“Yes. I will go.”
The man—or Titan, perhaps, though his height was not quite high enough to say for certain—Enki, dropped her in the town of Marsa. He had held his peace on the voyage, which suited her, given her need to mentally review all that had happened. All that might yet happen.
Again and again, she had weighed the consequences of confrontation with the ruler of Ogygia. More like than not, no good would come of an altercation, this she knew. And yet, Kalypso deserved to know what had happened to her great-uncle. Besides, times of emotion might shake loose hidden truths. And Kalypso and her Nectar bore at least part of the blame for Zeus’s most recent bout of paranoia.
She flung open the door to Kalypso’s estate and found not Prometheus’s grandniece, but rather the Heliad Kirke, satchel over her shoulder. Pandora had thought she was leaving days ago, but it seemed she had lingered, perhaps waiting for word of Prometheus’s fate herself.
“Where is Kalypso?” Pandora demanded.
Another sneer. Pandora had begun to wonder if Kirke’s face could manage any other expression. “You presume rather much to come in here with such bravado.”
Bravado, was it? Kirke had seen naught of that yet. “Did you know that Prometheus knew of what you and Kalypso brewed up here?”
The Nymph dropped her satchel and took a threatening step toward Pandora.
Pandora plowed on anyway. “He knew, but he refused to let you suffer the consequences of your own actions, so Zeus threw him into Tartarus!” The words had begun to pour forward, and she couldn’t have stopped them if she’d tried. “He pays for your crimes! They beat him, they mean to torture him! He suffers Hades-knows-not-what because of—”
Kirke seized her by the throat, cutting off her words. The taller Nymph hefted her aloft, eye level with herself. “Shall I answer to you, now? If Prometheus suffers, he does so for his own reasons, while you chase after all that is unseen.” Her grip tightened and Pandora’s vision dimmed. “Trust me when I say you do not wish me as an enemy. Yeah, I can see how few friends yet remain to you, and still you keep making enemies.”
The Nymph hurled her backward, and Pandora flew three feet through the air before collapsing on the ground, gasping, rubbing her throat. For an instant, she feared Kirke had actually caused real damage. Every breath felt like sucking down volcanic ash. By the time Pandora was certain her windpipe remained intact, Kirke was gone.
Maybe her anger had gotten away from her, just a little.
Maybe it was fucking rage.
In the Aviary, at sunset, Pandora stood over a table in the library. Two dozen scrolls were spread before her, with more scattered about the floor. First, she had looked over every recent missive Prometheus had collected. Maybe, she had imagined, she could find something in his correspondence that might aid her.
He had known Zeus might act against him, for he’d arranged that boatman for Pandora to return. Would it not stand to reason he would have then left some clue here for her as to what she should do next? That was, of course, assuming he’d known Zeus would cast him into Tartarus rather than offer some more mundane imprisonment.
Next, she began scouring his scrolls for reference to Tartarus itself. Of which, she found little. It was a nightmare prison. It lay, despite popular misconception, not in the Underworld, but beyond it. Beyond the scope of the entire World, and into some unknown darkness. It abutted but was distinct from some Otherworld called Erebus, the World of Dark.
Some of this came from speculation from some order called the Circle of Goetic Mysteries. Others were passing references from the Muses College in Themiskyra. Polyhymnia, in particular, favored such subject matter, though she did not dive deep into aught that lay beyond the Mortal Realm, much less beyond the very World.
Growling, wanting to scream if her throat did not hurt so badly, Pandora heaved the scrolls off the desk. They smacked the oil lamp, which teetered. She grabbed it, searing her palm even as she managed to stop it from pitching down onto the papyrus.
“Grraaa!” she shrieked. The burning in her hand made the rawness of her throat dim.
Bubbling over with frustration, she stumbled down two flights of stairs and she plunged her hand in the fountain. A pair of disturbed flamingos squawked angrily at her disruption, so Pandora settled a withering gaze upon one.
“I’ve never eaten flamingo, you know. What do you think you taste like?”
Predictably, the flamingo did not answer.
Rising, Pandora flexed her palm. It still hurt. Everything hurt. Her soul ached.
Much as she’d told herself she’d shed every possible tear as a child and had none left, she felt the dampness threatening in her eyes as she continued to wander the empty Aviary. His place, and without him, even the birds somehow seemed more foreign than beautiful. The life here was gone from so much of this refuge.
Underground, in his workshop, though, she could almost feel him here. He’d come here nigh every evening since she had been living with him. He would tinker with his tools and work on the puzzle box he was making her, always saying it was ‘almost ready.’
There it sat, upon the work desk, insides and gears no longer exposed. A metal cube, worked with complex geometric patterns and numerous interlocking panels. Prometheus had not let her get a good look at it before, always insisting she wait until he’d finished the design.
And this was the symbol of what he’d done for her, wasn’t it? A gift for her, wanting naught in return, merely because he saw her pain and wanted to ease it. Or because … because … Why did one person go to extraordinary lengths for another? Why had Uncle Kadmus brought her
