Pandora Gets Lazy (16 page)
“Move back!”
“Don't worry,” Pandy called, just as Ismailil disappeared behind the cloth curtain. “I'll take care of them.”
Suddenly, Ghida was gone from view and Pandy's head was forced to her chest.
“Keep it that way!” someone commanded.
Eyes down, the entire line was herded into rows facing one end of the hut. Off to one side, Pandy caught sight of a group of guards, just waiting. After the captives had settled, no one so much as flinched for a long time.
After several minutes of silence, they suddenly noticed a new sound: a light snoring was coming from the warm end of the room. There was a muffled conversation between two head guards.
“Just wake him,” said one finally.
There was a sound of footsteps, someone saying, “Sir, the new line is ready,” and then an enormous volley of harrumphing and sputtering.
“Oh, and I was having the nicest dreamâsomething about clouds, and there was a duck, and then my mother was there, only she wasn't my mother but a green skink.”
“Sir, the prisoners?” the guard reiterated.
“Ah, yes. Oh, goody . . . newbies! Yeah!”
“Eyes up, all of you,” said the guard.
Pandy looked up with everyone else, into the enormous, sleepy-eyed face of her uncle Atlas, Bearer of the Heavens.
He had to be, Pandy thought, at least fifteen times the size of a normal man, maybe twenty. Gods, she realized, Atlas was larger than Zeus! His arms were like tree trunks and his chest was shaped like a wine vat. His muscles had muscles. He could only sit or recline; standing would have torn the roof off the building. His skin was whitish pink from having the dark heavens so close to him for eternity and never really seeing the sun. His teeth, she saw when he yawned, were rounded and bulbous, like large onions. But it was his hair that caused Pandy's skin to prickle. It was everywhere. The thick black hairs on his legs were only the start. The hair on his head stuck out at least half a meter on all sides; his eyebrows were one black snake across his forehead. His arms were covered with thick patches of hair protruding at odd angles, and his black beard, braided and beaded in some places, which Pandy had only glimpsed outside, hung down almost a full meter. Then Pandy saw his tusk.
Tusk?
She waited for him to move his head, even a little. When he did, to yawn yet again, she saw that it wasn't a tusk at all but a giant yellowish gray hair, twice as thick as any other, about as big around as a big squash and at least a meter in length, growing straight out of one nostril.
“Very well, newbies,” Atlas said. “Where, oh where, shall I put you all, hmmm?”
One by one, he assigned tasks.
“You: fire pit number 8 . . . you, nice arms: bearer . . . bearer . . . bearer, northern mountain . . . feeder, eastern mountain . . .”
Pandy realized the surrounding mountains also had slaves in columns on their tops. Atlas probably intended to cover the mountains of the known world with millions of columns, all to do his job.
“. . . bearer . . . water-well number 37 . . . feeder . . . feeder, northern mountain . . . you, can you climb a ladder? Good: used-man retrieval . . . um, oven number 5 . . . you, good arms, but you're a kid: pulleys . . . for you: main mixing pit . . . bearer . . . bearer, southern mountain . . . you: perimeter sentry . . .”
Then, about halfway through the line, Atlas just closed his eyes and dozed. When the head guards woke him gently several moments later, he harrumphed and gazed around as if he didn't know exactly where he was. He stretched, yawning, and ran his giant hands through his hair.
“Oh, my. I need another haircut,” he said to no one in particular.
“Barbers!” called a guard. The call was echoed outside.
“Would you like to continue?” the guard asked Atlas.
“After my haircut.”
“Yes, sir.”
The rest of the line waited as two young Persian barbers entered the hut through an opening at the back, followed by a single assistant, a girl, carrying a large cloth sack. Quickly, the assistant opened the sack and handed one barber a pair of heavy shears. The other barber stamped his foot and clomped back to the opening.
“Hurry it up!” Pandy heard him yell.
“I'm sorry,” came a small voice, growing nearer. “I'm sorry.”
And there, suddenly, barely managing two big ladders and a long broom, was Iole.
“Ahhh.” Pandy choked loudly and gripped the boys so hard that they both cried out. As those closest to her turned to look, she quickly put her head down.
Her mind reeled. She was shockedâstunned, certainly, but she realized that she was happier at that moment than she'd ever been before in her life. Nothing was wrong, everything was right. Iole was alive. And if Iole was alive, then Alcie had to be . . . she just had to be.
“What's going on back there?” yelled one head guard.
Another guard, in the group, smacked Pandy with the flat side of his sword.
“What?” he barked.
“I'm sorry,” Pandy said loudly, looking up and craning her head high. “Leg cramp. It was me. My bad.”
Then she locked eyes with Iole, who dropped the ladders on one barber's foot.
“Sorry! Sorry,” Iole said, trying to get a good hold on them again.
“Shut it,” said the first guard to Pandy.
“You bet,” Pandy replied, settling back.
“Let's make this a full body trim,” Atlas was saying to the barbers. “I'm feeling all-over fuzzy.”
Iole and the other girl positioned the ladders against Atlas. As one barber unbraided and debeaded the long beard, the other went to work trimming the leg hairs. Pandy pretended to simply look around, her eyes always coming back to Iole. Iole tried to look like she was concentrating, but she was shaking badly and she kept handing the wrong implements to her barber.
“I said âstraight razor'!” he cried.
“Sorry,” she sputtered, handing him the right tool, her gaze drifting out to Pandy.
From the legs to the arms to the massive barrel chest, climbing up and down the ladder, the barber razored each and every black hair. Iole would step forward every few seconds to sweep away the cut hairs with the broom.
“You're giving me nice points, right?” Atlas asked the barber, semidozing. “You're not making them blunt?”
“Beautiful points, sir, absolutely.”
“And you,” Atlas said to the other, “when you're done trimming, I want ruby and ivory beads this time.”
“Excellent choice, sir,” said the barber, slowly scissoring each beard hair individually.
After twenty minutes, Pandy locked eyes with Iole for the hundredth time and finally got up the courage to mouth the word “Alcie.”
Iole gave an almost imperceptible nod of her head.
Pandy pursed her lips in a tight smile, then she mouthed the word “Homer.”
Iole nodded again, but her brow furrowed deeply.
Something was wrong with Homer.
As Pandy watched, Iole leaned the broom against the far wall and casually raised both arms above her head and turned her palms up, squatting for a split second. Then she lowered her arms as if it had only been a momentary stretch.
But Pandy understood.
Somewhere on the mountain, buried to his waist in a column, Homer was a bearer.
“Are we boring you, Iole?” asked her barber.
“No, sir,” she said. “I'm sorry.”
“Problem?” asked Atlas.
“Oh . . . no, sir,” said the barber. “It's just my assistant. If it would please you, I could use another.”
“Fine,” Atlas said, then promptly dozed off again.
The two barbers, moving at lightning speed, were almost done cutting and shaping the huge mane on Atlas's head. Then they stopped abruptly. One of the guards woke Atlas.
“Sir,” one barber said, stepping forward, “we are about to begin your face.”
Suddenly, Atlas sat bolt upright, which startled everyone in the room. Pandy immediately looked at Iole, who met her gaze with an expression that Pandy read as “pay attention.”
Working first on the ears, then the heavy brow, then the cheeks, the two men slowly moved inward toward the nose. Pausing for a second to breathe deeply, one barber used both hands to grab the thick, yellow gray hair and lightly move it out of the way as his partner set about snipping the other nostril hairs.
“Would you like points, sir?” he asked.
“Just do it!” Atlas growled.
Pandy had all but forgotten about the strange hair, so different from all the others. In fact, if she completely ignored the fact that he was gargantuan, it was the only odd thing about her uncle. Now she watched Atlas clenching his hands tightly, his knuckles snow white, his teeth set, breath issuing forth in short spurts.
“Don't nick it!” he hissed.
“Nowhere near it, sir,” the barber replied, but he had to stop every so often and un-tense his hands.
Why wouldn't her uncle want that horrible hair gone?
Atlas couldn't be in pain, she thought. Then it dawned on herâhe was nervous.
She looked at Iole, who cocked her head slightly.
Suddenly, she understood.
“Oh,” she said softly.
“What?” whispered Amri.
“Nothing,” Pandy whispered back.
All at once, the barbers backed away from Atlas's face like it was white hot and scuttled down their ladders. Now, with all the rest of his hair shorn, the giant yellow gray nose hair was even more prominent.
“All done, sir,” one barber said.
“Ah, the Persians.” Atlas laughed, once again completely relaxed and slightly jovial. “No one cuts hair like the Persians. Now where were we?”
And, as the barbers began to collect their tools, dumping them into the bag Iole held open, Atlas continued with his assignment delegation.
“You: oven number 18 . . . you, can you cook? Excellent: kitchen . . . bearer . . . feeder, western mountain . . . bearer . . .”
Next was Ismailil.
“Wow, you're puny: mixing pit number two.”
Suddenly, Ismailil was unchained and about to be pulled away. Frantic, Amri called out to his brother.
“What gives?” said Atlas.
“They're brothers,” Pandy spoke up. “Sir, if it would please you, they are brothers.”
“Aw, that's cute,” Atlas said, looking at Amri. “And you're even punier! Puny is cute. Okay, put 'em together.”
As Amri was unchained he looked up at Pandy.
“But, Panâ!”
“No!” She silenced him, not wanting her name to be revealed. “This is good. You just go.”
She bent down.
“Go,” she whispered to the little boys she now considered to be like her own brothers. “I'll find you. Just go and do what they say.”
She quickly kissed each boy on top of his head and they were led away.
Then she was alone.
“You,” Atlas began, and Iole dropped the bag, spilling all the shears and razors.
“Oh.” She looked up, innocent, trying to make her eyes impossibly large. “I am so terribly sorry.”
“I
do
need a new assistant,” said her master.
“I
could
use some help,” Iole agreed, looking directly at Atlas.
“Bold girl!” the barber cried. “I meant to get rid ofâ”
“Fine,” Atlas interrupted, glancing at Pandy. “You . . . with her.”
Pandy was unchained and shoved to the end of the room. Iole's barber barely glanced at her.
“Clean up and bring her to the tent,” he muttered to Iole as the two men exited, backward, with the other assistant.
“Um,” Iole said to Pandy, grabbing one ladder, “could you get the other one?”
“Sure,” Pandy said.
Pandy was moving toward the opening at the rear when Iole caught her by the arm and secretly gave Pandy a tight squeeze.
“You have to back out,” she said.
“Oh, okay.” Pandy stifled an unexpected sob. The two ladders kept colliding and getting stuck in each other as the girls left the large room.
Pandy was very busy trying to decide which piece of information was greater: the knowledge that her best friends were alive and right there, or the fact that Laziness was hiding in her uncle's big, ugly nose hair.
“She's here!” Prometheus all but screamed. He tried to straighten up, but in disguising them both as old men, Hermes had given Prometheus such a hunch to his back that, as he practically danced with excitement and joy, he looked like a deranged crab.
“And you'd like
everyone
to know?” Hermes replied, also hunched over, but not as badly.
“She's here!” Prometheus whispered, shaking his withered, gnarled hands up and down.
“That's good.” Hermes concentrated on his wooden pole. “Let everyone see how excited you are about something in this gods-forsaken place.
Ixnay on the akingshay
. Start stirring.”
“I'm just so . . . so . . .”
“Cheese it, the rat!” Hermes spat.
A guard was swiftly approaching from across the compound, knocking slaves out of his path. He strode directly up to Prometheus, almost knocking him into the mud pit.
“Where've you been, old man? I sent you for my morning meal an hour ago. Your knobby knees so bent you can't walk faster than this?”
Prometheus realized he had forgotten his task and looked imploringly at Hermes . . . who just rolled his eyes behind the guard and flicked at his nose as if he were flicking a fly. Immediately, in the sack hanging across one shoulder, Prometheus felt the weight of two apples and a wedge of goat's-milk cheese.
“And it had better still be hot, you wretch,” spat the guard, now bearing down on Prometheus, “or you'll be mixing this mud from the bottom up.”
In a flash, Prometheus felt the apples and cheese transform into a clay jar full of creamed oats.