Pandora by Anne Rice

The burnt thing took a deep breath, his chest heaving against me. “Her blood is beautiful,” he said. He kissed my cheek with the parched burnt lips. I closed my eyes. It was becoming harder and harder for me to breathe. I couldn’t open my eyes.

  He went on talking.

  “You see, I have no fear to take her into death with me, Marius, for if I must die by your hand, why not with her as my consort?”

  These words were distant, echoing.

  “Pick her up in your arms,” said Marius. He was very close to us. “And carry her gently, as if she were your only beloved child, and come down with me into the Shrine. Come and see the Mother. Kneel before Akasha and see what she will allow!”

  I swooned again, but I heard the creature laugh He did lift me now, under the knees, and my head fell back. We went down the steps.

  “Marius,” I said, “he’s weak. You can kill him.” My face fell against the chest of the burnt one as we descended. I could feel the bones of his chest. “Really, very weak,” I said, scarcely able to remain conscious. Akasha, yes, her true name.

  “Carefully, my friend,” said Marius. “She dies and I destroy you. You’ve almost overplayed your hand. She narrows your chances with every labored breath. Pandora, be silent, please. Akbar is a great blood drinker, a great god.”

  I felt a cold firm hand clasp mine.

  We had reached the lower floor. I tried to lift my head. I saw rows of lamps, splendid wall paintings hammered with gold, a ceiling veiled in gold.

  Two great stone doors were opened. A chapel lay within, a chapel full of dense fluttering devotional light and the overpowering scent of lilies.

  The blood drinker who held me let out a cry. “Mother Isis,” he said piteously. “Oh, Akasha!”

  He released me, setting me down on my feet, as Marius at once took hold of me, and the blistered and damaged one rushed towards the altar.

  I stared, amazed. But I was dying. I couldn’t breathe. I was falling to the floor. I tried to swallow air but I could not. I could not stand without Marius.

  But oh, to leave the Earth and all its miseries with such a vision:

  There they sat, The Great Goddess Isis and the King Osiris, or so it seemed, bronzed in skin, not white like the poor captive Queen in my dreams, but perfectly arrayed in garments of spun gold pleated and sewn in the fixed Egyptian style. Their black hair was long, plaited, real. The paint on their faces was fresh, the dark eyelining and mascara, the reddened lips.

  She wore no crown of the horns and sun disk. Her collar of gold and jewels was superb, shimmering and alive in my eyes.

  “I must get the crown, restore the crown!” I said aloud, hearing this voice come from me as if it had been born elsewhere to instruct me. My eyes closed.

  The black thing knelt before the Queen.

  I couldn’t see clearly. I felt Marius’s arms, and then a gush of hot blood come into my mouth. “No, Marius, protect her!” I tried to speak. My words were washed away in this infusion of blood. “Protect the Mother!” Again it came filling my mouth so that I had to swallow. Immediately I felt the strength, the power of this blood, infinitely stronger than the pull of Akbar. The blood rushed like so many rivers to the sea, through my body. It would not be stopped. Another gush followed, as if a giant storm had driven the river even faster into its delta, its broken and random streams seeking every morsel of flesh.

  A wide and wondrous world opened and would have welcomed me, sunlight in the deep forest, but I wouldn’t see it. I broke free. “The Queen, save her from him!” I whispered. Did the blood drip from my lips? No, it was gone inside me.

  Marius wouldn’t listen to me. Again a bloody wound was pressed to my mouth, and the blood was driven ever faster. I felt the air fill my lungs. I could feel the length of my own body, sturdy, standing on its own. The blood brightened inside me like light, as though it had enflamed my heart. I opened my eyes. I was a pillar. I saw Marius’s face, his golden eyelashes, his deep blue eyes. His long hair parted in the middle fell to his shoulders. He was ageless, a god.

  “Protect her!” I cried. I turned and pointed.

  A veil was lifted that had all my life hung between me and all things; now in their true color and shape, they gave forth their deliberate purpose: the Queen stared forward, immobile as the King. Life could not have imitated such serenity, such utter paralysis. I heard water dropping from the flowers. Tiny drops striking the marble floor, the fall of a single leaf. I turned and saw it, curled and rocking on the stones, this tiny leaf. I heard the breeze move under the golden canopied ceiling. And the lamps had tongues of flame to sing.

  The world was a woven song, a tapestry of song. The multicolored Mosiacs gleamed, then lost all form, then even pattern. The walls dissolved into clouds of colored mist which welcomed us, through which we could roam forever.

  And there she sat, The Queen of Heaven, reigning over all in supreme and unperturbed stillness.

  All the yearning of my childish heart was fulfilled. “She lives, she is real, she reigns over Earth and Heaven.”

  The King and the Queen. They didn’t stir. Their eyes beheld nothing. They did not look at us. They did not look at the burnt thing as he drew closer and closer to their throne.

  The arms of the Royal Pair were covered in many inscribed and intricate bracelets. Their hands rested on their thighs. It was the manner of many an Egyptian statue. But there never has been a statue to equal either of them.

  “The crown, she would have her crown,” I said With astonishing vigor I walked forward towards her.

  Marius took my hand. Keenly, he watched the progress of the burnt one.

  “She was before all such crowns,” Marius said “they do not mean anything to her.”

  The thought itself burst with the sweetness of a grape on my tongue. Of course she was there before. In my dreams, she had had no crown. She was safe. Marius kept her safe.

  “My Queen,” said Marius from behind me. “You have a supplicant. It is Akbar from the East. He would drink the royal blood What is your will, Mother?”

  His voice was so tranquil! He had no fears.

  “Mother Isis, let me drink!” cried this burnt creature. He stood up, threw up his arms and created another dancing vision of his former self. He wore human skulls hanging from his belt. He wore a necklace of blackened human fingers! Another of blackened human ears! It was grisly and revolting, yet he seemed to think it seductive and overpowering. At once the image left him. The god from the faraway land was on his knees.

  “I am your servant and always was! I slew only the evildoer, as you commanded. I never abandoned your true worship.”

  How fragile and insignificant seemed this pleading one, so revolting, so easy to clear away now from her presence. I looked at the King Osiris, as remote and indifferent as the Queen.

  “Marius,” I said, “the corn for Osiris; doesn’t he want the corn? He’s the god of the corn.” I was filled with visions of our processions in Rome, of people singing and bearing the offerings.

  “No, he doesn’t want the corn,” said Marius. He laid his hand on my shoulder.

  “They are true, they are real!” I cried out. “It is all real. Everything is changed. Everything is redeemed.”

  The burnt thing turned and glared at me. But I was quite beyond all reason. He turned back to the Queen and reached out for her foot.

  How her toenails flashed in the light with the golden flesh beneath them. But she was stone-still, as was the crownless King, without seeming judgment or power.

  The creature suddenly sprang up and tried to seize the Queen by the neck!

  I screamed.

  “Shameless, despicable.”

  Swiftly the frozen right arm of the Queen rose, her hand surrounding the burnt thing’s skull and crushing it, the blood gushing down her as the monster gave his last fractured cry for mercy. She caught his body as it dropped over her waist. She hurled it in the air, and all its limbs broke loose from it, crashing to the floor like so much timber.


  A gusting wind caught each remnant and gathered them all in one as a lamp fell from its three-legged stand to spill its burning oil on the remains.

  “The heart, look,” I said. “I can see its heart. The heartbeats.”

  But the fire quickly consumed the heart, consumed the flexing fingers and the writhing toes. There was a great stirring, a dance in the fire of bones, bones whirling in the flames, and then the bones blackened, thinned, snapped to pieces, became fragments; all of this thing was reduced at last to smoking cinders, crisping and skittering on the floor.

  Then came the breeze again, full of the breath of the garden, lifting these cinders and carrying them away, like so many fragile tiny black insects, into the shadows of the antechamber.

  I was spellbound.

  The Queen was as before, her hand in its old place. She and the King stared at nothing, as if nothing had taken place. Only the wretched stain on her gown bore witness.

  Their eyes took no heed of Marius or of me.

  Then there was only quiet in the chapel. Only sweet perfumed quiet. Golden light I breathed deeply. I could hear the oil in the lamps turned to flame. The Mosiacs were peopled with finely made worshipers. I could see the slow minute beginnings of decay of the various flowers, and it seemed but another strain of the same song that expressed their growth, their browning edges but another color in no contradiction to their brilliant colors.

  “Forgive me, Akasha,” Marius said softly, “that I let him come so close. I was not wise.”

  I cried. Great gushing tears came from me.

  “You summoned me,” I said to the Queen through my tears. “You called me here! I will do all you want of me.”

  Slowly her right arm rose; it rose from her thigh and extended itself and her hand very gently curved in the beckoning gesture of the dream, but there was no smile, no change in her frozen face.

  I felt something invisible and irresistible wrap itself around me. It came from her outstretching welcoming arm. It was sweet and soft and caressing. It made a flush of pleasure through all my limbs and my face.

  I moved forward, wound up in its will.

  “I beg you, Akasha!” Marius said softly. “I beg you under the name of manna, under the name of Isis, under the name of all goddesses, don’t hurt her!”

  Marius simply didn’t understand! Marius had never known her worship! I knew. I knew that her blood drinker children had meant to be judges of the evildoer, and drink only from the condemned, according to her laws. I saw the god of the dark cave, whom I’d seen in my vision. I understood all.

  I wanted to tell Marius. But I couldn’t. Not now. The world was reborn, all systems built upon skepticism or selfishness were as fragile as spiderwebs and meant to be swept away. My own moments of despair had been nothing more than detours into an unholy and self-centered blackness.

  “The Queen of Heaven,” I whispered. I knew I was speaking in the ancient tongue. A prayer came to my lips.

  “And Amon Ra, the Sun God, for all his power, shall never conquer the King of the Dead or his bride, for she is the ruler of the starry heavens, of the moon, of those who would bring the sacrifice of the evildoer. Cursed be those who misuse this magic. Cursed be those who seek to steal it!”

  I felt myself, a human, held together by the intricate threads of blood which Marius had given me. I felt the design of its support It had no weight my body.

  I was lifted towards her. Her arm came around me and pulled my hair back from my face. I put out my arms to embrace her neck because I could do nothing else. We were too dose for any other possible sign of love.

  I felt the soft silk of her real plaited hair, and the coldness and firmness of her shoulders, her arm. Yet she did not look at me. She was a petrified thing. Could she look at me? Did she choose to remain silent, staring forward? Did some evil spell hold her helpless, a spell from which a thousand hymns might waken her?

  In my delirium I saw the words engraved in gold pieces among the jewels of her collar: “Bring to me the evildoer and I shall drink his blood.”

  It seemed I was in the desert and the necklace was tumbling over and over in the sand, in the wind, rather like the body of the burnt one had tumbled. Fallen, lost, to be remade.

  I felt my head drawn to her neck. She had opened her fingers over my hair. She directed it, that my lips should feel this skin.

  “It’s what you want, isn’t it?” I asked. But my words seemed remote from me, a pathetic expression of the fullness of my soul. “That I am to be your daughter!”

  She tipped her head slightly, away from me, so that I saw her neck. I saw the vein displayed, the vein from which she wanted me to drink.

  Her finger rose gently through my hair, never pulling it or hurting it, merely embracing my head, sending rampant ecstasy through me, and urging my head gently down so that my lips could no longer avoid her shimmering skin.

  “Oh, my adored Queen,” I whispered. I had never known such certainty, such ecstasy without limits or mundane cause. I had never known such bursting, triumphant faith as my faith in her.

  I opened my mouth. Nothing human could bite through this hard flesh! Yet it gave, as though it were thin, and the blood pumped into me, “the Fount.” I heard her heart driving it, a deafening force that vibrated in the drums of my ears. This was not blood. This was nectar. This was all that any created being could ever desire.

  9

  ITH the nectar flowing into me, there came another realm. Her ringing laughter filled the corridor; she ran ahead of me, girlish, feline, unencumbered by grandeur. She beckoned for me to follow. Out under the stars, Marius sat alone in his soft shapeless garden. She pointed to him. I saw Marius rise and take me in his arms. His long hair was such a fine adornment. I saw what she wanted. It was Marius I kissed in this vision as I drank from her; it was Marius with whom I danced.

  A shower of flower petals descended upon us as upon a bridal couple in Rome, and Marius held my arm as though we had just been wed, and all around us people sang. There was a flawless happiness, a happiness so keen that perhaps there are those born who never even have the capacity for it.

  She stood atop a broad black altar of diorite.

  It was night. This was an enclosed place, filled with people, but it was dark and cool with the sandy wind off the valley floor, and she looked down at the one they offered up to her. He was a man, his eyes closed, his hands were bound. He didn’t struggle.

  She showed her teeth; a gasp rose from the worshipers who filled the place, and then she took the man by the throat and drank his blood. When she had finished, she let him fall and she held up her arms.

  “All things are cleansed in me!” she cried out. Once again the petals fell, petals of all colors, and peacock feathers waved about us, and branches of palm, and there was singing in great lusty bursts, and the sound of a riotous drum, and she smiled looking down from where she stood, her face remarkably flushed and mobile and human, her black-painted eyes sweeping over her worshipers.

  All began to dance, save she, who watched, and then her eyes rose slowly and she looked over their heads, out the high rectangular windows of this place, at the twinkling firmament. Pipes played. The dance had become a frenzy.

  A weary and secretive darkness crept into her face, a distraction, as though her soul had traveled out of doors towards Heaven, and then she looked sadly down. She looked lost. Anger overcame her.

  Then she cried out in a deafening voice, “The rogue blood drinker!” The crowd fell silent. “Bring him to me.”

  The crowd parted to let this struggling furious god be forced to her altar.

  “You dare judge me!” he cried. He was Babylonian, with full long curly locks and beard and mustache. It took ten mortals to hold him.

  “Into the burning place, in the mountains, in the sun, in the strongest fetters!” she cried. He was dragged away.

  Once again she looked up. The stars grew big and age-old patterns were clear. We floated under the stars.

  A boy in
a delicate gilded chair argued with those around him. The men were old, half-invisible in the darkness. The lamp shone on the boy’s face. We stood in the door. The boy was frail, his little limbs like sticks.

  “And you say,” said the incredulous boy, “that these blood drinkers are worshiped in the hills!”

  I knew he was the Pharaoh by the sacred lock of hair that grew from his bald head, by the manner in which the others waited upon him. He looked up in horror as she approached. His guardians fled.

  “Yes,” she said, “and you will do nothing to stop it!”

  She lifted him, this small fragile boy, and tore at his throat as an animal might do it, letting the blood flood from the fatal wound. “Little King,” she said. “Little Kingdom.”

  The vision ended.

  Her cold white skin was closed beneath my lips. I kissed her now. I no longer drank.

  I felt my own form, felt myself fall back over her arm, felt myself slipping out of her embrace.

  In the dim radiance, her profile remained as it had before, silent and without feeling. Stark, a face without a blemish or a line. I sank back into Marius’s arms. Her arm and hand returned to their former rigid position.

  Everything was brilliantly clear, the motionless King and Queen, the artful figures fixed in lapis lazuli in the gold mosaics.

  I felt a sharp pain in me, in the heart, in the womb, as if someone had stabbed me. “Marius!” I cried out.

  He picked me up and carried me from the chamber.

  “No, I want to kneel at her feet,” I said. The pain took the breath out of me. I tried not to scream from this pain. Oh, the world had just been reborn. And now this agony.

  He set me down on the high grass, letting it be crushed under me. A flood of sour human fluid came out of my womb, even out of my mouth. I saw flowers right near me. I saw the friendly Heavens, vivid as in my vision. The pain was unspeakable.

  I knew now why he had removed me from the Shrine.

  I wiped at my cheek. I couldn’t bear this filth. The pain devoured me. I struggled to see again what she had revealed to me, remember what she said, but there was too much obstruction in this pain.