Pandora's Key (5 page)

Evangeline crouched by the butterfly, watching as it tried in vain to fly. Gently she picked it up and smoothed its delicate wing. Not that it would help any, but she needed to do something for the poor thing. Unconsciously, she found herself softly humming a snippet of a song she didn’t know the words to, and had never heard aloud, but that often floated through her mind. Suddenly the butterfly flew off.

“Whoa,” Tristin muttered. “How’d you do that?”

“Magic,” Melia said with a grin, leaning in to give Tristin a kiss that lasted longer than was comfortable for Evangeline.

The bus arrived and they all got on. Raphe had saved Evangeline a seat. “Happy birthday!” He held up a frosted pink cupcake.

Evangeline couldn’t help noticing that the morning light brought out the gold flecks in Raphe’s brown eyes. He smiled and the dimple in his left cheek winked at her.
He’s nice to everyone,
Evangeline reminded herself.
Don’t take it personally cause it doesn’t mean anything.

“You look different today,” Raphe said.

Evangeline shrugged. “Same old me.” But she saw a few of the boys on the bus looking at her and self-consciously tried to smooth her wild curls.

“Quit it,” Raphe said, pulling her hand down. “It looks cool—like a lion’s mane.”

Evangeline took a bite of the cupcake. The frosting came off on her nose and they both laughed.

“What’re you gonna do for your birthday?” Raphe’s hand still rested on Evangeline’s wrist. She knew it was just a coincidence that he was still touching her, but regardless, she didn’t want to move.

“Mom’s making lasagna and we’ll have carrot cake for dessert. Then we’re going to watch “Talladega Nights” for the fifth time.” Evangeline rolled her eyes because she knew she sounded pathetic. If she was cool, she’d be having a big party to celebrate her sixteenth; if she was even cooler, someone would’ve thrown a party for her at a house where the parents were out of town and there was a keg.

“Can I come over?”

“You don’t have to do that,” Evangeline said. “Not even Melia wants to come over.”

“I’ve only seen that movie seven times. I hear the eighth is the best.”

Raphe finally moved his fingers off her wrist and Evangeline felt…disappointed. “Um, yeah, okay. I guess.”

On a whim, Evangeline untied her right sneaker, even though she was certain she was imagining things, and pulled out her foot. Her sock was soaking wet.

Malledy settled into a chair in the living room of the townhouse he and Juliette had rented in The Pearl District of Portland and opened his book. The letters swam out of focus. He rubbed his eyes, but the words remained slightly blurry. It was a side effect of the higher dose of Paroxetine, but worth it to still the tremors. He closed his eyes for a moment to rest them, thinking back to the past…

• • •

Malledy was ten years old and walking through a stone hallway on the lower level of Castle Aertz. His fingers brushed along the gorgeous silk tapestries lining the walls: hunts with horse and hound and smartly-garbed lords and ladies; the ancient Greek boy, Icarus, flying too close to the sun; various religious scenes including the Last Supper and Madonna and Child; the poet, Dante, his face fearful seeing the ferocious monster who guarded the gates of Hell. Stopping, Malledy stared into Dante’s face. “I know how you feel,” he told the terrified mortal, because he was afraid, too.

Climbing carved stone steps Malledy passed stunning stained glass windows that filtered the last rays of sunlight and painted the walls amber, ruby, and sapphire. His footfalls were muted as he tread along Persian and Turkish carpets.

“Where am I going?” he asked aloud. But he already knew the answer. He was going to the bonsai garden where his fate would be decided.

Malledy noticed several things when he entered the garden. The ornate bonsai trees were dusted with a light snow. Juliette was standing in the front row of the gathering, her green eyes hopeful, and her breath making tiny puffs of white that evaporated in the cold air. Ninety-three Archivists ranging in age from twenty-eight to ninety-seven were gathered beneath the purple sky that preceded darkness, ready to rule on whether the ten-year-old would become one of them or be removed from the Order.

Otto, the Elder who led the Archivists and Juliette’s former lover, nodded to Malledy. A reed-thin man with a perfectly manicured salt-and-pepper goatee, aquiline nose, and deep-set hazel eyes, Otto was known for his brilliance and his unwavering determination to fulfill a client’s desires at any cost. He gestured to the gathering. “It’s time to make your case, boy.”

Malledy walked slowly into the circle of Archivists. Instead of telling them that he was fluent in nine languages, including Clickita, an all but lost African dialect he’d managed to teach himself, or that he could grasp advanced physics, calculus, chemistry, biology and philosophy, he pulled a small, intricately-stitched leather pouch from his pocket.

It had taken Malledy the better part of a year to locate the artifact inside that pouch. After exhaustive research and countless dead-ends, he and Juliette had ended up on a boat through the frigid Pacific Ocean to Easter Island. Once on the island, Malledy had discovered the artifact by following a map chiseled into a flat rock owned by a Mapuche shaman who’d disappeared without a trace. The map had led him to an enormous toppled stone head carved by ancient Polynesians. Inside the head, he’d discovered the leather pouch said in ancient lore to have been a gift from Zeus to his followers.

The discovery should have been reported to the antiquities department of Chile, where it would be catalogued and end up on display in a dusty museum. But that was never going to happen because it now belonged to an Archivist and, ultimately, his paying client. Should anyone have disagreed, Juliette and the other Archivists would have changed their minds—permanently.

Standing among the silent Archivists, Malledy withdrew from the pouch a perfectly smooth, oblong black rock. In its center was a jagged white-marble streak. Mouth dry, uncertain if this talisman would be enough to save his young life, Malledy had held it in his palm and spoken a phrase in ancient Greek. He repeated his words again and again, each time louder, until they began to tumble into each other with force.

The white vein in the rock’s center pulsed and started to glow. Malledy looked up to the heavens. Suddenly a fierce lightning bolt ripped the cobalt sky in two. Long after the lightning faded, Malledy’s eyes still registered its intensity. Angling the rock in his hand, he boomed the words again. The iridescent silver lightning slashed across the sky like a knife and struck a large bonsai tree twenty yards away from the group, instantly incinerating it. The air filled with the stench of sulfur and burned wood.

“The client,” Otto said, taking the rock from Malledy, “will be pleased. What did you learn from this talisman?”

“That rock,” Malledy replied, “means there are real forces in the world—different Gods—and a piece of their power can be acquired.” What he didn’t say was that for a few moments, while he’d been speaking in Greek and felt the rock react to his words and summon a deadly lightning bolt, he’d experienced something he’d never felt before. To the Archivists, he was a mere child—a helpless orphan whose fate rested in their hands. But when Zeus’ lightning blazed across the sky, Malledy had been transformed… he’d been mightier than all of them.

“Malledy, do you understand that the acquisition of artifacts is everything? We live to pursue knowledge. We live to acquire talisman. Nothing—no man, no woman, no child, no God—stands in our way.”

“Yes, I understand,” Malledy said, trying to keep his voice from shaking because Juliette had told him that no matter what happened, he should show no fear.

“Even if I’m removed?” he’d asked his mentor.

Juliette had looked away. “Even then.”

Otto looked around the gathering of scholars. None spoke. “Then it is decided. Malledy is one of us.”

And so he was. The decision to become an Archivist hadn’t been his own, but it was all he had, as there was no family history, parents’ footsteps to follow, or other options available. So Malledy relentlessly chased a future devoted solely to research and acquisitions.

When a client decided to pursue seeds from a magical pomegranate, Malledy, by then eleven-years-old with a particular fascination with Greek mythology, was the Archivist for the job. He knew from studying ancient myths that Hades, God of the Underworld, had stolen the lovely Persephone from a meadow while she’d been picking flowers, and raced by chariot down to his dark kingdom with her. Despite Persephone’s protests, Hades had forced her to marry him. But there was a twist to the story. If Persephone didn’t eat anything in the Underworld, then she’d be permitted to return to earth. Sadly, Persephone did eat some seeds from a pomegranate and once tasted, the seeds made it impossible for her to ever return to earth, ensuring that she would remain Hade’s wife for eternity.

Zeus supposedly took pity on Persephone and broke the power of the spell on the pomegranate. This allowed Persephone to leave the Underworld. However, in order to be fair to Hades, Zeus ruled that Persephone had to eat a seed from the magical pomegranate once each year. This act would instantly return her to the Underworld and Hades for a period of six months. When it was time to leave, Persephone had only to eat another seed to return to the living realm.

If there was a legend that the magical pomegranate once existed, Malledy had reasoned, there was a chance it still did. Why a client might want those magical seeds was not Malledy’s concern. His sole focus was to track them down and acquire them.

After months of research, travel to distant lands accompanied by Juliette, and frustrating clues that yielded no results, Malledy finally uncovered a diary of a toothless eighty-nine-year-old woman living in Crete that ultimately led him to the treasure. He found the magical seeds in a blue silk sack lying forgotten in the corner of a basement on an olive plantation.

It was Otto, by then suffering from terminal cancer, who withdrew one of the seeds Malledy had obtained and placed it on his tongue. Twenty Archivists witnessed his seven-minute disappearance from bed. When Otto suddenly returned, materializing out of thin air, he was dead. But in his hand was a whole pomegranate and on his face was a smile.

Those seeds were just one of many of Malledy’s successes. Over the next five years he pursued and discovered the chain that had been used to bind Prometheus in punishment for stealing fire from the Gods. Soon after, he followed fragments of ancient conversations and cave paintings in Greece to discover the rough reddish fragment of a small trident that Poseidon, God of the Sea, had given to his half-brother, Chiron. The fragment could create massive waves on demand. And one of Malledy’s most recent accomplishments was the discovery of a platinum scepter encrusted with enormous rubies and emeralds that had once belonged to Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love and Beauty. Each stone was dazzling and unique, with sapphire, diamond, and amethyst starbursts in their centers.

Of course, all of Malledy’s acquisitions were sent to the clients who had paid dearly to acquire them, but the Archivists always retained a tiny fragment of each powerful talisman, storing them in their own vaults. The Archivists had survived through the centuries because they understood that while money was power, ancient artifacts were also power. And Malledy understood this more than most, because the moments when he was allowed to unlock the magic of an artifact and bend it to his will were the only instances in his life where he felt he had an ounce of control….

• • •

A clock in the front hall of the townhouse chimed the hour. Malledy opened his eyes.
What am I now? Who am I now? Do I have any choices left or am I just a victim of Huntington’s disease?

“No,” Malledy whispered. “I’m an Archivist and I need to finish what I’ve begun.”

Malledy would find one last artifact for his current client—he was already closing in on success. He’d earn a final and impressive fee for the Archivists and leave Juliette proud of her one-time student and charge. “I’ll have come full circle,” Malledy murmured. Zeus’s lightning stone had been his first discovery. His final acquisition, another of Zeus’ creations, would be his last.

“I do have a choice,” Malledy’s words sounded hollow to his ears. He wondered if his cruel disease would tighten its stranglehold on his body and mind before he found what he was looking for….