“All right, suppose what you say is true,” said the guard after a moment, releasing his grasp, “what are you doing out here? And what are these others doing with you?”
Iole hesitated a moment too long.
“Yeah, I thought so,” said the guard, grabbing for Iole once more.
“Atlas wants a new look!” Pandy blurted out.
Iole and Alcie just turned to stare at her.
“A what?” asked the guard.
“Yessss,” said Pandy, wondering exactly what was coming out of her mouth next, “he’s tired of having black hair and he wants to go blond.”
“Thaaat’s riiiiiight,” said Alcie.
“Atlas sent you out here to find a new hair color?” the guard asked.
“Precisely,” said Iole. “After much research and experimentation, he’s decided that the hair color he wants is exactly the same as that of the youth on that column.”
She pointed to a column about twenty meters away on the slope. Alcie quickly readjusted Iole’s arm to a different column in the same area.
“So we have to bring him in . . . have to get him down,” Pandy said.
“So we can match it,” Alcie said.
“That’s why she’s out here,” said the guard, nodding at Iole. “But you two don’t have the little clippy things around your necks.”
“We’re consulting,” Pandy said. “I previously worked at Calypso’s Clay Pot Beauty Emporium in Athens. I was an expert in color.”
“And so was I,” said Alcie.
Pandy spied an LPLD being hauled toward a nearby column.
“Ah, perfect! Right on time,” she said. “Iole, would you please redirect that pulley toward the . . . column . . . that we need it, uh, under?”
“Certainly,” Iole said, running off.
“And since you’re here,” Pandy continued to the guard, “it would be so helpful if you could supervise.”
“I don’t know,” he said at last, a scowl creeping over his face. “This doesn’t sound right. I need to talk to my captain.”
“Well, I’m sure he’ll say the same,” Alcie called after him, but he was already clomping out of sight.
“Sour plums! He’s gonna come back and he’s gonna be mad!” She whirled on Pandy. “So, Atlas is gonna dye his hair? This was your big plan?”
“I didn’t have a plan!” Pandy cried, racing after Iole and the portable pulley.
“But I thought you had a plan!” yelled Alcie, running to catch up.
“I never had a plan!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Homer up High
With Iole directing the slave guard, the LPLD was almost in position underneath Homer’s column.
“How are we gonna get him out, huh?” Iole heard Alcie say to Pandy as the two girls caught up.
“I don’t know yet,” Pandy responded.
“She doesn’t have a plan.” Alcie smirked at Iole.
“So I surmised,” Iole said to Pandy.
Alcie ordered two slaves to help her position the two short ladders.
“We’ll get him down and then we’ll figure it out,” Pandy said, totally unsure of what was going to happen next.
“Come on,” Alcie said to Pandy.
Alcie began climbing one ladder while Pandy followed up the second.
“Wait! Oh Gods,” Alcie cried when she was only a few meters high. “Hang on . . .”
Alcie fumbled in her pouch for a moment, then withdrew the Eye of Horus on a long leather strand.
“Got it!” she cried.
Alcie rushed up her ladder again, passing Pandy. After only a few meters, they transferred onto the rope ladders hanging from the top. Neither girl spoke until they were almost eighteen meters high. Then Pandy stopped.
“Alce!”
“What’s wrong?” Alcie called down.
“I . . . just looked down. I . . . I . . . can’t move,” Pandy said. Her teeth were chattering a little and her knuckles were turning white as she gripped the ropes.
Alcie descended her rope ladder and leaned out to look Pandy in the eye.
“Look at me. Pandy, look at me! You’ve been this high up before . . . Olympus, right? The Chamber of Despair in Egypt?”
“I know, but . . . but . . . the ground just kinda rushed away from me,” Pandy said, closing her eyes and swaying a tiny bit. “Oh Gods, all I can think about is falling out of Apollo’s chariot.”
“Okay, right, that was bad. But . . . but . . . you’re here! You lived! Figs! Look at me! You can do this. You made it this far without missing a single step, and you’re almost there! Now, look at me, right in the eyes . . . good girl . . . now take one step. Just one.”
“I can’t,” Pandy whispered.
“Don’t gimme that! Pomegranates. You can do anything. I’ve seen you! Anything. Except maybe come up with a good plan. Now, with me, one step.”
Pandy put her foot on the next rung of the rope ladder, then quickly took it down again.
“Can’t.”
“Pandy, keep looking at me. Listen, Homer is up there and he is counting on us. On you. On you, okay? Now, with me.”
Pandy looked at Alcie and didn’t move her eyes. Slowly she climbed the next rung.
“Good girl! Okay, let’s think about something really great,” Alcie said, climbing just a little faster, forcing Pandy to keep up. “Like how much Tiresias the Younger is gonna soooo like you when we get home and he hears about how you saved the world and everything.”
“He got . . . t-t-turned into a g-girl, remember?” Pandy said, breathing hard.
“I’m not saying there won’t be adjustments. Keep it in the positive! Like with Homie and me. He totally, like, lives in a different city, but we’re gonna write and stuff . . .”
“Alcie, Tiresias the Younger is a girl!” Pandy said, climbing without really thinking.
“. . . and we’re gonna see each other during festivals . . . and here we are!”
Alcie stopped climbing only two meters from the top.
“Not so bad. Okay,” she said, “I’ve seen them do this. Reach out and grab the two hooks closest to you.”
Pandy saw the hooks, easily within reach, yet still she closed her eyes as she grabbed for them, horrified of looking down.
“Got ’em?” Alcie asked.
“Wait, yes.”
“Good. Now, put the hooks in the two grooves on your side. Don’t . . . don’t look down! Look at me, if you have to. Are they in?”
“Yes,” Pandy said, hooking the second rope.
“Good, now wait a moment before we signal to the ground,” Alcie said, climbing higher.
“Hi, Homie,” Pandy heard Alcie say. “Pandy’s with me and we’re gonna get you down. Pandy . . . Pandy, come up here.”
Gods, Pandy thought, this was how it was all gonna end. No Hera, no enchantment, no magic. Just a fall off a rope ladder.
“Hi,” she said, slowly climbing the last few rungs of the rope ladder to bring herself up to one side of Homer. Then she caught her breath.
Homer’s back was almost completely twisted around and his skin, the color of a ripe peach, had tiny wrinkles in most places.
“Hi, Homer,” she said again.
But Homer didn’t speak; he didn’t even acknowledge they were there. His eyes were shut tight, his mouth was set in a terrible grimace. His breath was coming in short, sharp bursts. Pandy saw the darkness over his head, huge stars once again so close by, and Homer’s hands pressing on something transparent.
“Okay, Homie, we’re gonna lift you off. Here, take this,” Alcie said, placing the Eye of Horus around Homer’s neck. Almost immediately, Pandy noticed Homer’s eyes and jaw relax just the tiniest bit, although he was still silent.
“We’re gonna signal now,” Alcie said to Homer, reaching up to quickly stroke his cheek. “So when I tell you, drop your arms and duck your head. Pandy, back down the ladder a bit. You’re gonna be okay, Homie.”
As they descended several meters
on the rope ladders, Alcie waved her arms. The top of the pulley was moved in directly over Homer’s head, the metal rods and wheels just brushing the bottom of the heavens; slowly the ropes were drawn taut over the metal wheels and the top section began to lift off.
“Okay, Homie, drop it!” Alcie cried, and Homer lowered his arms and hung his head.
“Stop at once!” came a distant shout.
At that instant, Pandy and Alcie spied the guard, returning with his captain . . . and one of the barbers.
There was some confusion on the ground, and the slaves stopped lifting for a second.
“I said stop!” came the cry again, but the guards and the barber were still out of sight to those on the ground.
Pandy saw Iole run to the slave guard and start speaking very fast, clutching her tiny shears. The guard motioned to the slaves and they began lifting the section again. Now the pulley swiveled outward, dangling the section twenty meters above the ground.
“Gods, they’re coming back! Should we try to bring him toward us?” Alcie said, panicking.
“No! We can’t do it, Alce. We can’t reach the section,” Pandy replied.
The slaves began lowering the section to the ground as Homer hung limply over the side. As he passed Alcie and Pandy, he managed to look up and smile weakly.
“Stop this now!”
Suddenly, the section jerked to a halt as the approaching guards met the group of slaves. Without thinking, Pandy and Alcie raced as fast as their legs would take them to the bottom of the rope ladders, then they scurried down the wooden ladders.
“Who gave the order to do this?” a different guard, young but with white hair, asked the slave guard.
“That one,” the slave guard said, pointing to Iole.
“What gives you the authority?” said the white-haired guard, advancing on Iole.
“This does,” she spoke defiantly, unaware of the barber heading toward her. “We’re on a mission for Atlas by direct order of his barbers.”
“What mission is this?” said the barber, striding up. “I gave you an order, did I? What order did I give you that I cannot remember? Hmmm?”
“Uh, you asked me . . . don’t you recall?” Iole looked like she was going to be ill.
“This youth isn’t scheduled to be removed until tonight.” The white-haired guard was now forcing Iole backward toward the base of the pulley. “What makes you so interested in him?”
“His hair,” Iole sputtered.
“I told you nothing about his hair or anything else, you worthless girl!” screamed the barber.
“Put him back!” yelled the guard to the slaves. “He serves his full time!”
As the slaves began to twist and pull at the ropes, maneuvering Homer’s section back onto the column, Alcie, standing in the shadow of the column, grabbed Pandy’s arm.
“Oh Gods . . . Pandy, what do we do?”
“This is what we do,” Pandy said softly, and trained her eyes on one of the ropes. At once, a fine stream of smoke began rising as individual fibers began to char.
“If I can just cut through one,” she said to Alcie, her irises fading, her eyes going white, “then, I think, he’ll lower to the ground. The slaves won’t be able to hold him.”
“Oh, sweet nectarines.” Alcie shifted her gaze back and forth from Homer to Pandy’s eyes.
The white-haired guard was still advancing on Iole, his sword now drawn.
“You’re a troublemaker, you are. I have no idea what little scheme you and your friends are trying to pull off, but I have complete authority to deal with troublemakers as I see fit.”
Pop!
The rope burned through and snapped, causing the slaves holding it to fall backward. One of the hooks fell loose and went hurtling to the ground. Homer was grabbing as hard as he could on to two ropes, preventing the section from toppling away from the three other hooks.
The weight was too much for the slaves on the remaining ropes; they began lowering Homer.
Iole was now pinned against the base of the pulley as the white-haired guard raised his sword. His eyes flicked for an instant over the broken rope.
“Was that part of it, huh? Disable the pulleys one by one? You’re working against Atlas? Why, I wonder. No matter, I’ll get that information from the other two. Do I have your blessing, barber?” he asked, not taking his eyes off Iole’s face.
“You most certainly do. She’s a liar . . . and replaceable!” yelled the barber.
The white-haired guard sent his sword whistling through the air toward Iole’s head. Iole, at the very last second, unexpectedly dove to the ground, sending the sword right into the ropes. The sword sliced cleanly through one rope, scattering the slaves holding on to it and sending Homer’s section plummeting to the earth.
Alcie screamed. The slaves screamed. The guards yelled and shoved each other out of the way; one guard pushed another into the barber, who was then propelled, screaming, directly underneath the falling hunk of baked clay. The only one who didn’t scream was Pandy. Looking up, she flash heated the two whirring metal pulley wheels to a point where they became gummy without becoming liquid. As she took her gaze away, the sticky metal caught the ropes and slowed the section down enough that it landed, intact, roughly but safely.
Everyone stared at Homer (and two feet wearing Persian slippers sticking out from under the hard clay). No one moved for a second and that was all it took for the section to topple onto its side, exposing the barber (now flat as a papyrus sheet) and flinging the still-weak Homer about like a rag doll, who then began to roll down the slope and into the village.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Homer on a Roll
As the section of column headed down the slope, it rapidly began to pick up speed. Somehow it missed hitting every other standing column in the area, which might have slowed it a little. Instead, with nothing in its way and the speed increasing, Pandy knew that when it finally did hit something, whatever it hit and Homer were both going to be shattered.
“Gods!” Pandy cried, watching the section bounce down the slope.
“TangerINES!” Alcie screamed as she took off after Homer. Pandy and Iole also took advantage of the disorder around them and, escaping the astounded guards, ran after Alcie.
Because it was much heavier at one end, the section was rolling fast in a wide arc directly through the main part of the village. People glanced up from their tasks at the screams and commotion on the hillside, then scattered like birds as Homer came crashing toward them.
Oddly enough, the first thought that went through Homer’s mind as he started to roll downhill was not how hard the ground was each time his head hit it, but how good it felt to have the use of his arms back again. His mind, now free from trying to distract itself from the pain of bearing the heavens, snapped into focus. Quickly, Homer gathered loose rope ladders, which were flying out behind the section, whipping in all directions like snapping snakes. Holding the ropes and bringing his arms around his head, he formed a protective rope cocoon, which built on itself with every rotation, and which held him somewhat steady, although he couldn’t see anything but a spinning blur. He was sure he should be nauseated, but then he remembered the Eye of Horus. And then he knocked his head on a stray water bucket and passed out.
Men dove into mud pits, women hid behind ovens or tottered on the edges of water wells, a chicken flew all of two meters and landed on a guard’s helmet. A dog ran after the rolling column, barking ferociously.
Several guards, standing by a well, tried to stop the section: one had his foot mangled and another lost two fingers, but that contact was enough to skew the course of the arc and cause the section to just miss getting bogged down in mixing pit number two.
Prometheus and Hermes looked up from mixing in time to see Homer go hurtling by. Then, less than ten seconds later, Alcie, Pandy, and Iole raced after it, followed by a dozen or so guards . . . then everyone in the village who’d seen the spectacle.
Dropping their
poles, Prometheus, Hermes, Amri, and Ismailil dashed into the flowing river of bodies, trying to keep an eye on the rolling column and the girls, but it wasn’t two seconds before Prometheus heard Ismailil yell. The boys were too little to keep pace and had fallen to the ground, in danger of being trampled.
“Hermes!” shouted Prometheus, not caring at all who heard.
Hermes turned back, saw the boys in the dirt, and with a flick of his wrist, gently parted the crowd, forming a narrow but clear path. In no time they were gaining on Iole, then Pandy, then Alcie, who was running and screaming at the same time.
“Nectarines, get out of my way! Homie! Apples . . . apples, move! Fiiiiiigs!”
“Iole,” Pandy cried, seeing the crowd fleeing, “look where he’s headed!”
“I see it!” Iole yelled back. “He’s gonna be smashed to bits!”
The arc of the section, having missed everything else in the village, was now taking Homer directly toward the building inside which sat her uncle Atlas. In less than five seconds, Homer would crash right into one of the thick outer walls.
“Homie!” Alcie screamed. “Noooooo!”
The section rolled up a discarded ramp from a nearby oven and was airborne for the last few meters.
Then Homer hit the wall.
With a deafening explosion, the wall blew apart, forcing the two adjoining walls to crumble with a roar. A large section of the roof at the shattered end came crashing down, driving clouds of dust up and out. People everywhere screamed, blinded and choking, falling all over themselves. Even the guards, normally so sinister and controlling, ran in terror or just stood gaping.
Alcie didn’t falter; she ran headlong into the dust and right up over the rubble calling Homer’s name. Pandy and Iole followed her into the chaos, picking their way over the debris, but stopped when they came upon Alcie, standing on a chunk of wall, staring straight ahead.
The section carrying Homer had come to a full stop at last. Still intact.
Right at the feet of Atlas, who had been napping but was now wide-awake.
And angry.
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