Painted Blind

by Michelle Hansen

With everything loaded, Titus checked our safety ropes and made sure the knots were tight. The first leg of the journey was a gentle slope running along the crevasse. Luckily, we already knew where the drop-off was, because it had drifted over during the storm. An unknowing climber might try to cross the fragile shelf and fall to his death. Our navigation system, however, kept us on a safe path.

  Over three feet of powder had fallen during the storm, and we were forced to use snow shoes. Stuffing my boots into the bindings and tightening them down, I took a few trial steps around camp to make sure I wouldn’t fall on my face in the deep snow. Once I got the hang of the shoes, I hefted the pack onto my shoulders and waited until Titus had done the same.

  Snowshoeing was hard work, but it was easier than sinking deep into the snow with every step. After only a few hundred feet I was breathing hard and my muscles were complaining, but I pushed forward knowing it was only going to get worse. We were on relatively flat ground and once we reached the cliffs, the glaciers would lay below us, and we would be climbing the rocks.

  We broke from the cliffs in less than two hours, just as the sun fully appeared on the eastern horizon. The snow around us was set aflame by the sun’s rays. It nearly blinded us. Titus found our tinted goggles, and we traded snowshoes for crampons. The rocks were icy, and the way before us was steep.

  For much of the morning, we climbed the rocks like icy steps that lead into the sky. The rise seemed gradual, but when I looked over my shoulder, I froze with fear. Realizing I’d stopped, Titus tugged on the rope at my waist and rebuked me. “Don’t look down again!”

  I faced the mountain and kept climbing. I forced myself not to think about the nothingness that lay behind me. I climbed with firm determination until the sun rose high overhead warming my back and lifting my spirits. I was succeeding. It wasn’t that hard. I could do it. With this cheerful attitude, I reached the spot where Titus had stopped.

  He stood at the peak of the section we had just finished climbing, and he gazed across the way before. As I crested the peak, I tugged on his pant leg triumphantly.

  “I made it!” I exclaimed.

  He turned with worried eyes. “Don’t stand up,” he said. He blocked my view as he helped me over the last ledge and sat beside me. “This looks like a good place to stop for lunch.”

  I leaned around him to see what he was hiding. The mountain’s spine lay before us. While I’d envisioned the spine of a horse, a narrow line between two gradual slopes, this was a rocky twelve-to-fourteen-inch path with steep drops on either side. The spine wasn’t like standing on the edge of a cliff; it was like walking a pencil line between two of them. Maybe if I hadn’t been afraid of heights, if it hadn’t been snowy, and if I had been a more experienced climber, the walk across the spine would have been doable. As it was, Aphrodite could not have chosen a more difficult mountain for me if she had picked one double in size. I dropped my face into my hands, the anguish of fear and disappointment crushing all my optimism.

  “I can’t do it,” I cried.

  Titus dropped food packets onto the ground between us. We didn’t bother to heat them while we were climbing. “You can do it. And you will.”

  He didn’t understand. It wasn’t just fear. It was terror that gave me vertigo. I would get dizzy and be unable to keep my balance. I would fall, and I would take him with me. I would kill us both.

  While we ate, Titus tried to soothe me. “The cave is straight ahead. It’s maybe half a mile away. That trail is all that lies between you and finishing this task. It’s an easy grade. Some of it is even downhill. If that trail lay in a valley, you would skip across it in a quarter of an hour.”

  “But it’s not in a valley.”

  “You’ve come halfway across the world. You can’t quit now.”

  “Titus, I can’t do it!”

  Angry, he reached into my open pack and pulled out the sketchbook. He laid it open on my lap, and Eros’s face looked back at me. “Do you want to see him again? Do you ever want to hear him tell you that he loves you?”

  I couldn’t hold back tears. I promised myself I wouldn’t quit, no matter the cost.

  “That trail is no worse than looking into Theron’s eyes and knowing he wants to kill you. It’s no worse than nearly freezing to death in a storm.”

  “If I fall, I’ll take you with me,” I said.

  “You’ll go first, so I can see you. You just look at the trail, and ignore what’s beside it. You focus on walking. Just walking. It isn’t as hard as it seems.” He put his arm around me. “You must at least try.”

  I took a deep breath and thought of my dad, his tireless hard work and his courage to face any task great or small. How hard must it have been for him raise a daughter alone? How much harder must it have been when she turned out to be so beautiful that every man he met wanted her? I wondered if he had spent the last six years walking a trail more terrifying than this one so I would make it safely to adulthood.

  “I can’t carry a pack,” I said. “Leave behind everything we don’t have to have. Put all the essentials into your pack. Tie the rest down here, so we can get them on the way down. Whatever you do, don’t forget the box.”

  In one of the pockets of the pack there was a small satchel for day hikes. I stuffed a few energy bars and a water bottle into it and slung it over my shoulders. Titus wrapped the gear we were leaving behind in a piece of canvas from the extra tent and staked it into the ground. He lifted his pack onto his shoulders and shortened the tether between us.

  “As long as you don’t take me by surprise, I’m strong enough to catch you if you fall. So… well, scream if you lose your balance.”

  “I don’t think that will be a problem.”

  He helped me stand, and I had to close my eyes to stop the spinning in my head. While we stood there, Titus slid a finger down my neck and came up with his chain and Eros’s ring. “He gave you wisdom and safety.” Titus kissed my forehead. “Now take courage and go.”

  The first five steps were the hardest. Leaving the safety of the small plateau and stepping away from Titus’s firm grip brought on a new wave of nausea. It literally felt like I was walking in the air. Of course, there were rocks below to kill me if I fell. I had to find a way to walk the trail without seeing them.

  It is possible to trick the mind and make something three dimensional look two dimensional to your eyes. I’d done it hundreds of times when drawing. Now I forced my mind to see the way before me two dimensionally. The trail became my only focus, and everything around it fell into a plane equal with it. I didn’t look back, and I didn’t wait for Titus. I walked slowly, coaxing my body to put one foot in front of the other.

  My head began to feel thick, and I realized I wasn’t breathing. After that I inhaled as I set my right foot down, and exhaled with the left. I didn’t allow myself to think or feel anything along the way. The warm sunshine and the cold air ceased to exist. The farther I went, the more at ease my steps became until I felt my shoulders relaxing and my gait flowing more naturally. Still, I didn’t allow myself to lose the visual focus of a two-dimensional trail, because without it, I would be helpless and afraid again.

  I walked and walked and then the trail broke off. It ended inches from my feet and fell away. Blinking, I looked ahead. I was only about a hundred yards from the end of the spine. There the ground widened into the area where we would camp. Just above it was the opening to the cave where I would meet Aphrodite’s messenger. I looked down at my feet again. The trail had collapsed leaving a gap about three feet wide.

  “You’ll have to jump it,” a voice said.

  Startled, I looked back and found Titus standing there. He rested a hand on my shoulder. I had walked in lonely silence all across the spine. I had forgotten he was following and that I was wearing a rope which bound me to him.

  “It’s only a few feet, not much wider than the crevasse you jumped the other night. And you’re much stronger today.”

  “I could fall.”

&n
bsp; “You won’t,” he said confidently.

  I looked down and grew woozy, suddenly aware that I was standing on a trail only fifteen inches wide and thousands of feet above flat ground. I felt all my resolve starting to crumble. Tears threatened my eyes again. I bit down hard on my fear and leaped. My right foot landed and kept me moving forward until my left foot landed. I crouched to the ground to keep from falling off the edge.

  “Perfectly done,” Titus praised. He took a step back and leaped. His foot landed almost exactly where mine had, but as it did the rock groaned and crumbled. He landed his second foot, and there the trail fell away also. Fear shot through his eyes, and I screamed.

  I straddled the trail and dug my knees into the rock knowing he would pull me off the cliff when he fell.

  Titus threw his body forward as his legs fell from underneath him. I reached out and caught his hand, only to have his glove come off in my fingers. Then he slid. The momentum of the collapse and weight of the pack pulled him down. I braced myself for his weight, but it didn’t come.

  Shaking, I inched forward, afraid I would further collapse the trail if I went too far. The rope had fallen to the side of the trail. I looked down and found him hanging by one bare hand, trying hard to reach for a foothold.

  “Pull!” he yelled.

  I pulled. I took up all the slack of the rope and pulled as hard as my arms could. Then I wrapped the rope around my body, leaned back and pulled harder. Below me he grunted, and a second hand appeared on the ledge. He pulled himself around the side of the ledge and climbed the rocks until he surfaced on the trail between me and the cave.

  Panting, he wrapped both arms around me and rested his face in my hair until he gathered his composure. “Good thing you pulled off my glove,” he said finally. “Let’s keep moving.” He probably hoped I wouldn’t notice that his hands were shaking, and there was a slight glisten to his eyes.

  I managed to stand and follow him. It was harder now that the mountain had tried to kill us again. The trail widened slightly, so I didn’t have to watch my feet every step. Instead I watched Titus’s back as he navigated the rest of the spine. When we reached the end of the trail, the ground spread out and flattened into a long, narrow dale which bowed before the cave. Along each side were waist-high stones that looked too symmetrical to have occurred naturally. Titus surveyed this warily.

  “We should just camp in the cave tonight,” I said. “Might as well use the shelter.”

  “Maybe,” he replied, dumping his pack on the ground. He looked mostly recovered from his fall, but he was stepping lightly wherever he walked.

  I unclipped from the tether and moved toward the cave.

  “No, Psyche, wait!”

  Because he ran after me, I jogged ahead. I ran a very slow fifty-meter dash and crested the rise to the mouth of the cave only moments before Titus caught me. I pulled in a deep breath and held it. Running at this altitude was an inch short of downright stupid.

  The cave was about fifteen feet deep and equally wide with a peaked ceiling at least double the breadth. At the back was a solid stone wall. There were small hollows in the cliff walls as they rose, but other than that, the entire cave was visible, and it was empty.

  I faced Titus and raised my arms in triumph. “I made it with seventeen hours to spare!”

  “I knew you could.” He smiled as he approached and was about to hug me until he looked over my shoulder, and his immortal eyes saw something that was veiled from mine. His expression fell. He grabbed my arm, pulled me away from the cave’s mouth and literally dragged me all the way back to where his pack lay on the ground. “No,” he murmured to himself, “it can’t be. I didn’t want to believe it.”

  “Titus, what did you see?”

  “We can’t camp up there. We must stay as far from the cave as possible.” He dug through his pockets with shaking hands until he found the satellite phone and used the speed dial to make a call. He paced as he waited, growing more agitated with every step. Finally, he barked into the voice mail, “Where are you? We’ve arrived, and it’s exactly what you feared.” With his back to me, he dropped his face into his hands.

  “Titus?”

  He turned around with a forced calm. “We need to pitch the tent and get you inside. I want you out of sight.”

  I didn’t move. I wasn’t going to do anything until he told me what was in that cave. My voice was stern and determined this time. “I command you to tell me the truth. What did you see?”

  He didn’t hide the sadness in his voice. “A portal,” he answered, “into the Underworld.”

  Chapter 26

  We camped in the center of the valley as far from the cave as possible. We didn’t know for sure how much of the valley lay on solid ground and how much might be glacial ice. In silence we pitched our tent.

  Titus refused to say more until he spoke with Eros, and while I had hundreds of questions, it was pointless to ask them. With the tent standing, we climbed inside. I unrolled both sleeping bags, which seemed futile. I doubted either of us would sleep tonight.

  Titus looked too sick to move, until I tried to go outside and get ice for our pot. Then he jumped to his feet and told me to stay put until he returned. I unpacked MREs with little appetite. I wanted to know what lay ahead, but I was afraid that knowing might be worse.

  While Titus was outside, the phone rang. The caller ID blinked that it was Eros calling. I pressed the send button and quickly said, “Don’t speak. He’s outside. Just wait.”

  I unzipped the tent and found Titus already coming toward the door. “It’s him,” I said.

  He took the phone from my hand and walked away so I couldn’t hear him as he explained what he’d seen. He shook his head, and I could tell by his stance that he was pleading with Eros.

  I ducked back inside, where I warmed our frozen water bottles in the cooking pot before heating the meals. While I waited, I sketched the spine the way I had forced myself to see it all afternoon. The two dimensions took depth on the page, so that when I held it away from me, I saw the scene that had inspired so much fear—the steep drops and the jagged rocks on either side of the narrow path. Glad to have the image out of my head, I sketched the valley with the cave above. I was just getting to the formidable stone perimeter when Titus appeared.

  He didn’t look at me as he spoke. “Your survival will depend on your ability to resist temptation of every kind and follow my instructions exactly. One small mistake, and you will belong to Persephone. You’ll be lost forever.”

  “I’ll die.” I’d accepted death as a very real possibility, so it didn’t sound so terrible now.

  “No.” Titus’s eyes grew moist. “The darklings are immortal. They won’t kill you. They’ll enslave you.”

  “I thought the Underworld was the Land of the Dead?”

  “Your mythology joined our Underworld to your version of Hell. It is a place of eternal suffering inasmuch as we live an eternity compared to you. But it is not a final resting place for souls. It’s a prison. Hades and his wife, Persephone, are guardians of the prison, but they’ve become corrupted. They are as wicked and despicable as those whom they punish. The Underworld is filled with suffering beyond imagination. A mere glimpse is enough to give you nightmares, and you will have to travel all the way into the depths of Hades to meet Persephone at the palace.”

  “How will I know the way?”

  “She will send a guide, but you cannot trust him. He’ll be one of her subjects. It’s clear that the whole purpose of this task is to get rid of you. Aphrodite doesn’t expect you to escape Hades.”

  “What about Eros?”

  “He said this is why he sent me with you instead of Aeas. I’ve been to the palace in Hades. I know what will befall you there. I know what you will see. I’m to prepare you as best I can and give you the knowledge you need to escape their snares.”

  I tossed him a water bottle and a warm meal. “It’s a good thing we have all night. You can start by explaining to me who
is in the Underworld and how they got there.”

  Titus took a long drink before explaining, “When my parents were children, Olympus was a very different place. Robbers roamed the land in bands. They plundered the villages, raped women, murdered people and burned their fields. Then they would retreat into the mountains where they hid and built underground strongholds. No kingdom was immune from their violence. That is when the Council was first formed. All the kingdoms banded together and declared war upon the bandits. They tried to go into the mountains and fight them, but the robbers were well hidden, and each time the armies attacked, they suffered great losses without prevailing.

  “This went on for several annum. Whenever the armies would retreat, the bandits would fall upon a poorly guarded village, kill every person in it and burn it to the ground after stealing the stores of grain and gold.

  “It was Zeus who devised the plan for conquering the robbers. The kingdoms brought every soldier they could find and surrounded the mountains. They spent all winter piling wood and hay around the foot of the mountain range, a circular barricade to cage the robbers. The bandits thought they were merely trying to hedge them in and believed they had supplies to outlast the soldiers. When summer came, Zeus ordered the captains to set fire to the barricade and burn the entire mountain range. It would be the equivalent of the U.S. burning all the mountains between California and Colorado. He ordered legions of soldiers into the air, and they showered burning arrows down upon the rugged land.”

  Titus paused for a moment and downed half his meal, then continued, “Olympus lost sixty percent of its timber in that fire. The entire face of the continent was covered with haze from the smoke. When the robbers realized there was no place for retreat, they gathered themselves into one body, fought their way through the fire and attacked the nearest kingdom. They were greatly outnumbered, but the battle lasted two weeks before their leader was slain and they finally surrendered. The ones who survived were cast into the depths of the earth as punishment for their crimes. Hades was appointed ruler of the dominion. Since that time, all criminals from Olympus have been sent to Hades for punishment.