Pandora Gets Vain (Pandora (Hardback)) (5 page)

“Where is it, ghost dog? Huh? Show me where,” Pandy whispered into Dido’s ear.

At that moment, a light sparked on the horizon. It disappeared and reappeared again and again as the ship rode through the small waves. But it was constant; always there when the ship crested high in the water.

The
Peacock
was still a good forty kilometers offshore, yet off in the far distance Pandy could see the brilliant light. It was a steady beam, like a true marker pointing the way into the Great Harbor.

“How does it do that?” Pandy asked of no one in particular. “What makes that light so bright in the daytime?”

“It’s a mirror,” said Homer. “They use a mirror to reflect the sun; that’s why it’s so bright.”

“Apricots,” said Alcie.

“And,” continued Homer, “they light a fire at night and reflect that out to sea. The lighthouse is, like, one of the greatest architectural wonders in the world . . . right up there with the Hanging Gardens in Babylon. It’s hundreds of years old.”

“The coastline is so flat that ships would run aground if there was no guide into the harbor,” Iole broke in, not wanting to be outdone in the brains department. “And there’s a statue of Poseidon on the top . . . just in case anyone was curious.”

“I was. Thanks,” said Pandy.

The beam was getting stronger as the
Peacock
neared the harbor entrance. No one wanted to turn away from the beautiful buildings of Alexandria, now coming into view, but the light reflecting off the mirror was blinding.

“I’m going below deck to gather my stuff. I don’t want to miss anything as we enter the harbor,” said Iole.

“Right behind you,” said Alcie. She turned to Pandy. “You coming?”

“I have my pouch,” she replied, having gotten her leather carrying pouch and the box earlier. “I just have to get my water-skin.”

“I’ll bring it up,” said Alcie.

“Okay, thanks. Ouch!” said Pandy, as a strand of her brown hair suddenly whipped into her eyes. “Where’d the wind come from?”

“Yeow!” said Alcie, her outer robe flying over her head.

“You look good that way,” Iole joked to Alcie as she descended below deck.

“Oh, you are too funny!” said Alcie, fighting her fluttering robe and trying to follow. “Where are you?”

Then Iole, Alcie, and Homer were gone.

In the next instant, Pandy became aware that the sailors on the deck had shifted into high gear, many of them running about, grabbing ropes and tie lines. She looked up into the sky and saw not even a hint of a cloud. Then she heard one of the sailors speaking in Egyptian behind her. The urgency of his tone made her turn around and look.

Immediately, her eyesight shot past the sailor, out to the sea and sky behind the ship.

On the horizon about thirty kilometers away, back across the Ionian Sea that they’d just crossed, something hung in the air, the likes of which Pandy had never seen in her life.

It was a black funnel.

As she and the sailors watched in horror, the bottom of the funnel contorted and writhed back and forth, as if it were a soggy piece of cotton that someone high above was shaking hard. The funnel was, by Pandy’s guess, at least a hundred meters wide at the top and two hundred meters high. Every so often the small point would touch down on the sea, sending water flying in all directions. Even at such a great distance everyone could see the massive amounts of water the funnel sucked up into itself, only to spit out again at deadly speeds. It was sucking other things up as well, and suddenly the
Peacock
was pelted by bits of low-flying seaweed and small rocks. A bird smashed into the main mast. Another hurtled like an arrow right at a sailor’s head, knocking both man and bird senseless. Then a fish landed at Pandy’s feet.

Worse still, the funnel was heading directly for the ship and gaining fast.

There was a tremendous wind created by the vicious whirling black monster. Even the most seasoned sailors were terrified; they were screaming and crying and praying fervently to Poseidon. Confusion and panic reigned on deck; no one knew what the hideous thing was. Rowing was out of the question; nobody would venture below deck for fear of being trapped. The only thought in anyone’s mind was whether or not the
Peacock
could make it into the Great Harbor in time. But there was still too much distance between the ship and the barrier just beyond the lighthouse.

And the funnel, blocking out the sun, roaring and spewing and writhing, was now less than five kilometers away.

Alcie, Iole, and Homer came back on deck with all of their belongings just as the ship, as if it weighed no more than a feather, spun in a full circle on the water.

“Hang on to something!” yelled Pandy.

Iole glanced for only half a second at the approaching funnel, then headed straight for the main mast, throwing her arms around the pole as tightly as she could. Homer knelt down at the railing and thrust his huge legs and arms through the poles, hugging them tightly.

Alcie had no choice but to hang on to Homer. She wrapped her arms and legs around his back, his robes blowing back over her face, blinding her.

Pandy lurched toward the mast pole, trying to throw her body around Iole, the wind whipping her hair violently into her eyes. Dido skidded in front of her path and ended by slamming hard into the shipping crates at the end of the deck. As Pandy turned her gaze to follow her dog, she looked up.

The funnel was upon them.

With a roar that made the sound of the first storm seem like a whisper, the funnel began to tear the sails, crack the mast, and blow the shipping crates to bits. Rigging ropes were airborne snakes and anything made of metal had the deadly force of a spear. Sailors began to fly into the air, sucked up forty and fifty meters high, then belched out again into the water far away, or hurled into the side of the
Peacock
, or back on deck, unconscious or dead.

Pandy, holding on to nothing, yet somehow standing stock-still in the middle of the funnel, felt the
Peacock
spin like a top as it was lifted out of the water and up into the gaping black mouth. She was struck dumb to her core, watching everything whirling around and feeling no wind, not realizing she was at the center of the tornado.

But just as quickly the small center point of the twister shifted and Pandy, with nothing to ground her, was thrown high into the air, becoming part of the furious, swirling storm. Her last clear vision was of the captain hanging on with one hand to the passageway entrance, his body completely horizontal to the ship’s deck.

Pandy’s mind went blank, except for one little thought: “This is how it must feel to be caught in a whirlpool.” Except that whirlpools dragged you down into a wet spiral and she was being tossed higher on cold air currents in an ever-widening circle. Her arms and legs were whipping and smashing into the sides of her body. She caromed off something hard: another person, the top of the mast pole, a really big bird—she didn’t know. She knew nothing except that now she had a shooting pain in her right arm, just below her elbow, and that these were probably her last moments alive.

All at once, she was flying through the air, arcing out a hundred meters above the sea. Flashes of sunlight and deep blue water and light blue sky were all that met her eyes when she dared to open them. Then . . .

Smack!

She hit the water . . . and blacked out.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Rescue

12:09 p.m.

Pandy awoke underwater.

Light was filtering down through the waves from overhead, but it was getting dimmer, which could only mean that she was sinking. And there was absolutely nothing she could do about it. There was no moving her arms or legs, no swimming back to the surface; she was just too, too tired. Plus, there was a strange ache in one of her arms. She turned her head in the fading light and saw that her right arm was swaying in the current at an odd angle.

“Oh well,” she thought. “This isn’t exactly how I imagined it would all end, but there are worse ways to go.”

Then she hit the bottom of the ocean.

She looked up and could still see the blue of the sky. But when she realized she was completely out of air, Pandy started to panic.

She didn’t want to go! Not this way, not at all! Her life, suddenly and without warning, became very, very precious to her.

She struggled to move her left arm but it was caught in her robes and pouches. She tried kicking her legs, but the pressure of the water and her exhaustion made it too difficult.

She felt the last of the air leave her lungs.

The pain was incredible. Her throat seemed on fire. Just as she realized that not only would she never see her family or friends again, not only had she failed miserably in her quest, not only had she sentenced her family to eternal punishment, and on top of everything she didn’t have any gold coins left to pay Charon to ferry her across the river Styx and into the underworld . . .

. . . the sunlight overhead got brighter.

And brighter.

And brighter.

She felt the pressure of the water around her lessen as something carried her toward the surface. Her head was thrown back and it bumped up against something sticking straight up behind her. Something flat and thick and curved.

A fin.

“Great,” she thought, breaking the surface, her lungs now flat as two dried prunes. She hadn’t landed on the sea floor after all; whatever it was was very much alive, and now she was going to be eaten.

She spit up whole mouthfuls of salt water, then gasped for air in tremendous, heaving gulps. Worn out from almost drowning and now about to be devoured, she rolled feebly to one side, trying to escape being a mid-meal.

But the thing with the fin rolled right along with her, keeping her afloat.

Pandy looked down. Gray, rubbery skin. Two flippers, one on either side. A huge dorsal fin (with her leather carrying pouch wrapped around it), coal black eyes, and a long pointed nose.

She was sitting on top of a dolphin.

“Hello-sorry-about-the-late-arrival-hope-you’re-not-too-waterlogged-I-didn’t-let-you-sink-too-far-so-you-shouldn’t-be-feeling-any-ill-effects-I-see-you’re-still-wearing-your-water-skin-but-your-leather-pouch-with-the-important-things-in-it-wink-wink-well-that-was-on-its-way-to-the-bottom-of-the-ocean-so-I-had-to-stop-and-pick-it-up-and-as-you-can-see-it’s-quite-safe-around-my-fin-and-that’s-actually-what-made-me-a-little-late-but-now-all-is-well-how-are-you?” it said, bobbing up and down in the water. The words came out so fast it was the same as hearing quick notes blown on a panpipe.

Pandy looked around her to make sure she hadn’t actually crossed into the underworld without knowing it. Was riding on the back of a dolphin—already enough of a shock—going to be her fate for eternity?

She saw the black funnel miles to the west, now small and distorted, as if it was running out of power. The lighthouse at Alexandria was a speck, barely recognizable by its teeny beacon of light. The
Peacock
was gone, and Pandy now saw splinters and shards of wood floating all about her.

“Hi-down-here-the-thing-you’re-sitting-on-the-thing-that’s-
talking
-to-you-I-said-how-are-you?” the dolphin repeated.

“Uh . . .”

“Oh, Great Artemis’s Big Toe! Right . . . sorry, my fault! I forgot. Human, tiiiiny brain,” said the dolphin, slowing his speech way, way down. “I basically just said, ‘Hello, human.’ You know, Poseidon warned us that you all might be a little untalkative, and a few of my fellow cetaceans think humans are just plain rude. But I think you’re all quite nice for a species that uses just ten percent of the little brains Zeus gave you. And I don’t mind saying so.”

“I’m sorry,” Pandy replied at last. “And I’m trying to use more than ten percent. I’m just not quite, um, sure where I am. I’m a little . . . like . . . oh, what’s the word . . . ?”

“Disoriented?”

“Yeah! That’s it.”

“Not to worry!” said the dolphin, tossing his head merrily. “Do you have a name, human?”

“Yes.”

“And . . . you’d like me to guess what it is?”

“Oh!” said Pandy. “No. Sorry. It’s . . . um . . . Pandora.”

“Well, Um-Pandora, I am Sigma, pleased to carry you. Ready?”

“No! Wait! For what? Ready for what?”

“We have to get you out of here,” said Sigma. “We can chat a little later on. After all, we’re going to be with each other for a while. Are your lungs up to taking a deep breath?”

“I think so.”

“Good. You’ve ridden before, yes?”

“A dolphin?” said Pandy. “No, never.”

“Ah, so you need the signs. Here you go.”

Two dim violet-colored squares lit up on either side of the dolphin just behind his eyes. Within each square was written the words PLACE HAND HERE. Pandy put her hands directly on the squares; the skin here was loose and easy to hold. Instinctively, she grabbed large handfuls.

But as she tried to close her fingers, a sharp jolt shot through her right arm.