Pandora Gets Angry (17 page)

Both Noureddin and Douban hurried to keep up with Pandy and Alcie. Homer, with Amina in his arms, provided a substantial buffer for Mahfouza, Zoe, and Hassan, but nobody stayed behind.

Pandy slowed slightly as she entered the house. Noureddin, feeling bizarrely territorial, moved ahead as if to usher her forward. Pandy motioned him and everyone back against a dividing wall, then peered slowly into the room.

Giondar was in the middle of the devastated salon. Bits of the ceiling were teetering on his shoulders while other bits still clung tenaciously overhead. The air was filled with dust. Giondar was so enormous that his head and shoulders were sticking out of the open roof, yet his body below his thighs was only a thick trail of smoke, much like a tail, in the bright green color of his pantaloons. His skin was such a dark blue as to be almost black or purple. He had rings in both ears that were easily the diameter of chariot wheels. His mammoth brows were pinched closely in the center and curved up at the ends into neat circles. His eyes were black, but ringed in red, and his hair was piled high in a knot on top of his head. He was bare chested, but his neck, upper arms, and wrists were adorned with thick bronze bands.

“He has grown even larger since the last time I saw him,” whispered Zoe from the shadows deep in the corridor.

Being so colossal, his movements were slowed, and it took him several moments to notice Pandy's little head peeking from the entryway.

“Hah!” he said, blowing the word out with spiteful laughter as he put his hands on his hips. His teeth were huge, sparkling white, and flawless.

And he had a giant spike through his tongue.

“Undoing all of my work, I see,” said Giondar, spotting Mahfouza and her restored siblings who had come to stand behind Pandy. “Who are you that you would be so arrogant, reckless, and stupid?”

Emboldened without the faintest notion why, Pandy stepped into the center of the entryway.

“I am Pandora Atheneus Andromaeche Helena of the House of Prometheus of Athens and—”

Just then Mahfouza shrieked, startling everyone.

“Saouy!”

Amina, who was able to walk by this time, and Zoe each went to Mahfouza's side as she pointed to the far wall of the salon.

“Hush now,” said Amina.

“She did not see him yesterday, Amina!” replied Zoe.

Pandy and the others peered past the misty tail of the genie to see what had so alarmed Mahfouza. Even Giondar slowly turned his massive body.

Against the wall were two tall, impossibly thin beings. So thin that Pandy thought at first they must be some sort of strange new animal; they simply couldn't be human. Then she saw, as they cowered in the corner, shafts of light from the open roof playing upon their skin, that they were indeed human—they were indeed a person. More to the point, they were two perfect halves of one person and as such, they moved in perfect sync as if they were still connected. One leg, one arm, one eye, one ear, half of a mouth, half of a nose. Skin covered the portions of their bodies where they had been split, but they were a mirror opposite in every respect. A matched pair.

Pandy was dumbfounded, but the motion of Giondar as he turned back to her, a malicious upturn to his mouth, brought her mind back into focus.

“That is who I am, Giondar,” she said, standing straight.

“It is of little consequence,” Giondar began, then he broke off and stared at Alcie, who was still in the shadows but visible as she stood just behind Pandy …

… rolling an emerald pear in her hand.

Pandy followed his gaze.

“What are you
doing
?” she whispered frantically.

“What?” Alcie whispered back, ticking her head toward the two half-beings. “I'm just ahead of you all. Big deal. Four fruits left. They're a pair, right. Pair …
pear
?”

“Get back!” Pandy said, using her forearm to push her into the shadows as Homer stepped up to drag Alcie back. Giondar spotted the lamp hanging from Homer's waist.

“My
lamp!
” Giondar screamed, shaking the house. “Thieves! You have plundered my garden!”

“Not
your
garden, Giondar,” Pandy said, feeling certain that she could dodge or outmaneuver any blow the genie might deliver. It was how to get him into the box that concerned her. “And now, it's destroyed.”

“My brethren have not forsaken me!” he cried, shaking the house again.

“Oh, but they have!” Pandy said.

“I shall deal with the scum of the household first and then with you, infidel!”

His eyes narrowed a bit as he focused his gaze on Mahfouza. Quickly, Pandy stepped in front of her, blocking her from Giondar.

“Mind telling me why you're doing this?” she asked with such a casual tone that even Iole was forced to look sideways at her. But Pandy was trying a new tactic: yes, he was gigantic, but Giondar's physical movements were almost painfully slow for such a powerful being. She had a hunch—she hoped, rather—that his brain was, perhaps, a bit “casually paced” as well. She was going to try to keep him mentally off balance. And, as if to confirm her suspicion, as soon as she'd asked the question, Giondar closed his eyes and folded his massive arms neatly across his chest. Pandy took that moment and quickly turned to Iole and Douban.

“Go!” she mouthed and pointed to the upper floors of the house. “Find the others!”

Douban nodded and quietly stepped back into the shadows and hurried down the long corridor, already fumbling for the remaining pieces of jeweled fruit. But Iole looked at Pandy fearfully, questioning if Pandy knew what she was doing. Pandy winked.

“Go!”

With a single backward glance Iole caught up to Douban, waiting at the foot of a large staircase, and headed up to the second level.

As Pandy turned again toward Giondar, her gaze passed over those around her; Alcie, Homer, and five members of a tortured household all depended on her next movements.

“I have no need to tell you, traveler,” Giondar boomed.

“That's true,” Pandy said. “But you have your freedom. You could be anywhere, doing anything. And yet you stay here, hurting people who have done nothing to you.”

“Nothing to me!” Giondar bellowed, his face turning black as his speech picked up speed. “You are as ignorant as a camel! You know less than a beggar's dog! This family took from me that which was most treasured—my love. You are too young to know a loss such as mine. Until you feel pain such as I do, you will never understand my
rage
!”

There was the word. Giondar had actually spoken it, knocking several beams loose from the roof with the timbre of his voice, sending up splinters and clouds of dust as they crashed to the tiles beneath.

But the word “loss” had sent Pandy's thoughts back to one single event that had taken place only weeks before: the moment when she'd felt Alcie die in her arms. Giondar assumed she didn't know “loss,” didn't know rage. The loss of her best friend had crushed Pandy so completely, she knew there would never be any recovery. Even though Alcie had actually returned from Hades, very much alive, Pandy still remembered the feeling of a knife plunging into her heart when she saw Alcie's head fall to the side and the light go out of her eyes. And
then
to discover that Hera had murdered Alcie out of sheer spite and was joyful about it, loving every moment of the aftermath; Pandy felt a rage so great that she had, on pure impulse, set the goddess on fire. She had been on the verge of doing the very same thing to Homer when he questioned her despair over Alcie's death. And now Giondar assumed she knew nothing?

“You don't know me!” Pandy cried, startling everyone. “You have no idea what I have gone through! You don't know what or who—”

Giondar flung out his right arm and hurled Pandy into a wall.

The pain was so intense that for a moment Pandy saw the entire room begin to swirl before her eyes as if it were water circling a drain. Then her vision began to dim and blur. She was only vaguely aware of Mahfouza high overhead somewhere. She began to slide down the wall and felt a pain in her left shoulder so sharp that she couldn't decide whether to let it take her out completely or shock her back into consciousness. The next moment, her vision cleared and she heard Amina and Zoe screaming as Giondar held Mahfouza high in the air, laughing as he tightened his grip on the slender girl.

Without thinking, Pandy focused her mind directly on the middle of Giondar's torso, waiting only an instant for the silence she knew would come. She felt a cool tingling down her right arm and stretched her hand out toward the cackling genie. At once, a white hot fireball shot out from the tips of her fingers and exploded into Giondar's chest. He was blown back, dropping Mahfouza onto the cushions of an overturned couch. Pandy didn't wait for him to recover; she blasted him again straightaway, this time throwing him into a far wall, which blew outward, sending him flying into the garden. Pandy tried to get up, but a tapestry hanging by a thread above her head came crashing down over her, sending her into the dark. As she pulled the fabric off her head, the pain in her left shoulder made her cry out and slump against the wall. She looked at her left arm and saw that it was dangling at a funny angle. She tried moving it, but not only was the pain unbearable, the muscles wouldn't respond.

By this time, Giondar was upright and moving back inside. He flung his arm out again and sent his own fireball straight at Pandy. She saw it coming and, instead of letting it hit her, she sent out her own fire wall to meet it. The two forces of fire met only a centimeter above her skin and formed a cloak of white flame. Pandy realized the effect this might be having on Giondar and with great effort, forced herself to her feet.

Walking toward the amazed genie, she tried to spread her arms wide for a greater spectacle, without having the slightest notion of what to do next, but when her left arm refused to move, she abandoned that idea and just tried to stay as tall as possible. But she was unable to clearly see objects in her path and suddenly her left arm knocked into a marble table. The shooting pain made her lose focus and the flames went completely out.

In a flash, unexpected given his previous slowness, Giondar had her in his hands, both of them squeezing her tightly to prevent any movement. Pandy screamed as his enormous thumb pressed against her shoulder.

“You must be a spirit of some importance and power in your land,” he said, looking at her curiously. “But I see no roc egg about you, so I will assume that is the extent of your abilities, ignorant one.”

“I'm not ignorant!” Pandy cried. “You aren't the only one who has ever suffered, you stupid blue … thing.”

She felt the pressure of his grasp on her lungs.

“People suffer loss all the time,” she gasped. “But they don't usually kill people to make themselves feel better.”

Just as she realized she had run out of air and couldn't take another breath, she also realized that it was incredibly foolish to try to reason with a being under the influence of one of the great Evils. She felt the pounding of blood in her temples and knew that at any moment, she was going to pass out. Then she felt Giondar relax his grip only a tiny bit.

“I shall grant you a wish, brains-of-a-dog,” Giondar said, staring at her, turning her about like a toy. “And when you tell me what you wish, I will trouble this family no further.”

“Huh?”

“Hear me, traveler. I am going to grant you one wish.”

“A wish?” Pandy said.

“Yes,” said Giondar. “Even though you are as a flea in my armpit, you obviously possess some extraordinary powers. Out of respect for your abilities, I shall grant you a wonderful favor.”

“What's that?”

“The luxury of telling me how you wish to die.”

Douban moved ahead of Iole up the staircase, on the watch for any surprises. The second level was in much better shape than the first; statues were still upright and whole, walls were still in one piece, privacy curtains had not been shredded.

“He must not bother himself with this section of the house,” whispered Douban, walking slowly down the corridor.

“Perhaps there's no one up here,” Iole said softly, looking at a wall hanging, stunning even in the dim light. Inadvertently, she bumped into Douban standing at the entrance to a sleeping chamber.

“No,” he said, staring into the room. “We are in the right place.”

Iole followed his gaze. In the middle of the room, a woman—or a man, Iole couldn't tell—was sitting, or standing, perfectly still. The bottom half of the person was bloated to at least five times normal size and had been covered in various places with pieces of clothing and fabric. But the skin was dark, almost purplish. The upper half, by contrast, was shrunken and distorted so that the head and neck were almost of the same shape and thickness and curved slightly to one side. The skin went from purple at the torso to yellow as it covered the neck and face. In fact, only the tufts of black hair at the back gave any indication of where a face might be. In Iole's mind, there was absolutely no question.