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She Who Sends Up Gifts
I. Before
Zeus wanted to celebrate the Olympians’ victory in war, Athena told Pandora, so he ordered Hephaestus to create her as a gift for Men.
Pandora, having no knowledge of the war other than what Athena had taught her, accepted this. She felt proud, to be honest, and not a little excited at the idea that she had been created with such a purpose. Hephaestus had gathered her together from the best of his parts collection and inspirited her with the essence of Men. This was most important, she was told --to be of the gods, but like Men.
Everyone on the Olympus had a purpose, unlike those on Tartarus, who --according to Athena-- were lazy and prone to allow their engines to go idle because the Men who lived there didn’t understand their role, they had no understanding of Time and its importance. Pandora would agree, though she herself didn’t understand Time at all. What is it, except something the gods themselves had created to stay busy? Hermes laughed when she asked him this. You’re learning well, he said.
The music on the Tartarus doesn’t suit the ear of gods, Apollo told her, because those on Tartarus ignored their own hearts and minds. Why is that, she wondered. All Man knows is how to love his gods, he told her. All they’ve been given is wasted, and her role will be to help Man learn about these gifts as she’s been taught.
Pandora asked Aphrodite if Men were as beautiful as Olympians, for she was aware that beauty was an important asset on Olympus. She believed it was possible the ship’s engines were kept running on beauty alone. Aphrodite gave only brief answers to her questions, though. Hermes told her it was because they resembled each other too much, and Aphrodite is a jealous goddess.
She had known from the moment she was aware of herself, and the hum of the engines, and that the thoughts in her head were separate from the words from others’ mouths, that she was meant to be a gift for another. One day, when Zeus decided she was ready, she would leave the Olympus and move to Tartarus to marry a stranger.
She walked the ship’s corridors during brief moments of privacy and attempted not to think about the nature of her life. It was inevitable, as every visit from Hera-- brief as they were-- filled her with a tickling in her belly and insatiable questions no one was willing to answer. She would stand at her favorite starboard window and stare and stare at the layer of gray-green fog, below which the Tartarus rested on a planet made uninhabitable by a war between gods.
This would be her home at any moment. She tried to examine her thoughts about this, but found herself too easily distracted by the way her breath would fog the glass, which encouraged her to draw designs, at first random, then more purposeful. Athena promised her a gown for her wedding made of the finest threaded silver. She traced a design on the glass, long and flowing, making sure it would show off her perfect golden brown skin.
Epimetheus. She tested her future husband’s name on her tongue late at night when lessons had ended. She would lie on her bed in her lovely quarters and practice and practice, saying his name as a sigh, or as if in the middle of a rant, or while distracted with another task, or with affection. That was the most difficult, she decided. She thought about Love and its expectations, as Aphrodite has taught her.
Zeus checked in with her daily. To see if she was ready, he would say. He would ask her puzzling questions in a confusing manner, such as, If Atlas is keeping the world below afloat, then what keeps Atlas afloat? Pandora always attempted to answer, even if she was unable to think of possibilities (Perhaps Prometheus foresaw this fate and provided him with winged shoes?), the results of which generally caused a mixed reaction of amusement and irritation from Zeus -- Father?-- before he would leave.
The thing to keep in mind is, we’re all related, Hermes told her, Olympians, Titans, even the Men who existed in a space between and who were created by your soon-to-be brother-in-law, if you really thought about it. Hermes was not her favorite teacher, that was Athena, who was cool, but kind, and answered all her questions with patience. Hermes was intent on making her as clever as possible, and would threaten to cut off six lengths of hair for every dull answer she offered.
You really shouldn’t mention Prometheus to Zeus, Hermes would admonish, and he would then make Pandora practice her guile. Why, she would ask, just to hear him tell her more about the history. Each time he answered, he revealed something new.
How does Atlas stay afloat? Why, through your Will alone, Honorable Zeus, she answered sweetly one evening. He did not smile, but she could see his approval, even if he sensed the true nature of her words.
The next morning her things were packed in trunks and boxes. Gifts accompanied her to her wedding: a shining lyre that never needed tuning from Apollo, new dresses that would always move perfectly when she danced from Athena, a pearl necklace that would protect her from the fumes in the swamps from Poseidon, and a spark of sexual desire for her unknown betrothed from Aphrodite.
From Zeus, the most beautiful jar she had ever seen, the story of her lessons painted on the sides with delicate accuracy, its lid sparkling with gems that glowed with interior light. Just a little something to decorate your new home, he told her. She nodded, mesmerized by the way the light shifted within each gem. It is not to be opened, he stated, his stern voice gathering her attention. It is not to be opened, he repeated until she nodded again and again.
II. After
The engines on Tartarus were never idle. They overheated frequently in their attempts to filter toxic gasses out of the atmosphere, churning with hideous grinding noises until the mechanics replaced parts with rebuilt scraps in an attempt to push them through another year-cycle. Pandora would whisper instructions to Epimetheus while he slept, gracing him with knowledge he could never otherwise attain.
Every man on Tartarus had a purpose. Without one, each would starve and die, be ravaged by disease, or allow despair to so overwhelm them that they would forget to eat and sleep.
Pandora never wore the silver dress again. Like the jar, hidden in the corner of an unused wardrobe, it had tarnished and lost its glow. She preferred a more utilitarian linen sheath, which was much easier to wash, especially bloodstains from her shifts at the newly built hospital wing. She prayed every night that neither she nor her husband would fall victim to the new sicknesses that had ravaged the land.
To whom she was praying, she couldn’t say.
Epimetheus never blamed her, nor allowed any unkind words to leave his mouth. Pandora knew he wouldn’t, as she had been forged to please every sense and outwit even his bravest moments. For this, she remained especially patient with him, as it was his connection to his half-brother that had protected her in the early weeks when those who fell ill cursed her and attempted to send her back to the Olympus.
Men were now a superstitious lot. Sudden mortality did that, it seemed. None of them knew about the jar. Epimetheus hadn’t even known until she had told him. She was considered Bad Luck all the same, for all her gifts.
It was months before she realized that all of her training had not prepared her for the frantic surge of protectiveness that would overtake her. During moments when Epimetheus would ask her to play her lyre or sing to him, she would see peaceful contentedness relax his face and she would know, she would know that she would murder anyone who would dare take him away from her.
No one had actually taught her about love. She understood why now.
The vent filters needed cleaning every third month. Pandora waited to volunteer, but she finally had to do it, knowing an open vent called to her, invited her to step onto the planet’s surface. Instinct told her the gods would never put this much effort into creating her just to make her so fragile as to suffer easily. Still, she wore her necklace from Poseidon.
The air was thick and humid, the surface greenish and dank. The swamps lay to her left, so she walked to her right. After several minutes, she heard the crashing of waves. Pandora tied her wrap more tightly and walked quickly towards the sound. She began to feel a breezy spray against her cheeks, and her eyes stung, but the air was clear the closer she got to the sound. She continued walking, stepping carelessly on the rocks that now covered the ground. She could see that she was headed for a large outcropping of rock, which was muffling the sound as she approached, and allowed her to hear another sound over the sea that she didn’t recognize.
She climbed the slick rock, suddenly desperate to see the water on the other side, grasping too hard without paying attention to sharp edges slicing into her fingertips. Her feet slipped and she fell gracelessly and started laughing. Everything hurt, but the air. The air was clear and she didn’t know if her face was damp from tears of seawater and she didn’t care.
She looked back in the direction of the Tartarus, knowing Epimetheus would soon be returning to their quarters from his shift in the mechanics wing. He would worry. She rubbed her elbow and checked her body for further injuries before standing again. There would be time to explore another day.
She stood and saw the eagle. It was larger than any man and diving at the rocks just out of her sight. Ignoring any pain that may have stopped her, Pandora scrambled up and up, rounding a large boulder in time to see what the eagle was attacking.
Stop! She screamed and waved her arms, tripping over the damp and dirty edges of her shift in her rush to keep the eagle from hurting the man chained to the rocks. It was only when he looked in her direction that she realized whom she was trying to save.
She froze, aware that her attempts were hopeless, but she could not keep herself from staring at the gory spectacle. It was no worse than watching a man die because his insides had burned up and liquified, she realized. It was no worse than helping to burn the initial wave of hundreds of corpses that had piled in the hallways of the leisure deck.
The eagle ignored her, intent as it was on its predestined purpose. Prometheus stared at her, his body convulsing with each swipe of the giant bird’s talons, but his gaze never wavered, his expression rapt.
Sometime later, the bird flew up, circled three times with a screech that caused Pandora to cover her ears, then departed. Pandora hesitated for moments before running toward Prometheus. She could see his lips moving before she was close enough to hear him, only dimly aware of the waves that had drawn her to this location.
The chains binding him to the rock were larger than her chest and heavier than she could even think of lifting, though she tried. She crouched over him, smoothed his brow, and leaned closer to hear his words.
It’s you, it’s you, he was saying. Blood poured from his side faster than she could track, but his expression of amazement never changed. I saw you, he said.
I am married to your brother, Epimetheus, she told him, but he nodded because he knew. Of course he knew.
She pulled at the chains again, knowing it was only to feel she was doing something. He shook his head and grabbed her hand in his when she was close enough. She stilled, breathing heavily through her tears. When had she started crying, and now, after everything? She inhaled deeply. The air was clean, salt-tinged, and made her want to cry more.
This land is habitable. Pandora had considered the possibility, when thinking upon Zeus’s treachery late at night, her new form of prayer. It was what had led her to attempt walking outside the Tartarus. She asked the helpless dying god in front of her, and he tilted his head in assent. She closed her eyes, so tired all of a sudden.
She felt Prometheus squeeze the hand he was still holding, though weakly. You hold the future within you, he told her. She shook her head. She was the bringer of death, the end of all things. He repeated himself again and again until he could speak no more.
Pandora released his hand and settled herself more comfortably against his side. She wrapped her scarf around her head to ward off the chill and pulled her knees to her chest. Epimetheus will be frantic with worry, but she had more questions for the god who died once a day, and then came back to life.
III. Elpis
Epimetheus was happy, she could tell before he told her, which he often did. It was in his kisses to her cheeks and his laugh. He had finished laying the framework for their future home the day before and was eager to continue working. The land they had been allotted was fair for farming, and nowhere near the funereal swamps or the rocky edge of the sea.
There was no need for her husband ever to see the true torment of his brother’s punishment. One of them needed to continue laying gifts at the altar, if Zeus were to continue to let men leave the ship and live on land.
Pandora rubbed at her growing belly, and looked over at her dim, sweet husband, whose name she had yelled, and sighed, and laughed, and spat through gritted teeth, and yes, moaned with desire. He was handsome and hardworking and devoted still, despite everything. Those were his gifts, and they had proved more valuable than magic baubles or shimmering gowns.
He would die one day. The thought landed in a calm space within her. She had made peace with that fact the same night she awaited Prometheus’s resurrection. The gods valued life at such a small price, because theirs never ended. Even the Titans still lived, deep below the swamp. How could any of them ever grasp the desperation that would force a man to live each day not knowing if it would be his last?
They played at war over petty disputes, worried over music and playthings. Let them, she thought. Let them while away the time they created. She and hers, meanwhile, would build something real.
Pandora loved walking outside the ship and spent most mornings traveling to new areas of the planet. The daily shuttles were filled with men looking for plots of land to use for farming or commerce, and plans were already in place to convert the ship into a medical facility when everyone completed their homes. Everywhere she went, she heard the grumbling of men complaining about being tricked to live on the ship all those years. She pretended not to hear them, for they kept their voices low and spoke only to those they trusted.
She was not the only one who knew what the wrath of Zeus could bring.
Pandora smiled. Change was inevitable, if slow in coming. Zeus may mete out punishment, but he won’t risk destroying completely those who sacrifice at his altars.
She walked past the shuttles that usually brought her to the acreage that Epimetheus had claimed and stepped into the one scheduled for the daily trip to the Olympus. She nodded to the pilot and made room for herself among the daily offerings sharing her trip.
She wore her drabbest, most shapeless cloak, and had made certain to walk through the most pungent, gaseous areas of Tartarus before seeking her audience. She would not be refused. He was her creator, after all.
Zeus received her with mild amusement on his face. She knew she was incapable of killing a god, but her heart relentlessly told her it was possible. This was not why she was here, though.
She referred to him as Father to disarm him, and she smiled her most charming smile. No shame or fear clouded her mind. She felt only disdain.
She opened her cloak, instinctively placing her hands on the roundest part of her belly, knowing he could end it now, if he wanted, knowing somehow that he would not. Zeus never could resist a conundrum, even one he did not know to ask. Revenge and repentance had no place in the shape of her womb, but that was exactly from where whence it would spring.
I know how you’re going to die, she told him, and it won’t be due to a war, yet your temples will crumble and become ruins.
Zeus raised an eyebrow and waved a lazy hand, willing her to continue. She waited a beat. No need to rush to please him now.
When she could just see the edge of impatience crease the corners of his eyes, she smiled.
Oh no, this is a puzzle for you to figure out. Though I do believe the worst thing that could happen to any god would be to be forgotten. So my question is this: Do gods still exist when men stop building altars in their honor?
She felt a push against her hand. Her little Pyrrha, named in honor of the uncle who showed her the future she helped build. One filled with death, disease, and sadness, but also one in which hope was still allowed to thrive uncorrupted and not be lost among the evils.
She did not wait to be dismissed. She simply turned and walked out with her head high and shoulders straight, knowing others have been struck down for less. Perhaps it was stubborn pride which had led her to this. Whose gift had that been? It didn’t matter, not anymore.
They were her gifts now.