Pandora's Box, Part 18

The wolf stumbled to a halt outside the palace gates, panting with exhaustion after fighting his way through the thick foliage and thorns surrounding the palace. Splinters speared his paws, and he desperately wanted to lie down and lick his wounds, but Pandora would allow no rest, urging him to take her within the gates, to the palace doors.

“Now may I go?” the wolf growled, grinding to a halt inside the gates.

“So keen to leave me? Careful, wolf, that smacks of treachery,” warned Pandora. “I may well have need of your service again, so you will stay in my reach. Go to the kitchens and eat whatever you desire, bar my servants. Then wait in the stables until I call you. The maids will tell you where they are.”

Pandora climbed the steps to her chamber, triumph giving her steps a lightness she had not felt in weeks. She pushed open her chamber door, and approached the opened box, running her sharp nails across the broken padlock. Shadows mingled and blended as whispers echoed around the room; “Hate, desire, envy, pain, evil, death…”

Pandora’s threw her head back and screamed in triumph. “Yes, death! She is dead, dead, DEAD!”

Hope quivered in the corner, exhausted and silenced, closing her eyes on the evil world surrounding her.

Pandora leapt across the room, lively as a mountain goat, invigorated by the giddy sense of revenge. She grasped the shattered mirror, ignoring the thousand shards pinpricking her skin.

“Mirror, mirror, tell me what you see,

I am still the most beautiful, you will agree.”

Each shard of glass splintered again into millions of pieces, all with Aurora’s young, tender face gazing out at Pandora with reproachful eyes.

“No, old queen, we cannot tell a lie,

The young one has lived; she will not die!” the mirror crooned.

The box let out a screech of despair while Hope sidled towards the wall, climbing upwards, step by weary step, seeking the window, and the light beckoning beyond the palace walls.

Pandora gripped her head between her hands, blue veins sticking out like a jagged mountain range. A memory of the blind soothsayer’s words, uttered with such certainty, rushed back to her jangled mind.

“Look in the mirror and within and the truth will be revealed. The path must be cleared of rivals. The tower must be overcome before the true end can be reached. The younger will seek to outdo the older. One half will seek to destroy the other half. Hope may remain if all else is lost.”

“Look in the mirror and within and the truth will be revealed. The path must be cleared of rivals. The younger will seek to outdo the older,” Pandora repeated spitting out the words. “Ha! That will never come to pass. The brat may be alive now, but her end will come, and very soon!”

She flew from the room, screaming for the wolf to come to her heels.

Meanwhile, Hope pulled herself along the rough ground, steeling herself to pain as brambles and thorns tried to prevent her passage. She crept onwards through the night, further and further into the darkened woods.