Pandora Gets Frightened

by Carolyn Hennesy

  “Why can’t Cottus help?”

  “Don’t make me come over there!”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Nnyahhh,” said Cottus, sticking out his tongue and taking the net from Gyges. “Thank you!”

  As Gyges worked to remove some of the stones blocking the entrance, Pandy tried to catch a glimpse of anyone in the net; tried to make eye contact with Alcie or Iole. But she couldn’t see past the thick rope, and everyone seemed to be pretty tangled up inside. She could hear them whispering but couldn’t make out any words clearly.

  “Quiet, mice!” said Cottus. “There’s a big blue cat waiting for you; one of you in partic’lar. Which one is it, huh?”

  He started poking into the net.

  “It’s me!” Pandy cried. “I’m the one she wants. Leave them alone … lead-brain!”

  “Okay.”

  Gyges hefted a final rock back onto the rock pile, then turned toward his brothers and again took up two corners of the net.

  “It’s all clear!”

  He turned back toward the entrance and was instantly smacked in ten of his heads with a red-hot lava bomb. As the lava singed his scalp and fried his hair, he bowed low to Cottus.

  “You first.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Cottus said moving ahead, then he paused. “Hey, what the …?

  “Get moving!” barked Briareus, shoving them both through the entrance.

  And into the most dreaded part of the underworld.

  Chapter Twenty

  Tartarus

  Her ability to be stunned continually surprised her. Fortunately, at this moment Pandy was too stunned to be terrified.

  Tartarus stretched into the endless distance ahead, to the left and to the right. Before them, thousands of pits—more than Pandy could count—of varying shapes and sizes had been dug into the earth, each one filled with fire, oil on fire, burning coals, lava, hot ash, molten metal, and a variety of other blazing torments Pandy couldn’t even guess at. The heat was so intense that the ceiling—the underbelly of the mountain—glowed orange and red, steam rising from the pits collected on the rock overhead and dripped back down only to be instantly changed into steam again.

  Then Pandy saw the spirits—those whose lives on earth had been so ill-spent that they’d been condemned to remain forever in this inferno. A few—comparatively—were merely chained against the wall, tormented only by the unbearable heat. Some were sitting, chained, on the edge of the pits, their feet positioned on top of yellow-hot coals or on what looked like a simple but enormous frying stone, cooking oil popping and sputtering between their toes. But all the others were actually in the pits, buried to varying degrees. A large number had their feet submerged in boiling oil or bubbling pitch. There were those standing up to their knees in something white-hot that smelled like sulfur. Some were waist high in molten metal, burning garbage, or pure fire. Not a few were actually chained next to a pit on their bellies, their arms sunk deep into coals or flaming tar. And lastly were those buried to their necks in never-cooling lava.

  All of them, however, had signs around their necks (in the case of those up to their necks in lava, the signs were balanced on top of their heads) clearly stating why they’d been sent to the flame pits in the first place. Along the wall, most of the signs described things such as ABANDONED FAMILY or NEGLECTED SPOUSE. But those in the pits were guilty of more heinous crimes; almost all of those with buried hands had signs reading THIEF—WITH WEAPON or THIEF—REPETITIVE. Many, buried waist high in what had to be—from the scent—burning alcohol, had signs that read INTOXICATED IN PUBLIC. Others were charged with various abuses of the law, sacrilege against the gods, and ill treatment of their fellow men and women. Those sunk to their necks were charged with the most hideous crime: murder.

  And just like the pits themselves, the number of shades seemed limitless.

  For the second time in what she calculated to be less than three hours, Pandy threw up, splattering Briareus’s hand—he didn’t even notice. Her arms were bound at her sides in the monster’s snug grip, so she wiped her mouth as best she could on the shoulder of her cloak. As she lifted her head again, she thought she saw something off in the middle distance, another creature, similar to Briareus—but it was too far away to be truly recognizable and the next moment, as Briareus took his first step, it was gone.

  There were narrow walkways winding between the pits and it was along these that the hecatonchires began to move slowly forward. Without any warning, there was a splash into a lava pit far enough away that no subsequent splatter reached any of them. But to her right, only two pits away, there was a whoosh as hot coals dropped seemingly out of the air. Then, five pits beyond that, Pandy saw a small trapdoor open in the rock overhead and a stream of molten metal poured into the pit and onto the spirits below. To her left there was another lava splash and, as she was trying to find the source, she saw a shower of hot oil rain down from a tiny hole in the ceiling over another pit. Then, Pandy saw the machine: a catapult, ornate and beautifully detailed—and one of several Pandy saw—being loaded every few moments with lava bombs that moved ever forward on a long ramp that descended from the ceiling. On its own, the machine swiveled to launch its bombs into the right pits. The next bomb flew right through an ash rain, scattering ashes everywhere, including onto the net. Pandy thought her heart would crack in two as she listened to Alcie’s and Iole’s screams. Even Homer and the mighty Achilles were wailing as hot ash lit on their skin.

  “Alcie!” Pandy called out.

  “Quiet, you,” Briareus said roughly, shaking her a little from side to side—which nearly caused a concussion.

  There was no response; only a dying flurry of moans as the last of the hot ashes cooled, and Alcie and Iole tried to brush them away as best they could. But their cries were truly nothing compared to the lamentations of the spirits all around her, punished for eternity. How could neither she nor any of them not have heard the sounds of utter anguish from the Elysian Fields?

  Briareus, Gyges, and Cottus were strangely quiet now; no goofing around or bullying. Pandy knew that, for all their simplicity, their cargo was precious and one false step would send them into the pits and bring the wrath of Hera down upon them. She realized she was sweating buckets and there was the barest hint of an odd tingling all over her body. A flicker of movement to her right caught her eye and, for the second time, she could have sworn she saw Briareus—and now herself, held high—in the distance. But the figure was gone almost as soon as she turned her head. Then she spied two creatures who looked like Gyges and Cottus plodding a parallel path, perhaps forty meters away; yet as soon as she looked at the real hecatonchires, their doubles vanished. Garbage rained from another trapdoor in the ceiling almost exactly overhead and she buried her face as deep as she could into her shoulder. Looking up again, she saw something that was no figment, no false vision. Ahead, a dark figure was seated in silhouette against the endless fiery, steamy background.

  Hades.

  As the hecatonchires drew near to the lord of the underworld, Hades looked up from where he was bound to an enormous superheated iron chair, and the faintest hint of a smile replaced the look of utter weary weakness. He sighed—relief or resignation, Pandy couldn’t tell—upon seeing who Briareus held in one of his hands. Then his brow furrowed and he glanced around Tartarus.

  “And where is Hera?” Pandy thought.

  The Queen of Heaven was nowhere to be seen.

  “Put her down,” Hades commanded.

  “You’ll pardon me for sayin’ so,” Briareus replied, “but I don’t answer to you no more … uh, anymore. I’m takin’ my orders from Hera di-rect.”

  “If you don’t put her down now, I shall see to it that you are placed in the hottest lava pit—on your head,” Hades said quietly, lowering his head.

  Briareus looked at his master only a second, then shrugged his shoulders.

  “Okay.”

  Setting Pandy gently on the ground at Hades’ feet, the
god motioned that Gyges and Cottus should also set down the net. Hearing their brother’s potential fate, they were especially gentle and placed Alcie, Iole, Homer, and Achilles in a large intersection of two pathways.

  “Now, all of you, out!” Hades ordered.

  “But …,” Briareus began.

  The next moment, all anyone could see of the hecatonchire were two legs sticking up out of the nearest lava pit. Three seconds later, he was back on the pathway, standing right side up, lava dripping down his head and onto his shoulders.

  “Gotcha,” he said with a nod to Hades. “All right, you maroons, move it!”

  Gyges and Cottus left the net where they’d set it down, a good distance from Pandy and Hades, and the three monsters all but ran back the way they’d come.

  “I may not be able to counteract the cow’s enchantments,” Hades said, with a wry gaze to Pandy, “but I still have a little power where it counts. Hello, Pandora. We’ve not officially met. The last time I saw you, you had a knife handle sticking out of your shoulder and there was certain talk of officially losing you to my realm. I believe my wife was instrumental in bringing you back among the living.”

  “Yes, she did. Uh, was,” Pandy answered.

  “And speaking of bringing someone back,” Hades said, glancing at the net. “Is Alcestis with you?”

  “She is, mighty Hades,” Pandy answered, acutely aware of the minutes slipping away. “But I have so little time left and I have to find Fear and I don’t know where it’s hiding.”

  Pandora got up and began circling the glowing iron throne.

  “We’ve looked everywhere in the underworld and we didn’t see it. Persephone—uh, your wife—thought that if anyone would know …”

  “What are you doing, maiden?” Hades asked, confused by Pandy’s walking around and around the chair.

  “Oh. I’m looking for a way to untie you.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Hades said with a sad smile. “That’s something my wife would do. But Hera’s binding will have no knots and you wouldn’t be able to touch them anyway without burning yourself.”

  “You might be surprised,” she answered. Then she felt the tingling sensation throughout her body growing slightly stronger. She came around to stand in front of Hades. “Anyway, we—I—thought you would know where it is. Fear, that is. Your wife thought you might.”

  Hades looked at her and slowly shook his head.

  “Pandora, I have no idea,” he said at last. “It’s not here, that much I can tell you. I’m sorry.”

  Pandy stood silent for a moment, her mind racing. Ever since she’d begun this quest, there were so many occasions where she’d been sure she’d failed—that she’d run up against a wall she just couldn’t get around, over or under. Always, in every instance, she’d been able to find a way out. Or Alcie had. Or Iole. Even Homer. Now, with seconds dropping away like grains of sand through an hourglass, to be thwarted by the lord of the underworld himself. To have gotten so close, only to be utterly denied … Her lower lip began to quiver.

  “But it has to be!” she cried at last. “There’s no place left. The map said ‘Underworld’ and that’s where we went.”

  “It’s not here. Look around. Do you see Fear?”

  “You bet I do!” Pandy yelled. “I see it everywhere. There’s someone right over there with sizzling feet … she’s screaming in fear!”

  “No,” Hades said. “That’s not Fear. She’s in a great deal of pain, to be sure. But she’s looked within herself. She has to—every moment for the rest of eternity….”

  “But … but … we’ve done everything that’s been asked of us!” she said, breaking into tears. “All of us. We’ve been pounded and pummeled and baked into stones. Our bones have been broken and Alcie was killed and we’ve been enslaved and been turned into dogs and gotten sick and bit by scorpions and been flooded in a sewer and Homer had to fight for his life and Iole was almost buried alive.”

  Hades stared hard at her.

  “Pandora, are you listening to me? That woman over there, the one you pointed out. She has to look at herself every moment. She’s looked within and has accepted her fate. Everyone here has to look at themselves forever. Their pain is only a result of their fear—their personal fear—but it is not the Fear you seek.”

  “We’ve—we’ve been good,” she stammered, not noticing Hades’ eyebrows arching up in that way her father’s used to when he was trying to get his daughter to understand something. Usually something right in front of her face. “We fought for each other, we protected each other, we kept each other alive. That’s got to count for a little bit!”

  She was so intent on getting the story out, as choppy and brief as it was, that she didn’t register Hades’ eyes as they moved to focus on something that had appeared behind her.

  “And we got them all back!” she railed on, her voice beginning to break in frustration. “All of them … except one. And this is where the map said it would be. So you can’t tell me it’s not here. Time is almost out, do you understand? Maybe it’s already out and …”

  She finally realized that Hades was no longer even listening. It was then, as her words slowed in their mad rush out of her mouth, that she heard Alcie and the others yelling. Something about turning around. Something about behind. Behind?

  Slowly, Pandy turned.

  Out of the lava pit directly in front of her, a huge figure was rising up, nearly halfway out of the molten pool. Pandy didn’t need anyone, at this point, to tell her who was making such a dramatic entrance. As the lava fell away and the blue robes began to be revealed, Pandy felt the tingling increase as her knees went weak. She caught Alcie’s voice over the pounding of her own heart and glanced at the net: Achilles was furiously trying to sever the netting with his sword, failing miserably. Nothing was going to cut through those ropes, Pandy thought; Hera would have seen to that.

  The last of the lava dripped away and Hera, in all her evil glory, was floating above the lava pit, her arms folded across her chest. Her hair was now fully restored from the moment in Aphrodite’s temple when Pandy had set her on fire, and her bottom was no longer in its bandage from the spanking her husband had given her only a short time before. Hera was completely restored and intact and, Pandy had to admit, absolutely beautiful. Hera looked down at Pandy and smiled.

  “Flattery will get you nowhere.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Fear

  “Hello, brother,” Hera cooed. “Still comfy, I hope?”

  “Fine.”

  “Well, that’s just wonderful. Although when this is all over and I’m on the big throne and you’re on that chair for eternity, I’ll make your bindings the kind that get a lliiittle bit tighter every ten topside years or so. I made your darling bride suffer, that’s for darn-tootin’. But I don’t really care about her.”

  “If you harmed …”

  “Quiet!”

  Hades’ jaw slammed shut. Hera turned to Pandy.

  “And speaking of things I don’t care about—hello, brat. Did you like my entrance? Wasn’t it just too dramatic for words? My husband has always said that my real calling was the stage. And not just the chorus, mind you. No, no, front and center; out there all alone. Hey, you’re alone! Where are the other worm-buffets?”

  At that moment, Achilles managed to sever a single piece of rope and open a tiny section of the net; Alcie gasped. Hera turned to see the blade of his sword poking through. With a flick of her finger, the net was instantly hoisted up to the ceiling where it hung directly over a pit of molten gold. Everyone screamed as they were crushed in on each other once again.

  “Go ahead, cut through all the net you want, hero,” Hera snarled to Achilles. “Be my guest. Maybe you can get a few more sections cut before the little door opens and liquid gold starts gushing all—over—you.”

  Pandy began to shake, her knees felt as if they were going to give way at any moment, and the tingling sensation was growing. Her entire body felt
as if the blood were rushing furiously everywhere.

  “Wow,” Hera said, turning her gaze back to her nemesis. “Awwww. Just couldn’t find it, eh? My little contribution of Fear? And you’re right, you all were doing so well, despite my best efforts. But boo-hoo, boo-hoo. Yes, I heard you gnashing your teeth, wailing like a baby. Even through the lava, I heard you. You know, I think that’s just about the worst thing I’ve ever heard. To get so close, to go through so much and then … to fail.”

  The Queen of Heaven began to laugh. At that moment, out of the corner of her eye, Pandy clearly saw a second Hera, fairly close this time. She turned her head slightly and the vision was gone. Then she moved her head back the other way—just a tick—and the second Hera was there. Lowering her head, trying to ignore the tingling, her eyes did a subtle sweep of Tartarus, all that she could see.

  “Hey, you know what I’m going to do?” Hera went on. “After you’re dead, I’m gonna take you and your palsy-walsys up there, dip you in gold—might not wait until you’re dead for that—”

  And there it was. A shimmer. A very slight flux. There were two women, identical, right next to each other, both suffering in a fire pit. Two men across the way, dressed identically, each with their feet in exactly the same position on a bed of coals. Only, it was an opposite position.

  “Looking glass,” Pandy thought. “This whole place is paneled with looking glass.”

  “—and then I’m going to stand you up in the agora back in Athens. I’m going to make you all minor deities. ‘Pandora, Goddess of Failure.’ I love it!”

  She glanced at Hades, trying to make it seem as if she were turning away in despair from Hera’s awful words. Hades, his jaw tense and unyielding, only stared at her knowingly. Suddenly, Pandy felt the tingling turn into a burning and she doubled over.

  “Oooh, am I frightening you?” Hera sang out.

  With all her might, Pandy tried using her own power over fire, the power that had grown and been refined over the past months as she’d learned more about it. She focused her mind swiftly on cooling herself down. Nothing. In fact, it only seemed to make matters worse. Pandy glanced at Hades once more and saw his eyes move slightly to his left. Pandy tried to follow, but the fire inside her was growing in intensity—exponentially. Every second brought a new wave of searing heat. And it was nothing she’d ever felt; never once before had she been in any pain, but this was not a fire over which she had any control. Her organs were ablaze, her muscles, tendons, and sinews were being burned to crisps.