In the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away.
—Isaiah 49:2
BEYOND THE DOOR, a narrow tunnel wound into the earth. The floor might have been the snaking spine of Hades himself. It looped back so often, at times I could not tell whether I was ascending or descending. Sometimes I felt as though I were falling. At other times I began to wonder if I had moved at all. I tried to look ahead and make out what was coming, but it was too dark. Down, down, down. Would the tunnel never end? I began to wonder if the door itself was a deception; and I might even then have despaired if not for the memory of my wife and son.
I worked my way onward and downward, feeling through the darkness. And gradually, almost imperceptibly, the stale reek of Hell began to give way to something else—a quality in the air I recognized but could not name. Memories of apples and turned earth emerged among my thoughts. The air took on a living sharpness—a clear, metallic scent like new rain. Then a wash of light, blue as the night sky just before dawn, and when I turned the last corner of that winding passage, I found that I was standing on grass. I blinked the weariness away, and for the first time in three thousand years, I looked upon trees, green leaves, fields, and morning mist. I heard the sound of living creatures—birds, crickets, tiny peeping frogs. The music of the living world washed over me. I felt the breeze, light as a nymph’s fingers on my face, clean and cool.
To my left, the grass fell away into a deep, green valley.
To my right, stood a woman.
She was tall as an elm and wore a gown of linen so white, it shimmered like snow in the moonlight. Her hair, black as onyx, hung loose from her head and mingled with the night.
“Am I dead?” I said.
She smiled. “Not quite.”
“Are we going somewhere?” I asked.
“We are.”
“Olympus?”
“A mountain, yes.”
I stopped. “But Penelope, Telemachos, Diomedes . . .”
“Be still, little one. They are further on.”
I smiled and nodded, taking a fold of her cloak in my hand like a child. “You will take me to them?”
“Of course,” she answered, and we began to walk.
“Wait.”
She stopped, looked down, her gray eyes shining.
“Proteus?”
She smiled. “He too has shown a greater love.”
I took a deep breath and blew it slowly out. “Then I am ready.”
“I think you are.”
We walked in silence then, I clinging to the fold of her mantle, she smiling into the night. Slowly the ground began to slope upward. The grass grew thin, and stones cropped up here and there. Once or twice I stumbled. But always, the Parthenos helped me up again.
“Will this be difficult?” I asked.
“Very,” she answered.
“But you will not leave me.”
“Odysseus. Incorrigible man. Have you not learned? I have been with you all along.”
I grinned. She laughed. Her voice washed over the hills like rain. I held her cloak to my cheek and looked ahead across the long ascent. Trees, moss, stones, and soil. Above it, the clouds and sky. And beyond them all, glittering like windows into heaven—the stars. If you’ve ever held a jewel to your eye and watched the world fly into a thousand shining dreams, then you know what I’m talking about.