He cracks up, but when he stops laughing, he gives me a steady look. “I think you’re smart enough to figure out that some things you have to learn on your own.”
He’s right. I know he’s right, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. But it also means I can’t argue about it with him anymore either.
Silence stretches between us for several minutes, until it’s disturbed by a gust of wind whispering through the trees. The sound of it reminds me of all the other questions I had for him before he totally blew my mind.
“So, this means you knew Pandora.”
He shoots me a wary glance. “I did.”
“What was she like?”
He looks confused. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, everybody always makes it sound like she’s so awful, but I don’t think she was. Just because they created her to do one bad thing doesn’t mean she was actually bad, right?”
PT—no, Prometheus—takes so long to answer that I get nervous, start worrying that I overstepped.
But then he clears his throat several times and in a voice thick with emotion, he says, “She was fantastic.”
“I knew it!” I crow, proud that for once my instincts were right on. “Can you tell me about her? It doesn’t have to be anything big. Just what you remember.”
“I remember everything,” he says, and there’s so muchpain in those three words that it breaks my heart. More, it makes me want to give him a hug, but I’m too afraid of hurting his side to do it.
“She smelled like honey and pomegranates. She had an amazing voice and liked to sing in the bath—and when she was doing laundry. Always soldier songs, never anything normal.” He blushes a little at the memory. “She could make friends with anyone. And I mean anyone.”
His voice grows softer, his eyes more faraway. “I can’t tell you the number of times I’d lose her in the square because she got busy talking to someone or another and then decided to help them carry their goods or their bread or whatever it was. She loved to eat but was a terrible cook. She couldn’t keep her mind on it, so she ended up burning everything she tried to make. So I did the cooking most of the time and she cleaned up. Oh, and she would give you anything she had—everything she had—if she thought you needed it.”
“You loved her.” The realization crashes through me and the words come out before I can think them through.
“Everyone loved her,” he tells me fiercely.
“It was you,” I whisper. “Not your brother, Epimetheus. You. That’s the sibling trouble you were talking about.”
“She was always meant to be mine. Even when I knew I couldn’t have her, she was mine.”
That might be the saddest thing I’ve ever heard, especially since I can practically hear his heart breaking beneath his stoic front. “This isn’t right,” I whisper. “Notwhat they did to Pandora. Not what they’re still doing to you.”
I look down at the cut on his side. “It’s been thousands of years and you’re still being eaten alive every night. It’s not right.”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s right when it’s what the gods wish,” he says with a sad smile. “But speaking of night, I should probably get going. I have a date with a very impatient vulture.”
So it’s a vulture now that Agatha has retired. No wonder different stories claim different birds.
“What happens if you don’t go? What happens if you just stop doing what Zeus wants you to do?” Even as I say them, I know the words are revolutionary.
“It doesn’t work that—”
“Penelope!” Fifi’s voice floats through the darkness as she comes running up to me, Arjun right behind her. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere!”
“Sorry, I’ve been out here with PT.”
Arjun nods at him. “Hi. How are you?”
“Doing all right, thanks.” He stands up. “Thanks for letting me borrow Penelope for a few minutes.”
“No problem,” Fifi says, eyes wide as she looks between us.
“I’m going to head out,” he tells me. “But you might want to look behind that bush.”
