“If Wang Chun Lo is to be believed, and he always is,” began Abdul-Rashid, squinting in the last of the sunlight, “they are indeed simply three girls, a boy, and a white dog. Flesh and blood, nothing more. He announced this morning that he would hear their tale tonight. But he assures us all that there is absolutely nothing to fear.”

  “Hello!” Pandy shouted up in flawless Arabic.

  Musa screamed and Abdul-Rashid fell off the slug.

  “Stay back!” cried Abdul-Rashid, leaping to his feet, then crashing backward on his bottom as his feet slipped on the shiny slime trail. “Back, I say!”

  “I’m sorry,” said Pandy, instinctively moving forward to help and trying not to giggle.

  “No!” cried Abdul-Rashid, “do not cross the trail! It is fully charged. A very strong current. You would be killed instantly! Even though you are a woman and therefore unimportant, you are still the guest of Wang Chun Lo.”

  Pandy stopped laughing. Had she heard him clearly—unimportant?

  “Then how can you stand . . . ?” Pandy pointed to his feet, covered in slime.

  “We are the renowned Caliphs! ‘Channels of Earthly Displeasure.’ Night sentry for Wang Chun Lo. The slime is our creation,” Musa shouted. “You’ve heard of us, certainly!”

  “No,” Pandy replied, “I haven’t.”

  “Well, surely you have heard of Wang Chun Lo’s Caravan of Wonders in whatever mud hut village you live in,” scoffed Abdul-Rashid.

  Pandy bristled slightly.

  “I live in Athens,” she replied coolly. “It’s the center of the known world, and no, I’ve never heard of it.”

  “Oh, Athens. Haifz?” cried Musa over his shoulder. “When do we play Athens?”

  “Five weeks,” came the answer.

  “Perhaps you’ll see a performance then?” said Musa.

  “Somehow, I don’t think so,” said Pandy.

  Suddenly, at Abdul-Rashid’s feet, there was a blue flash and a split-second buzzing ending with a tiny pop. He picked up a large blackened beetle that had crawled into the slime trail, now quite dead, smoke curling gently off its body. He examined the bug in the growing moonlight and, after inhaling deeply, took a serious bite off of one end.

  “Ah, well,” sneered Abdul-Rashid, walking toward the rear end of the slug, chomping on the beetle. “The great ones where you come from obviously don’t think much of you to have kept our glory a secret. I would tell you all about us, but you’re only a woman and we’re on duty.”

  “Look,” Pandy said, backing away from the slime trail. “I just wanted to say that we’re not—my friends and I—we’re not anything bad . . . we’re mortal. You know, just in case you were worried.”

  Abdul-Rashid was attempting mad dashes up the slug’s slippery tail with Musa trying to pull his captain up.

  “Worried?” he panted. “I laugh at you and what you say!”

  “The feast is that way!” Musa shouted, finally pulling Abdul-Rashid on top but also accidentally plucking the turban off his captain’s head.

  “Thank you. Um, sorry . . . again,” Pandy called. She turned around, but not before hearing Abdul-Rashid ranting that, now that a female other than his wife had seen his hair, he would naturally have to shave his head.

  Passing several tents, Pandy realized that the tangerine tent was silent; the earlier chatter and laughter had ceased while she had been talking to the strange sentry. In a far corner of the tent there was a loud crash, then much shushing in many languages. Then silence again. But it was the kind of silence that occurs when hearts are beating, mouths are breathing, and ears are listening—very hard.

  Pandy lifted the flap of the tangerine tent and crossed over the threshold.

  The interior of the tent was a riotous jumble of intricate rugs, huge floor pillows, and silk swaths crisscrossing from one tent pole to another—all in every shade of orange imaginable. Everything was either completely or mostly orange, except for some of the wilder animal-skin pillows, the bronze oil lamps, and the low-slung wooden tables dotting the room.

  People were sitting on single cushions or had stacked large bolsters to form long, low couches. The little tables were heavy with foods the likes of which Pandy had never seen.

  But no one turned to look at her. Not Scylla or Charybdis, sitting together. Not even Usumacinta, who sat with a green parrot on one shoulder. No one even noticed she was there. Some people, their mouths full of food, had simply stopped chewing. Those who looked like they might be servants were standing with their arms full of steaming platters or dirty plates. Someone was in midpour of a tall teapot. Every so often a person in the crowd whispered a few words, but every eye was fixed on someone at the far end of the tent.

  Someone with curly brown hair, two left feet, and a big, big mouth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Feast

  7:26 p.m.

  “So that brings us up to . . . where? Figs. Oh, yeah. Okay, so we get off the dolphins and walk out into the desert. Of course, I wanted to head right to Alexandria, but Pandy needed to get her bearings and she was a little tired.”

  Alcie had complete command of the room, speaking in perfect Cantonese, and she was talking fast. Seated like a sultana around a wooden table, she had Iole and Homer to her right and the old man and his ancient mother on her left. Homer was gaping at Alcie, his eyebrows knit together to form one long blond line across his forehead. Iole was sitting cross-legged on what looked like a large persimmon, her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, staring out over the crowd with a look of abject mortification.

  “And then . . . like . . . all of a sudden Pandy was gone. Just disappeared. Right, Iole?”

  “Oh, Alcie, you’re doing such a wonderful job of telling this, you just go right ahead.” Then Iole lowered her voice. “You realize you’ve gone nuts, right?”

  “Okay, anyway . . . Pandy is just gone. And naturally I’m thinking how do I—we—save her?”

  Suddenly, Iole sat straight up.

  “And I’m thinking,” Iole cried, “that we should let Pandy take it from here! Hey, Pandy!”

  And all eyes turned toward Pandy standing at the entrance. No one moved for a long moment. Then, very slowly, someone began to clap. And someone else joined in. Soon the room was full of the sound of a rhythmic applause; not wild, but measured and enthusiastic.

  “Well . . . sure,” said Alcie, realizing that she had totally lost her audience. “Now that she’s here. Of course. Pandy! Whoo-hoo!”

  “Why were they clapping for me?” Pandy asked Iole in a low voice as she approached the table, the applause dying out.

  “Because, believe it or not,” Iole whispered, “Alcie did a magnificent job of telling everyone how you undertook the quest all alone and how brave you’ve been. She recounted the whole story of the box and Zeus and Jealousy just as it happened. Then she started talking about the black whirlwind and the sea and the dolphins and suddenly it became all about her. I think she’s got river water on the brain. But that’s when you came in.”

  “Why Cantonese?” Pandy asked.

  “You were sleeping when Scylla and Charybdis gave Alcie and me a tour of the camp,” Iole answered. “It was a tour of the world. This is kind of a traveling circus and everyone in the troupe comes from someplace completely different. And we understood everyone! But Wang Chun Lo finally explained that most of these people have been with his caravan so long that his native Cantonese is the language almost everybody knows.”

  “Ah! The last of our little fishes has jumped out of the river of sleep.”

  Pandora turned and saw the old man standing before her, his hands thrust deep into the opposing sleeves of his deep orange robe, his black braid gathered in many loops at the back of his neck. He regarded her intently for a moment and she felt he was going to say something using only his mind as before.

  “No, not tonight.” He smiled and opened his mouth to speak, his polished, jagged teeth catching the light of the lamps, his actual voice just as high and gravelly as she’d heard it in her head. “That tool is only used when I am suspicious and wish to probe the recesses of someone’s mind. For example, four young companions walking out of a cursed burial tomb. That’s a cause for suspicion, don’t you think? Now that I know who you are, it is unnecessary. However, that ability pales compared with what your friend says you are capable of, my dear Pandora.”

  “Oh, well . . . Alcie probably just meant . . . ,” Pandy began.

  A candied orange rind flew out of nowhere and hit the old man on his wrinkled cheek.

  He did not turn around, but merely closed his eyes and sighed softly.

  “Pandora,” he began, extending his left hand out toward the old woman, who was dressed in bright red and glaring from her perch on a high yellow pillow. “Allow me to present my most honored mother, Mai Fung Tan, second dynasty, ruler of the Hunan provinces, consort to Ang Li Fat—He Who Was Truth Bringer, Fire Breather, and Collector of Ladies’ Fans—first wife to Lee Hung Lee, third dynasty, He of the Small Ears, and fourth wife to Chan Kwong Lo, eighth dynasty, He Who Sleeps Much.”

  “Bow,” whispered Iole.

  “Bow!” Alcie repeated urgently. “We learned the hard way.”

  The old woman clutched a handful of orange rinds menacingly. Pandy put on her most solemn face and bowed very low to the old woman, who remained motionless except for her twitching fingers.

  “She is also an excellent fortune-teller and our biggest money maker,” the old man whispered. “I am Wang Chun Lo. You are most welcome. I trust you slept well?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Pandy said.

  “Splendid. And now, as your companions have done, you will eat and refresh yourself further and then perhaps you will finish your tale.”

  He beckoned her toward a large, fluffy apricot-colored cushion. The subtlest flick of his forefinger called to a host of servants hovering nearby and seconds later the table was crowded with silver bowls, each holding something delectable. Large prawns and blackened walnuts glazed with honey. Asparagus tips and flat brown mushroom heads, steamed with a sauce that was slightly bitter but delicious—what she imagined salted cream would taste like. A whole fish was encrusted with a coarse seasoned salt that made the taste zing all over her tongue. Little light brown rolls, like tiny pillows—crunchy on the outside, yet warm and soft inside—were filled with many vegetables, some familiar, others unknown. Certain flavors were light and delicate, others very rich. Some dishes had odd textures, and others had one scent but a completely different taste. To drink, there was hot, sweet jasmine tea.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Wang Chun Lo said, observing Pandy silently devouring everything. “Since you make no sound, I assume that you are only eating to be polite.”

  Pandy looked up, not realizing that she might be being rude.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “It is customary in China to show pleasure with one’s food. Perhaps you do not like it? Shall I take it away and . . .”

  “No!” Pandy said, throwing her arms out over the table. “I mean no, thank you . . . this is delicious. This is wonderful!”

  “Then I am glad. I apologize that these are only the second-best dishes of my country,” Wang Chun Lo said. “My cook refuses to repeat himself from one night to the next, and as we expected you last night, naturally he prepared his specialties for you then. Water beetles in oyster sauce, caterpillars in dry mustard, shark fin and quail egg porridge. Ah, well . . . perhaps you shall have another opportunity to taste them.”

  “Yum!” said Alcie. “What a shame we missed all that!”

  Pandy sent a mental thank-you to Morpheus for having knocked her out so completely for an entire day. Then she pinched Alcie.

  “Ow! Okay, I’ll be good.”

  When Pandy had emptied all the bowls (with a great deal of loud chewing), a feat at which even the old woman, Mai Fung Tan, had just stared, she sank into the apricot pillow and gave an unexpected but tremendous burp. Wang Chun Lo clapped his hands in delight, then again raised his forefinger and the entire tent fell silent, waiting.

  “Pandora,” he began. “I believe we had just come to the part where your companion, Alcie, had caught you in her arms as the whirling black wind threw you from the ship, shielding you from harm as you splashed into the ocean. No . . . wait . . . we were past that. Ah, yes, what happened after Alcie led the dolphins to your rescue? No . . . no . . . wait . . . we were past that as well. What happened after Alcie spotted the place for your landing in Egypt?”

  Pandy slowly turned to look at Alcie.

  Alcie cleared her throat and smiled coyly.

  “Well . . . ,” Pandy began.

  She told of the Chamber of Despair, from first falling though the desert floor to at last reemerging onto the temple terrace. When she finished, the tent was silent again. Then a huge man with a red braid who called himself Olaf held aloft a double-headed ax in salute and called out a greeting in Vik, the ancient language of the Vikings. Pandy smiled and answered back. One by one, members of the troupe rose and introduced themselves. Usumacinta hailed her in lyrical Mayan. Four beautiful, black-haired Arabian girls—Almase, Mahfouza, Nabile, and Sabahat—sang out in unison while a bald woman, Mehlika, wearing a turquoise top and yellow pants, said hello in a biting Hittite dialect. Two girls the color of rust stood up and spoke in rapid Ethiopian. Pandy gasped to see that they were actually joined together at the waist and had only three legs between them. Then three tiny men with red dots on their foreheads greeted her in Hindi as others called out hellos. Latin. Gallic. Persian. Anatolian.

  Pandy, Alcie, Iole, and Homer answered them all.

  “Even knowing how you came by this knowledge of languages makes it no less amazing to witness,” said Wang Chun Lo. He turned to the crowd. “And now that we have all dined well and truly met our guests, it is time . . .”

  The crowd groaned.

  “No! Not yet! Let’s hear more!” came resounding cries.

  Wang Chun Lo calmly withdrew his gnarled hands from within his orange robe. “Need I remind you that not only was your practice interrupted yesterday due to the unexpected arrival of our most honored guests, but that our last show in Peking was—how shall I put it?— abysmal.”

  “But we’re a joke! People expect us to be abysmal,” said Olaf.

  “We’re always terrible,” said Usumacinta, over a murmur of general agreement.

  “We’re not!” Wang Chun Lo shot back, a brittle sharpness in his voice. At once, everyone was silent. “We do not travel the world, erecting these pavilions and taking men’s coin only to be thought of as disappointing! Perhaps we have slight miscalculations here and there, but I do not pay you to be second rate! We are not jokes! We are performers, my friends, not merely oddities for casual viewing.”

  Pandy looked at the two Ethiopian girls, sitting in a bizarre three-cross-legged position.

  “Each one of you is a walking miracle, and together we are a collection of—”

  “Whimsical Manifestations of Nature’s Good Humor,” they all said in unison.

  “Yes! And if your manifestations are to be ready for the city of Alexandria and the young queen Cleopatra, your skills must be much, much sharper. Which reminds me, everyone, brush up on your Egyptian.”

  “I don’t need any practice,” croaked Mai Fung Tan. “I am as sharp as a knife. You dishonor your mother and your ancestors to say that my skills of sight and prophecy are otherwise.”

  With that, she leaned far forward off her yellow cushion and grabbed Homer’s right hand, stretching it out across the small table. Homer, who didn’t even twitch when he’d have a finger or toe sewn back on by the school physician after every sparring match at gladiator school, now froze in terror at the old woman’s touch; unblinking, she held his palm to her yellowed eyes, dragging a long nail across his skin.

  Wang Chun Lo sighed to himself.

  “The soul of a scribe,” Mai Fung Tan began, searching the lines in Homer’s hand. “Ah . . . there is a great legacy. Wondrous! Oh, there has been much pain. You turned your back on your father’s wishes. Your father does not approve or understand your choices. Ah, but your mother would have, had she lived.”

  Homer’s face went slack.

  “You have a great love of words and a glorious future. All will know your name. As your ancestors before, you will write things that will transcend space and generations. I see something else . . . something, no . . . someone new to you has touched your heart in a strange way. Unexpected. A young—”

  Homer snatched his hand away, startling the old woman.

  “I . . . I . . . think I’ll go check on Dido,” he said, standing. “He’s probably hungry. Or . . . something.” He left the tent, throwing the flap back so hard that it caught on itself and remained open, showing the moonlit desert illuminated beyond.

  Mai Fung Tan watched Homer leave, her eyes narrowing into slits. Then she smiled, showing teeth even more sharply pointed than her son’s.

  She looked smugly at Wang Chun Lo. “I don’t need any practice!”

  “Honored mother,” said Wang Chun Lo, with a slight roll of his eyes. “You are correct as usual. But your wonders are simpler, a private matter outside the main pavilion, between you and your customers. I speak only of the others. Forgive me.”

  He gazed out at the crowd, silent for a few moments, as a smile slowly creased the corners of his mouth.

  “With new guests and new stories come new thoughts and new ideas,” he said at length. “Friends,” his voice rising slightly, “we have a fresh audience right here in our midst. Let us practice tonight with an actual show! Costumes, wizardry, lights, and magic! Spare nothing! You have only moments to prepare—be off!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Wang Chun Lo’s Caravan of Wonders

  8:43 p.m.

  The entire troupe cleared the tent in a frenzy of colors, shouts, clangs, cheers, and clashes. The next minute, the tangerine tent was almost empty except for Pandy, Alcie, Iole, and Wang Chun Lo. His mother had disappeared, seemingly in a puff of smoke. Servants began pushing tables, cushions, and rugs back against the fabric walls, clearing a large empty circle in the center.