Chapter 28

A greater fear I do not think there was

What time abandoned Phaeton the reins,

Whereby the heavens, as still appears, were scorched.

Dante, Inferno, 17.106-108

They rode on in silence after their encounter with the unhappy family, until the land rose up before them in a high, rocky bluff. It extended across the valley, north to south, so if they were to proceed further west, they would have to climb it. It looked far too steep for the horses.

“Is there a trail somewhere?” Dante asked, as he unwrapped his face and brushed himself off.

Adam looked north and south, then at the peaks that loomed above the bluff, further to the west. “To the south there is.”

They proceeded to the south a short ways, staying close to the base of the cliff. They stopped when they saw the line of a trail snaking back and forth across the cliff face. The trail was a very steep switchback, and it was so narrow it was barely discernible from where they were. Although it was more navigable than the bare cliff face, it was clearly impassable for horses.

“This?” Dante asked.

Adam dismounted and the others followed. “Yes,” he said. “This is the trail to the next plateau. The one to the final plateau is even steeper, though it’s not as high.”

“I thought you said people live up there?” Dante asked as he got down. “How can this be the only way up?”

“There aren’t many this far up, and they live very simply, if wickedly,” Adam replied. “We must learn simplicity from them, and avoid their wickedness. Take only necessities – water skins and a little food. Eat what you can now. We only need to survive until tonight. We will decide our fate by then, as the people here have decided theirs.”

Dante slung two water skins over his shoulders and filled his pockets with food. He rolled the blanket up into a small bundle with a few other items, like flint and knives. Tearing a piece of bread off with his teeth, he handed the rest of the loaf to Bogdana.

“But you said there were mines up here,” Dante said. “How can they bring their goods down and sell them?”

“They mine for jewels, so they can carry their gains on their own backs,” Adam said. “It would be different if they mined iron or copper – useful, substantial things. But with such small expensive cargo, they don’t even need pack animals to help them in their existence, like normal men would. Just their own intellects and desires are enough to drive them on. And men who are totally impervious to beauty are perfect for plucking such tiny fragments of it from the darkness.”

Bogdana patted the neck of her black horse. “What will happen to the horses?” she asked.

Radovan and Adam were already starting up the trail. “The two from our monastery are trained to return to it. Without us to burden them, they should be there before we reach our goal,” Adam answered. “I suspect the other two will know to follow them. Animals are better about that.”

Bogdana followed the other two up the trail, and Dante fell in line behind her. He looked over his shoulder. The horses were already churning up a cloud of dust to the east, heading back the way they had come. He looked up the trail, at the height they had to scale, and felt fairly sure the animals had a better chance on their journey. The trail was little more than an irregular ledge, slightly wider than a person’s foot. One had to lean toward the cliff face to keep from falling over, or hold on to rocks. Sometimes there were gnarled trees and shrubs that grew there, many of them dead, and their roots and stems offered some handholds.

After toiling up the bluff for some time, they stopped for water. All of them were panting from the exertion. Dante looked down, and the height made him feel sick and dizzy. He’d never been especially afraid of heights, but balconies or frequently-used trails were one thing--those were made by civilized people to minimize a person’s fear. Hanging on to a dead tree root over a plain of ash several miles wide, with ominously described horrors above them and shambling hordes of the dead below them, that was something else entirely. That was a situation to kindle a mind like Dante’s to the most horrible flights of speculation – to thoughts of avalanches, earthquakes, and volcanoes, as well as swooping attacks from giant birds of prey, screeching ghouls tumbling down the slope, or even tree roots coming to life and wrapping around his wrist and neck, then tightening and leaving his strangled body forever on that desolate, cursed mount of slaughter. Dante closed his eyes and breathed deeply. The only sound he heard was the faint whispering of the wind. He looked to Bogdana, and the sparkle in her eyes when she glanced back at him was enough to banish his terrors for now.

They had only gone a short ways after their water break when they again stopped. “Look there,” Adam said as he pointed up. “What are they doing?”

Dante looked to where he indicated. Four birds were circling above them. The wheeling birds spiraled down toward them as they watched. They were not small birds, but they also weren’t big enough to be the kinds one would normally associate with this behavior, like eagles or vultures. If Dante’s fantasy of an aerial attack were coming true, it was not being launched by gigantic, mythological creatures. However, looking down to where his boots overhung the edge of the trail, then past them into the chasm below, Dante thought of how it wouldn’t take a harpy or a sphinx to knock him off this tiny ledge.

The four of them stayed still on the ledge and watched the birds as they descended. The animals made no sound as they came closer. Finally Dante could see that they were owls, as little sense as that made for a group of birds flying in the daytime. Dante thought how owls were the birds of Athena, but also how the Bible declared them unclean, and associated them with defeat, death, and desolation. But whether he took his symbols from Athens or Jerusalem, all such knowledge seemed pretentious and pointless to Dante right then, there on that silent, forlorn cliff. Warning, curse, blessing or prediction – none of those seemed certain, and all seemed possible.

The birds continued their descent, and Dante could see the creatures’ large, unblinking eyes looking at him. With their strange, unnatural bodies, they could even keep their eyes fixed on him throughout their spiraling flight. Their stare was neither chilling nor comforting; it wasn’t even penetrating, as though Dante were being searched or violated. He did feel as though the birds saw everything. It just didn’t bother him or reassure him, because it didn’t seem to matter to these beings what their all-encompassing gaze took in, and therefore it didn’t matter to Dante if they saw every detail of him and went on examining him forever. All-seeing eyes without judgment or approval behind them might as well be made of glass.

As the birds passed below them and tilted their heads to focus on some spot on the valley floor, Dante turned to the pair of eyes that most mattered to him in the world right now.

“Four of them, four of us,” Bogdana said.

“Yes, but we don’t know what that means, and you said just knowing that they mean something was enough for you,” Dante replied.

“Well, perhaps it is enough for me. But I don’t like it. Let’s get out of here. Who knows what else is watching us?”

Dante felt sure, as he always did, that something was watching. But for the first time in his life, he was not sure what it was. Perhaps, as with Bogdana’s earlier evaluation of portents, it did not matter: they knew they were not alone, and perhaps that was enough.