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

the way up!”
    She felt around the space in front of her, finally locating the top of the invisible wall. From touching it at every possible angle, she determined that it was about one meter in width; enough room to sit on comfortably before she dropped to the other side.
    “Okay, I’m going over!” Iole said, pulling herself onto the wall and accidentally kneeing Alcie in the neck.
    “Ow! Apricots. Wait!”
    “Yeah, wait,” said Homer.
    “Why?” Iole asked.
    Homer and Alcie paused.
    “I’ve got nothing,” said Alcie.
    “Me neither,” replied Homer.
    “I’m gone!” and Iole sat on the wall for only a moment before she lowered herself down, coming face-to-face with Alcie on the other side. Their eyes locked and Iole saw Alcie mouth the words, “good luck.” But knowing Alcie, Iole thought, she probably yelled it at the top of her lungs.
    “So,” Iole mused, “the wall is a sound barrier from this side.”
    She dropped easily to the main floor of the chamber just as Alcie began to pummel Homer to put her down again.
    As she turned and looked up, Iole’s heart dropped into her stomach. While they had been focused on getting over the invisible wall, no one noticed Pandy being hoisted fifty meters into the air.

     
    The razor-sharp point of the nearest pole was coming into view underneath her, perhaps only five meters below.
    When the point was aimed directly up at Pandy’s stomach, she stopped. And hovered.
    For a second.
    And then she felt herself descend. Very, very slowly.
    She wanted to flail wildly but her body was still rigid and out of her control. She could only watch as the pole grew closer. She was going to be pushed onto the point and left there until she was nothing but a pile of bones crashing to the floor.
    And there was absolutely nothing anybody could do about it.

     
    Homer had tried to put Alcie down as swiftly and gently as he could. He used a right-handed, right-footed dismount assist, standard when undoing a human ladder, and it had always worked back in school. Unfortunately he hadn’t ever used it on someone with two left feet. Alcie had toppled backward on Homer and was now hanging upside down with Homer’s huge hands trying to get a firm grip on her two left ankles.
    But even hanging upside down and furious as a sea nymph on dry land, she still managed to take in what was happening beyond the wall.
    “Homer . . . looook!”

     
    The fear Pandy felt was unbearable. However, as soon as she realized what was in store for her, she became aware of something behind the fear.
    Anger.
    Back home in Greece she had understood all that had happened to her and her friends. At the Temple of Apollo, when Callisto, the high priestess, had been about to roast Iole over the great altar fire, Pandy understood that Callisto thought they were thieves. And Callisto had been driven to insanity by the Jealousy she was carrying inside. Pandy had at least been able to talk to, if not reason with, the high priestess. Now, here in Egypt, she had no idea why any of this was happening. And her fear turned into rage and frustration.
    At least when Callisto had ordered Iole’s death, it was in plain Greek and Pandy could do something about it. She could put out the flames underneath Iole using her newly discovered power over fire.
    She was now only two meters above the top of the wooden pole.
    The wooden pole.
    Wood.
    Which burns.
    Could she do it?
    She could flash small, cold embers into tiny fires back in her own room, but could she . . . ?
    The point was now only one meter away.
    Pandy concentrated all her thought and energy, focusing everything she had on the pole.
    “Send the force down,” she thought. “Shatter and burn. Shatter and burn. Shatter and burn.”
    And, like that day in the temple, she again went deaf. The world around her was utterly silent and she no longer heard the chanting or the shattering of bones dropping off the mounds.
    But this time she knew exactly what was happening and