Pandora Gets Lazy (4 page)

The man who had spoken before on the beach, who wore more bits of armor than the others and who seemed to be in charge, let out a gargantuan laugh and held up his hand, stopping any further attack.

“Back! All of you!” he said in the strange Latin/Berber language. Then he stared at Homer for a long time.

“On my honor,” he said slowly, sending a wad of yellow spittle over the side of the boat, “the Great One shall give you a kilometer squared to lift by yourself. I shall forfeit my sword if he doesn't.”

Homer said nothing, not even guessing what the man could have meant. Iole started to dig her finger into Alcie's palm as the two held hands, but Alcie's squeeze let Iole know that Alcie wasn't about to utter a syllable in retort.

Coming alongside the ship, they could see hundreds of creatures at the railing and climbing the mast poles. A rope ladder was thrown over the side. Iole started up, followed by Alcie and then Homer. With their hands bound so close together, it was extremely slow going. It was only when they were almost to the railing that Homer finally had to speak.

“Whoa!”

“What?” asked Alcie, looking down at him, seeing a look of reverence come over his face.

“I've heard about her but, like, I never thought I'd actually see her,” he said quietly.

“And who, for apple's sake, is
her
? Hmmm?”

“Will you two try not to be so obtrusive?” Iole whispered.

“She was built for King Hiero II.” Homer was close to the railing but he was also completely rapt, so when a creature poked at him with a spear, he again whipped the creature and its spear into space without even a pause. “They say she took a year to construct, she's got twenty banks of oars, three masts, like, eighteen hundred tons worth of cargo space, stalls for twenty horses, ginormous kitchens, and a gymnasium! So cool! I thought this ship sunk years ago—but it's her! It's the
Syracusa
!”

CHAPTER FIVE
Ismailil and Amri

The boys didn't move a muscle . . . neither of them. Pandy waited only a few seconds, hoping they would speak first and identify their language. Nothing.

“Please, get up,” she said at last in Greek.

Not a twitch; only the faint breeze slightly rustling the topmost black hairs on their heads.

Pandy began to quickly run through everything she knew about the area: “Libya,” the Greeks called it. It was amazing, she thought, that it stretched from the border of Egypt all the way to the great, unknown ocean to the west. And . . . ? And . . . ?

And then all she could remember was falling asleep in Master Epeus's class as he was droning on about the native Libyan people. Snooze.

With no warning at all, her mind was suddenly aware of dozens of different languages that these boys could possibly speak: Chaouia? Djerbi? Nafusi? Zenaga? All of them falling into the Berber category. What if it were another category? Without thinking she blurted out a traditional Tarifit greeting. At once the larger boy raised his face and stared at Pandy. His large, carob-colored eyes began to well up and his mouth quivered as he spoke.

“Are you death?” he asked in broken Kabyle.

As had happened so often in the last few days, Pandy spoke and understood any language she encountered because she had drunk water mixed with the ashes of a brilliant sorcerer while in the Chamber of Despair.

“No! I mean, no, I'm not death,” she said to the little boy. “My name is Pandora and I come from Greece, which is . . . uh . . . that way, I think. It's far. What's your name?”

The older boy nudged the other one, who had remained stock-still.

“I am Ismailil and this is my brother, Amri,” he replied. The younger boy looked up at Pandy with eyes the same beautiful brown as his brother's, only about twice the size. Pandy could plainly see he was much more terrified than Ismailil was.

She had a thousand questions, but the first thing she did was slowly put out her hand to wave very gently at Amri. These were two of the most beautiful little boys she'd ever seen. Their dark brown skin was the color of freshly tilled soil, accenting the startling whites and browns of their eyes. They each had long, wavy black hair and Ismailil at least had perfect white teeth.

“Hi, Amri.” She kept her voice light and cheerful. Amri didn't even begin to smile.

All at once, the pine-nut cup fell apart with unexpected hisses and pops as several nuts underneath exploded. The boys shrieked and fled back into the shadow of the boulders as Pandy stood up, brushing and shaking nuts from her legs and clothing.

“Hey, guys?” she called after them. “Boys? Ismailil?”

She followed after them through a narrow slit in the rocks and along a twisting path deep in shadow from the rocks on either side. She soon came upon a small, open, empty space in the rock where someone had made a rather sad little camp. Two dirty mounds of rags, a small pile of drying berries (some still on their vines), a water-skin, and the tiniest pile of wood. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the movement of something small receding from a second thin opening in the rocks.

“Ismailil? Amri?” she called softly. “I'm not going to hurt you.”

Nothing.

“I have food,” she said, remembering the gift of unlimited supplies of dried fruit and flatbread that Athena had given her. Reaching into her leather carrying pouch, she took out a handful of dried dates and apricots and placed them on one pile of rags. When she reached back in for more, she was surprised to find her hand on a ripe, dark red pomegranate.

“Thank you, Athena,” she thought.

She settled herself midway between both openings, her back against the curved rock wall, tossing the pomegranate from one hand to the other.

“Wow!” she called out in perfect Kabyle, seemingly talking only to herself. “Does this look yummy or what? Totally dee-licious! I can't wait to bite into this. But it's way too much for me . . .”

There was a shift in the darkness from the opening.

“I wish I had someone to share this with.”

She broke open the pomegranate just as two dark brown legs came into view.

“Of course,” she went on, “if you don't like pomegranates, there's always apricots and dates. Maybe there's a fig lying around someplace.”

To her surprise, it was the younger boy, Amri, who approached first, cautiously sidestepping his way toward the pile of rags, never taking his eyes off Pandy. He picked up an apricot and, after sniffing deeply, devoured the golden fruit in one gulp. Ismailil appeared from the opening and ran to grab his share from the pile.

“Yeah, that stuff's okay,” Pandy said, trying to be as casual as possible, “but if you really want to taste something good . . . Here, catch!”

She tossed a pomegranate half to each boy. Amri leapt high to catch his while Ismailil simply held out one hand. As the brothers munched the juicy seeds, Pandy took in their appearance. They were both wearing garments similar to the togas worn by young boys back in Greece, but the fabric was heavier . . . wool, Pandy thought. Ismailil's plain white was shot through with stripes of color, and Amri's was dark red; both sleeveless, ragged, and extremely dirty. No cloaks, and Amri was missing a sandal. These boys had been here for a while.

“Can I talk to you?” Pandy asked.

Ismailil and Amri looked at each other but said nothing. Pandy got up slowly and walked toward the boys, speaking softly with every step.

“You know, I have a little brother too. His name is Xander and he's three years old. How old are you guys? Huh? That's okay, you don't have to tell me. So, like, is this where you guys are living? That's cool. You can see the stars at night and Artemis when she lets the moon loose in the sky . . .”

Pandy, now very close to the brothers, gently lowered herself onto the ground.

“It's neat, am I right?”

“I'm eight,” Ismailil said, “and Amri is five.”

“That's great! Those are fun ages,” Pandy said.

Amri walked over to Pandy and stared at her face. Then he pointed just underneath her left eye, to the golden teardrop—the single mark she carried from her adventure in the Chamber of Despair on her way to capture Vanity.

“This?” Pandy said, her hand reaching up. “This is . . . a . . . gift . . . from a friend. Um . . . everyone has them where I come from. Oh Gods. Uh . . . wanna touch it?”

Amri quickly stepped back and pointed at her leather carrying pouch.

“What? Oh, you want something else?”

Amri pointed at his pomegranate rind.

Pandora reached in and, to her amazement, pulled out another pomegranate, larger and redder than the first.

“Athena, you are
so
cool,” she thought.

“Here you go,” she said, and Amri sat on the ground next to her. “Where's your family?” she asked him.

“Amri will not answer,” Ismailil said.

“How come?” Pandy asked.

“Because it was his voice that killed our mother.”

For the umpteenth time in many weeks, Pandy was struck dumb. She knew that there were even more horrible, shocking, heartbreaking things yet to come, but somehow this would live with her as one of the most terrible.

“Okay,” she said quietly after a moment, “why don't I tell you all about me and why I'm here. Then you can tell me whatever you want. And maybe we can help each other, okay?”

She suddenly felt much older than she actually was. There was a sense of responsibility that was settling on her shoulders. And she had no idea why.

She began slowly, telling them she was looking for something very important; her family back home was busy, so they had sent her. She told them about her friends and the magical places they'd been. She told of Delphi and Egypt. And she said that she had other friends helping her on her quest, friends who could do “special” things and that's how she'd gotten down from the mountaintop. Now she had a long journey ahead of her and maybe the boys could point her in the right direction. She had to get to someplace called Jbel Toubkal . . .

Hearing the words “Jbel Toubkal,” Amri scuttled across the dirt and hid behind his brother. Pandy paused, looking at the boys.

“Okay. Um. That's about it for me. So. Why don't you like Jbel—?”

Amri's body tensed.

“. . . that place?”

Amri peered up at his brother as Ismailil began.

“We live eight days' walk from here. In the highlands. Men with swords came into our village. They took my father. They chained him with everyone else. Amri and I were helping our mother gather our goats in the mountains. We heard the noise and ran back to our house. When my mother saw the men, she hid us all underneath our house. She told us to keep quiet. We watched for hours as the men took everyone. Some people tried to fight back and they were killed. Amri was hungry so my mother tried to sneak out and get some food. She told him again to be quiet, but he thought it was a game. He thought it was funny. And he wanted food. So he called out to my mother just as she was reaching for some meat and the men caught her. I hit him but it was too late. This is why he will not speak. They took her. When they left, we followed, but we went to sleep one night and when we woke up everyone was gone. We tried to find them, but Amri fell and hurt himself . . .”

It was then Pandy noticed the large gash running almost the entire length of the little boy's leg. It had not been attended to and it was becoming infected; several areas were swollen and there were pockets of pus.

“He could not walk and I could not leave him. So we stayed here.”

Pandy was silent. She made the smallest motion toward her carrying pouch to retrieve the Eye of Horus, then she remembered that she'd given the magical healing amulet to Iole for her broken arm.

“How long have you been here?” she asked at length.

“Five days.”

“Which way were you heading?”

Ismailil led Pandy and Amri back through the boulders to where the cup still lay in a pile of pine nuts and pointed to a pass in the western mountains. Far off in the distance, the black wall rose into the heavens, blending with it seamlessly.

“Jbel Toubkal,” Ismailil said.

“The mountain is . . . is . . . that way, where that darkness is?”

Amri nodded.

“How do you know that's where they were going?”

“We would get close to the fires at night. We would listen to the men,” Ismailil said. “Our parents were cold while they were warm. They spoke of someone in the mountains on the highest peak that wanted our parents. But why, we don't know.”

Amri nodded.

On pure instinct, Pandy's stomach twisted itself into a knot.

She remembered where she'd heard the strange name of the mountain.

The map had already told her that she would be heading straight into the forbidding land of her uncle Atlas, for whom the mountains had been named. For fighting on the losing side in the battle between the Titans and the Olympians, Zeus had sentenced Atlas to bear the burden of the heavens upon his shoulders for eternity. Zeus had condemned him to stand forever on the tallest peak in this range, Jbel Toubkal. Cold, inhospitable, and sinister.

Suddenly, from a great distance off, they all heard the sounds of shouting and the fainter sounds of metal on metal.

The boys again retreated into the safety of the boulders, but this time they pulled Pandy with them. As the sounds became louder, the brothers raced across the clearing and into the second thin passageway until they hit a dead end. Then they began to climb up the wall in front of them, using small crevices and protrusions, toward an opening at the top, beckoning Pandy to follow. Pandy had no idea how Amri was able to climb with his leg in such horrible condition.

Reaching the top, she found the boys lying flat, inching their way toward the edge facing the road. As Pandy joined them, she could see what a tremendous vantage point they had. They could see the road approaching for at least three hundred meters and the road leading away for another two hundred.