Geoffrey walked back into his living room with a bowl of cold cereal, sitting down to have a quiet dinner. Two boxes sat on the mantle over his fireplace. One had held an engagement ring, the other box he had brought home the night Sarah had her accident.

I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window,
And in-flu-enza.

She had gotten the box in a card game that was held once a century upon a boat. It was 1917. The game they played didn’t have a name, it was centuries old and played with a deck of tarot cards, a True Tarot and not the incomplete version peddled by so-called fortune tellers and mystics.

The box had been provided for the game by an old Asian man of indeterminate nationality and thickly accented English.

She had lost the game, and been forced to take the jewelry box with her. It was the forfeit of the match, and she had instructions on when and where to open it.

Eventually curiousity got the better of her and she opened the box the next year in Spain. She loved through that year, she had won a small prize, she would live to see the time come for the box to pass from her hands, but she had a corpse-like pallor after that. With skin as pale as uncolored wax.

Geoffrey took the strange box down at times, holding it in his hand, feeling its weight ( so heavy for such a small box ), and wondering what he would see if he opened it up to take a look inside.

Ring around a rosey,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo, a-tishoo,
We all fall down.

The box has been in Europe for some time before the card game, since around 1350. It had made its way to Europe from China where it had been opened sometime around 1330, it is a little hard to be certain given differences in the calendar systems.

The box had resembled a puzzle box back then, a curious thing of carven wood and intricate designs. It had come into his master’s hands in a game involving painted ivory tiles, a precursor to what would be known these days as ‘mah jong’.

The winner of the game claimed he was cheated, that the box was not a prize but rather a burden. He put the box into the care of the servant who later stole it.

It came over with the spice trade, though it is hard to tell if it traveled the overland route or by sea, but it is known that it left China and found its way to the European nations and did so among the possessions of the former servant who had stolen it from his master. A servant himself who survived the coming years though never quite escaped the guilt of his theft or his addiction to gambling.

Geoffrey put his dinner bowl down on the coffee table, he took the box down from the mantle and carried it back to where he had been sitting, setting it on the table before him and just staring at it for a while, wondering what could be in such a tiny jewelry box and yet be so heavy.

Agbarus, prince of Edessa, sends greeting to… Therefore, now I have written and besought thee to visit me, and to heal the disease with which I am afflicted...

It was taken as a trophy of war, with many other treasures, to an Assyrian king after his soldiers happened upon a merchant caravan that was traveling across their lands. In those days it appeared as a jeweled box, made of precious metals and inlaid with jewels. He hoarded it in a room he had set aside for such treasures, and stared upon it with greed in his heard. It was something in the nature of his character, or the room it was kept in, that had only him aware of the boxes presence once it came into his possession. In fact no one knew of the box until he passed away and his possessions were ‘distributed’ among those who came to take his place.

The box went from there to the lands far to the east with a trading caravan where it resided untouched and unnoticed for several centuries.

Geoffrey turned the box in his hand again, examining the box from all of its angles, looking at the finely wrought little hinges on its back to the way that it had many smooth contours but no visible seems. Like it had been crafted from one single piece with only the flaw where the two halves meet and the box would open to show it hadn’t forever been a single whole item.

Bast nefer dy ankh
A Bast, shu asenu
sesept em kekui,
i kua ser-ten, uat sesh-tha, ta em hetep.

The box entered the lands of Egypt as the possessions of a trader from Greece. Once there it was given as an offering to one of the temples in Bubastis.

Bast, lady of the East, lady of Ankh-taui, goddess of cats, granter of virility, strength and agility. The box came to her awareness when her priests collected it as an offering in her temple there. Curious as a cat, she knew the box for what it was despite it’s wearing the form of a Grecian urn.

She knew that if the box was opened, her temple was doomed, but what the box offered may save her temple from the decline she also knew was inevitable, in those late days it was clear to her what was to come.

She came to the head priest in a dream and the next day the box passed from her temple back out to the markets and bazaars of Egypt. It passed through many hands but soon traveled to lands further east.

Geoffrey turned the box over in his hands, wondering at its odd shape. He couldn’t remember if it always been flat on the top and the bottom or if one had been curved when he took it like a normal jewelry box was. But now, now it seemed to have no difference between the top and the bottom, and he couldn’t remember which had been which.

Phol ende Uoden vuorun zi holza
duuart demo Balderes volon vuoz birenkit.
thû biguolen Sinthgunt Sunna era suister;
thû biguolen Frîia, Volla era suister;
thû biguolen Uodan, sô hê uuola conda;
sôse bênrenki, sôse bluotrenkî, sôse lidirenki:
bên zi bêna, bluot zi bluot.
lid zi geliden, sôse gelîmida sîn!

Grecian traders traveled far to the north, carrying with them goods that they hoped to find a market for. Including an oddly painted piece of pottery. They found a people far to the North, a war-like tribe that was more interested in taking then in trading, but common ground was found and items put on display.

Odin One-Eye, chief god among his war-like people, knew that the box was there, though it looked like a simple piece of pottery then. He gave up one eye for wisdom, hanging upside down for seven days upon the great tree and having drunk for Mimir’s well. He knew the end of days would one day come, and that what was in the box could be used as a weapon or tool, causing it to be opened among his foes to send them into discord. But there was none among his people he trusted with the box, and he knew too well to keep it in his own home. And so it went south again the Greeks without having been opened in his lands.

It never seemed to rattle when Geoffrey shook it, but he could feel something shift inside. As if the box’s center of balance would move from place to place within it. But without making any noise as it moved about. More like whatever it was flowed within the box without leaking out of it.

Μην αφήστε μια γυναίκα, poy αυτή πίσω, και που κολακεύει και που πείθει, να σας κερδίσει Θέλει τη σιταποθήκη σας: η γυναίκα είναι ακριβώς εξαπατά.

She was the first woman created by the Gods of Greece. Her name meant ‘she to whom all gifts are given’ and she was blessed by the gods, given skill and wit and health and beauty by the Gods. But Prometheus, who with his brother Epimetheus created man, defied the Gods and angered them.

And so she was given as a bride to Epimetheus, upon her wedding night Zeus told her of a secret, warning her that there was a jar with a great secret in it buried behind his home and that if she was to be a good wife she was never to look upon it.

And so she didn’t she kept her curiosity in check, but time passed and it nagged at her mind. In time, Epimetheus left on an errand and her need to know was too great. She took up a spade and dug a trench in the yard and found the jar hidden there.

She opened the jar and released upon the world all the evils and diseases that had been hidden away. Franticly she tried to catch them and seal them back away within the jar, but they spread too fast and too far for her to catch any but a few of them.

Epimetheus upon his return home discovered the hole in his yard and Pandora in tears, he remembered only then his brother’s warning to him, to never accept any gifts from Zeus regardless of how tempting or innocent they seemed. He took the now empty jar from her hands and called it a source of hope, for it had held all the evils of mankind once and could contain them again if caught.

He called upon some of the greatest hunters he knew and sent them out into the world with the box, to recapture the evils that had once tormented mankind. And so the box began is journey, and while its purpose was soon forgotten, it already by then contained some of the greatest plagues man would ever know within it.

The box, that had so very long ago been a jar, sat in Geoffrey’s hand. So heavy, so tempting, so curious about what was inside. But the night was late, and he needed sleep, and so he placed the box back upon the mantle again. A secret for him to explore another day.

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- Hythian

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