Titus lifted it with his finger, and his eyes turned worried. I wondered if he knew something about the lock that he wasn’t telling me. The look lasted only a moment. “We’ll make sure it’s well cushioned on the climb, so it won’t get broken if we take a spill.” Reluctantly, he rolled his sleeping bag onto the filthy cot. “I sent a text to Eros this afternoon.”
“To tell him I didn’t stay where I was supposed to?”
“And that you tried to ditch me at the hotel.” He offered his satellite phone to me. “I thought you might want to see the reply.”
She infiltrated the Fortress, faced Theron, was beaten nearly to death and still completed two tasks. Did you think for one moment a woman like that would take orders from you? Remember your place, Titus. And give her my love.
I tossed the phone back to him. “So, he knows we’re here.”
“He always knows where you are.”
“How?”
Titus tapped his watch. I looked at the matching one on my wrist. It must contain a GPS beacon. In other circumstances I might have been irritated, but on this journey it was comforting to know that no matter where I wandered, Eros could find me.
After climbing into his sleeping bag, Titus pulled off his sweatshirt and T-shirt.
“Titus!” It was bad enough we had to share a room. “Do you think you can keep your clothes on?”
He grumbled, “We never wear shirts in our world. I can’t sleep with it on.”
“It’s going to get cold,” I warned. Unless one of us woke in the night to add wood to the fire, it would burn out, and the room would be freezing by morning.
“But, I’m not cold now,” he complained.
I slid into my sleeping bag across the room. “Fine, if you answer one question.” When he nodded, I asked, “Why don’t you have hair in your armpits?”
His brow furrowed. “We don’t have body hair.”
“None of you?”
“We don’t grow beards either. Not until we’re old men.”
I laid back and stared at the ceiling. “That would explain why Aeas didn’t pack me a razor.”
I heard Titus chuckle. “I’ll put it on the list of things we need for the way home.”
Our local guide was waiting for us at dawn. We loaded his poor yak with everything except our backpacks and water bottles, but the beast didn’t seem to mind. Our guide did not speak a word of English, Italian, French, Spanish, Latin, Greek, or any other language that Titus knew. Titus finally stopped bugging the poor man and let him walk in peace.
The trail was wide enough that Titus and I could hike side by side. We talked about Italy and warmer weather. Titus was not a fan of winter, but he seemed to be reveling in this adventure. He was surprisingly open, even when I pried into his personal life. He had never bestowed his pendant on any woman, but had some romantic experience with mortals. “Aphrodite encouraged that,” he explained. “She’d rather her servants were unmarried, and she expects them to mingle with mortals. She views mortals as toys, so you can imagine her complete outrage when her only son decided to marry one.”
“You’re terrible,” I told him, “going around seducing mortals and then disappearing.”
He stopped me. “I’m not what you assume I am. I didn’t leave little Titus’s all over Italy. I just enjoyed the company of mortal women. I dated and tried very hard not to inflict heartache on any of them.”
“Yeah, sure.” I kept walking.
For some reason, the yak took a liking to me. Whenever I got slow on the trail, the beast would speed up and rub his head on me. If he were an ordinary steer, I probably wouldn’t have minded, but the yak stank, so I tried to keep my distance.
The road was steep, but before long we reached an open plateau between four peaks. The guide shouted at us. When we turned around, we found him stopped and waving his arms.
Titus pulled the GPS device from his pocket and checked our location. “Oh,” he said, “we’re here.”
The area designated for our camp was flat, hard ground. Titus looked around disappointed. “It isn’t much, is it?”
“It’s flat, and it’s dirt.” The snow had melted off and the dirt was dry, so we didn’t have to pitch our tent in mud. There was circle of ashes and rocks that had been scattered. We were above the tree line, but to the north was a small cliff, which partially sheltered us from the wind.
After unloading the yak, our guide made a gesture of good-bye and started his descent, probably hoping to get home in time for a hot lunch. Titus turned to me visibly bewildered, so I had him circle the stones of the fire pit and build a fire.
While he stacked the wood and broke smaller pieces into kindling, I unloaded the large tent from his pack, rolled it out on the ground and unfolded until it made a rectangle seven feet wide by twelve feet long. I began pounding the stakes into the frozen ground with a mallet. The fire now burning, Titus stood over me and watched.
“I feel worthless,” he confessed.
I stomped on a stubborn stake with my foot until it finally dug into the earth. “I can pitch the tent alone.” With a grin I added, “I’ll just make you give me a foot massage later.”
Titus nodded unconsciously the way Aeas did. “Is there anything I can do?”
I showed him how to put the supports together and thread them through the tent’s body. When it was standing securely, I laid down basic tent rules. “No boots in the tent. Sit down at the door and take them off, so we don’t have mud and snow everywhere.” I hauled both our packs into the center room of the tent and designated a bedroom for each of us. After unrolling our sleeping bags, we boiled water on the fire and heated our lunch packets. The sun was shining and there was no wind. Even though the temperature was near freezing, it felt warm.
“It’s a long way from a five-star restaurant.” I used a pair of pliers to pull a foil packet out of the boiling water and onto Titus’s plate. We were having mashed potatoes with bacon bits for lunch and fruit cobbler for dessert. After removing the packets, I put apple cider powder into the water and split it between our tin cups.
He waited for me before he ate. It took me three meals to realize that he did this, but I came to understand it was the nature of our relationship. “It’s definitely not as good as the food we had at the hotel,” he confessed, “but it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.”
“The dehydrated ones my dad used to buy were worse. They never absorbed water like they were supposed to, and there were always crunchy spots. This is much better.”
While he ate, Titus started to blink more often than usual. He seemed to be panting, too.
“Headache?”
“Yes.”
“It’s the altitude. Take a deep breath and hold it. Your body needs to absorb more oxygen from the air.”
After a few long breaths, he turned to me. “Why aren’t you sick?”
“You live at sea level. I live in the mountains. I’m only five thousand feet above what I’m used to. It’s double that for you.” I took his plate and trash. “You should rest. Use as little energy as possible until you adjust.”
“That’s good advice for both of us.” He unzipped the tent door and motioned me inside. There was nothing else to do besides sit in the tent and talk. I had the feeling I was going to know Titus very well before this was all over. We left the tent door unzipped. There was only one advantage to winter camping—no bugs.
Titus reached out and took hold of my ankle.
Startled, I tried to pull away. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I owe you.” He pulled off my sock.
“I was joking.”
Titus paused, his head cocked to the side and his expression unmoved. “I’m a servant. This is what I do.”
“I don’t like to be touched,” I persisted.
With his thumb, he began massaging the ball of my foot. “I’ve been advised of that.”
“And, I’m ticklish. I might kick you,” I warned.
He continued und
aunted. “No, you won’t. There’s a pressure point here on your foot. If I keep my thumb on it, it disables that reflex.”
This was a fight I was not going to win. Relenting, I lay back against the pack. “You did this for Aphrodite?”
“On occasion, but she’s very particular. Anyone who touches her has to do it perfectly, so I’ve spent a great deal of time practicing on her maid Fauna.”
“Interesting. Who usually gives her massages?”
“Theron, of course.”
“Him? You’ve got to be joking.”
“You’ve only seen the violent side of Theron. When he wants to be, he is as gentle as a summer breeze. She wouldn’t have kept him all these ages if it weren’t so.” He rubbed my toes, which tickled. “He could probably seduce you given the chance.”
I let out a growl. “Not as long as there was breath in me to refuse.”
Titus set my foot into his lap and moved onto the next. Minutes passed in silence. It felt awkward. Titus looked up only once when a breeze tossed the tent door, then he went back to rubbing my feet as if he enjoyed it.
“Do you think Eros will find me again before we start climbing?” I asked him.
With a wicked grin, Titus asked, “Would you rather he stayed away?”
I considered kicking him in the chest, but I didn’t. “If I never see him again, I want him to know I don’t have any regrets.”
Titus’s eyebrows arched as he looked down at my foot. “None?”
“I could have done without spilling the dust and having him throw me off a balcony, but other than that…” I shrugged.
Shaking out my socks and slipping them back over my feet, Titus finally looked up. “I think I’m going to lie down like you suggested. You should do the same.” He didn’t move until I got up and went through the partition to my sleeping area. Then he went into his side and zipped it closed.
The zipper on my sleeping bag was down, and it lay open, which was not how I left it. I pulled off my sweatshirt and dropped it at the head of the sleeping bag to use as a pillow. The sweatshirt didn’t fall to the ground. It stopped, draped over an unseen object. How long had Eros been here listening? Titus had seen him, that much I knew.
I stretched out on the sleeping bag as Eros’s arm drew me into the hollow of his shoulder. “I’m glad you didn’t let him keep you away,” I murmured.
He kissed my temple. For awhile, we just lay there in the silent tent. Eventually Eros stirred. When he returned he had my sketchbook and a pencil. I could see them, so he must have had them unveiled inside a veiled bag. The pencil seemed to stand up on its own as he wrote on the blank page.
In case you have time for therapy.
“Unfortunately, I can’t see my favorite subject.” I thumbed through the pages, and stopped on a clean white page. “Come with me.” At the tent door I pulled on my boots and went outside. I turned a circle before I found the landscape I wanted to draw. The afternoon sun began to fall, beautifully illuminating the peaks to the east. I sat in the dirt and felt Eros settle next to me. While I sketched, he toyed with my hair, then made a pile of stones and scattered them. When the sketch was finished, I turned the page toward him. “What do you think?”
He took the pencil and sketchbook from my hands. I thought he was writing a note, but when he turned the page around, it was a sketch of me—a very good one.
“That’s amazing. You did that in less than a minute.”
The book still facing me, the pages fanned to the back. Eros started about ten pages from the end and showed me the sketches there. In the first sketch I lay asleep in my own bed. In the second I was sitting on the bed with books spread around me. They looked like black and white snapshots, detailed down to the pattern on the comforter. He continued through them showing me each one, then stopped a page before the end and closed the book.
“You missed one,” I said.
Eros set the book in my lap and laid his head on it.
“I want to see the last drawing.”
He put my hand on his forehead and shook his head.
With a gulp, I asked, “Have you been watching me shower?”
He chuckled and didn’t try to stifle it. The sound sent my spirit soaring. To my relief, he shook his head again.
“Okay,” I relented. “Don’t show me the last drawing. I’ll look at it when you’re not around. Instead, show me what happened to Theron after he beat me.”
Eros laughed again and got up. He moved so that he was behind me with his legs on either side of mine. Resting his chin on my shoulder, he opened the book as it lay in my lap and started to draw with his left hand. These were different from his previous drawings. They were caricatures with the people represented in scarce detail, but recognizable from their features. On the first clean page he drew a bed and a body lying in it.
“That’s me.”
He drew a second person nearby, and I recognized him by the way he drew his hair. With a sigh, he drew teardrops on the face.
“That’s you crying over me.”
He kissed my cheek and turned the page. The next scene took me a while to recognize. It was a square room full of boxes and tools. In the corner he drew a bow hanging on the wall.
“It’s a garage. My dad’s hunting bow?”
Eros nodded. At the bottom of the page, he drew a close-up of an arrow. It wasn’t the kind of arrow he had in his quill at the palace. It was the kind my dad used to hunt elk—aluminum shafted and razor tipped. He turned the page and quickly sketched an island with steep cliffs above the water—the Fortress.
The next scene was of a man and a woman together on a balcony. The curvy caricature Eros drew of his mother was hilarious. He over emphasized her mouth, so that she was pouting.
The next scene was of Theron on the beach with four arrows in his body. There was one in each shoulder and one in each leg.
“Ouch!” I slit my finger on an arrow once. It took five stitches to close the cut.
On the final drawing, Eros took his time. It unfolded like a Sunday morning comic. He drew a bathtub and Theron wailing, his arms and legs hanging over the sides, while a servant dumped a barrel marked “Ambrosia” into the tub. Aphrodite stood nearby pulling her hair and stomping her feet. In a text balloon over her head she screamed, “EROOOOOS!!!”
I fell back against him laughing.
He closed the sketchbook and wrapped his arms around me.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“Are you two going to sit out there all night?” Titus stood just outside the tent door, his coat unzipped and no boots on. He opened his arms to the west. The sun was down and the light waned.
I stood, clutching the sketchbook to my chest and took Eros by the hand. “Are you going to stay with me tonight?”
He squeezed my hand.
“We’ll behave,” I said to Titus.
“Not my business,” Titus replied.
“Correct.” I tugged on Eros’s hand. “I might end up liking Titus after all.”
I woke to a rock falling on my chest. At least I thought it was a rock until my hand found it and realized it had square edges and was wrapped in paper. The body that kept me warm all night was no longer beside me.
Without opening my eyes, I muttered, “You’re up already, and you didn’t make me breakfast?” I loved teasing him when he couldn’t say a word. “You probably can’t even fry eggs. Spoiled little prince.” I sat up just as a granola bar whizzed across the tent and smacked me in the forehead. It landed in my lap with the box.
Inside the small, heavy package was an iPod loaded with music. After I’d opened it, Eros tossed a second package into my lap. It was identical, but had a small card on top. Written in Eros’s script were the words: for Titus.
The little curtain to my sleeping area parted.
“Hey, wait! Are you leaving?” I jumped to my feet and followed him. I realized it was fully light, and yes, it was time for Titus and me to start climbing, but I didn’t want Eros to go.
He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to his chest. He ran his fingers through my hair, kissed my forehead, then held me close. I rested my nose on his warm neck, inhaled his skin and let the memories of our stolen time together swim into my mind. I wished I could stay in his arms and forget about Aphrodite’s contract. Sensing my weakness, Eros stepped back from me, lightly kissed my lips and unzipped the tent door.
“I’ll meet you here in a few days with Aphrodite’s reward.” I forced determination into my voice.
He opened my hand and placed an invisible object into it. Its shape was familiar. Even without seeing it I knew it was the ring from his first finger. I tried it on my thumb and my first finger, but each of my fingers was too narrow. It slipped right off. I needed a chain. Titus wore a chain around his neck.
Unzipping his side of the tent, I found that his sleeping bag had disappeared with him. “Hey, Titus. Wake up, so I can see you.”
“Huh?” He still didn’t appear.
“You veil when you sleep. Did you know that?”
Now he appeared, shirtless with the sleeping bag knotted around him. “No, I didn’t know that.”
I lifted the chain that lay against his neck. “Does this necklace have deep personal meaning?”
“It’s just a chain.”
“Can I borrow it?”
“Sure, why?” He rolled his shoulders grumbling, “I hate sleeping on the ground.”
I opened my hand and showed him the ring. “I can’t see it now, but when he gets far enough away, and unveils himself, it should appear, right?”
Titus nodded and took the ring from my palm. “It’s inscribed.”
“Some sort of hieroglyphics. I don’t know what it says.”
As Titus slipped the ring onto his chain and began to fasten it around my neck, it became visible to my sight. A moment later my satellite phone beeped the reception of a text message.
Painted Blind Page 24
