SWNOVELS Chapter Prologue
Plague and strife harrowed all the kingdoms of men. No-one knew why the gods were so angry. Misery was everywhere. Poverty and famine, death and sickness wracked the peoples, touching all four corners of the world. The living envied the dead, and the dead were everywhere.
A wise king looked out over the world and wept. King Epimetheus sent forth a call to gather all the wise men and the greatest craftsmen from the lands where his writ held and from the lands beyond. While other kings spent a ransom building pyramids and other monuments to their rule, feeding their egos, King Epimetheus ordered a simple box built.
Crafted from gopher wood and inlaid with precious woods from the four corners of the world, not a single piece of metal went into this work of art. And when it was completed, the king cast all the ills of the world into it until the tribulations of mankind were few, and the people were happy. Decades of peace and prosperity followed to rival that of any age before or since.
Pandora, the king’s granddaughter, was an inquisitive child. From an early age, her one love in life was to play with this box. Something about it drew the girl, something in the way its graven images seemed to move when they caught your eye, the exotic smell of its woods, and the way its lacquered surface gleamed in the light. On all four sides were Chinese puzzles, mazes of sliding wood that held mysteries that were never the same twice. Pandora could spend hours merely gazing at its images, daydreaming of far off lands, of monsters and heroes and of a thousand romances.
As the years past, stories of Pandora and her wondrous box spread across the land, taking on a life of its own. Its figures could move and talk. It could float off the ground, grant wishes, or answer riddles. It was given every magical and miraculous characteristic imagination or rumour could envision. But no one could say what lay within? Forgotten were the long years of strife and hardship.
One day a new advisor came to the court of King Epimetheus. A shadowy man, a man of whispers and rumours. Always in his wake came stories about the box – Pandora and her box of wonders. In time these whispers reached the child, and she grew curious. If what was on the outside was so magical, surely what lay inside must be something beyond her dreams?
“What is in my fabulous box?” She would ask her grandfather, King Epimetheus.
And he would reply, “nothing a little girl would ever want.”
The more Pandora heard the whispers, the more obsessed she became with its contents. Some said gold, jewels, or something even more precious. Others said magic so great it would grant the bearer all their fondest wishes. What could be in her fabulous box? Surely one peek could not hurt?
Finally, curiosity overcame her obedient nature, and one day when Pandora was alone in the gardens, she lifted its lid. Merely a crack. Only enough for a quick peek. Out flew strife and war, famine and plague. And when all the horrors had escaped, and the girl could find the courage to look in, in the bottom, she found Hope.
It was this last item that began Pandora’s quest to refill the chest with all those items that would become Mankind’s great last hope. Over the centuries, wars would be fought over the chest, and it would change hands so many times it was eventually forgotten and lost.
Crystal read the last words with a frown. Why did Jean Claude take such pains to preserve such a silly myth? It did not even agree with the most well-known versions of Pandora’s story. Where were the Greek gods, or the moral? Crystal set down the heavy volume and rubbed her eyes. He was such a silly old man.