Pandora Gets Lazy (13 page)

“Uh,” his little voice trembled, “I can't see!”

“You don't have to. Just follow me. Now come on, what kind of animal are you?”

“I'm a brown lizard with gold stripes,” said Ismailil.

“Very, very cool,” Pandy said. “Amri?”

“I'm a snake too, but I'm bigger than you and I have a blue nose and I'm going to pretend that I'm always hunting you and I'm right behind you trying to gobble you up.”

“Well, let's see if you can!”

And they were underneath.

Pandy kept her eyes shut against the polluted air, trying to breath through her teeth.

“You know what I like best about my snake?” she asked, putting a hiss in her voice. “I can slither with my eyes closed 'cause I have super smell capability.”

“Me too,” said Amri.

“I'm a lizard,” replied Ismailil.

“Close enough,” Pandy said.

But after an hour of struggling on the hard ground, moving forward only several hundred meters, Pandy and the boys abandoned the game in favor of silence, concentrating on how best to keep from shredding the skin on their arms and legs. Five more days of this, Pandy thought, and there would be no flesh left on any of them.

Suddenly, Pandy heard a tiny
whoosh
off to her right, followed by a frantic squawk. Then her right arm brushed against something lying on the ground. Instinctively opening her eyes, she saw it was a fledgling bird. She reached to lift it gently out of Amri's path when the bird gave a feeble, almost soundless chirp and beat its wings against the earth, pushing itself farther off the road.

“What's that?” asked Ismailil.

“Nothing! Just a bird that got . . . um . . . no biggie,” Pandy said. “Keep your eyes closed, okay?”

As the bird hobbled away, her eye caught something else off to the side: three more fledglings wandering in the dirt, the dense air around them making it difficult to fly. Then Pandy spied the mother, much larger and farther off, frantically screeching at something close overhead in the blackness. Pandy looked up and sharply gulped a lungful of thick, dusty air.

“What?” Ismailil asked.

“Uh . . . oh . . . I was hissing,” Pandy lied, staring into the void.

“
Hisssss,
” Amri said.

“Oh . . . hiss,” said Ismailil, moving on.

In the blackness hanging above the earth, its wings beating furiously, a fifth fledgling was trapped. The mother bird extended her neck as far as she could, not daring to poke through the bottom of the void. Without warning, another fledgling lifted off the ground and flew close . . . too close. In a split second, the little bird pierced the bottom of the void and was sucked through the thin membrane with a soft
whoosh
. The mother bird now went mad. The first baby, eyes closed, wings barely moving, was floating on its side, and the second was thrashing wildly. The mother bird began pecking at the void, trying to reach her children. Extending her neck too high, she poked through and almost reached one fledgling, but the suction on the other side was too much and her body was being lifted off the ground. With a
whoosh,
she was pulled through. Pandy craned her neck to keep watching as the line continued to move and saw the two fledglings, quite still, and the mother, moving slightly, suspended close to the bottom. A large spherical shape softly bumped one fledgling in the moments that Pandy stared, sending it floating off in another direction.

Pandy felt as if she was going to be sick. “There's no air up there,” she whispered.

Suddenly, clearly, the enormity of the horror came rushing in on Pandy.

The black void overhead was the heavens.

And the heavens were falling.

But why? How? Her uncle was supposed to be holding them up . . . for eternity. And if he wasn't doing that, if something had happened, then the heavens . . . where they weren't being held up, were . . . oh, Zeus! . . . were sagging. She flashed on her pallet linens at home: when she had crawled under them as a little girl to make a tent, the circle of linen closest to her always settled itself first, then spread like a wave in all directions.

Pandy looked up into an enormous black void. The heavens were slightly less than a meter from the surface of the earth, almost certainly spreading out in a great circular wave. The heaviness of the air in the thin layer between the heavens and the earth, the dust, and . . . whatever . . . were the only things that kept the earth from being completely smothered. Iole would know the precise reason, Pandy was certain, but she wasn't here to ask. But it meant that if the heavens continued to fall, soon the entire earth would have less than half a meter in which to live. She then realized that the spherical objects, the large gray masses very close now . . . were stars. The constellations, so beautiful in their original forms, were now being compacted as they fell downward. Some were being jumbled and mixed together, crashing into each other, completely out of order. She thought she could make out the crab . . . but then again, it might have been the big bear, or the archer, or a bunch of big gray rocks.

And why wasn't it pitch-black? They were so far underneath the heavens, she shouldn't have been able to see anything. Twisting around, she looked back far and high. She spotted a tiny glowing orb moving slowly, almost imperceptibly, above. The powerful sun was breaking through the darkness and giving the stars a glow that dimly lit up the thin crawlspace. Apollo was driving his chariot in the area of the sky not yet being compressed. Was he moving it slower, she wondered, or would the days become incredibly short? What would happen to the sun if the heavens covered the earth?

She closed her eyes and shook off those thoughts. If they were going to be on their stomachs for only five days, then there was fresh air and open space on the other side. She just had to keep the boys calm and moving that long. She would figure out the rest as it came.

Several hours later, the line was stopped; Pandy discovered this by plowing right into Ismailil. Amri stopped when Pandy slowed him with her hand.

“Can we sit up?” he asked.

“NO!” Pandy cried. “I mean, snakes can't sit.”

“I'm tired of that game,” Ismailil said.

“Okay, we won't play one for a while. Let's just stay down and see what happens.”

Two of the tiny reddish men, able to negotiate the crawlspace easily, were scuttling alongside the line, tossing crusts of bread and squirting water from a skin into the open mouths of the prisoners with unerring accuracy.

“Please,” Pandy begged, “just a little more for the boys?”

The reddish man with the flatbread just laughed and crawled back up the line, but the other, with the skin, took pity and gave each boy another squirt of water.

The brothers were strangely quiet during the rest break; both were on their backs staring straight up, their eyes darting from one point to another. There were many other things that had gotten caught in the void. Bushes and small trees hovered, pinecones floated, a rabbit hung suspended, a fox was stilled in midstride, and there were many, many birds. Someone had lost a sandal, someone else lost a cloak, and there were bits of flatbread scattered everywhere. She knew the boys must have been frightened, certainly curious, but Pandy didn't dare tell them what she suspected, so the three of them remained silent.

For three days they wriggled along. They had no way of gauging the time except when the stars began to dim even further. They rested, ate, and slept when they were told to. Pandy spoke little, only to comfort the boys, but she thought a great deal. What would Atlas be like? Would he respect the fact that she was his niece? Would he help her find Laziness?

Then on the afternoon of the third day, making their way over a smooth, well-worn stretch of road, Pandy was daydreaming about her favorite food: honeyed apricot-and-blood-orange cakes drizzled with sweet cream, when she heard a
whoosh
followed by a high-pitched scream. The woman ahead of Ismailil had managed to slip her narrow wrist through her manacle and, still moving with the line, had tried to work her foot out of the adamant bond on her ankle. But in her struggle to escape, she had lifted her body off the ground to such an extent that her long black hair had been sucked into the void. Now her entire head was slowly being absorbed into the blackness as she shrieked and struggled wildly. Shouts went up the line as her torso began to be pulled upward, her mouth now gulping for air in the blackness. Several reddish men rushed in to pull her back to earth, but it was too late: with a final
pop
, her bound foot disappeared, the attached chain disappearing as it lifted higher . . .

. . . taking Ismailil's arm with it.

Ismailil was too stunned at first to make a sound, then when he realized
he
was about to be sucked up, he yelled and scrambled backward, clinging to Pandy.

The small reddish men were still pulling the chain attached to the woman when the right arm of one of the little men entered the void. Being so small and with nothing to anchor him, the creature was trapped in an instant. Ismailil was now being lifted off the ground. Pandy grabbed him by the waist but the force of the suction was like nothing she'd ever felt. He clawed at her, his eyes glazed over in terror. Then, with a horrible
whoosh,
his head disappeared. Now Pandy was being lifted as, with another
whoosh,
the second reddish man was sucked into the blackness. Ismailil was almost gone. Pandy stretched her body full out; sticking her hand into the void she grabbed the little boy's shoulder. Feeling an unknown strength surging through her body, she was just on the verge of pulling him back from certain death when she heard a loud
WHOOSH
, and then absolute silence.

She was floating. Completely weightless. Her limbs wafted to and fro.

And . . . she couldn't breathe.

Ismailil was still struggling; the woman who had tried to escape was barely moving; and Pandy, for several seconds, just took in the vastness of the heavens around her. Gods, she thought . . . it was so incredibly beautiful! There was a huge, strange sphere with a ring around it just overhead, and several other constellations were only centimeters away. She could have reached out and touched them, but the pressure on her lungs was now distracting her. What little air she still had in her body was fighting mercilessly to get out. Oddly, with her mind on complete overload, she didn't panic; she just stared back down at the ground, so close and so far. She saw the faces of the prisoners ahead of them in line, mouths wide open. She saw Amri's little hand poking through the thin membrane as the chain attaching them was drawn higher and despaired that he, too, was going to die.

Then her bottom hit something hard. Looking behind her, she realized that she'd hit one of the stars in the constellation Gemini, named after the triplets who founded the great city of Rome: Romulus, Remus, and Ralph. The force of her bump had sent Ralph careening off in a completely different direction.

“Ooops,” she thought. She had an insane desire to giggle, but there was no air in her brain and she started to pass out.

Just as she was about to lose consciousness, she felt a sharp yank on her right leg and her body began to move as if she were being pulled through water. She looked down and saw three of the large men, lying on the ground at angles, pulling with all their might on the chain that linked the prisoners. Amri was already back on the ground, his eyes closed, gasping. Then, with an explosion of sound that almost burst her eardrums, Pandy was pulled out of the void. She lay with her eyes closed, feeling a sharp pain in her shoulder where she'd landed, gulping air, when suddenly Ismailil landed directly on top of her, unconscious. This forced Pandy's eyes open and she saw the woman's body being pulled out of the blackness directly overhead. Quickly she threw Ismailil to the left while she rolled to the right only seconds before the woman hit the ground with tremendous force right where they'd been lying.

No one moved.

The other prisoners, even with this tremendous distraction, had been too shocked to attempt to break free. Amri, who'd been in the void the shortest time, was lying silently, tears streaming down his face. Pandy rolled to Ismailil and gently nudged him. He flopped, unresponsive, to one side.

“Ismailil?” Pandy whispered. “Oh, come on . . . no. Ismailil? Oh, please . . .”

She pressed on his stomach lightly, she opened his mouth . . . she could think of nothing else to do.

“Oh, Ismailil, you've come so far. You guys are doing so well. Don't do this . . . don't do this. . . .” She began sobbing.

Finally the men, with the flat edges of their swords, began forcing everyone back into line.

“If we weren't paid by the head, I would have left them,” Pandy heard one say to another.

“Anyone tries
anything
like that again, and we send the lot of you up there. Do you understand? One person gets a bright idea and you all die!” screamed the third man, moving his way to the head of the line.

The prisoners mumbled their acknowledgment.

Pandy was being herded back into formation.

The woman, lifeless, had been unshackled and rolled off the road. One man was preparing to do the same to Ismailil.

“No!” Pandy cried. “We can't just leave him!”

“Shut up!” His sword whacked her newly bruised shoulder.

“Please!” Pandy persisted.

“Do you want to drag him?” The man smirked.

“I will,” she replied.

“Well, I won't.”

Just as the man was about to release Ismailil, the boy gave a huge gasp, his little body arching in several spasms, arms and legs shaking.

“Thank you, Athena; thank you, Apollo! Thank you, Hades, for not taking him!” Pandy cried. “He's okay! See? He's okay! You can leave him chained up.”

That, she thought, was probably the most ridiculous thing she had ever said.

Ismailil was brought back into the line, but Pandy moved forward to crawl directly alongside him, which forced Amri to her other side. Gently, uttering anything she could think of to keep the boys moving, she pushed, prodded, humored, and coaxed them—both in complete, wordless shock—forward with the rest of the prisoners.