of snakes.

“Guys, stay very still,” Pandy said.

“Oh Gods,” Iole whispered in a tiny voice, seeing the snakes covering the walls. “Homer, will you—would you?”

Without finishing her question, Iole grabbed the shoulder of Homer's cloak and hoisted herself up his body, until he helped her to sit on his shoulders.

“They're just snakes,” Homer said.

“Yes, they are,” Iole answered.

“I will ask again,” said the old man as a red and brown snake slithered under one arm and across his sunken chest. “Who are you and why do you wish to enter?”

“I am Pandora Atheneus Andromaeche Helena of Athens, and this is Iole—”

“You,” said the man, cutting Pandy off and pointing to Douban. “Who are you?”

“I am Douban,” said the youth. Then as if the meaning of the words was only just hitting him, he said very slowly, “The Physician.”

“You lie!” said the man sharply. “I know the Physician. He visits frequently. You are not he. You lie.”

In unison, all the snakes that Pandy could see turned their heads toward Douban and bared their fangs.

“No,” said Douban, far more calmly than Pandy would have expected. “I do not lie. The great Physician, the man you knew, is—was—my father. He is now dead. And I have taken his place.”

The snakes closed their mouths and went back to slithering as the man stared at Douban for a long time.

“That saddens me,” said the man. “He was the best of men.”

Then he looked again at Pandy.

“Why do you wish to enter, Pandora of Greece?”

“My friend is stuck in a tree on the other side. In the garden,” she answered.

“She's in a cherry tree,” Iole said.

“We only wish to get her down and be on our way,” Pandy said.

“My father has instructed us on the enchanted garden and the three rooms of coins,” said Douban.

“Then you know you may not touch a single piece,” said the man.

Everyone nodded their heads.

“You may enter to find your friend,” the man said, turning his filmy eyes back to Pandy. “But only you. And beware, the danger to which you will expose yourself is greater than you imagine. Attacks may come from any side. Many have tried to walk through the rooms of copper, silver, and gold, and they have all met a terrible end, I can assure you, for not one of them has ever come back. Except, of course, for your father, young Physician. You would all be better to turn back and let your friend stay in the cherry tree.”

Pandy huffed at the suggestion. Remembering her power over fire, Pandy squared her shoulders. “I can defend myself if someone tries to attack me. And I'm not interested in any money—just my friend.”

The old man smirked.

“So you say. But what if those who would attack you cannot be seen, how will you defend yourself then?”

Pandy had no idea.

“I just will,” she said at last.

“Very well, since you will not listen to my advice and turn away, hear this: when the door is opened, you must summon all your courage to find your way into the first room, which will then be lit as bright as day. Pass through the room as quickly as you can and pay no attention to anything you may hear. Anything. And above all, touch nothing. I shall repeat, although it never does any good: do not listen and do not touch. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Pandy replied. If it was just voices, how bad could that be, she mused.

“Then come,” said the man, unbending his legs and rising. Pandy noticed that, while the old man had been talking, all the snakes had simply disappeared. Moving swiftly to the golden door, the man gave the gentlest push and it swung silently inward, revealing nothing but blackness beyond.

Pandy looked to Iole, Homer, and Douban, her smile weak but her fists clenched firmly. Then she walked into the darkness. Remembering that she had forgotten to ask anything about the garden itself, its size, shape, or where exactly to find Alcie, Pandy turned back, but the golden door was swinging shut and, suddenly, she was in pitch—pitch—black.

It was then Pandy recalled the words spoken by the head of Douban's father: “the deadly corridor.” And she flashed back to the first words of advice the old man had just given her: “You must summon all your courage to find your way into the first room.”

Pandy had just assumed that she would be in some sort of rocky passageway, much like the one she and the others had passed through as they descended the stairway into the earth from above. Why would she need any courage? Couldn't she just walk?

Then, as her eyes were trying to adjust, trying to find even a pinpoint of light to lead her, she heard the sound. So very soft. All around her, a rustling, but not harsh—whisper soft. It was the sound of things gently rubbing together, oh so slowly.

Tentatively, she put out her hand, trying to find a wall with her fingers. Nothing. She edged forward, slowly. Finally, her middle finger brushed against something soft and dry. Pandy pulled her hand back, then stretched it out again cautiously, feeling again the papery softness.

Then she felt it move.

In the blink of an eye, just before she jerked her hand away, she felt the tiny but strong muscles contract. She knew exactly what it was. And she flashed on all the small heads turning toward Douban, fangs bared.

All the snakes that had disappeared from the alcove were now surrounding her; her skin rose up in prickles along the back of her neck and down her arms and legs. She remained frozen for—she couldn't say how long. She hadn't known this particular type of fear before: to be completely unable to see the enemy, to see what was coming at you. Then she remembered that her feet hadn't come into contact with anything so, perhaps, shuffling along the floor wouldn't be dangerous. Her legs felt like they were made of bronze. She forced herself to go onward until her shoulder grazed a wall and she felt a mass of long shapes on her upper arm.

“
Okay. Okay
,” she mouthed to herself. “This is not the way. I could be in here forever, bumping into walls. Think!”

Without knowing why exactly, only that she was, naturally, curious, she gradually raised her right arm into the air over her head. Her elbow was still bent when she brushed against a ceiling writhing with long, slender bodies—so close to her head.

She gritted her teeth and hesitantly put out her hand one more time.

“If I can just move along a wall,” she mumbled.

She closed her eyes; there was no point in keeping them open, she knew she could only rely on her fingers and her sense of touch. She lightly traced over a mass of snakes slithering on a wall. Moving forward, she delicately swept her forefinger along one particular snake or another, always avoiding the head. This worked until she headed into a corner and her nose rammed between two snakes clinging to the wall. Instantly, she flung her head back but not before her cheek felt a tiny fang, bared and ready to strike.