by James Welsh
Pale Eyes
Copyright 2012 James Welsh
Invocation of the Muse
Calliope, my Muse – I beg of you, please be
my chorus as I flip the pages of my book.
I need a voice that thunders like an avalanche.
I need a voice as violent as swords that are
magnetized by war. I beg you for your words,
tremendous words, because they’re loud enough for each
and every soul to hear. I mean, this whole entire
world is nothing more than some pushing crowd
with splashes of voices, some old crowd where each will speak
and no one hears. I need you, Muse, to make them listen.
The story I’m about to give will need to draw
in every soul because I need some actors else
I’ll fall to ruin. Also, I’ll need all corners
of the world because I’ll need a stage. It is
a play whose scenes will span the length of time. It is
a tale that weighs too much for me to lift alone.
Calliope, I beg you, make me feel that I
have grown. And true, this story is a tragic one –
enough to drown a heart if one isn’t careful. Help
me through these wrenching scenes of death. I never learned
to breathe during funerals, let alone to grieve.
I need my voice clearer than windows, no more brittle
than diamonds. Please, my Muse, just give me sight right now,
because the first step in any story is always the hardest.
Book 1
The moment Alexander of Aeolia was born, he heard his mother’s last words, but he was too young to remember. His father thought that was the reason why Alexander never spoke for the first year of his life. It wasn’t until one night when everything changed, when the father woke up to hear his child’s foreign screams. He rushed out of the crumbling clay house to find his son a short distance away, struggling to get out of a ditch. The father figured that the infant Alexander was trying to crawl towards the mother’s grave, which was near the house. Not only did young Alexander learn to crawl, but he learned that he needed to move if he wanted to bring the world closer.
That is why it is so torturous that no man has ever stood in the first moments of his birth – only horses had that right. No, the only thing that can prop up a man is time, as the months push him along, as the years hold him up and steady him, as the decades build him like a wall, one brick at a time. Only then does the reward come, the pride of walking upright, the gulf between man and all other creatures. And yet so much muscle is needed for those two, wobbly legs. And so much faith is needed for the man swaying in the strong breeze, hoping that he doesn’t topple.
But, just like the man can walk away from the crawling creature, so too does the towering soldier glance down casually at the slouched philosopher. The philosopher may know all of the secrets to life, but the soldier laughs because he can see the thinker’s balding head, his shining crown. And just like the tall look down on the short, so too did Mount Olympus cast shade on those who groveled at its feet. Morning at the base of the mountain came a little later than morning elsewhere. Alexander’s neighbors were foolish, because they were farmers who planted their crops in the shade of the mountain, and so their fields became stunted by the long nights. Even the sun – a glow that bakes the bricks in a home – could never quite melt the snow packed into the cracks of the mountain. People like to think they’re the princes and princesses of the world, but in the eyes of the sunlight, any mountain is royalty that should not be disturbed. Even the brisk winds during the winter months rush around the rock, like the river sloshes around your feet when you wade across.
And so, just like the man looks down on his livestock, and the tall look down on the short, Mount Olympus looked down upon everything. It was a mountain tucked into the land like an unearthed treasure chest. All of the tall men that Alexander knew pledged to be the first to open that ample chest, to be the first to plunder the treasure. But no man, as far as Alexander knew anyway, took on their own challenge. There were even a few who felt guilty for thinking of trying. And because it was forbidden, the people became curious: if the summit of Mount Olympus was where all of the immortals lived, who wouldn’t want to say that they have walked amongst the gods?
It was the worst-kept secret in the world. All of the stories that Alexander grew up with pointed to Olympus as being the palace of the heavens. When the priestesses made their offerings – those slabs of fat sizzling over the fire – they insisted that the winds carried the juicy smells to Olympus. All sounds, all smells, all light, all touch, all taste – all of those sensations were pulled from across the world towards Olympus, as if the world was paying tribute. Alexander heard those stories, and he thought they were almost impossible. After all, when he played at the nearby pond, and he tossed a rock into the center of the waters, the ripples all moved outwards. At Olympus, though, all of the ripples moved inwards. That the world was magnetized towards Olympus was the first symptom that there was something strange about the mountain.
On the melted days during the summer, when the heat had blasted away all of the clouds in the sky, Alexander liked to crane his head upwards, squint his eyes, and find the arrowhead in the mountain. But even with all of the clouds in the sky gone, the summit of Olympus was always swaddled in a sugar of clouds so far above, obscuring the view from all of the people deep below. The perpetual clouds always provoked argument in town during the nights, when there was nothing to do except bicker. Some said that the clouds were protecting the heavenly palace from mortal eyes. Others said that the clouds were protecting people from the gods. After all, wasn’t it true that even an athlete would drop dead at the sight of a powerful immortal? Still others, perhaps the bravest of the townspeople, insisted something else entirely. They jeered and asked, “If we can’t see the summit, then how can we say there are gods up there? Who’s to say they even exist?”
The arguments finally boiled over one hot afternoon, when the young Alexander gathered up his courage like fallen grain and said, “I’m going to climb to the top of Mount Olympus.”
His words ripped the town apart. The reverent begged him not to go, saying, “If you trespass on the palace of the gods, you will make them angry. And we have suffered enough from the droughts this year. Please, don’t add to our misery.” The reverent said this, afraid that young Alexander would climb to the top of the mountain, only to find rock and thin air.
The skeptical encouraged him to go, saying, “If you reach the top of Olympus and find no one but yourself, you will still be the tallest man in the world. Go and show every other breathing creature just how high a man can reach with his arms. It’ll make even the lions bow down before us.” The skeptical said this, afraid that young Alexander would climb to the top of the mountain, only to find himself surrounded by even taller gods.
Alexander’s father – a poor merchant down in the town’s marketplace – advised the eager man. He said that Alexander should listen before he does anything, and do before he says anything. The father had seen too many men boast and not enough accomplish. Alexander listened to his father, and so he listened to the townspeople first, like the student he never was. Still, the words of the fearful did not move him anywhere but up.
Alexander left home late one night. Before he left, he warmed himself by his father’s fire one last time as the nervous merchant gave away his only torch – he gave away the rest of the wine – he gave away the bit of cheese and strips of pork. The merchant weighed his son down with as much love as he could, not thinking that a bird can climb in the air with only a whisper of feathers. Everyone from the vil
lage had gathered at the foot of the mountain, just to watch Alexander climb up Mount Olympus. They all watched as the torchlight grew fainter and fainter up the mountainside, until it suddenly flickered away, like it was the second sunset for the evening.
But when the sun rose in the morning, Alexander did not march in with the morning triumph.
The hours grew long and longer with the father wringing his hands at the market. The hours felt like days until they were days. The days felt like weeks until they were weeks. And still, Alexander had not come back, even though his father was older than ever, graying with waiting for him.
