PANDORA

by Rebecca Hamilton

  She was leaning on the hood of the Fiat Punto, waiting to see how long it took him to spot her. He had parked in the thick of other vehicles hemmed in by shrubs, though most of the villagers had hiked out to the site or biked, and he threaded his way to her, feeling the unaccustomed flush of the alpha male. She brought him quickly back to earth.

  “I just wanted to congratulate you before you ran off,” she said, looking quite inscrutable.

  He glanced past her at his suitcase pressed up against the window and realized she hadn’t heard that he was leaving (who would she hear from) and had just now drawn her own conclusions. “I was going to see you,” he said.

  “Ah. To tell me.”

  “Yes. If you didn’t come here, I was going to your house.”

  “And here I am. I’m glad I could save you a trip.” She smiled grandly. “You make up your mind very independently, Lane Andersen. I s’pose I ought to admire that.”

  Her innuendos elbowed their way into his thoughts, surprising him, slowing him down. He felt immensely stupid. “I’m sorry if you thought . . . I mean, it never occurred to me, I should . . .”

  “Discuss it?”

  “Well . . . we’ve never actually said anything that would . . .” He broke off lamely. How was it that women came to conclusions about relationships and then expected a man to know? You spoke to them one day, and you thought you knew where things stood, and the next time you saw them it was as though you had missed something.

  “There’s really no need to be sorry. I didn’t have any expectations. That would be quite unreasonable.”

  “Sosanna ”

  “Dear me, I shouldn’t have said that. Now you think somethin’s changed. Did my father come see you?”

  “He did.”

  “I thought he might. We had a flamin’ good argument, and he went away for a bit. I don’t know what he said to you, but it was probably the wrong thing. Pay him no heed.”

  “He said I could come to the house.”

  “Oh.” A little hurt in her voice now. “I see.”

  He planted both hands on the roof of the car. “I was going to.”

  “Yes, you said that. If I didn’t come here, you said.”

  He drummed his fingers until she looked at him. “Sosanna, I’d made up my mind to leave before your father came. It just seemed like I was here under false pretenses, you know?” She was looking at him in a way that even he could see meant she didn’t know at all. “And . . . once I’d thought it through, it just seemed like . . .”

  “The logical thing to do.”

  He knifed his hands into his front pockets. “You’re the one who said I should take a month. Take a month, you said, and then we’ll know whether we want to start a relationship. I thought you meant a month.”

  “Well, it didn’t take a month! Did you think I’d circle the calendar and convene a meetin’?”

  He stood there, dumb and distraught, warmed and astonished, tempted and terrified. For the first time he understood how quickly he was falling in love with her. How much power she had over him already.

  “Does this have somethin’ to do with me pullin’ you out of the pond?” she said. “‘Cause if you think you’re in my debt, well . . . well, I’m not so sure I saved you anyhow.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Somethin’ let go of you, that’s all. It wasn’t me wrestlin’ it into submission. My father was comin’ after seein’ from the house, and the thing let go, like like it knew and didn’t have to finish drownin’ you.”

  “There was no thing.” They were talking about things now. He was more comfortable talking about things. “There isn’t any Water Wolf, Sosanna, and the only thing under that pond is something dead from the past, something I think may be related to a global culture that hasn’t been uncovered yet a temple, a crypt, or a shrine that was lost. I’d love to excavate it.” Suddenly it came back to him full force: his epiphany. “And maybe I can . . . now.”

  “How?”

  “I might have figured something out just now when I saw that stone split on the road. It made me think about the steles” he unlocked the car door, yanked them out of the nylon overnight bag and the towels “look. They’re uneven, like that split stone. I tried to attach them to the Pillar of Thiollaney Merriu on the smooth sides, because that’s the way they came off the pylons in Peru and Egypt. But maybe when they’re moved to another pylon they have to be reversed. There were encrustations on the two blank sides of the Pillar. I think if I clear them out, the raised glyphs will fit in them.”

  “Raised glyphs?”

  “It’s called alto-relievo. High relief. The stele on the Pillar doesn’t have it, but these two do. It must mean that they were meant to be moved here. Thiollaney Merriu is the main site.”

  She stared at the tablets uncomprehendingly.

  He thrust the carvings out as if it were obvious. “The uneven sides of the steles and the open sides of the Pillar fit together like the halves of that sphere they interlock! I had the wrong sides down.”

  “So now you’re goin’ to stay a bit, so you can stick those things on the Pillar?”

  “Well, not just so I can put them on the Pillar. I mean, you said you wanted me to help you figure out the mystery your father has been hiding in the churchyard. And I promised him I wouldn’t go out on the pond . . .”

  “So now you need my help again?” She pushed away from the car, started walking.

  He shoved the steles back into the nylon bag and went after her. “Why do you keep putting stupid words in my mouth?” She looked at him and he licked his lips. “What do you want me to say? That I’m afraid to stay here? I am. I’m no good at serious relationships. I never wanted one. Until now.”

  She didn’t exactly smile, but she looked serene again, and he understood that he had said it the necessary words. Not great maybe; good enough, though. Good enough for him, too. Because he was admitting at last how he felt, yet promising nothing.

  They were almost back to where the crowd was still trying to salvage an outing turned sour. In the road, a teenager was dribbling and juggling a soccer ball through a group of whirling children. Others sat in groups or paired off, watching from the bluff on the inland side of the road. Through the green tracery of shrubs Lane Andersen and Sosanna McCabe glimpsed the still life of established relationships and understood that this was their moment of prerogative. All else was scenery, and they were the couple they had seen a hundred times who had drifted off alone from parties and dances and come back languid and aglow. The first kiss was clinical, the second eager and passionate. Then he took her by the hand and drew her back toward the car, but there she stopped him, sensing that something more complete and exquisite was at stake.

  “Well, we’ve got the rest of the month yet, don’t we?” she said. “Maybe we both need that. I’ve had a little revelation myself, somethin’ to do with my mother. I’ve got to figure out who I am before I’ll know who I can be.”

  “Don’t we all?” he said unable to appreciate her literal meaning, and the smile he had been waiting for came faintly to her lips.

  “One month,” she repeated. “Stay away from the pond for one month just so I know why you’re still here and then I’ll see about helpin’ you.”

  ***

  It was a test he was all too willing to take, even though he knew it was a betrayal of things he was or perhaps had been. And he had a sense of urgency not impatience, urgency for something he had missed, for time wasted and opportunity passed. I’m in love, he thought. Foolish, blind, illogical love.

  He had left the car door open and he folded his arms on top of it, watching her out of sight as she walked to the beach and turned homeward barefoot through the pounding surf, like a tightrope walker holding her shoes out for balance, dancing back and forth with the ebb and flow. And then he slid behind the wheel, slammed the door and maneuvered his way out of the tangle of cars. He never noticed that the nylon overnight bag into which he had returned
the steles had been zipped shut and pushed back onto the seat.

  47

  It wasn’t the road bowling that rankled Flann Macloy. Or if it was, he referred that humiliation to the greater grievance. It was stealing away Sosanna McCabe that he could not stand. That was blindingly painful. How could a Yank waltz in here and win her favor in a couple of weeks? He had always assumed she would give him his shot some day. What else did she have to choose from around Darrig? She thought he was pompous and crude, and maybe he had been more or less ten years ago, but he could be what she wanted. She had never given him a chance, never held a conversation with him that went over fifteen seconds, never let them get alone; yet she had actually been seen coming out of Lane Andersen’s cottage.

  And now this.

  He had been sitting in Dolan’s Mitsubishi right next to them when they started with the argument, and it was clear enough they weren’t lovers yet. All that blarney about a month the lad was dense as a post. Andersen had her when they were lip-locked, and he let her push him away. He doubted she really liked the American that much. She liked control over men, of course. All women did. You couldn’t blame them for that. But it was these bookish fags like Andersen made them think they never had to give up nothing, he thought with fresh rage.

  He had known he wasn’t thinking clearly when he slipped out of Dolan’s car to cop the stone slates Andersen had left poking out of the bag, but by then he had heard enough to know it was those odd objects that were keeping the intruder here. Sosi had accused the Yank of that. Something about how he was just staying so that he could stick the things on the Pillar. Then they had gone off for their little kiss-and-make-up festivities, and Flann’s fiery heart had leaped out of his chest like the stone he had thrown down the road. And when the burnt-out certainty of it fell back to earth fell short again he had seen his cold, clear opportunity. At first he thought he would just toss the stone slates away so maybe the bastard would go home. But then the two of them came back and Sosi said that about him staying off the pond for a month to prove his undying love or something or other.

  A month!

  There would be blood on Flann’s hands if he had to see this continue for a month. Fortunately for the Yank, he had a better plan. All’s fair in love and war, they say, and when Sosi looked out later and saw the stone slates right up there on the Pillar where her lover-boy wanted to put them, she would believe he had betrayed her.

  This afternoon had been the blackest in Flann Macloy’s life, and yet there was the sidhe penchant for an uncertain fate in it as well. The information about the stone slates and the opportunity had come to him like a stroke of magical intervention. Didn’t that mean something? And he had seized it white with rage, yes, but survival instincts had to be trusted at times like these.

  And so he struck out boldly not half an hour after he had the steles in his possession. To wait would give Lane Andersen time to discover the loss and perhaps contact Sosi, but once the tablets were in place on the Pillar, any plea the American made would sound lame.

  It wasn’t difficult for Macloy to be left alone. In the aftermath of his defeat no one said more than a few words to him or looked him in the eye. So he told Dolan he wanted to walk home, and that was how he made his exit and arrived at Thiollaney Merriu on foot up the beach. He lingered in the outcroppings of the grotto, studying the churchyard, looking toward the house, and he decided luck was with him, because he neither heard the dog nor saw Brone’s old pickup truck. Moreover, there was the boat lying neat as you please right next to the pond as if waiting for him.

  So now he began sizing up the specific task, because he wanted to do it as quickly and as surreptitiously as possible. Reverse the slates so that the marked sides would fit into the Pillar that was what he had overheard. You couldn’t see the way they fit from the shore, but it must be clear enough when you got up close. He would keep the Pillar between himself and the house as much as possible, and unless someone happened to look out in the next five minutes, he could be done with it and back to the edge.

  The Yank was some kind of university wonk who wanted to know all about the Pillar, and that was why the stone tablets were important, he supposed. What was that he had babbled about a global culture and ruins under the pond? Egypt and Peru, he had said. These ivory tower types and their never-ending theories! Odd, though, that just fitting the slates on the Pillar had become so important. He wondered: if Brone hadn’t opposed it, would it have mattered? And Sosi, using it to test where she stood in the Yank’s priorities: just like a woman.

  His woman.

  A seaward breeze was turning, laying in bruised clouds. He thought it might rain again soon. It made the churchyard about as gloomy as you could hope for in the middle of the day. Keeping low, he loped down to the boat and flipped it. Stowing the oars and the steles, he shoved it prow first straight into the water, hopping in at the last moment. He’d worked the fishing grounds off the coast and could handle any kind of craft with dispatch. In half a dozen swift sharp strokes he had closed on the mid-pond prominence. Feathering one oar, he came around and grasped the Pillar with his right hand.

  He needed no acrobatics to transfer out, just swung the flat of one oar onto the slight apron at the base of the pillar and stepped onto it as though it were a narrow gangplank. With the pin still locked in the thole, the oar kept the boat from drifting as he laid the steles on top of the blade where his foot had been in order to weight it down.

  He could see the encrustations Andersen had spoken of, slight discolorations textured like coarse salt on two of the upper facings. With his pocketknife unclasped he braced one foot on the tapering base and swung up. Clinging with his left hand just below the top, he began stabbing the faint outline, digging and scraping, and it seemed to him that the air grew suddenly very still. It was the effort, of course. You always got that stagnant feeling when you worked in close quarters, breathing deeply and sweating. This was going to take a little longer than he had anticipated.

  But he soon got the knack of it. The briny residue that had leveled the depressions began to break away in chunks. He found himself scraping a thin coating off the entire seaward face of the Pillar where the deposits were heaviest. It occurred to him that he was doing the bloody Yank’s bloody work, and he hoped Andersen would appreciate that fact as he became persona non grata at the McCabes.

  Odd. The clouds had stopped moving and actually seemed to be sinking over the churchyard. Funny way for mist to come in, and at this time of day, too. There was no reason for it. All the better, though. Less chance of being seen. Satisfied at last that he had cleared the indentations, he rotated his neck to relieve the strain, shifted his weight, and slid half a meter down the Pillar.

  The water was pure glass now. Black glass. It almost seemed rounded, like a lens. The boat was rock steady. Even when he lifted the top slate off the oar that bridged the gap to the Pillar there wasn’t the slightest movement. Back he went, positioning the tablet so that it lined up with the cleared depressions of one of the Pillar faces. To his surprise, it went in cleanly with a little tug as though some magnetic force had captured it.

  You wouldn’t think this little adventure would have him breathing so hard, but he was, as if the vitality had gone out of the air. This was what revenge felt like, he thought. A bit of excitement, a bit of anxiety over getting away with it. He slid down again, pausing to scrutinize the pond. It absolutely looked like it was swelling. And the clouds that had been sinking now webbed his face and the backs of his arms. You could almost believe the pressure had gone out of the layer of air that separated the water from the sky. Something had thinned and the ambient atmosphere was collapsing in on itself from above while the water swelled to fill the void from below. Peculiar. Carefully he picked up the remaining slate that was weighting the oar. Again, no drift. The oar and the boat weren’t going anywhere. So, back up the Pillar . . .

  He was concentrating on the alignment when the smell hit him, and he couldn’t look down, cou
ldn’t see the immense blister almost as wide as the pond that had risen and burst quietly with a fetid exhalation. But he gagged and immediately hawked up air, trying to empty the tidal depths in his lungs. He had worked in a tannery and he had smelled the vilest of ocean sediments and festering bogs, and yet he had never inhaled anything as foul as this. His eyes watered and he held his breath while he worked. The second slate went in with an even stronger magnetic attraction than the first, as if a circuit had eagerly closed. And after that, everything changed:

  He heard the sound, and thinking the oar was grating on the stone as the boat drifted away, he let out his air with an explosive curse. Then he looked down and saw with astonishment that the old hull was rushing toward him. It was dipping as it rose, however, slipping off a column of water that was fired green with luminescence. He didn’t have time to notice that the perimeter of the pond had shrunk, or that the shallows were now a moonscape of glistening round stones and algae combed out by the rapid recession of the waterline, or that the remaining surface danced and cavitated. He didn’t have time because he was riveted on the green luminescence that soared toward the surface. And just before it engulfed the horror-struck form clinging rigidly to the Pillar of Thiollaney Merriu, it resolved itself into something rapacious and lupine, trailing silvery glints like slathered fangs.

  48

  No more than ninety minutes separated the tender truce between them, but Sosanna arrived at Lane’s door almost before he had talked to Cooney and settled in again. Eyes the color of winter met eyes that blazed raw sienna.

  “You couldn’t wait for me to get out of sight, could you!” she accused, backing him into the room. “Did you rush out on the pond the minute you saw your chance? And why bother with all that ‘serious relationship’ blather? Did you think I’d tumble for more than I did right there in the bushes?”