Pandora Gets Lazy

by Carolyn Hennesy

  “Duh!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Close Call

  The heavens, so unbelievably close, cast a gray pall over everything. Even though it was morning, the only light in the village came from the small fires everywhere and the dim sunlight trying desperately to beat its way from the other side of the void, through the blackness, past the stars.

  “Why are we going this way?” Alcie asked.

  “Because she has to see how the men get into the columns in the first place. We need to go by the big ovens,” Iole answered.

  The hazy light only confirmed what Pandy had suspected: this small village on the mountaintop was the filthiest place she’d ever seen. People covered in mud and grime, everyone toiling or sleeping; the body stench was overwhelming. Mud pits next to wells next to small ovens next to column bases next to clusters of dozing bodies. There were no roads, just occasional open spaces to jostle in and out of with the rest of the moving throng. The air, which seemed a little cleaner on the climb up the mountain, was once again dense and sooty. The whites of people’s eyes, the only clean thing about them, stood out, giving everyone a startled appearance.

  Iole led the way through the village. Every few seconds, she would tap her tiny shears defiantly to appease a guard blocking their way or to silence someone demanding to know why they weren’t working.

  Pandy was deep in thought. What was she going to do to save Homer? It was much easier, she mused, to act on instinct. Since she began her quest, she’d saved others and herself by thinking fast on her feet, or while tied to a chair, or floating in the air. Now that she actually had time to formulate a plan, her insecurities were rising again. She didn’t know if she had the brainpower to come up with anything.

  Beyond several columns, she saw the building housing her uncle and thought about his fast-growing hair and his tremendous size in comparison with his brother, her father. Her father.

  Gods! She hadn’t talked to her father in . . . weeks! She looked around. There was so much noise and activity, no one would hear her. And the bottom of the heavens was like a shroud overhead. Zeus could see through the clear skies, but could he see through the darkness of the heavens? Maybe not. She hoped not. And, if anyone stopped them, Iole would need only to wave her little shears and say that Pandy was talking into a shell on “barber business.”

  Iole was ahead of her and Alcie’s eyes were focused on something far in the distance. Slowly, furtively, Pandy reached into her leather carrying pouch, brought out her shell, ran her finger down the lip, and, burying it in her hair, held it to her ear.

  Just then, the three of them approached the middle of the village and mixing pit number two.

  Prometheus, working at the far end of the pit with Hermes, Amri, and Ismailil, felt his shell vibrate in his cloth sack. Instinctively he reached in and pulled it out.

  “Pandy?” he said softly, turning away so as not to attract attention.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she replied, keeping her voice low.

  “Prometheus.” Hermes leaned over and spoke softly, “Your girl is heading this way.”

  Prometheus looked over his shoulder and followed Hermes’ gaze. He spotted Pandy, perhaps thirty meters away, slowly wending past a guard hut and the main water well, pushing her way through the crowd. Her hand was hidden in her hair as she pretended to scratch her ear. More than anything else at that moment, he wanted to run and throw his arms around his daughter.

  “How’s everything at home?” Pandy asked.

  “What are you doing?” hissed Alcie, her face close by.

  “Talking to my dad—don’t look at me! Act like this is normal.”

  “Oh, toasted grape seeds. Puh-leeze.”

  “Everything is fine, honey,” Prometheus said, certain that Xander was fine with Sabina, as he watched his daughter approach the mixing pit. “How are you? Uh, where are you?”

  “Keep it low, Pro,” Hermes cautioned, his eyes on the guard hut.

  “I’m on top of Jbel Toubkal. I’ve seen Uncle Atlas, Dad. I think I know where Laziness is hiding. It’s in his nose hair!”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty big, isn’t it?” Prometheus said, then realized his blunder.

  “How do you know that, Dad?”

  “Uh . . . uh . . .”

  He had a single moment to think of his answer, because just then Ismailil and Amri saw Pandy walking toward the mixing pit.

  “Pandy! Pandy!” they cried.

  Tossing down their mixing poles, they raced around the pit, to the surprise of all the slaves, including Prometheus.

  “Well, honey . . . uh . . . ,” he said, watching the two little boys throw themselves all over his daughter in a fit of glee. “I know how big my brother is normally, remember? If an evil has gotten in his nose hair, then it must be enormous, right?”

  “Pandy!” Amri was yelling and pulling on her cloak.

  “Oh, yeah. Duh! That makes sense. Hi, Amri!” Pandy said. Then she became a little disoriented from the clamoring boys and the surrounding din, unsure of which sounds were which. “Hey, Dad, sounds noisy where you are. What’s going on in the background?”

  Pandy, Alcie, and Iole had stopped directly in front of the mixing pit.

  “Uh, that’s your brother,” Prometheus faltered. “It’s uh . . . uh . . .”

  “Xander, Dad. His name is Xander.”

  “What? Oh, yes, it’s Xander,” Prometheus said, entranced at the happy scene in front of him. Then he saw two huge, sinister-looking Roman guards on the move, heading toward the fuss. He nodded to Hermes, who also took note of the guards and began hurrying, as fast as his old-man body would move, around the side of the pit.

  “Where are you? What are you doing with Xander?” she asked into the shell, bending down to ruffle Ismailil’s hair. “Hey, Ismailil,” she whispered, hugging him tightly as the little boy clung adoringly to her legs.

  “Wow,” Prometheus said softly, turning his back on the scene again, aware of the fact that the Pandora he knew would rather be caught dead than actually be nice to little boys. And these two knew her . . . and liked her—no, loved her. His daughter had changed.

  “ ‘Wow’ what, Dad?” she asked.

  “Uh, nothing. Where are we? Uh . . . Xander and I are at a . . . a . . . bake sale. They’re trying to rebuild the Athena Maiden Middle School and we brought some of Sabina’s, uh, cookies.”

  “Pandy,” Iole said, “we have to keep moving.”

  “All right, Dad, I have to go,” she said, realizing she was causing too much commotion and that people staring was soooo not a good thing.

  “Me too, honey . . . oh, I love you so much. I’m so proud of you,” Prometheus said, looking again over his shoulder. “Big-time phileogottagobye.”

  He shut off the shell and watched the two guards, now almost upon his daughter.

  “Hey, boys, I have to go . . . but I’ll be back, okay?” Pandy said to Amri and Ismailil, covertly replacing the shell in her pouch—but not without Amri seeing.

  “Were you talking to your father?” Amri asked softly.

  Pandy nodded, then winked at him, putting her finger to her lips.

  “Pandy,” Alcie said, “let’s move!”

  “All right, little ones,” Hermes said, suddenly appearing between Pandy and the boys. “Let’s get you back to work!”

  “Oh, you’re Greek!” Pandy said to the old man.

  “By Jupiter, what’s going on here?” asked one of the Roman guards, striding up.

  “They’re with me,” Iole said in Latin, pointing to the scissors dangling from her neck.

  “Very well,” said the guard, “but if you maidens have business here, be quick about it.”

  “Yes, sir! We’re on our way,” said Alcie.

  “Pandy!” Amri was yelling, reaching out for her with his arms as Hermes ushered him and Ismailil back to the far end of the pit.

  “Be good, Amri!” Pandy called after him, then to Hermes, “Thank you, sir!”

  “No
trouble. My friend and I have just been helping the little brothers with their burden, that’s all,” said Hermes to Pandy, indicating another ancient man, covered in mud from head to toe, watching her intently from the far end.

  “Well, thank you, sir,” Pandy said to the second old man, looking at his thin white hair and toothless smile, “they’re like my own brothers. Thank you for taking care of them.”

  Prometheus, unrecognized, nodded feebly at his daughter.

  Pandy waved at the boys and moved on.

  “She looks good, don’t you think?” Hermes whispered, ambling up. “Little more meat on her bones, cheeks flushed . . . looking more like her mother every day. ’Course, she looks a little tired.”

  “Yeah, she’s . . . she’s tired,” Prometheus choked.

  “Aw, come on, pal,” Hermes said, putting a withered hand on his friend’s shoulder, “don’t fall apart on me now. No tears. This is good. She’s good.”

  Prometheus wiped his face and nodded. With a little smile at Hermes, he put his shell back in his pouch.

  Amri noticed his movement and, eyes wide, nudged Ismailil. Ismailil turned to look and the brothers saw their new friend, Theus, had a shell exactly like the one Pandy had used to talk to her father.

  Prometheus then went back to work, completely unaware that both little boys were now staring at him very, very hard.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Ovens of Jbel Toubkal

  “Atlas’s whole idea is to make as many columns as fast as possible,” Iole was saying as they trudged toward a particularly hot area of the village. “So he has ovens everywhere on the mountain, but the ones we’re heading toward are the biggest.”

  “I heard this morning, just before my shift ended,” Alcie cut in, “that Atlas has finally started the expansion into other areas of the mountain range. He thinks that he’s got enough columns around here to hold this section pretty firm . . . I mean, like, in terms of numbers. Now he just needs to keep men in them.”

  “Doesn’t he know he’s going to run out of men eventually?” Pandy asked as they passed a large group of the tiny, baked used-men now being trained in the use of tiny swords.

  “He doesn’t like to think past today, says it’s too much work,” Iole responded. “That’s a direct quote.”

  They rounded the corner of a long row of makeshift shelters, and in a large clearing, Pandy saw five large ovens, each with an opening at least two meters in diameter. At first the heat shimmer blurred the actual activity, and the tremendous warmth felt like a wonderful bath. But soon Pandy realized she was drenched in her own perspiration. Moving along the side so as to escape the wind generated by the fires, Pandy at last saw what was being done.

  On the other side of the clearing, a long row of pre-baked cylindrical column sections extended away from the ovens. Guards were forcing the men, horizontally, into holes in the center of these sections, waist deep, then slaves were packing the remaining spaces with wet mud. Some men were screaming and fighting with all their strength only to be beaten into submission; others were just hanging limply, awaiting their fate.

  Then, whenever an oven was free, a cylinder was rolled, slowly, by many slaves, up a wooden ramp and onto a platform, one in front of each oven. These platforms then slid onto a rack, which moved in and out of the oven. Only the clay and mud of each section was placed into the oven; the men remained outside the opening and, as each cylinder was slid inside, a heavy black protective cloth was thrown over the man inside.

  The fires were so hot that it took only ten minutes exactly before the wet mud had been baked hard enough to imprison each man.

  “They bake the cylinder, but not the man,” Pandy said.

  “They have it down to a science,” Iole went on, tapping her shears to a curious guard.

  “Iole!” said Pandy as a thought struck her. “Why didn’t you give Homer the Eye of Horus? He might not feel any effects at all. It might have saved him!”

  “Oh, of course! Why didn’t we think of that?” Iole said sarcastically.

  “I only meant . . . ,” Pandy said quickly.

  “As if we even knew what was going to happen to him when we were led in here? As if we weren’t shackled ourselves and couldn’t move! You’re certainly not serious, are you?”

  “I’m sorry, Iole,” Pandy said. “That was stupid of me to even ask.”

  “We couldn’t have done it, duh,” Alcie said. “But don’t think we didn’t think about it. Lemons, I even tried to slip it around his neck when I went up to feed him, but his neck’s so thick it won’t go around. I found a longer piece of leather and was going to give it to him, but they took him off my rounds yesterday, so I’ve only been able to see him from far away.”

  “I’m sorry, guys . . . it was dumb.”

  “Apology accepted. So is this giving you any ideas of how to get him out?” Iole asked.

  “Um, absolutely,” Pandy lied.

  Without warning, a shout went up.

  “Number one, done!” a slave called.

  Over at the first oven, the black cloth was ripped away, the man underneath gasped for air. The platform was swiveled sideways and the cylinder rolled back onto the ground and away. The whole process began again. Ovens were loaded and unloaded three more times while the girls watched.

  “Come on,” Pandy said at last, “take me to Homer.”

  “Ooooh, you’ve got a plan! I can tell. Iole, she’s got a plan!” Alcie squealed, then she yawned widely.

  “Oh, Alce, when do you sleep?” Pandy asked.

  “I can’t sleep,” Alcie said. “Not with Homie up there. I try, but I can’t shut off my mind.”

  “Don’t say a word,” Iole mumbled to Pandy.

  They slowly made their way to the far side of the village, passing other wells and mixing pits and prebaking ovens. And everywhere, columns.

  “Watch this,” Iole said, bringing them to a halt at one point and gesturing to a column and a huge piece of strange equipment nearby.

  “What’s that?” Pandy said.

  “An LPLD,” Alcie replied matter-of-factly.

  “Once more, in Greek, if you please?” Pandy asked.

  “A Large Portable Lifting Device,” Alcie said.

  “We have no idea what the actual name is,” Iole said. “Alcie came up with LPLD because she’s not clever when she’s tired.”

  “I have no problem admitting that,” Alcie said with a shrug.

  The LPLD was being rolled into position alongside the column. For a second, Pandy was reminded of the scaffolding she would see periodically on the sides of buildings or temples back home when workers needed to repair something high up on the exterior. But this contraption looked more ominous. It was a huge array of beams, boards, ropes, and spinning wheels; the entire device was only slightly taller than the man on the column (almost reaching the very bottom of the heavens).

  “It’s sort of a pulley,” Pandy said.

  “That’s what I said,” Alcie replied. “It’s a pulley.”

  Two slaves raced up two wooden ladders, then transferred onto two ropes hanging down on either side from the top of each column.

  “Oh, I get it . . . a regular ladder could never go up that high,” Pandy said.

  “Well, it could,” Alcie said, “but it would be unwieldy.”

  Pandy looked at her.

  “That’s what Iole told me.”

  The slaves, now at the top, each grabbed two hooks from the pulley, dangling in the air close by, and set the hooks into grooves in the top section.

  At a signal, slaves manning the ropes lifted the top section off and lowered it to the ground. Then, just as quickly, the new section with a new slave was lifted high and set into place.

  “Raise your arms, slave!” commanded a guard on the ground. Slowly, the man in the new section lifted his arms, the muscles on his back tensing and straining as he began holding up his own little section of the heavens.

  “But what about the used-man?” Pandy
asked.

  “Watch,” said Iole.

  With picks and hammers, two men began pounding on the hard clay of the old section until it simply crumbled. The used-man fell limply onto the ground, where he was lifted to his feet and led away.

  “Why is his bottom half twisted and red?” Pandy asked quietly. “It wasn’t exposed.”

  “That much weight . . . that high up?” Iole said. “I don’t think we’ll ever know what it must be like. The sun and weight penetrates, I’m certain.”

  “My Homie is losing his silky smoothness,” Alcie said quietly.

  “Oh, please,” Iole muttered.

  “What? I’ll still like him!” Alcie said.

  Pandy had never really stopped to think about her uncle and what his life had been, and would be again, if she could get Laziness back in the box. She had taken for granted that the heavens would always be far, far overhead. It was just something normal, like Sabina’s bad cooking. She hadn’t really pondered what strength and courage it took to bear the heavens, the whole thing, all alone. She looked up: everywhere around her men were sunk into columns, their arms and backs being twisted and crunched, baked into bizarre, gruesome statues.

  The girls continued walking until they were close to the inner wall of the mountain that sloped up to the ridge. An enormous guard stepped directly into their path.

  “Why aren’t you three working?” he demanded.

  “Excuse us,” Iole said, tapping her shears. “Out of our way, please.”

  “What’s that? Huh? Okay, so you have a tiny pair of clippy things around your neck, so what? Get back to work!”

  “I beg your pardon, sir, but I am assistant to the barbers of Atlas and as such I have been given liberty to traverse this entire village in peace and safety. And they are with me.”

  “I know nothing about this.”

  “What are you . . . new?” asked Alcie.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh,” Iole said, “well, I urge you to ask anyone, and now, if you please.”

  “I don’t think so.” The guard grabbed Iole by her arm.

  “That arm was recently broken, sir,” she said calmly but sternly, “and if you break it again and I am unable to satisfactorily perform my duties, you will be broken, sir, by Atlas himself !”