"When Orpheus Looked Back."

Aug 19, 2006 12:45

"When Orpheus looked back, Jake, it wasn't stupid. The myths are slanderous. It wasn't the sudden fear that she wasn't there that turned his head. It was the threatening light from above. What if it was not the same, out there? It's so human, to turn and catch the eye of your companion on a return journey, to share a moment's terror that everything you know will have changed.

There was no one I could look back to, and everything I knew had changed. Pushing open the doors onto the street was the bravest thing I have ever done."
--"Looking for Jake" by China Mieville

The first brush of doubt. Nothing significant; it is translucent, the barest glimmer of red malignancy. But then there is the second and the third. And suddenly it is not transparent after all, it is quite opaque, and all you can see is the doubt. How did this happen? How did it claim one so fast? Only three steps and suddenly all resolve has been dashed into the gutter.

His feet crushing the stone walkway are suddenly heavy. They leave imprints of his unease behind, shallow cuts in the unforgiving earth. His heart is laden and heavy, struggling to beat against his own ribs. His body has become his prison; if only, if only to escape…

Would it be so bad to look back?

Would it be so wrong?

The god has decreed that he not do so. He feels her wraithlike skin against his. Or does he? Is that not air which his hand clutches? What if, in her doubts, she has returned to whence she had come - back to death, back to sweet repose. To be reborn and live again, without her dear husband.

The sunlight beats upon the path ahead, rendering the hideous flesh of hell into simple rock. It is blinding; he holds a hand up to shield fragile, dilated pupils. And in this moment, as the weight within him grows unbearable, as the path comes to a close and he wonders if it has all been in vain, weakness becomes the victor.

He looks back.

Eurydice regards him with grief. Why, dear husband? The eyes speak. Why did you not trust? And as simple as dust, the wraith disappears.

An unearthly wail of sorrow erupts unbidden from his chest, and Orpheus collapses into the light of day.

--8-19-06

orig!fic

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