Pandora Gets Vain (Pandora (Hardback)) by Hennesy Carolyn

Author:Hennesy, Carolyn [Hennesy, Carolyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2010-08-10T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Just a Little Chat

7:16 p.m.

“Dear, precious child,” Hera said to herself. “Precious, darling, resourceful, intrepid, sensible, cunning, conniving, presumptuous, arrogant brat of a child!”

She pounded her large fist into a rose-colored silk pillow, sprawling on the divan in her spacious suite of rooms. Before her stood an elaborate, many-armed candelabra, a wax taper ablaze in each sconce. When lit, each flame showed a tiny portion of whatever view or scene Hera wished to see at any given moment. Right now, her beautiful but bulging eyeballs were trained on a garlic-shaped tent in the Egyptian desert, and the three sleeping girls inside.

“Just how clever do you really think you are, Pandora?” she mused. “Surely even you must realize that the only thing keeping me from dropping you headfirst off the slopes of Olympus or turning you into a grain of sand—or into my hairbrush, for that matter— is the fact that my husband would be slightly miffed at me.”

Hera knew (much) better; Zeus would stick her head-down in a frozen Norse lake if he even suspected she was interfering with Pandy’s quest. All her plans were riding on her ability to be subtle (not one of Hera’s strong suits). And time.

“Why oh why couldn’t you cooperate and simply have been skewered on a pole in that dreadful tomb? Ah, me,” she exhaled heavily. “Patience is all I need. And if I can just figure out how to cultivate that . . .”

She poked a large forefinger into one of the small flames in the candelabra showing Pandy’s tummy. On her cot, Pandy moaned in her sleep while dreaming about her stomach being attacked by enormous rodents.

“I have it!” came a loud whisper.

Demeter swept in, breathless, flushed, and rather giggly; her hair changing seasons very quickly in her excitement.

“Excellent!” said Hera, blowing out the candles. “Give it to me.”

From her robes, Demeter withdrew a small clay jar. Hera snatched it with one hand while she cleared her admiring table (as she called it) of all its pots, brushes, and creams with the other.

“Come,” she called, summoning two deep chairs from across the room. “This should be interesting.”

“Oh, I’m all peppery and speckled inside!” Demeter began, giving her hands a little shake. “You have no idea . . . Just a little chat with Zeus, you said? The moment I mentioned what a shame it was that since he’d been forced to reduce Pandora’s mother to ashes and he’s had no chief personal aide in his Athens temple since, he got all pouty. And that’s when, just as you predicted, Hera, he sort of wandered over to his table and gently touched that jar. So that’s when I knew which one she was in.”

“How did you distract him long enough to steal it?” asked Hera, regarding the jar from underneath her alternately arching brows.

“I looked out the window and told him I thought I saw that pretty Greek maiden, Atalanta, jogging on the beach. I turned around and he was gone.”

“Yes,” Hera sighed, “my husband likes girls who run.

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