Pandora Gets Angry (3 page)

CHAPTER FOUR
A Full and Frank
Exchange of Views

Pandy's lower body was completely encased in sand; she could still wiggle her toes, but moving her legs in the dense grit was difficult. Now, as it began to pile up and around her back and arms, she started to panic: they were all going to be buried alive. Suddenly she realized that Iole wasn't even sitting up, the way she and Homer were; Homer had laid Iole down against the camel … on her side! Pandy began flailing her arms, trying to brush away some sand in order to free herself. She had to get to Iole, if she wasn't already buried.

As she freed one arm, the wind caught hold of the fabric of her cloak and nearly ripped Pandy's arm out of its socket. Pandy was dragged almost wholly out of her sand casing and flung on her stomach, her legs pinned awkwardly and painfully underneath her. Almost immediately, the sand began covering her again. She felt Dido struggling away from her and then she felt a strong tug on the enchanted rope tied around her waist. Completely blind, her eyes shut tight, her hands now exposed as the wind tore the cloak away, she groped the air in front of her, grabbing nothing but sand and air. She didn't even know which direction she was facing. Suddenly, the rope snapped in two and Pandy felt herself flung backward and her hand hit something hard but pliant. She felt a huge pair of hands grab for her arm and pull her slowly across the sand. Feeling her way along as Homer dragged her up and over the sand covering his own legs, Pandy's finger touched Iole's shoulder, and then her head, which was lolling to one side. Homer had righted her, Pandy thought, thanking the gods.

Pandy's clothing was now twisted against her body. As she crouched down beside Iole, the edge of the camel blanket Homer had used as a covering flew up and slapped Pandy on the side of her head, dazing her for a second. She thought she felt Dido climbing over her at one point. Then, the fraying ends of her cloak (a prize possession of her mother's that her father had given to her the night before she began her quest) got caught up in another particularly violent gust and nearly strangled Pandy as it was blown backward before it was thrown over her head and pinned against her face, suffocating her.

Then …

… it all just stopped.

The wind and the sand died out and the thunderous roar dimmed to just an obnoxious noise.

Pandy didn't know what was happening exactly and brought her hands up inside the cloak, trying to make a little breathing room. Suddenly, she realized that she could move her arms and her shoulders freely. She heard Dido yelp once, then Homer's voice calling to her. Slowly she pulled her cloak off of her head.

There were still a few grains of fine sand spiraling through the air, so she shielded her eyes as she opened them, staring down at first.

Looking up, she saw the enormous brown mass of whirling, choking sand now about five meters away and slowly moving off to the east. With only a glance at Homer, who was extracting his legs from their sand tomb, Pandy looked toward Iole …

… or where Iole should have been.

She was almost completely covered. The only thing Pandy could recognize was the shape of Iole's head and a few hanks of black hair poking out from the sand hill stacked against the camel.

“Iole!” Pandy screamed as she began flinging sand away from Iole by the handful, just as Dido, somehow freed from the rope, rushed over and began shaking himself furiously.

“Homer! Help me!”

Homer was at her side in an instant, but instead of scooping away the sand, he rammed both arms, elbow-deep, into the sand hill on either side of Iole and slowly lifted her out. Part of the camel blanket was caught in Iole's hair clip, and Iole's neck was stretched at an awkward angle. Pandy quickly freed the clip. Homer laid Iole on her back, and Pandy searched her face for any signs of life, but Iole was ashen.

“She's warm,” Pandy said, putting her hand to Iole's forehead while she pushed away Dido's nose. “Stay back, boy!”

“She's breathing,” Homer said, pointing to the very slight rise and fall of Iole's chest.

The next moment, Iole coughed and opened her eyes. Then she closed them again.

“Iole?” Pandy asked gently.

“I'm here,” Iole answered, almost inaudibly, her eyes still closed.

Pandy sighed and turned to Homer.

“Thank you,” she said, mindful that he was deliberately not looking at her. “Gods, that was fast thinking!”

“Oh,” he said, then paused as if weighing his next words very carefully, “I'm sure you could think that fast. I've seen you do a lot of things fast.”

He moved to stand, untying his end of the magic rope and dropping it on the ground.

“When you want to.”

Pandy jerked her head to stare up at him, seeing only his back as he walked away, shaking the sand from his cloak.

“What?” she called after him.

He didn't reply.

Pandy felt confused, as if he'd physically hit her for no reason, or no reason she knew of. But beyond that, she was just plain curious. Homer was behaving as if he were a totally different person.

“What did you
say,
Homer?” she yelled, her growing confusion and frustration causing her voice to rise unevenly.

Homer was shaking out his toga as if he hadn't heard her at all.

“We'd better get moving,” he said calmly. “The storm shifted all the dunes and—”

“Stop it!” Pandy cried. She fumbled at the rope knot around her waist, then realized the rope had snapped and she was no longer tied to Iole.

Pandy stomped toward Homer. She stepped in front of him and spun to face him.

“What is going
on
?” she yelled. “What did you say about me being fast or quick or whatever? What's with you?”

Sensing Pandy's anger, Dido rushed in and was about to leap on Homer.

“Dido! Go! Go stay with Iole!”

Dido growled but trotted away.

“So?” Pandy hissed.

“I just meant,” he said, gritting his teeth, and Pandy saw that he was not calm at all; his whole body was shaking slightly, “that you can be fast when you want to be. You can move fast and think fast … and
answer
fast. When you want to.”

“What are you
talking
about?” Pandy cried.

“And hey,” he yelled back at her, “we didn't, like, lose Iole, so I guess it doesn't really matter which of us was fastest this time, right?”

Pandy felt like she was being slapped. But why? This was code. Homer was talking in some sort of code that she couldn't decipher. She vaguely heard Dido bark in the background. Who cared who was fastest? He'd made a point of hammering the word “answer” as if it meant …

And suddenly the realization hit her so hard that she staggered backward and fell to the ground.

He blamed her for Alcie's death.

Pandy just stared at Homer, tears filling her eyes, her lower lip beginning to quiver without her knowing.

In Aphrodite's temple in the city of Aphrodisias, when Hera, disguised as Aphrodite, had demanded a life in return for the golden apple, Pandy, Alcie, Iole, and Homer had huddled together to try to think of a way out. There was nothing to be done, however, and Pandy, of course, had spoken first: she had to be the one to die; after all, this whole thing was her fault. Homer had spoken, and Iole—Pandy let them all have their say—but she knew that, in the end, as the leader, she would be the one to make the sacrifice. Then Alcie had demanded her turn to speak, and Pandy was fully prepared to hear her out, then gently tell Alcie there was no way and raise her own voice to volunteer. What she had not prepared for was Alcie suddenly calling loudly that she would give
her
life and Hera seizing the moment. Pandy tried to override Alcie, but Alcie was instantly transported to the steps where Hera stood and bitten by a huge snake, before Pandy could do anything of consequence. Worse still, the other three had been forced to watch, immobilized, as Alcie writhed in agony.

And now Homer was putting Alcie's murder squarely on Pandy's shoulders, insinuating that Pandy had deliberately been slow to call out her own name and had willingly let Alcie die. No, more terrible, that Pandy had, essentially, killed Alcie.

Pandy sat in the sand and sobbed. She covered her eyes with her hands, getting more tiny grains stuck underneath her lids. In the next few moments, she realized that she, herself, had never really grieved, never really come to terms with the loss of a best friend.

And then, in the blink of an eye, she became angry. Not quite as angry as she'd been with Hera, but very close.

“How dare you!” she screamed at Homer, startling him.

Dido was on the move.

“Stay back, boy!”

Dido backtracked and sat, tensed, over Iole. Pandy glared at Homer.

“You blame
me
? You think I
let
her do that? You think I wanted my best friend to die? It was always going to be
me
, Homer. Always! I was the one! I let the rest of you speak because that's … that's what a good leader does. And I was … I am trying to be a good—”

“Oh, yeah, you're good, all right,” he started.

Pandy took a swing and landed a blow on his arm, which caused her hand a great deal of pain.

“SHUT UP!”

Homer did.

“You think you're the
only
one who loved her? Huh? We—Iole and me—we loved her a long time before you even knew she was a living, breathing person. We had her first! And we had her best …”

She was breathing so hard that she was beginning to lose her air, and her head was getting light.

“Well, you didn't have a whole future with her ahead of you!” Homer screamed back at her.

“Like Hades we didn't!” she panted. “You think she was gonna give us up and run away with you when she got older? FAT LEMONS!”

“Stop it,” came Iole's voice across the sand, too weak to even be acknowledged.

“As a matter of fact, I do!” Homer cried. “You think she wasn't gonna grow up?”

“Of course she was gonna grow up, you clod! We all are, but just because you love somebody else doesn't mean you give up your friends!” Pandy spat back.

“Why don't you just do the only thing you do really well and set me on fire! Then I can join her!” Homer yelled.

“Stop it!” Iole shrieked.

“Maybe I will!” Pandy said, the energy leaving her voice. Then her lightheadedness turned into dizziness, and she pitched forward as Homer caught her.

Then Iole mustered every ounce of strength she still had and let out a long, pitiful scream as Dido, panicked, spun in a circle.

“Oh Gods,” Pandy mumbled as Homer carried her quickly to Iole.

Iole lay with a line of sweat beaded across her forehead, her hands absently clawing at the sand.

“I'm okay. Put me down. Put me down,” Pandy said, her head clearing a bit as Homer stood her upright.

“For Hermes' sake,” Iole whispered, her eyes still closed. “For anyone's sake. For Alcie's sake. Both of you,
stop
.”

“Iole, don't try to—,” Homer began.

“Be silent, Homer,” she said. Each word was a struggle, and only every third or fourth was audible. “You too, Pandy. Gods, Alcie … spitting at the two of … she were here now.… loved her and we all … miss her. No one … monopoly. Homer … not Pandy's fault. You know … because … knew Alcie.… enough to know … was a perfect Alcie thing … she did. Desist …”

She fell into a cough that lasted several seconds.

“Can't you appreciate? … comprehend? If … at each other like this … no point in going on. And we promised Alcie … Don't … both understand? We're all we've got!”

Homer and Pandy were silent. Then Homer turned away, pounding one fist into the other hand, again and again. Pandy saw his shoulders heave and when he began to turn around, she was certain that it would be to blast her again with another reproach. But his big, beautiful face was scrunched tight and overrun with tears. His mouth was open and slack.

“I'm … I'm sorry,” he said, staring at the sand, shaking his head back and forth.

“It's okay, Homer,” Pandy said. “I get it. I do.”

“I'm sorry,” he repeated.

Then he reached down and grabbed Pandy into a hug that brought the dizziness back with a rush. Dido jumped up and put his forepaws on Homer's hips.

“Homer. Homer,” she wheezed, patting Dido's head and Homer's back. “We're good. We're good.”

He set her down.

“We're a team, remember? And everything we do now, we do in part for Alcie, okay?”

“Okay,” he agreed.

“Right, Iole?” Pandy asked.

But Iole had passed out.

“Gods,” Pandy said. “We have to get her to a physician.”

“We have another problem,” Homer said.

“What?” Pandy asked.

“Look,” he said, pointing.

Two camels, already on their feet, were pawing at the sand over and around the third; Homer's camel lay on the ground, a mountain of sand piled high against her back, quite dead.

“Oh, no,” Pandy said, following Homer as he went to make certain.

“Hermes said the camel was known as ‘The Ship of the Desert,' ” he said softly. He patted the camel's neck, feeling her body growing cold.

“They're supposed to be able to withstand anything,” Pandy said.

“Maybe,” Homer said, “it was just her time.”

Pandy was silent for moment.

“Like Alcie,” she said, putting her hand on Homer's.

“Like Alcie,” said Homer, rising and glancing down at the animal, her fur moving faintly in the lessening breeze.

“She was a good ship.”

He wasn't aware that Pandy was staring at the crest of a newly created sand dune.

“We need another camel,” he said.

Then he followed Pandy's arm as she raised it to point off into the distance.