Pandora Gets Lazy (9 page)

Fine, Alcie thought; she knew that having him there in his condition would probably only make matters worse.

“The two of us, then. Okay, here we go,” she said, hoping that her words were sounding the way Pandy would have said them. “I'll go in and surprise them. And then . . . and then . . .”

Without warning, Alcie quickly reached up and snatched the bronze shield off the passageway wall. Another of Eros's arrows came perilously close to piercing her rear end. Then she turned and ran, yelling, into the room.

“Ahhhh!”

The two figures were so startled that Eros dropped his bow.

“Ahhhh!”
they screamed together.

Then Iole rushed in.

“Ahhhh!”

“Ahhhh!”

“Get them!” Alcie yelled.

Instantly Eros took off flying around the room. With no more arrows to shoot, he began dive-bombing the girls, howling with laughter.

Alcie dropped to the floor and went after the little woman, but she was so swift that Alcie caught only handfuls of blue vapor.

“Don't touch it with your bare hands!” shouted Iole.

“Give me something!”

Iole ran to the far side of the cabin and snatched a thin fabric covering off of a pile of crates.

“Here!”

Alcie caught the cloth in the air and moved to scoop up the woman, but she was too fast and ran right under Iole's legs; Alcie tried to follow, sending both girls sprawling. Alcie chased the woman behind the pile of crates only to see her dash out the other side.

“There she goes!” yelled Iole.

“I see her!”

The figure took one moment to look behind her as she ran. She was almost clear across the room when she turned to face forward again and almost ran headfirst into the fallen silver tray, now lying against the cabin wall.

Stopping dead in her tracks, she saw her own reflection. She put her hands up to her face, took a deep breath, and let out a moan that filled the entire cabin. It was a sound of complete, utter despair. Alcie and Iole covered their ears; Eros whizzed out of the cabin. Then the tiny woman quietly passed out, falling with a blue trail to the floor as Alcie threw the cloth, covering the figure completely.

“Now what?” asked Alcie, breathing heavily and looking desperately at Iole. “Gods!”

“Pandy has the net and the box, Alcie. We've got nothing that will hold her—it.”

“Look!” Alcie crossed to the crates and picked up a small wooden box. She opened it and a tiny golden spoon fell onto the table.

“Here!”

She strode back across the room, slowly lifted the cloth, and reached for the figure.

“Not with your bare hands!” Iole said.

“Okay, like . . . duh!” Alcie said, startled, but she wrapped her hand in the cloth and very gingerly picked up the tiny woman with her thumb and forefinger and placed her in the box.

“Ta-da!”

“It doesn't have an adamant clasp, Alcie,” Iole cautioned. “This thing is a lesser evil, but it still needs to go in
the
box.”

“Iole,” Alcie said, “we can't let her go. Whatever this is, it's not supposed to be here. You know it and I know it. We came to help Pandy, even if she's not around, so use that stuff between your ears and—”

Alcie suddenly took in a sharp breath and went silent, almost as if she'd been turned to stone.

“Alcie?”

“Shackles.”

She stared at Iole, then spoke with uncommon deliberateness, as if each word were presenting itself in her brain only one at a time.

“The captain—when he took off our shackles—he said something about how cruel it was to use them because they were . . .”

“Adamant,” Iole and Alcie said at precisely the same time.

“But it's not a net!” Iole said.

“We'll figure it out!” Alcie said, moving past her back down the corridor.

Clutching the box tightly, she raced back toward their cabin, flung open the door, and was hopping around between the sleeping pallets when Iole panted into the room.

“Gods, you run so fast now that your feet are back to normal!”

“Okay. Okay,” Alcie rushed on, “we know that the net is adamant and we think that's the only thing that will capture an evil until it gets into the box. Right?”

“Righ—”

“Now, we don't have the net and we don't have
the
box. We just have an evil in a box. But we know that there are adamant shackles on this ship. So what if we got those and somehow . . . surrounded this box. She's just a tiny woman, how strong could she be, right?”

“Righ—”

“Shackles would be kept where—in the armory, right? When my dad was fighting in a war close to home and it was Take Your Daughter to Work Day, I always used to see shackles and chains in the armory. So, where's the armory on the ship?”

“I don't think it's on this end; we'd hear clanking,” Iole said.

“Good thinking.”

“If I were designing a ship, I'd put it in the middle: easy to get to, even weight distribution.”

“Okay, let's go get—”

“Alcie,” Iole cut her off, “we can't just walk into the armory. We'll be killed or chained up or Hades knows what!”

“Right. We can't both go.” Alcie paused. “But if one of us were to create a diversion, then the other could sneak in behind and get the shackles. Now, I can carry heavier stuff and you're not so much of a threat—to anyone. And they probably wouldn't do much of anything to you if you act all innocent and girly. So . . .”

“So, you want to use me as
bait
?” Iole squealed. “Why am I always bait?”

“When have you ever been bait?”

“Hello! Cleopatra?”

“Okay, but don't think of it as bait!”

“That's what it is!”

“I know, but don't think of it like that. Find another big word for it, a pretty word.”

Out of nowhere, they both heard shouts of “Evening meal” and heavy footsteps racing about on the main deck above their heads. Instinctively, they opened the cabin door and paused only a moment to listen to the sound of something like furious scratching coming from Homer's cabin. Clinging to the inside of the passageway, they stole up on deck.

Almost everyone, except the prisoners, was either heading for or already gathered at the back of the ship as the cook ladled out bowls of odd-smelling soup. A few pirates were already seated in small groups, eating and drinking.

“This is perfect,” Alcie whispered, hearing an off-key tune and then a splash.

The two girls, darting from one guard tower to another, snuck to an opening mid-deck and down into the bowels of the
Syracusa
. Seeing no one, they peeked into several large, empty rooms: an abandoned spa now littered with makeshift pallets and trash, a library with most of the books thrown onto the floor to make room for the kidnappers' personal items. Peeking into another room, Iole caught a glimpse of the sorceress before she forced Alcie to flatten herself against the wall, putting fingers to both their lips. The sorceress, humming softly, had her back turned, her nose in a jar of something foul-smelling, and didn't notice the two girls slinking by her quarters. Scurrying along the empty passageways, they finally found the armory, full of immense weapons—those of the kidnappers and those looted from their hapless captives. Iole and Alcie went straight to the wall where hundreds of sets of shackles and chains hung on hooks, a key in each lock. Trying to be quick yet thorough in their examination, Alcie had her hands on two sturdy sets.

“Those are strong enough, I suppose,” came a stern voice from behind them.

Both girls froze.

Suddenly, there was an ear-splitting clang of metal hitting metal.

Alcie and Iole glanced sideways at each other, then turned around, waiting to be slashed to ribbons.

In the center of the armory, there now stood an enormous anvil and behind it, a giant of a man. His massive arms were covered in soot, his dark brown hair flew out from his head at wild angles, and a heavy ink-black beard covered his face. He had a large gold earring in one ear, a tiny Roman helmet on his head, and a black tattoo of a woman on one arm. With an enormous arc he brought a huge hammer down upon a piece of metal with another clang that almost sent the girls to their knees.

“This pair, however, might be more to your liking,” he growled, raising his hammer high once more.

“Please don't kill us,” Alcie whispered.

But Iole had already begun to understand. Brown hair? Black beard? And, of course, she'd seen him before.

“Heph-Hephaestus?” she stammered.

The hammer stopped in midswing.

He dropped his head, his shoulders sagged. Slowly, he laid the hammer down on the anvil and looked sheepishly at the girls.

“What gave me away?”

“Brown hair, black beard—oh, wondrous smithy,” Iole said. “And, perhaps, the giant anvil. Besides, all the other pirates are completely bald.”

“Oh, bald. Right,” he sighed, then gave a little hop and disappeared. Then next instant he appeared from behind the anvil, startling the girls for a second with his severely misshapen lower body no bigger than that of a tiny baby. And now, of course, he was no taller than the girls. Iole realized he'd been standing on a chair.

“Aphrodite swore that you wouldn't recognize me in this,” he said, pulling the fake black beard away from his face.

“I didn't,” said Alcie honestly, making him feel a little better.

“Why are you incognito?” asked Iole.

Both Alcie and Hephaestus just stared at her.

“In disguise,” she clarified.

“It's a pirate ship,” he said brightly, “and how much fun is
that,
I ask you? I almost never get to leave the forge, so I thought here's a chance to see how the other half lives. And anything I can do to cover this ugly face . . .”

“Oh, I wouldn't say—,” Alcie spoke up.

“Enough, please don't flatter. Or lie. Doesn't suit either of you. Now, listen, we have no time. Take these.”

He pulled a pair of shackles down from on top of the anvil.

“They're adamant, naturally. And I've crafted them so they'll fit around that box.”

“How did you know?” Alcie asked.

“I've been watching you in the fire on my forge. I check in every once in a while. And I heard your prayers. Everyone on Olympus has, actually, but of all the gods, Zeus pays the least attention to me, and I knew I could sneak away and help this time. Here, let me have it.”

Wordlessly, Alcie handed the box to Hephaestus. He held it up to his large ear. From inside could be heard the sound of a woman weeping.

“Misery. That's what you've got, you know, the pure stuff. Anguish, loneliness, despair? They all come from this source.” He sighed, tapping the box. “Hopelessness. Phew . . . don't I know about that, huh? My wife's off with another—another—ah, well, never mind. And it's not like everyone doesn't already know. Shouldn't be burdening . . . you . . .”

He gave a sad little laugh that broke Alcie's heart in two. He swiftly fitted the square shackles around the small wooden box and closed the clasp.

“Thank you, oh magnificent smitty—smithy!” Alcie said with a tiny smile.

“Stop, Alcestis,” he said humbly. “I'm just a working god.”

As Pandy had done before, Alcie impulsively rushed forward and kissed his cheek. Not to be outdone, Iole did the same.

Hephaestus just shook his head.

“You maidens are something else.” He smiled.

With that he clambered back up on his chair and raised his terrible hammer high.

“Be good!”

With a swing and a clang, he and the anvil disappeared.

CHAPTER TEN
Inevitable

What
was
the word?

“In—” something, and it meant that something, some event, was bound to happen. No escaping it. Like the Fates had decreed it or Zeus had said it would be.

Pandy sat on the hard ground and let her brain just struggle awhile, trying to come up with the word. For the foreseeable future, she had nothing but time and was doing a great deal of thinking.

She reached her hand to her face, trying to wipe a speck of dust out of her eye, but was stopped short. The woman next to her in the line of prisoners was asleep, lying on the short chain linking their manacles, and Pandy didn't have the heart to wake her up.

In fact everyone was asleep except her, two guards watching the huddled group of prisoners, and the three guards sitting around a fire some distance away.

Inevitable!

“That's it,” Pandy thought. It was inevitable that she and the boys would finally be caught. She just didn't think it would be this soon.

So, if it was absolutely inevitable, why was she still blaming herself? The gods themselves knew she had done everything possible to keep herself and the boys safe, and for the previous three days she'd been very successful. Since Athena had healed Amri's leg only the night before, and this morning there was no more than a light scab over flat skin, Pandy had rejoiced in the early light, certain that they would make much better time. But that certainty had ended only a few hours later.

At dawn they had begun their usual scurry alongside the road, keeping to the brush. But a large bare stretch had left them exposed. Amri heard the sound of clanking metal and heavy footsteps first, and Pandy had raced the boys to the nearest clump of rocks she saw up the hill. It was too small, and too late. Raiding parties, one after another, began passing back and forth on the trail below, leaving them unable to move a muscle.

Pandy and the boys had been pinned behind some rocks for hours, forced to crouch in painful and awkward positions, their bodies barely hidden. In the heat of midday, unable even to reach into her pouch for food or water, Pandy, drowsy herself, had watched the boys drift off to sleep, thankful that at least in slumber they wouldn't feel the terrible cramps in their legs and arms. But Ismailil, although unconscious, had apparently had enough and slowly extended his right leg out from behind the rocks, in plain sight of everyone on the road.