Painted Blind Part 30

It may have been cowardice that drove me to betray Eros, but it wouldn't keep me from seeing him again. Whatever waited for me in the cave, I was going to face it and finish the task.

While the sun s.h.i.+ned, it was cold. When it turned overcast, it got much colder. Bitter wind threw shards of snow and ice into our faces. Dark clouds hung on the peaks to the north.

"We have to move faster if we're going to make it before that storm hits," t.i.tus told me, but I was moving as fast as I could with the wind beating me back at every step.

I cursed the mountain, Aphrodite and her contract a thousand times over. We reached another ice face, double the size of the last. Exhausted, I couldn't help crumpling to the ground.

"Don't give up. We only have to get over this face and around the break in the creva.s.se, then we can camp anywhere along the other side." He forced a smile. "Think of warm food and a sleeping bag." t.i.tus was playing tough, but he was cold, too. He had trouble fastening his harness, and he beat his gloved hand against his leg before trying to sink the first screw into the face.

I shook my head to flick ice off my face. "The MREs are probably frozen." I was harnessed, too; and as he clipped off to the first screw, I became his safety net, my weight and strength the only things able to catch him if he slipped. He had tied a loop in the end of the rope, and I wrapped it around my b.u.m, which I figured was the heaviest part of me.

Three-fourths of the way up the face, t.i.tus did slip and slid three feet before the rope tightened and nearly jerked me off my feet. I sat against it and resisted as best I could. He gathered his balance again and kept climbing with the wind beating at his back. I adjusted the rope to keep it taut, then ducked my head against the coming storm.

"Your turn," he shouted down at me.

I raised my head to see him kneeling at the edge above.

"I've got you clipped off up here, and I'm tied to you, so you won't fall." He instructed me on how to clip off to the bolts as I climbed and then unclip from the lower one. Aside from that, I had to climb it the same way we climbed the last face-with axes for handholds and toes for footholds.

Any experienced climber would have rebuked us. We didn't really know what we were doing, and we were on a dangerous mountain. We had all the right equipment, but we were learning as we went.

The footholds still gave me trouble, but I worked hard to get a solid dig into the ice before pulling up on the ax with my arms. Still, it took me three times as long to climb the face as it took t.i.tus. With two feet left, my arms felt so weak, I was afraid they would give out and drop me. I dug my right foot hard into the ice and managed to get my arms and shoulders over the ledge. "Help me," I moaned.

t.i.tus grabbed my arm, dug his crampons into the ice and pushed back with his legs. He pulled me over the ledge right into his lap. Instead of scrambling up quickly, like I thought he would, he lay there gasping for breath. "I'm beat," he confessed as the wind blew over our nearly frozen bodies.

It was just a short hike to the crossing. We could see the chasm growing narrower to our right. "Race you to the other side." I said.

"You'll lose," he wheezed.

I rolled to my feet and started to push into the wind, but I was stopped by the harness. t.i.tus was still on the ground chuckling. The rope that tethered us together was bolted into the ice so we created a pulley. He pulled the bolt out and unclipped it, but kept hold of the rope, so I couldn't take off without him. Finally, he rolled to his feet and said, "Go!"

We were too exhausted to run hard. All I could manage was a weak jog, and with a few long strides, t.i.tus pa.s.sed me and headed toward the creva.s.se. He stumbled along the edge for five or six steps, then leaped across. "t.i.tus!" I screamed.

Safely on the other side, he grinned. "It's narrow enough here. Jump it." He tugged on the rope attached to my waist. "I've got you."

On an ordinary day jumping the gap in the ice might not have seemed like a monumental task, but my head was thick from lack of oxygen, my body completely tapped out, and I was carrying a thirty-pound pack. I wanted rest more than anything else, and it lay on the other side of the glacier. With a quick inspection of the distance, I drew back, took a running start and leaped across. As soon as I landed, I doubled over panting. "No problem," I wheezed. "Let's find a place to camp."

We ended up hiking another half hour before finding a place sheltered enough from the coming storm. By the time we shrugged off our packs and dug out the tents, the wind was whipping relentlessly. t.i.tus used the ax to drive the stakes of the first tent while I put together the cross supports, which threatened to blow away before I could get them secured. Snow and hail pounded down on us. With another ax, I secured the tie-downs, barely able to see the stakes as I struck them. t.i.tus was about to unpack the second tent, but I stopped him. "Just get inside before we both freeze."

We kicked off as much snow as we could, then ducked inside boots and all. It was a tight squeeze, the two of us and all our gear inside the tiny tent, but I didn't care. Neither of us moved to unpack our sleeping bags or food.

"When I can feel my fingers again, I'll find some hand warmers," t.i.tus said. His teeth chattered, and his lips were a shade of purple.

I braved the cold for moment to pull off one glove, check my watch, and stick my hand inside my coat. "The watch says it's two degrees."

"Without the wind chill," he added. The hair hanging out of his cap was cluttered with ice. We had only an hour of daylight left, then it would get even colder.

"Okay," I said finally. "Haul your pack over here. I think I can unzip it now and find what we need." First I found a hand warmer and broke it against my leg before dropping it between t.i.tus's shaking hands. Then I dug out our battery-operated cooking pot and a non-flammable heat cell. We discovered that all our water bottles were frozen. "What we need is a nice chunk of ice," I said regretfully.

"I'll get it," t.i.tus replied. He pulled his gloves back on and braved the storm again. While he was gone, I found the sleeping bags, some MRE packets and hot chocolate powder.

t.i.tus unzipped the tent door and handed in a chunk of ice just large enough to fill our pot, then shook himself off as he came inside. "I put two more outside the door." He zipped the tent closed with a s.h.i.+ver. "It does feel a little warmer in here."

The heat cell would only last a few hours. After that, we had our sleeping bags to keep us warm and another cell to help us thaw in the morning. With some warm food and hot chocolate in us we were finally able to slip off our boots, coats and snow pants and climb into the sleeping bags.

The sleeping bags were rated to fifty degrees below zero, but I still felt cold. There was no way I was parting with my jeans or sweats.h.i.+rt, despite the fact that I had long underwear underneath. I pulled the top of the sleeping bag over my head and sat up, like a caterpillar in a giant coc.o.o.n.

t.i.tus stacked our packs atop one another and rested against them with his legs in his sleeping bag and his hands wrapped around a cup of rapidly cooling hot chocolate.

"Can I sketch you?" I asked.

"You draw?"

"Not very well, but I enjoy it. I have to warn you, though. Portraits aren't my strong suit."

"Go ahead," he answered. "It's not like I want to move anytime soon."

I opened my sketchbook to a clean page. My fingers were half-frozen, and holding the pencil was difficult, but sketching helped take my mind off our suffering. When the light faded, we put a lamp between us, and I packed the pencil away. The shading would have to wait.

"So, you sketch often?" t.i.tus asked.

"It's a school a.s.signment. My art teacher said I would never master still lives and perspectives until I learned to harness the chaos in my head. He a.s.signed me to fill a sketchbook with my own personal therapy, and he would give me a good grade."

This piqued his curiosity. "And that book is full of the things in your head?"

"Sort of. The process of drawing relaxes me."

"Will you show me your drawings?"

I shrugged. "They aren't anything great." I moved beside him and looked at each page as he went through them.

t.i.tus spent a great deal of time on the first few sketches-my many starts and stops trying to draw Eros and a few random scenes from the palace. Then he came to Eros's self-portrait. "Wow. That looks just like him. You drew this?"

"No, he saw me struggling with the others, and he finally gave me what I was looking for. I colored it, because it wasn't right without the violet eyes."

t.i.tus went through the rest of my sketches until he found the caricatures Eros drew for me the night before. When I explained what they were, t.i.tus threw his head back and laughed. "Oh, I wish I could have seen it. I can imagine this scene perfectly." He turned to me with a smile. "Your drawings are good, even the one of me," he said.

"Not as good as these." I turned to the back of the book and showed him the sketches Eros had done.

"He's very well trained." A smile tugged at his lips as I turned each page. "They're all of you."

"They're all of me when I didn't know he was watching." I stopped when I reached the final sketch Eros showed me the night before. "So, there's one more that he wouldn't let me see last night."

"Turn the page. Let's look," he prompted.

I wondered if it was a mistake to look at all, much less let t.i.tus see it, but I turned the page. The drawing there was a close up of Eros and me. My head was tilted back and my eyes closed. His face was tilted down, his nose against my jaw and his open mouth kissing my neck. Our bare shoulders touched. "Oh...I... uh... didn't pose for this."

t.i.tus threw me a glance, then studied the sketch. "It's..." He searched for the right word and finally said, "hot."

"Yeah."

"And, look." t.i.tus turned the page and showed me ragged edges behind it. "I bet they got hotter. That's why he took them out."

"You could send him a text and ask him?"

"No, you should send him a text and ask him." t.i.tus set his empty cup aside and slid farther into his sleeping bag. "Tell him we're camped for the night." He closed his eyes.

I dug out the phone and composed a text: There seem to be sketches missing from my book. Were they more revealing than the last?

The reply I received was a colon and parentheses smiley face. I expected as much, so I gave him our report.

We're camped for the night. It's stormy. It will probably be twenty below later.

After dimming the light, I lay back and closed my eyes. If I were warm I would have fallen asleep immediately, but my whole body was cold. A moment later the phone beeped the receipt of a message. I opened Eros's reply.

I believe t.i.tus to be an honorable and trustworthy man. Use him if you must.

"What did he say?" t.i.tus murmured.

"Nothing," I replied. "He's good at being evasive."

I had lain perfectly still for hours, my body too tired to move and too cold to let me sleep. t.i.tus hadn't stirred either, but he was still visible, so I wondered if he was awake. The storm howled around us. It rocked the tent relentlessly. Our heat cell went out, and it was much colder. When I raised my face above the sleeping bag, the moisture inside my nose began to freeze after a single breath. I could never remember a time when I had been this cold, not even when Dad's truck broke down in the mountains while we were hunting and we had to walk all the way back to the main road. It had been close to zero degrees that day, and I complained the whole way, but that cold was nothing compared to this. I understood the nature of winter well enough to know that when I stopped feeling cold tonight, it would probably mean I was dying.

"t.i.tus," I whispered. "Are you awake?"

He raised his head from under the sleeping bag. "Yes."

"I'm still cold, even in my sleeping bag. How about you?"

"Freezing," he replied.

Where was Eros when I needed him? Probably in Kathmandu in a luxury suite or at Apollo's palace in Olympus with a roaring fire to keep him warm. I really did not want to blur the lines of my relations.h.i.+p with t.i.tus, but what difference would it make if we were both frozen in the morning? "Do you want to share?" I said finally.

"Yes," he answered, his voice a little shaken. "Please." He unzipped his sleeping bag and ushered me inside. He was s.h.i.+vering, and his hands were icy. We each struggled out of our sweats.h.i.+rts, unwilling to take off much, but knowing that the fewer layers between us, the better. When I snuggled in beside him, he wrapped his arms around me with a sigh. "Warmth. Finally."

We pulled the other sleeping bag over the top of us and hoped that the double layer plus our body heat would be enough to keep us from freezing to death in the night.

Though it was awkward, I was grateful to be warm. "You know how you said you didn't understand me?"

"Uh huh." He was still shaking.

"I don't understand you either."

"I explained why I took an oath to serve you." He forced a lightness into his voice. "But now wouldn't be a good time to ask me if I regret it."

"You said I was beautiful."

"Aren't you?"

"But, you're not attracted to me." If he was, I still couldn't see it. We had been together two days, and the only time I saw a hungry glimmer in t.i.tus's eyes was when the waiter at the hotel laid a plate of spaghetti in front of him.

He raised his head and scowled at me. "That bothers you?"

"No, it's just unusual."

t.i.tus let his head fall back and stared at the billowing tent ceiling. "You've never met a man who wasn't attracted to you?"

"Not really."

Now he seemed genuinely confused. "Even Aeas?"

I let out a snort. "Aeas is a Stoic. I can't get him to smile half the time. He doesn't count."

"He does count, as much as me at least. I'm used to being around beautiful women who don't belong to me. I can appreciate that you're beautiful without wanting you for myself." t.i.tus s.h.i.+vered again, and shook me in the process. "And anyway, you're not really my type."

Curious, I asked, "And your type is...?"

"Dark hair, olive skin, generous curves."

I laughed. "I'm really not your type." But in all seriousness, I needed to know for sure. I propped myself up so I could see his face. "So, I'm safe with you?"

t.i.tus looked directly into my eyes and answered, "Completely."

Satisfied, I lay my head on his chest. "Thank you."

He rubbed his hands on my back, still trying to warm them. "No, thank you for keeping me from freezing to death."

The storm was still beating the tent when t.i.tus startled himself awake. "This isn't what it looks like," he murmured.

I had been sound asleep and felt him jump. He started to push me away, but must have awakened, because I heard him sigh and felt his body relax. "I'm giving you nightmares," I mumbled.

He pulled the sleeping bag tighter around us. "You're fine," he replied. "I'm sorry."

"It's morning?"

"It doesn't matter," he said. "We're still pinned down by the storm. Sleep as long as you like."

I planned to open my eyes, but I couldn't because I was warm and still too tired to move. Without realizing it, I slipped back to sleep and resurfaced later to hear t.i.tus talking softly.

"The wind has stopped, but it's still snowing. If the trail is as treacherous as it says on the instructions, there's no way we can attempt it in this weather. She's going to have a hard enough time when it's clear." He waited for the reply before speaking again. "We have another day. You planned for bad weather. It should be fine."

He was talking to Eros on the satellite phone. I pretended to sleep, so they wouldn't hang up.

"She's tougher than I thought she was," t.i.tus said. "I honestly didn't think we would make it up here yesterday, but she wouldn't quit." He touched my hair softly. "Uh..." He stammered like he didn't want to answer. "Yeah, she's fine." I felt him wince and wondered if Eros was digging for information that t.i.tus didn't want to give. "And if that were the case?"

He stopped breathing for a moment. "Of course." There was a defensive note in his voice. "I'll let you know when we're moving again." He disconnected the call and let out a slow breath.

"Did you tell him I gave you nightmares?"