“Oh yeah,” said Pandy remembering her thoughts and feelings as the smoke was coursing through her. “He was it.”
“Then it’s box time!” Alcie cried.
With her one good arm, Pandy went to open her leather carrying pouch and found the flap so hardened by the effect of Rage that it was almost wooden. She felt for the box and grabbed a handful of objects as hard as pebbles. She pulled out burnt, stony chunks of dried fruit.
“We couldn’t eat it anyway,” she mumbled.
She removed the box, also slightly blackened, and handed it to Alcie.
“Pandy?” Douban asked, watching from a distance. “What is the matter with your arm?”
“I think it’s … loose,” she replied.
“Let me look at it,” he said, moving forward.
“Not right now, Douban,” Pandy said, then she smiled at him, holding up the box for him to see. “This is why we’re here. This is the most important thing. You can look at me later.”
“Need the net?” asked Iole.
“Don’t think so,” Pandy said. “I touched the lamp. It’s a little hot, but it doesn’t affect me. Ready?”
Mahfouza and her brothers and sisters crept up beside the girls as Alcie held the box while Iole slid the hairpin out and flipped the clasp. Pandy picked up the lamp from where she’d left it on the floor. It was hot. It was very hot and becoming hotter. Perhaps she should have used the net; she was beginning to get a little … angry.
“Okay, let’s do this,” she said testily. “One, two … three!”
Alcie opened the lid, Pandy threw the lamp into the box, and Alcie snapped the lid shut again. And there it was: the sizzle, the sound of Evil evaporating into a fine mist. But this time, just as the fizzle and sizzle began to subside, there was a long, low, faraway laugh as Giondar bubbled into nothingness.
Pandy thought back to the moment when they had first captured Jealousy: the whooping and cheering. This time Mahfouza’s family was exuberant, Homer was whirling Alcie and Iole around in the air. But she was just exhausted. She sank to the floor, leaning her back against the a wall. If she could only sit, even for a moment. And maybe find something to eat. She couldn’t remember the last time she—or any of them—had eaten! Could it have been—no! Was it the first meal in the caravan camp yesterday morning? Had it been two full rotations of a sundial? Suddenly, they all heard a strange sound from the corner of the room.
Hands, clapping awkwardly.
They all turned their heads to see the two deformed, mirror-opposite figures, hitting their hands together as hard as they could, at once cheering Pandy’s cleverness and begging for attention.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Last Two
Pandy struggled to get to her feet, but Alcie gently knelt beside her and sat her back down again.
“I’ve seen you do it,” Alcie said. “Sit, for Athena’s sake. Let me. I promise I won’t goof it up.”
Without warning, tears formed in Pandy’s eyes.
“I know you won’t.”
“Why are you crying?”
“Gee, Ares’ armpits, I don’t know! One of my best friends is alive again, my arm is totally useless, I’ve seen more bad things happen to good people than I could ever think of, and I just felt Rage and wanted to kill everyone. Think that could be it?”
“Dumb question?” Alcie asked.
“Duh.”
“Okay, I’m gonna go help this guy. Let Douban try and fix your arm.”
“Cool,” Pandy said, slumping back against the wall as Douban bent over her.
“I’m just going to feel,” he said, his fingers gently pressing her shoulder as she tried not to scream. “Oh, my. The bone has been dislocated. I can join it again, but it will be painful.”
“Go ahead,” Pandy said. “Can’t use it any other way.”
Douban placed the strap of her leather carrying pouch between her teeth.
“Bite,” he said.
She bit, then he shoved her arm bone back into the shoulder socket.
When she regained consciousness, Pandora looked at the strap of her pouch where she’d almost bitten it in two. Then she looked at her bare feet and the lumps of blackened sandal leather she’d kicked off to one side. She looked at her damaged arm now in a sling made out of Douban’s sash. Finally she looked at Douban.
“You blacked out,” he said softly. “Not long. Five heartbeats at the most. You thrashed a little, but now everything is fine. Your shoulder will heal and Alcie is taking care of Saouy.”
Pandy closed her eyes for a moment, then realized the fusing of two opposite halves of a person back into a whole was something she didn’t want to miss. Slowly, with Douban’s help, she stood, then hid behind a pile of ceiling debris and ruined furniture, watching the scene in the corner of the room.
“Iole,” Alcie asked, “you think I’m right, right? It’s the pear?”
“I think you have deduced it flawlessly,” Iole replied. “Yes.”
“Tanger … ,” Alcie began, then she did something Pandy had never seen before. Alcie purposefully stopped herself from swearing. She didn’t make a big, showy deal of it; she didn’t slap her hand over her mouth or humph or roll her eyes. She simply stopped saying the word “tangerine” and closed her mouth.
“Okay,” Alcie continued. “Mahfouza, get on his right side, please. And, what’s your name?”
“Fair Persian. I am called that because my appearance and form have elicited that response—”
“Aprico—! Ummmm. Yes, okay, don’t really need the backstory at this moment,” Alcie said as Iole suppressed a giggle. “Just need you to get on Saouy’s left side. Now the two of you bring the two of him as close together as possible.”
“Good girl!” Pandy thought.
“Saouy,” Zoe said, “these maidens will help you. Do as they say.”
The two halves of Saouy’s head nodded.
Alcie approached with the emerald pear. Immediately, it became soft in her hands. She broke the fruit in two and placed the halves in the two separate hands.
“At the same time,” Iole cautioned.
“Right,” Alcie said. “Now eat.”
The two halves of Saouy placed the fruit in their half-mouths at precisely the same moment. Instantly, his flesh melded together as if he were being sewn up the middle of his body with incredible speed. His clothes even mended themselves. Almost at once, a handsome young boy was standing before them without so much as a scar.
The family rejoicing was exuberant, but short-lived.
“Zinebi?” Zoe asked.
“We only restored Kerim and your sister,” Iole said, with a glance Fair Persian. “We came down to be of assistance.”
“Then we must find her,” said Mahfouza. “Zoe says Zinebi was one of the very last to be transformed. She should not be too hurt.”
Pandy and Homer went with one group to search the remainder of the second level. Iole, Alcie, and Douban went with another to hunt through the rest of the garden and the lower level, coming at last to …
… the food-preparation room.
On the second level, Pandy heard the screams of Zoe and Amina and flew downstairs. She arrived at the entryway just in time to see Kerim holding Noureddin’s head over an urn as he became sick with dry heaves. Looking past them, she saw Zoe holding a weeping Amina as Douban and Iole crouched over a small body on the floor. Pandy saw Iole hand a juicy red apple with one bite taken out back up to Alcie.
“It’s done,” Pandy heard Iole say.
“They’re all moving back into place,” Douban said.
Pushing past other family members, Pandy finally saw Zinebi; the little girl was lying on the floor, bound by her hands with cords to a small table, essentially on the very spot where she had shattered Dery’s glass bottle. As Pandy looked at her, she saw nothing whatsoever the matter with the child. Then, very subtly, underneath her silken robes, Pandy saw an object slide into a shallow trough that ran up and down the girl’s m
idsection. Then she saw the trough disappear.
Zinebi was wide-eyed but silent as tears ran down her face.
“Somebody start talking,” Pandy said. “Please.”
“She was an apple,” Douban said, rising.
“I know. I know, it was the last fruit left,” Pandy said. “But what was that moving into her body? How was she an apple?”
“What does one do to an apple, Pandora?” Douban asked, lowering his voice for those family members who had arrived late on the scene with Pandy. “Her major organs were all on the outside of her body, as if she were being—”
Pandy’s mouth fell open, she held up her hand for him to stop.
“Cored?” she finally said in horror. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I am afraid not,” Douban said. “But after we convinced her to eat the apple, everything has returned to its proper place. What you saw was her heart finding its way home. And Zinebi claims she was in no pain at all.”
“Gods,” Pandy murmured, looking at Hassan trying to loosen Zinebi’s ties. “Wait. What do you mean you convinced her to eat? She didn’t want to?”
“No,” replied Douban. “And she doesn’t want to be moved. She wants those things on the ceiling to fall on her.”
“What are you talking about … ,” Pandy asked.
Then she looked up at the ceiling and saw three bright blue objects, shaped almost like daggers, dangling over the little girl by the slenderest of threads. They reminded Pandy of the odd pointy-down things that she would see in caves when her father took the family on hikes back in Greece.
“Okay!” Pandy called out. “I want everyone out of the room … NOW!”
Mahfouza and the rest of her family were so startled, they simply stared at her.
“Homer, Douban, get them out. Alcie and Iole, you stay.”
“Duh,” mumbled Alcie.
“Come, Fair Persian, come, Amina,” Mahfouza was saying on her way out.
“But,” Amina protested.
“Pandora knows what she is doing,” Mahfouza hushed.
With her good arm, Pandy withdrew her net and handed it to Alcie. Then she took out the box and gave it to Iole.
“Look,” Iole said, pointing up.
One of the blue daggers had begun to vibrate over Zinebi’s body.
“No, please,” the little girl cried. “I deserve it!”
Pandy couldn’t even comprehend why the child would even be thinking something like that, let alone saying it. She dragged a chair underneath the blue things and, wrapping the net around her hand, stepped up. She grabbed the first one and became aware, even through the net, that it was soft but freezing to the touch. And she was instantly assaulted by a sharp, rancid smell—as if she’d just opened a jar full of goat cheese and lemon rinds that had been left to bake in the sun. As she pulled it off the ceiling, another one began to shake itself loose.
“Box!” she cried as Iole slid out the hairpin and readied the lid.
“Now!” Pandy yelled and tossed the blue substance, which felt slimy and gooey, inside the box as Iole snapped the lid shut. Looking back up to the ceiling, Pandy caught the second dagger just as it was falling, and Iole reopened and closed the box with perfect timing. But when Pandy had turned for the third dagger, it had already broken loose and was plummeting downward toward Zinebi. In a flash, Pandy was off the chair and Alcie had kicked it underneath the falling blue goo. It hit the edge of the chair and for one terrifying moment, no one knew whether it would fall on Zinebi or roll into the center of the chair. Risking infection by … whatever it was … Alcie reached in and tipped the chair, forcing the goo into the center, where Pandy scooped it up and flung it into the box, where it sizzled away with the others.
“Nice save, Alce. We’re getting pretty good at recognizing the lesser evils,” she panted.
“You are,” said Alcie. “I just thought it was interesting Persian decorating.”
“I’ll bet Poseidon’s trident,” Pandy said, “that those were Spite, Entitlement, and Petulance.”
“I’ll bet you’re right,” agreed Iole.
“Why did you do that!” Zinebi began yelling. “I wanted them back!”
“Okay,” Alcie said from between her teeth. “Crazy time. Not all the way back to normal.”
“Hush,” said Pandy, looking at the little girl intently. “Guys, gimme a moment.”
“You’re certain?” asked Iole.
“Yep.”
Pandy waited a few moments after Alcie and Iole had left the room. Then she found a sharp knife and knelt down beside Zinebi.
“Good! Please kill me! It’s what I deserve,” Zinebi cried.
Pandy just stared at her.
“I’m not going to kill you,” she said at last, beginning to cut through the cords. “I’m just super curious why you want to die. Or why you thought you should be—Gods, what’s the word—uh, reinfected with those things on the ceiling. And why you didn’t want to eat the apple to restore you, and they had to convince you. Y’know, just curious.”
Zinebi began to cry again.
“Because I killed our peri. Well, I got her killed, which is the same thing. And now my mother and father are dead. My family has been hurt. Our house is nearly gone. And it’s all my fault. Something bad should happen to me.”
Pandy regarded Zinebi with something close to awe. When she was this girl’s age, she would have done anything she could have to blame someone else for her mistakes and very often did. Not that she ever got away with it, it was simply the first place her survival instincts told to her to go. But this girl wanted to pay, as if her death could somehow make things right.
Freeing Zinebi at last, Pandy helped her to sit.
“Look,” Pandy said after a long moment. “I get it. I do. If anyone gets it, it’s me. But here’s what you gotta understand: your death won’t bring anybody back. Not your parents or your peri. In fact, you letting yourself become spiteful and stuff all over again is the worst thing you could do. ‘Cause you wouldn’t, like, be in control and you might cause other bad things to happen. You have been punished enough, okay? Something bad did happen to you. And you saw what happened to your brothers and sisters. There’s only one thing you can do now to make it right.”
“What?” asked Zinebi, wiping away tears.
“You can never forget what you did and you have to work really hard every day to make sure that nothing like it ever happens again. In fact, you have to work double hard to be a better person—grown-up—than your parents or your family ever thought you could be. It sounds silly, but it’s like their death will have had some purpose if you do that. Y’know, make them proud of you. Even though they can’t see you. Can you do that?”
Zinebi stared at Pandy for a long moment and Pandy saw that the girl was thinking very hard.
“Yes,” said Zinebi.
“Cool,” Pandy replied. “I thought so. Okay, let’s find the others.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Did You Really Think
I’d Just Blow Away?”
Pandy fetched Dido from his hiding place in the storage room, then she and Zinebi joined Alcie, Iole, and Mahfouza in the large salon. The rest of the family was scavenging in the garden, trying desperately to find something, anything, to eat. No one wanted to leave the property; they were all overcome with a desire to be close to one another, but the trees were bare and any vegetable, root, or herb they found was blackened, shriveled, or rotting. Finally, Kerim caught a rabbit and, dispatching the creature quickly and painlessly, brought it into the food-preparation room. Pandy lit a fire in the grate (to the amazement of no one—not after what they’d seen and experienced) and a short time later, the entire group was sitting around several tables in the large salon, picking at tidbits of the little roast and marveling at Pandy, Alcie, Iole, and Homer’s adventures.
“I will go to the marketplace tomorrow for supplies,” Mahfouza said. “I simply am too tired to do it now.”
�
�Will you stay, Pandora?” asked Fair Persian. “The house is in shambles, but we can make you comfortable. You must rest a little while.”
“So sorry,” Iole answered, just as Pandy opened her mouth to speak. “Tempest fugit, you know. Oh, you must forgive me. That’s Latin. Just a little something I picked up. It means ‘time flies.’ We really should be off now. Tight schedule.”
“Yup,” said Alcie, her mouth full of rabbit as she looked from Fair Persian to Douban.
Pandy stared at Iole as if she’d just grown another head.
“I think we can at least stay one night,” she said, looking back to Mahfouza’s family. “Thank you. Although, Hermes’ helmet, I don’t even remember how many days we have left.”
“And we don’t know where we’re going,” said Homer.
“Probably far away,” Iole said softly, tossing a bone onto a platter. “Need to be ambulating.”
“Well,” Pandy said, removing the blue bowl from her pouch, which was slowly regaining its suppleness. “Let’s find out.”
The bowl had several dark blue veins now running through the colored marble—an effect of Rage, Pandy mused. But other than that, it looked fine.
“Uh-oh,” she said, holding up the vial of her tears. “It’s empty.”
“Do they have to be your tears, Pandora?” asked Fair Persian. “I have become an expert at crying when needed.”
“Sheesh,” mumbled Alcie.
“I, too, can cry at will,” said Zinebi. “It always got me everything I wanted.”
“What did we talk about?” said Pandy, looking at the young girl.
“Oh. Right. No more of that kind of thing,” agreed Zinebi.
“Thank you, everyone,” Pandy said. “But they have to be mine. I just don’t know if I can think of anything right now that will make me—”
Out of nowhere, Alcie slugged Pandy on her wounded arm—not enough to knock it out of place again, but enough that Pandy doubled over. When she raised her head to look at Alcie, there were fresh tears spilling out of both eyes.
“Alcie!” yelled Douban.
“Gimme the vial,” Alcie commanded.
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