The other three looked at Adam.
“Where will you be?” Dante asked. “We’ve fought off the last of them. We can all leave safely. And why will the snow come crashing down? I don’t understand.” He looked up at the snow above them more nervously than before.
“I will return to the valley,” Adam said. “I fear some of these wicked men may try to follow us and find the way out of here. It must remain a secret the evil do not know, do not believe in. It gives us some power over them. The same way not believing in evil gives it so much of its power. God knows, they might try to lead the dead out of the valley if they knew this path, and befoul other lands with their plagues. Besides, one of us should return to save those children we saw before. It is my job to take them back to the monastery and raise them to fight this evil, but first I had to make sure you were safe. So you all go on ahead. The snows are very unstable this time of year. A loud shout and they will come tumbling down and obliterate the path.”
“I will go with you,” Radovan said.
Adam shook his head. “You are as brave as ever, my son, but you do not need to do this. I will sneak past the men in Lord Ahriman’s camp more easily if I’m alone, and I can take the children by myself.”
“This land is my home,” Radovan replied. He gestured to Dante. “I think you can say how difficult it is to live far from home, in strange lands. No matter how beautiful they are, they have made you sad and sick, haven’t they?”
Dante nodded. “Yes, they have, every day.”
“Then I will return with you, sir, to the valley. I think you may need some help, for Myra will need someone to lean on as she goes down the mountain.”
Adam looked between Radovan and Dante. “I see you two are alike in some ways, after all.” He smiled and shook his head. “Well, love for virtuous women is not a very bad thing to have in common, I suppose. Let us go before the darkness overtakes us completely. Farewell, my friends.”
Adam pulled Bogdana and Dante to his small but reliable chest. Dante had not felt such a paternal embrace in many years. He was glad the freezing cold had already made his eyes wet with tears, to save himself the embarrassment of his weeping being noticed. Radovan clasped the two separately and more briefly, but Dante felt reassured by his stoic strength, and again gladdened by his virtue and optimism. Having made their farewells there on the barren mountainside, Dante led Bogdana to the rock Adam had pointed out. They turned back to see the other two men waving to them.
“You will always have hope, you who have left this valley!” Adam shouted. As he did, Dante could hear rumbling and creaking all around them. “Go forward! The banners of the King advance!”
The sounds coming from the snow did not crescendo gradually, but all at once turned into a roaring explosion. Bogdana gave a squeal and Dante pulled her close as a thundering, rushing blast of snow engulfed them. Dante pressed his stinging nose and eyes into her hair until the sound stopped. When he opened his eyes, he could only see white for several minutes more, but gradually the world became visible. The trail to the valley was gone, a mountain of snow in its place. If Adam and Radovan were still back there, he could not see them.
As Adam had described, the trail ahead was clear, leading down through a crevasse free of snow. Dante pulled Bogdana along in the twilight and, in a short while, they had clambered far down the other side of the mountain. As they went, the temperature rose rapidly, turning from winter to spring in just a short while. Soon the terrain also transformed, from a rocky waste to a lush meadow. In the fading light Dante even saw flowers in the tall grass, and heard crickets calling to their mates. Looking at Bogdana, he risked a small laugh at this new landscape, though he feared a fragile spell might be broken and everything around them would erupt in ash and flame. But as they made their way down the mountain, the fields around them now lit by the moon, Dante wondered if it had really been the last three days that were under a spell. It now seemed like an evil dream from which he had suddenly been summoned, like a fever patient finally breaking through the wall of suffering and blindness that had been wracking his body and smothering his mind.
They walked more slowly. The lights of a town were ahead of them, down a gentle slope that they now traversed quite easily. Dante took the jewel-encrusted stone from his pocket and held it out to Bogdana. She took it, turning it over in the moonlight. Its enormous worth could be seen even in the night. She looked sideways at him and smiled. The curl of her lips and the sparkle in her eye were mischievous.
“For me?” she said. “You stole something for me? Is that a proper gift?”
He pretended to look shocked or hurt. “It was on the ground. That’s not stealing!”
She shook her head. “You are always so exact and precise, such a stickler.” She put the stone in her pocket and slipped her hand into Dante’s.
“Well, you have made me less so,” he said. “But I think you’ll need the jewels, to help you make your way in whatever land this is we’ve come to.”
He felt her hand tighten on his. “And where will you be, Dante?”
“I’ll stay near till you’re settled, of course, until after your baby is born. But eventually I will go back to Italy. Even if I never return to Florence, I belong in my own country. More importantly, I have a new purpose now. I have something to do that’s worthy of you. Something that just has worth, period. It will even have eternal worth. I will tell the world of what we four went through. Hundreds of years from now, people will know of your virtue, and Adam’s wisdom, and Radovan’s courage. All the misery you’ve been through will be for something – for goodness, truth, and beauty. And those will last forever, while the pain is just a memory.”
“You would leave me because you have to go off to make me immortal?” Her mouth, and especially her eyes, continued to look mischievous. “Perhaps you’re less of a stickler, but you are still a very strange man, I think.”
“Perhaps I am. But maybe that is not such a bad thing?”
Bogdana turned toward him and took both his hands in hers. She locked her gaze on his. “No. I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all.”
Bogdana tilted her head back to look up at the sky. Dante pulled his focus from her exquisite neck and face, and followed her gaze up to the myriad of tiny lights above them.
“It’s good the stars are out,” she said.
“Yes, it is,” Dante agreed. “It is good there are so many beautiful things in the universe. It is especially good that some of them are much closer than the stars.”
In the dark, it was impossible to tell if she blushed at this. Of course, it wouldn’t have changed anything, whether she did or not, for Dante would’ve approved her modesty if she did blush, and admired her confidence if she didn’t. He could see, however, that she smiled, though they both kept their attention fixed on the stars. “And when you tell of others’ virtues, Dante, what will you say of yourself?”
“Just that I’m very observant. And grateful.”
She laughed outright at this. It was the first time Dante had ever heard her really laugh -- a full and healthy outpouring of joy, with a ringing, musical quality to it. He imagined that in the empyrean, the blessed laughed like this as they embraced one another – those souls like Beatrice who were beyond pain or jealousy, loss or envy.
“Perhaps you could give yourself a little more credit?” Bogdana said as her laughter subsided. “Do it for me, at least. One who is worthy of me should be more than just observant and grateful, don’t you think?”
“All right, for you.”
Their gaze met again. When her lips touched his, Dante knew a tiny bit more of the beauty his words could never attain.
Table of Contents
Valley of the Dead (The Truth Behind Dante's Inferno)
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Valley of the Dead (The Truth Behind Dante's Inferno) Page 25