Pandora's Boon

He was standing next to the rusting pumps when he saw the figure shimmering like a mirage in the distance across the ash belt. The pumps hadn’t pumped in years. Not since his grandfather’s time, or so he had been told. He never knew his grandfather. He only vaguely remembered his father. His mother had lived longer, but then the toxicity of ‘The Fission’ had taken her too. He watched the flesh melt from her bones and, when she passed, she felt like a feather in his arms as he laid her in the dusty grave next to the man she had loved.

Since when, he had lived at the gas station alone, beneath the faded sign that his mother had taught him said ‘ESSO’. He had no idea what ‘gas’ was or what it was used for. His father had been keen to keep the pumps in working order. ‘One day son, an automobile will drive down that road looking for gas.’ He had pointed along what was once a four-lane blacktop. Now it was split, pitted and overgrown with weeds. He reckoned it was never going to happen.

The distant figure became inexorably bigger. He took a pull on his Pabst. For some reason his father had acquired thousands of cases which were stacked up inside a huge cavern under the bluff behind the tumbledown shack in which he lived. When The Fission came there must have been plenty around to spare. He drank one every afternoon after he finished tending his garden – a perennial struggle, but the only thing that kept food on the table.

He sat in his mother’s rickety old swing seat, in the shade of the porch, silently counting the approaching hoof beats. It was a unicorn – silver, with a golden mane. That much he knew from the few books his mother had used to teach him how to read. On its back, sitting in a saddle of rainbows, were moonbeams which slowly morphed into a raven-haired woman dressed in a cloak of stars.

‘I am Pandora.’ Her voice was clear and cool and deep yet, at the same time, tinkled like the spring as it bounced across the stones at the base of the bluff.

She was almost too beautiful to look at, so he dropped his eyes. ‘I can’t remember who I am. It’s a long time since anyone spoke to me.’

She dismounted, the cloak of stars flowing around her. ‘I know your name. You are Adam.’

He moved his head from side to side, pursing his lips in thought, rolling the name around his mind. ‘Yes. Yes, that’s it. That’s what my mother called me. Adam.’ He reached behind him into a bucket of cold water. ‘Would you like a Pabst?’ His mother had taught him that, should visitors call, it was polite to offer them a drink. Something she called ‘manners’.

‘That’s very kind.’ Pandora popped the ring and sipped delicately. ‘Mind if I sit there in the shade with you?’

He made space and Pandora sat. The swing seat creaked dangerously. They sipped beer silently for a moment or two.

He finally broke the silence. ‘Where do you come from?’

‘From the earth, where we all come from.’

‘How did you know my name?’ He turned to look at her.

‘I was sent to find you.’

‘Who by?’

‘By the Gods, to whom someday I will return.’

He stared at her. ‘Why?’

‘We are to save the world.’

He made a noise he didn’t recognise at first. Then he remembered. It was called laughing. ‘Just the two of us?’

She took a pull on her beer and nodded.

‘And how do you propose we should go about that?’

‘We are to have children together, three daughters.’

‘I hope you know how to make that happen? I have no idea.’

She stood up and held out her hand. It was cool to his touch but he felt a crackling on contact like lightening he saw across the distant hills. ‘Come inside. I’ll show you. It’s a nice thing to do.’

Later, as Adam felt the warmth flow from his body into hers, he vaguely heard the sound of galloping hooves. The unicorn, as is their wont, had vanished.

The first child they named ‘Faith’. While it was happily suckling at Pandora’s breast, she handed Adam the placenta. ‘Put this in the sunlight and when it is dry grind it to dust for me.’

Adam, amazed by the process of giving birth, obeyed happily. When he took the powder back to her, she passed him a heart shaped golden locket. ‘Open it, pour the dust inside and then snap it tight.’

Sitting beside the birthing bed Adam tried to do as he was asked but there was too much dust to fit in.

‘Take what’s left and let the wind scatter it over your garden. Oh, while you’re out bring me back a Pabst? I’m getting a taste for them.’

He did as he was told. The following morning, as he went out to tend his vegetable patch, he was stopped in his tracks – the garden was a cornucopia of vegetables and flowers, the like of which he had never seen. He rushed back in to tell Pandora.

She smiled. ‘Do not be surprised, the placenta was the very quintessence of faith. The earth has long been waiting whilst you have tended it faithfully.’

The next daughter they called ‘Hope’. Once again Pandora sent Adam off to dry and grind the placenta. Once again, she produced a silver heart shaped locket. Once again there was too much dust. This time Adam was dispatched to scatter what remained into the spring.

The following morning, all along the banks of the creek, as far as Adam’s eyes could see, majestic trees and shrubs had suddenly appeared. In the rockpools made as the creek tumbled downhill, Adam saw silver creatures swimming and jumping. He thought they must be fish – he had seen one in a book once.

That afternoon, carrying the baby, he took Pandora and Faith down to see the miracle.

Pandora took him by the hand. ‘Do not be surprised, the placenta was the very quintessence of hope – and it has created the beauty and calm every man and woman hopes for.’

Pandora named the third baby Love. This time the dust kept flowing into the coper locket she had given him until every grain was inside. Adam looked enquiringly at his mate. ‘That was the biggest placenta of all three – yet the locket seemed bottomless.’

Pandora reached up and gently touched his cheek. ‘Do not be surprised – that is because no one thing in the world can ever contain too much love.’

They lived happily together beside the creek, feasting on fish from the creek and vegetables from the garden until one day, whilst sitting on the porch in the swing seat, Adam saw three figures shimmering like a mirage in the distance across the ash belt. As they came closer, he recognised them and called out to Pandora. ‘The unicorns have come.’

Pandora called their daughters and, around the neck of each one, hung the heart-shaped locket which was their birth right. ‘The time has come to do your heaven-sent duty and enter into this remorseless world of human pain.’

One by one they approached her, and she kissed them on the forehead. They did the same with Adam, then each mounted a unicorn.

Pandora made the benediction. ‘Go now, seek out humanity, and wherever you find it dispense faith, hope and love.’

The girls turned and trotted off down the old blacktop road.

Adam sighed deeply. ‘Will you go now too?’

Pandora turned and kissed Adam on the forehead. ‘I’ll tell you what. I’ll stay until the Pabst runs out. Why don’t you go and get couple of cans now and bring them down to the creek?’

Adam strolled over to the cavern in the bluff. He had only ever kept one thing secret from Pandora. When Love was born, he had stolen a pinch of dust from the placenta, held it in the palm of his hand, stood at the mouth of the cavern and blown hard. He understood that faith, hope, and love were essential in any world. But he knew that the greatest was love.

As he surveyed the ever-replenishing stock of cans, he reckoned he had a good few years yet together with the woman he had come to love. And then some.