Shimmering Splendor

by Roberta Gellis

  Something shrieked in the dark, and Psyche bolted upright, her heart pounding. Nothing, she told herself. It was nothing dangerous to her, only some small creature taken by an owl or a fox, but she pushed the branches farther into the flames so that they would leap higher, and it was a long time before her breathing steadied and she leaned back against the tree again. Tears gathered in her eyes; she had enjoyed the nights she had spent in the woods with Teras. Then the dark beyond what little light the fire gave had been comforting, almost an extension of the dark in which Teras wrapped her with his warm embrace. She pulled her cloak more tightly around her. She had been warm enough while she walked and worked, buoyed up by the thought that she was getting closer to Teras, but now she was cold…and lonely.

  Later, a moaning that moved around her brought her scrambling to her knees to throw more wood on the fire again, although she knew it had to be an owl disturbed by her presence. Still she shuddered and wept a little, wishing she had brought her book of spells and some magical herbs so she could cast a warding around her camp. Then she shivered again. She had recovered from using her magic to gather and separate the seeds, but she doubted she was strong enough to cast any spell that would last the night. It was better to be fearful and alert than to believe she was protected and fall victim to some unexpected danger. Again she leaned back against the tree.

  Once more she was brought upright, but this time by a sense of falling as she slipped sideways. Despite her fear, she had fallen asleep. The fact that nothing had harmed her even though the fire was no more than embers gave her the confidence, once she had renewed the cheerful flames, to spread her blanket and lie down. She thought the feeling of helplessness brought on by being prone, intensified by the ache of longing for the times when she lay safe and warm in Teras’s arms, would keep her awake, but it did not take long for the tension to drain from her tired body and for her eyes to close.

  A hysterical screeching brought her abruptly awake and in another moment made her laugh. It was morning—a bright, sunny morning. Several birds now perched in the branches of the tree had taken strong exception to the swaying of the food bag below them. She did not laugh for long, however. Her first movement brought a groan. She was so stiff and sore that she would not have moved again had not an urgent need to relieve herself forced her upright.

  “Damn you, Teras,” she muttered through set teeth, “I’ll take this out of your hide for being such an idiot.”

  Her fury at the suffering she was enduring just because the man would not believe she loved him lent her strength to stagger down to the stream. Once there, she washed her hands and face, wincing and shivering with cold. The icy water brought her wide awake and the activity warmed her muscles, reducing her pain just enough to allow her to become aware of violent pangs of hunger, which drove her to climb up the bank—cursing Teras’s idiocy with every step—and peer into the ashes of her fire. Her muttering ceased when she discovered a few live coals and the addition of some hastily gathered dry leaves and twigs brought the fire to life again. Fortunately, there was wood enough to build it up and to cook together in the little pan a handful of flour and chopped up dried meat.

  Her execrations of Teras were renewed when, her breakfast eaten, she rolled up her blanket and tried to pull on her pack. The pressure of the straps on the bruises they had made the day before was excruciating. Biting her lips in pain, Psyche unrolled the blanket and folded it so she could lay it across her shoulders as a pad. After she had loosened the straps to fit over the blanket, she was able to bear the pack.

  Because she was so late starting, Psyche did not stop to eat her noon meal, although she did dig up some lily bulbs which she peeled and ate while she walked. As her discomfort diminished with the warmth of exercise, she grew more cheerful and stepped out more strongly. She was reasonably sure she had actually traveled at least as far as she had come the previous day and was looking forward to accomplishing an equal distance before having to stop when the increasing brightness of the forest ahead of her made her proceed with caution. Thus, she was in no danger when she came to the edge of the great ravine that broke the side of the mountain.

  Across the huge rift, Psyche could see that the forested land sloped downward. The valley beyond was hidden, but she knew that if she followed that valley west she would find Olympus. Only there was no way across the ravine.

  Psyche lay down on her belly and inched her way forward until she could look down. The face of the rock was broken here and there, small trees clung to cracks, and bushes had rooted in smaller clefts, but Psyche knew she could not climb down. Worse, the last bit that bordered the river was sheer rock, worn smooth by the rushing water. The other side was no better. It was impossible. Even if she succeeded in getting down without falling, she would have to cross the strong current and somehow find handholds and footholds in the sheer rock of the other side. Slowly Psyche sat up and closed her eyes.

  Was it possible that she had been wrong to hope, that there was no way to reach Olympus? Tears of weariness and hopelessness oozed under her lids and down her cheeks. She slipped her pack from her sore shoulders and just sat, her mind essentially empty. Then she leaned over, resting on the pack, whispering, “I tried, Teras, I…”

  His name coupled with the idea of reaching him brought back a memory of the first time she had planned to leave the lodge to get to Olympus on her own. That time Teras had returned before she could make the effort and he had been furious, thinking she was trying to escape him. Psyche opened her eyes and sat up. He had not sneered and said she could not escape; he had asked to where she intended to go! And when she had told him she had intended to go to Olympus, he had not said it was impossible.

  Psyche looked left, then right. To the left, eventually, she would reach the sea and one way or another find a way to cross to the southern headland, but she had no idea how far inland she was, and Olympus should be even more inland. She crept forward again to look down at the rushing water and saw that right was upriver. Usually, the closer to its source, the smaller a river became—usually, except that she had no idea how far away the source was and it might be so far that the river increased in size before it began to decrease. Still, between one uncertainty and another, it seemed reasonable to Psyche to go west, toward Olympus rather than away from it, while seeking a place to cross.

  The shock of thinking her effort all in vain, although it had not lasted long, had tired her more than all the walking she had done. Psyche simply could not bear to lift the pack to her back again. Nonetheless, it would be stupid to stop where she was, without water or a decent sized tree, so she got to her feet and plodded westward, sometimes lifting the pack and clutching it in her arms and sometimes dragging it behind her. Both methods of bringing it along were so awkward that she had stopped to replace it on her back when she heard a sharper tinkling above the faint, dull, rushing sound of the water below. Careful listening brought her to the very edge of the ravine where, not a foot below, a spring burst out of the rock and made a bright, slender waterfall.

  Leaving her pack to mark the place, she went back from cliff edge seeking a suitable tree. In this she was unsuccessful, but she soon laughed at herself. She did not need a thick trunk to guard her back. Nothing could come at her up the ravine without making so much noise that she would wake. She began to gather supplies for her fire, including three sturdy branches that she could tie together into a tripod from which to hang her pack.

  The advantage to camping with no more than a couple of slender saplings between her and the edge, Psyche thought, as she lay wrapped in cloak and blanket watching the fire with heavy eyes, was that it was quieter. The ravine was too narrow, probably, for birds of prey to hunt with comfort, and no fox would be foolish enough to attempt the climb. Something about the thought seemed significant in a pleasant way, but Psyche slipped into sleep before she was able to come to grips with the idea.

  She woke, the explanation clear in her mind, smiling with relief. She was certain the s
plit in the mountain had not been too narrow for a bird of prey to dive into where she had first come upon it. Lifting her head with caution, for she remembered how sore she had been the previous morning, she looked across. It was narrower. Psyche smiled more broadly. She had been more cautious about moving, but with less reason; her muscles ached and the bruises on her shoulders hurt, but both less than they had the day before.

  Partly because she found movement easier, partly because she was so eager to discover whether the ravine had been cut by the river, which went all the way back to the northern range of mountains, or was merely a split in the mountain that had filled with water from many springs like the one springing from the rock below her, Psyche was out of camp very early. She walked strongly, trying not to look over at the other side of the ravine, because she knew if she did she would be constantly elated and depressed by accidental widenings and narrowings.

  By noon she was starving, and she sat down to eat the last of her bread, which was rather stale, and some gleanings of bulbs and tiny, still curled grape leaves. By evening she was glancing constantly across the divide, wondering whether if it widened again, she could come back to this place and try to jump across. She dared not try in the deceptive half-light, but she could not bear to stop and camp, even though she was so tired that her knees shook, because the roar of the river below was louder and angrier. The sound made her hope there was an even narrower place ahead, and she wanted to be there to cross when she was freshest and strongest.

  She struggled on and on, after a while needing to pretend it was not too dark to see, until even her fatigue could not disguise the fact that the roar of the water was fading. Then she stopped, knowing her hope had not been fulfilled. The river must be quiet, she thought dully, because the gap had broadened enough to allow it to flow silently. She was bewildered with exhaustion, wondering why she had pushed herself so hard. She must find a place to camp, she told herself, wanting only to sink down and weep. Setting her jaw, she took one more uncertain step—and found no footing.

  Off balance, pressed forward by the weight of the pack on her back, and with muscles too fatigued to respond quickly, Psyche uttered a shriek of terror and fell. Her hands clutched wildly and found only grass, which tore free. She shrieked again but realized even as she cried out that she was not dropping into the depths of the ravine. She rolled only until the heavy pack braced her, and she lay, trembling and sobbing, clutching at some tough tussocks of grass until she could find the strength and courage to feel about her, first with her feet and then with her hands. Nowhere did the solid earth drop away to nothing.

  When the shock of terror passed, she realized she had only tripped into a hollow in the ground and that she was safe where she was. Faint with relief, she managed to slide the pack straps off her shoulders and pull the blanket around her. Fleetingly, she was aware of hunger and thirst. She thought of a fire, but with a hazy indifference. She had no interest in trying to struggle to her feet and find firewood in the dark. Nothing was more important than rest. Psyche’s eyes closed.

  Thirst and the warmth and brightness of the sun on her face woke Psyche in the morning. She looked up, not into a canopy of branches and newly budded leaves, but into a clear, bright sky. Turning her head from side to side brought little change in view. She sat up to look around more carefully. Clearly she was in an alpine meadow, which extended some distance back the way she had come, from the east. Slowly Psyche shook her head at the memory of her foolishness. It was only because she had come out of the woods that she had not walked head on into a tree—or into the ravine.

  She frowned as the word came to mind and got to her feet to see better. To the south the meadow sloped downward and ended in a border of trees, but she could see no ravine. And the roar of the water was diminished to a faint muttering. She must have wandered far from the edge, she thought, and then shook her head again. How could that be possible? She had been almost blind, going forward only because she was following the sound of the river.

  Psyche turned around slowly, listening carefully, and then turned again. She was sure the noise of rushing water still came from the east. She might have been so dulled with fatigue that she had not noticed the sound slowly diminishing, but the last time she remembered hearing it, the roaring was so loud it had nearly deafened her.

  She put the puzzle away while she relieved herself and ate some cheese, but her mouth was so dry that she could not completely satisfy her hunger. The puzzle of the sound of the river was more compelling than hunger, partly because the sound meant water and she was desperately thirsty. Bundling everything except the pot she would need for water into her pack, she set out to retrace her steps to the place of the loudest roaring in the hopes that would also be the narrowest passage across.

  Close to the edge of the meadow, she found what she sought, and she was so astonished that she forgot everything else. Beyond a rise of ground, which apparently had blocked the bellowing of the struggling water, she found both ravine and river. Both began together where a torrent leapt through a huge hole in the wall of rock that ended in the ravine and rushed away down the track it had carved for itself. Beyond the source, the land was whole. She now had no need to cross the ravine.

  Had she wandered too close and fallen… Psyche first shuddered with fear and then smiled. Surely the Mother was caring for her, guiding her; surely She wanted her to find Olympus. Psyche glanced at the furious fall of water and shrugged. She was not going to attempt to dip a potful out of that cataract; she would find a spring or a stream elsewhere.

  Chapter 18

  Four days later Psyche looked out from a patch of woods across tilled fields, already carpeted with sturdy shoots of grain, stretching in every direction. Beyond the fields was a road, and in the far distance she was sure she could see a thread of smoke rising into the sky. She had been aware for the past two days that she was approaching inhabited land. The meadows she passed had shown clear signs that they had been grazed over in the past. That was an advantage; at this season they were alive with young hares and she had eaten well.

  A second advantage had been to give her time to think about what she should do when she met someone. Her first instinct had been to ask for directions to the city, but then she realized that would be a terrible error. If she met a stupid peasant who knew only that strangers were to be killed at once, she might never get to say she was coming at Aphrodite’s order. It would be best, she decided, to be as near the gates as possible and walk right in as if she knew where she were going. Once inside the city, she could ask directions to Aphrodite’s house, saying she was a servant of…of Athena—no, that would not do, Athena would not be likely to send messages to Aphrodite. One of the male Olympians.

  It was fortunate she had made the decision, for in the afternoon of the previous day she had had to make an instant choice of being discovered or taking to a tree to avoid notice by a swineherd and his charges. Psyche had approached each meadow cautiously, fearful of shepherd or kineherd and the herd dogs, but she had not expected swine in the woods at this season. She had barely escaped and did so only because, though swine were fierce and dangerous, they were not hunters. They would not cluster around the base of the tree yelping and looking up, as shepherd dogs would. Since they did not consider her a danger, they had passed, indifferent, and had not called the swineherd’s attention to her.

  The encounter had provided another advantage. The swine had left tracks and rooted up places, and since they were going in what she believed was the right direction, they provided a better guide than judging by the sun and other signs. And they had proven a reliable guide, Psyche thought, watching the fields and the road. Olympus must be ahead, along that road. The question now was, how far ahead? Certainly it was not in sight, and if she were caught wandering in the fields or on the road far from the city, the excuse she had planned to give might not be accepted.

  She would have to travel at night until she saw the walls, Psyche decided. Then she would have to find
a place to hide for the rest of the night so that she could approach and possibly enter the gate with the farmers and tradesmen who arrived every morning. She slipped off her pack, which was much lighter now, and took out some strips of hare, killed in the morning and roasted the night before after she was certain the swineherd was far beyond the light of her fire and the smell of her cooking.

  Naturally, there had been nothing to glean after the passage of the swine. She chewed the meat slowly, and took out and then stored away again the last of her cheese. Although birds and hares might be plentiful in the fields, she dared not hunt them in daylight and doubted her ability after dark. Perhaps there would be lily bulbs by the side of the road; they grew there in Iolkas, so perhaps they would in Olympus. If not, she would have to go hungry. It would do her no harm to fast for a day. Water? Her eyes lifted to the thread of smoke in the distance. Where there was a house there would be a stream or a well. She would not go thirsty. And she might reach Olympus this very night.

  Psyche not only reached Olympus but walked right into the heart of the city without realizing it. Having managed to sleep a few hours in the afternoon, despite her rising excitement and fear that Aphrodite would turn her away, she set out at dusk. There were no people in the fields or on the road, and she needed some light to pick her way through the growing crop so as not to leave a clear trail of crushed plants.

  There had still been a glimmer of light when she reached the road, and she hesitated, fearful of being seen. After a moment she decided to walk on, thinking it would be more dangerous to appear furtive by trying to hide. However, she met no one and continued more boldly as night deepened. The moon rose in time for her to notice a small, placid pool not far from the road. There she stopped to rest and drink her fill. She had been trembling with nervousness before she reached that place, but found herself calmed by the aura of peace. As her stomach stopped fluttering, Psyche realized she was hungry, and she took out and ate her last piece of cheese. She was certain now there was no need to hoard food. The place was not wild, but a carefully tended shrine.