The Gifts of Pandora, page 11
He wasn’t human. The retort almost leapt from her mouth, but she managed to still it, barely. Tantalus had tried to beat the acerbic tongue out of her. Tried and failed.
Prometheus, though, put forth such extraordinary efforts for her. Could a woman and a Titan have a true friendship? Could they have aught at all?
A reassuring squeeze of his hands seemed to offer his answer. For whatever reason, he remained unflappable.
As if utterly determined to give her another chance at a life. The least she could do was seize that chance. Yes. Standing in his workshop beneath his Aviary, Pandora swore she would claim the occasion he offered. She would be more than she had been, more than anyone had ever thought she could be.
From the ashes of her past, she would build something new.
11
Kirke
1570 Silver Age
* * *
A shriek and a wail, and a hurled amphora that shattered against the wall of their shared laboratory, causing Kirke to cringe.
Then Kalypso was doubled over, clutching her knees, moaning, and Kirke raced to her side, grabbing her shoulders. She eased the other Nymph to the ground and wrapped her arms around her.
“My mother …” Kalypso moaned for the hundredth time. “My mother …” Then, almost inaudible, the whisper. “Mama …”
Kirke said naught, for there was naught to be said. Sometimes, life so ravaged a person that all you could do was hold them in place and keep the pieces from blowing away in the wind.
“Prometheus and his new girl didn’t do a damn thing about all of this,” Kirke grumbled the next morning, while the two of them sat beneath a cypress tree on the estate’s edge, sipping from a bowl of wine. Well, Kirke might have done more than sip, having no interest in the figs Kalypso ate. “Maybe even made it worse.”
“Oh, leave over,” Kalypso snapped. “They didn’t have aught to do with it.”
“She’s trying to seduce your great-uncle,” Kirke complained. Girl seemed damn familiar, too. Another of her father’s bastards, perhaps removed by a few generations, not even worthy of being called a Nymph.
Kalypso favored her with a withering look. “As if that’s our great concern at the moment. Zeus just murdered my mother—and the rest of the Pleiades. For sixteen centuries he trusted them to govern Atlantis and manage the flow of Ambrosia to Olympus. And now … Now … What if he comes for us as well?” The woman paled. “He might not know about you, but if he turned on my mother, how long before he decides I’m a threat?”
It was … a possibility. Zeus was unpredictable, as always. He’d banished Atlas to Tartarus but allowed the great Titan’s daughters to rule Atlantis until now. Still, he might not act without some provocation. She took a long drink from the bowl before setting it aside, drained. “Yeah, I think him more like to observe you first. Wholesale slaughter of the Atlantid genos would weaken his support, even among the other Olympians. People tend to get worked up about that sort of thing.”
“Observe?”
“Yeah, well, he’s been known to use Morpheus to hunt through the dreams of those whom he has begun to doubt.” Was that what had been sparking Kirke’s nightmares of late? Did Morpheus hunt her specifically, or merely comb through the dreams of all Titans in this region? “Morpheus is one of those men who values privacy. He likes to take your privacy and keep it all for himself. He’s like … like a secret-hoarding magpie, you know?”
Kalypso grew paler and clutched Kirke’s hand. “Can you keep him out?”
“Ah … I wish I could, but I’m not that powerful of a sorceress. He’s the strongest oneiromancer I’ve ever heard of. No, my friend, you have to guard your own mind. Control your thoughts and your fear. Forget what we’ve been up to for a time.”
“W-will I know he’s inside my head?”
Kirke squeezed her hand, wishing she had more reassurance to offer. “Maybe. Such things have no easy answers. It depends on you and your mind and how aware you are of it.” And on how deep Morpheus chose to push into her dreams, if he came for her. “Believe me when I tell you, staying calm is our best defense.” If Morpheus pulled incriminating thoughts from Kalypso’s sleeping mind, she and Kirke could well both be damned.
“Why would Zeus do this?” Kalypso abruptly moaned. “Why now?”
Kirke sighed. “Why does a megalomaniac do aught he does? Maybe he snapped from too much Ambrosia. Maybe he sampled a bad batch of Nectar.”
For a moment Kalypso’s eyes widened, appearing to try to judge if Kirke was jesting. Not even Kirke was sure about that. Either way, Kalypso’s face darkened, and she snatched her hand back and rose, storming away.
Not knowing what else to do, Kirke rubbed her forehead and remained sitting beneath the tree. What in the very gates of Tartarus had happened on Atlantis to prompt Zeus to such madness?
And now, even Kirke’s very presence on this island might make her and Kalypso look more suspicious. So what was she to do? How was she to comfort her friend and still protect them both? Kirke banged an impotent fist against the unforgiving ground. All their dreams were flitting away, broken before they had truly begun.
Was it possible Zeus had known the Nectar came from Ogygia? Had he acted against Kelaino to punish Kalypso? It seemed too subtle for him, but who knew what wild gyrations went through the king’s mind?
One thing seemed abundantly clear though. They needed help before Zeus came for them.
The caliginous city streets had fallen away, revealing rugged hills and an even more shadow-drenched forest. Kirke could make out so little, but still she stumbled forward, half running, dead certain someone followed her.
The one thing she knew: someone stalked her dreams, and she could not allow him—or it—to see her. So she ran in the darkness, darting between trees and—
Her foot snared on a root sending her crashing down amid fallen leaves. The impact jarred her shoulder, and she lay there moaning. Before she could right herself, a snake slithered in front of her face. Kirke froze, not daring to breathe. In the darkness, she had no idea what kind of serpent it was or if it was venomous.
A moment later it was gone, disappeared into the fallen leaves.
Somewhere, in the direction she’d come from, footfalls crunched more leaves.
Ah, shit.
She hurled herself to her feet and raced onward, certain that whatever followed her would be worse than stepping on a snake in her blind rush. Her elbow scraped rough tree bark as she fled, and underbrush tore at her khiton.
Her pulse had begun to pound in her ears.
Her mad flight brought her atop an outcropping over the hills, where the land pitched away into the utter darkness of an unseen valley, and she lurched to a stop, arms flailing to keep from tumbling into the abyss.
The sound of running behind her intensified. Whoever chased her was growing closer.
This was a dream.
It was only a dream.
But if her pursuer caught her, it would become something more.
Kirke leapt into the void.
Neither woman spoke much as they climbed the mountain. While mostly keeping her gaze upon Prometheus’s Aviary, Kirke could not help but steal glances at Kalypso when she wasn’t looking. All oneiromancers suffered nightmares full of portent and metaphor and, as now, the persistent fear of other oneiromancers stalking them. Oh, such uses of the Art were potent and could be used to pass messages without regard for distance.
But as with every other branch of the Art, there was terrible risk.
A fortnight since learning of the Pleiades’ fate, and her nightmares grew worse, and with them, the sense of everything coming to a head.
And maybe Kalypso would be better off if Kirke was as far from her as possible, both physically and emotionally. If it was Morpheus stalking her, sooner or later, he would catch her, and her mind would unfold before him like a papyrus roll.
Was she betraying Kalypso by even thinking of leaving her in such circumstances? Or did she betray her more severely if she let her affections for the woman stop her from taking steps to protect the both of them?
While she did not relish the thought of being alone, she had spent ages traveling the seas with little or no company, and she could manage if she must. As a child she’d grown up in Helion, in her father’s court, though she had spent her earliest years in Byblos before that, in times she barely recalled. But both had been ages back, and so much had happened since then.
Then the Titanomachy had come and, in the last days of the war, her mighty father had abandoned Kronos and bent his knee to Zeus. Mostly, she blamed Artemis for that, but the bitch had help, and Kirke could not forgive that. For thousands of years Helios had been one of the greatest forces in the Thalassa, and Kirke, while still a Nymph, was a princess worthy of respect. Now what? Now she was just another Nymph daughter of a fallen Titan, a shadow of his old self, who held his puppet throne only by sucking at Zeus’s teat.
Such things dashed about her mind more and more these days. Memories of the Golden Age. And the World grew harsher for anyone not reigning from Olympus.
Atop the mountain, Prometheus met them, not inside his Aviary, but past it, beckoning them over to where he sat in sunshine upon the cliff’s edge, watching the sea. Kalypso paused a moment by the tower, sniffing the daphne and lingering, perhaps now dreading the conversation they must have with a Titan more ancient than even Kirke. Maybe more ancient than Kirke’s father. Prometheus had been there, in the dawn of time, when Ouranos drove back Nyx, or so some legends told it. And he, too, had helped Zeus overthrow Kronos, though Kirke could not fathom his reasons.
He gave Man the Art of Fire and pyromancy, taught them trades and arts and so many things, and they called him benefactor. Yet he helped enthrone the greatest tyrant in the ambit of history. Whether in weakness and fear, like her father, or out of mere poor judgment, his mistake was not something Kirke could forgive.
Not waiting for Kalypso, Kirke strode over to where the Titan sat and slumped down beside him. “Word has already spread about the fate of the Pleiades, you know. And by now I’d have to imagine it’s the talk of fishwives in the harbors of Korinth and philosophers in the streets of Kronion.” Kirke spread her hands for effect. “Maybe it was inevitable, too, right, Prometheus? I mean, if you let a madman take control of the land, let him think himself a god … if you let him reinforce that belief by allowing him to force others to call himself a god, well then you’ve set the stage for your own execution, haven’t you? Yeah, maybe we ought to start selling tickets to this show, too, because something tells me we haven’t reached the climax yet. Have you got a comfortable seat for it, Firebringer?”
As Kalypso approached, Kirke could almost hear her wince at Kirke’s tone. No, this hadn’t been how she’d planned for this conversation to go. Browbeating a Titan wasn’t like to produce results, but the words had rushed out of Kirke without her having much say in the matter.
The Titan, however, favored her with a sad smile, sympathy touching his crystal blue eyes. “You hope that, perhaps, I will somehow join you in a second Titanomachy? You imagine that, if you could gather enough supporters, you might wage some grand war to overthrow tyranny and establish a new order, better than what we have.”
“Yes!” Kirke snapped. “Yeah, I want you to fucking do something, Firebringer. I mean, something more useful than sitting on a mountain collecting birds and naming the clouds.”
Prometheus frowned, ever so slightly, though whether at her outburst, profanity, or some war within himself, Kirke didn’t know. “I am, always, doing a great many things. And naught lasts forever, Kirke, not even Zeus’s reign. But I will not join in a war against the Olympians.”
“They slaughtered the Pleiades,” she said, barely able to stop from screaming at him again. “They murdered them all, and no one will do aught about it.”
“Indeed, I was there,” he reminded her. “And Zeus and his ilk will do worse still before things are done. But I cannot do as you wish.”
Kirke hesitated. “I think he sent Morpheus after us.”
She felt Kalypso stiffen even as Prometheus’s frown deepened. “I will see if I can direct his eyes away from you,” the Titan said softly.
“Uncle …” Kalypso moaned. “What he did to Mother …”
Prometheus inclined his head to his great-niece. “Kirke had the right of it, Kalypso. We do set the stage for our own end, Zeus included. His actions may yet prove his undoing, but a war against Olympus now would be doomed to failure.”
“Oracular insight?” Kalypso asked.
“Call it that.”
Oh, but if he had seen a war, it meant that one must impend. Or perhaps, rather, he had seen himself warn them of this very moment, and thus relied upon his statement that a war would fail to know it would. Prescience was always so twisted, bent back upon itself.
Either way, there was no aid for them here.
Despite not having spoken in the climb up the mountain, somehow the silence seemed even deeper as they returned to Kalypso’s estate. Kirke had to wonder, over and over, what Prometheus thought he would do against Morpheus. A weaker Oracle could not see a stronger, but oneiromancer dream stalking was different, and, so far as she knew, Prometheus had no such abilities.
By tacit accord, she and Kalypso wandered the grounds aimlessly, neither quite able to meet the gaze of the other.
Was this what it had come to? All their plans to right the World, all their experiments, the long summer nights of making love, the dreams of time when Nymphs could choose their own Fates … Dwindled-down embers before they had the chance to even catch flame.
Like unspent tinder, they would blow away in a strong gust, and all they had sought would be forgotten. Maybe they had never had a chance. Or maybe … maybe she still could, but she needed to perfect the Nectar, no matter how long that took. And clearly, Kirke could no longer do that here, with Kalypso.
They drifted into the garden, where Kalypso knelt and poked at the moly crop. The little white bulbs just eased out now, ready to bloom. After a few moments, Kalypso rose with a sigh. “What about your father? He has forgotten, hidden his strength, but surely it remains there, quiescent.”
Kirke could barely stop herself from scoffing. Once the most radiant of the Lords of the Ouranid League, her father’s fall had been tragic. Watching it had torn her to pieces, even as his most precious children, Artemis and Apollon, had sided with his enemy. “He won’t act against Zeus.”
“He lost his status in the Ouranid League,” Kalypso objected, as if Kirke could ever forget.
Kirke huffed. “After he betrayed them for Zeus, yeah. He won’t take any step that might risk him losing what remains of his empire. My father yet controls Helion, Thrinakia, and numerous smaller islands, you know? He is the most powerful Titan outside of Olympus. You think he’d jeopardize that?”
“Not even if it meant the chance to rule instead of licking Zeus’s sandals?”
Kirke folded her arms. “We don’t have any moves left right now. The best we can do is lay low and hope Zeus and his minions won’t associate us with the Nectar.”
“They just murdered my mother!” Kalypso blurted. “You want me to lay low? Shall I perhaps fetch a rod for them to beat me with while I’m at it?”
It was always going to come to this, and Kirke couldn’t help but glare at Kalypso. “You think I’ve no quarrel with them? But if you don’t want to join the Pleiades in the Underworld, you have to bide your time. Sell what’s left of the stock. We cannot afford any chance of discovery right now. I can always make more when things have quieted a little.”
“You’re leaving.” Kalypso fair spat the words in accusation.
“For now. Laying low, remember.”
The look of betrayal upon Kalypso’s face ripped straight into Kirke’s heart. But before she could say aught more, the other Nymph stomped into the house.
With a resigned sigh, Kirke paused long enough to pull up two of the moly herbs. She’d need the seeds to plant more crops wherever she ended up.
And she needed some damn wine. A lot of wine.
One thing was clear: she needed to get off Ogygia as soon as she could figure out a destination.
12
Pandora
1570 Silver Age
* * *
After a fortnight of living in the Aviary, Prometheus still had not made any effort to touch Pandora. Though, in moments of self-reflection, she had begun to wish he would. Nor did she think it from lack of desire on his part, for he seemed interested in her, almost affectionate at times. Mulling it over, all she had come up with was that, perhaps, he thought her so wounded by the past as to need convalescence from it before she could claim aught substantial in the present.
The thought, once it had occurred, had haunted her like the screeching voice of a Fury, nagging and needling in every private moment. As now, when she walked in the spice fields outside Marsa, trying to slow her mind by speeding her heart, if only a bit.
A farmer waved to her as she passed and Pandora returned the gesture.
When word had come of the events in Atlantis, a kind of hysteria had blazed through the town. People hid in their houses. Others drowned their growing consternation in wine houses. She’d heard one fisherman had loaded up his family and made to sail for Neshia, though she couldn’t imagine a fishing boat could make the voyage across the Thalassa.
And then, almost as fast, when naught came of it all, the madness had burned out, the fever of it broken overnight. The Pleiades were murdered. Zeus was a despot. And life continued much as it ever had, the atmosphere of dread unsustainable even in the wake of such turmoil. Aught could be passed over, so long as it did not come here.
Perhaps that was one reason Zeus forever retained power. Those not directly affected by his depravities could only maintain umbrage for such a short time. Oh, wasn’t it awful what happened to Europa? Oh, poor Kelaino! I hope it won’t disrupt the salt shipments, dear.
