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The cold, dreary wind blew through the perilous dark tunnel to aboveground. Orpheus could feel its blow through his body like cold, sharp knives of ice as a shivering threefold voice wailed in the back of his mind, seeping through his brain and through the bones beneath the skin, icy threads of water solidifying into ice.
Where’s she? Where’s she now??
Just keep on walking, he tried to reassure himself, through the aching of a thousand throbbing wounds. Just keep on going. It won't be long.
But his hopes waned with each pained step he took to aboveground.
Orpheus’s throat still hurt from singing the song to Hades. His fingers still throbbed from pressing through the strings of his lyre. He bared his innermost soul - he sang his love for Eurydice, his world he knew and loved so much, words escaped him a feeling he couldn't muster as tears escaped from his eyes kept on hers, her beautiful dark starry eyes. There were no words for the way he felt - he knew he deeply loved her, as he deeply loved the glittering starry night and the gleaming white light of the moon shining on a lake midst the blossoming forest, as he deeply loved legends and stories sang through song and dance. He felt so many intense feelings, his love for her, always deep, always steady, mixed with his dread he felt of Hades and horror of this windless place down below, mixed with the feelings of so many Shades and Stones gathering round him as he sang, they sensing his emotions much as he felt their own, his turbulent emotions and the echo of theirs mixed also with a sense of inadequacy - he felt displaced in this world down below, deeply uncomfortable as a thousand eyes dreary and sharp as stone and steel stared onto him.
All those Shades and Stones were still behind him - his Eurydice among them, her head high, keeping her eyes up to the sky as she has always kept them. He could feel them, in a way. He could feel them as bruises and cuts pained where fists of cinder and nails of razor hit his frail, mortal skin. He could feel them as his throat hurt coarse with rough dry cement from the river of rancor they almost drowned him in.
He has never felt so lonely. The world never felt so dark, so cold. His wounds never felt so painful.
He could feel the wind getting stronger and stronger as he got closer to aboveground, hitting his bruises and cuts with knives sharper and colder. As he treaded and walked, a foot front of the other, each step pained and frail through such blood lost and so many burning wounds, he could feel the river of shades behind him less and less.
Should the wind feel so cold? Should these knives of ice hurt so much?
He sang to bring spring back. As he left Spring herself was perhaps following behind him. The world above should feel warm and lively, perhaps he would feel the soft, delicate scent of blooming flowers as he gets closer to aboveground – then why should the blow from up above feel so cold?
She should be behind him. Spring, his Eurydice, should be behind him.
But he could not feel her behind him. He could not feel her soft, steady footsteps he had always felt before, he could not feel her soft, steady breath she did not breathe anymore. The dazzling feeling of her starry eyes starring onto him, a thousand buzzing worlds he could picture and lose himself into, was not there anymore.
Where's she? His mind screamed, his dread heating against the cold as his many wounds burned through his body. Where's she now??
He marched, trying to keep his weakly step steady as his body shivered against the cold and the burning heat of so many bruises and cuts. He could barely see anything other than thick dusty dark and vertigo, a thousand colorful dots dancing through his eyes, disorienting him. He could barely hear anything, other than the howl of the cold wind and the desperate thumping of his own heart within his frail body. He could barely feel anything other than the constant pounding of the sharp cold wind against his wounds burning in so many directions, paining in places he didn’t even know his body bored.
She should be behind him. He knew that. He… he loved her. Her silky hair as dark as the night coating the world aboveground… he knew her hair was dark. He knew her eyes were deep, a dark sky glinting light like so many stars. He knew her soft, but steady features, curved and copper like the stout oak, as he knew the palms of his hands. But the silkiness of her dark hair, the starriness of her dark eyes, the softness of her copper features escaped his hands. He could barely feel the palms of his hands beneath the burning scream of so many wounds.
He knew she should be behind him. They should be behind him. He wasn’t alone. He knew he shouldn’t be alone.
But loneliness is all he felt. He could not feel anything, anyone near him. The life energy and breath of all living things, all animals and plants around his dancing feet, the soft glimmer of stones, the gentle blow of breezes aboveground – he knew them as much as he knew his own legs and arms, feeling them as much as he felt his own breath. Now darkness is all he felt – nothing around him except slough and soot and the wintry wind howling in his ears, nothing he could feel except his own sore wounds burning against the piercingly cold wind.
They might not be behind him at all. She may not even be following him at all. She might have turned back down below midst the walk.
The horrible images he has seen down below were engraved back of his mind. Lifeless shades toiling and shoveling coal in a big black hole as they themselves melted to steam to keep the Underworld's boiler boiling. Windless souls swinging their hammers on the cold hard ground and ringing their pickaxes, their backs bending in injurious ways, endlessly toiling and carrying boulders so big to build an endless wall never finished.
Eurydice left the world aboveground behind to join this dreary landscape, of twisting steels and concrete walls, of broken spirits and dead souls. Orpheus felt hurt and turned upon, but he didn't blame her. This place was soul-sucking, spirit-breaking, but at least she had shelter and warmth, her hunger satisfied as her spirit was frozen, dormant flame of candle frozen with no need to breathe and burn. Small but essential things she couldn't get up above by his side, the world so broken a tree lively blossoming would be a rare thing.
Why would she even follow him at all, to the cold and dark again? If he abandoned her before? If here down below, in death, she could actually live?
The dancing dots through his eyes seemed to get more frantic and energized as his legs could barely keep himself standing. He was sure he was seeing hallucinations, or was him in the edge of death? He saw a light, and only a light, coming as from the end of a tunnel, the kind dying mortals see as their spirits and souls shed their frail bodies behind.
Would this be the end? Was him really reaching the threshold – where life fades to death? Where death fades to life? Was him really drawing near… wherever he was about to go?
He pressed his eyes shut. This cannot be right. The glimmer of light still flashed in his eyes, dotted with a thousand colorful dots dancing within his view, his aching wounds numb against his sore head.
This cannot be right. Why would he ever let him win? If he reduced his frail body to a pulp, a throbbing pile of aching pain for daring to come down there. Why would he ever let him go?
This cannot be. This must be a trick. This is not the end of… wherever he went. This is an illusion, a flare of his Electric City, waiting to welcome him back into a deep dusty cell.
He knew she… he knew someone should be behind him. Somebody he knew, somebody he… loved? He knew he shouldn’t be this alone. He was being followed by… someone. Whoever they were.
Where was he even going? What was he even doing? Who was he trying to fight against, to run away from? Who was him to think he could win against…?
Who was him…?
He used to see the way the world could be. Was what onlookers and listeners used to say about him. Whoever they were. However this elusive world might have been – a world he might have once felt, a world he dreamed about long ago. It felt like a lifetime ago… a shade, an echo of shattered hopes and dreams. A world now nothing more than echoes of fractured memories in his mind – memories he felt he should know…
Now the way the world was – soot, slough, the sweltering sweat of brows as backs curved to arms endlessly toiling hard ground, the burning pain of his many bruises and cuts against the bitter wintry wind – was all he could see. And nothing was all he could see.
Who was him?
He felt he should know the answers – he felt he did know them not much long ago. But answers that once were now escaped his mind – fading in the dark behind him, blown away by the howling wind.
They were behind him… the answers were behind him.
It was instinctual, as he got closer to the gateway – him barely standing still, the bitter wind blowing piercingly against his frame frail with many burning wounds… when he turned and looked back.
And he saw her beautiful deep, dark starry eyes widening in shock against his. And a thousand memories flashed in his mind as he felt a thousand expectations crumbling and dragged away by the wind through the tunnel to underground, her shock and disappointment, the sorrow he could feel she felt stinging deeply through his heart – he failed.
“It’s you.”
He stood by the gateway, framed by the light of dawn aboveground, his bruises shaded bright red by the sunrise. She saw his battered, tired face as he turned, as she met his eyes penetrating on hers – grape green, ripened by brightening red veins growing through his white sclera.
She had seen him tread dangerous grounds, fight a thousand shades and stand against the literal King of this Damnation in her name – even when she thought he wouldn’t think about her when she went down below, barely had he noticed when she struggled in the storm. She watched and listened as he sang his masterpiece – his song of Creation, finally finished, the most beautiful song she has ever heard in all of life and death. He came to her when she was lost, he found her struggling midst heating irons and sharp steels when memory waned from her. Through all this time he seemed cut from heavens above, sunlight shining with him, through him, his voice higher and lighter than the highest principle known to mankind. Touched by the gods, he was a demigod – a god, even. Perfect, elevated, the unfathomable his kindred, he could tread any ground, withhold any storm.
Now, glimpsing him battered and bruised as he is against the gateway to aboveground, his face tense and tired, his eyes wide and aghast like a deer in headlights, he seemed so… normal. Flawed, imperfect, mortal. Too fragile to tread harder grounds, too vulnerable for the storm, scared of the unfathomable, now stranger to him. He couldn’t be the same man who struggled damnation in her name, who withstood a thousand blows of death as he melted the stern king’s heart of steel with song. He couldn’t be the same man who heard and saw a thousand stories sung in the starry skies up above, who could turn an old shredded paper into something beautiful as a flower shimmering white as the asphodels in the ground. Who could make you see the way the world could be, in spite of the way that it is.
But he was. This young man staggeringly staring at her, his swollen green eyes penetrating onto hers, was the same man who brought Life through song deep down below. The same man who once upon a time, a long time ago, danced with her under the glittering night sky, their souls resonating in reciprocating tune. He has failed his test, his deepest doubts and flaws now brought up front, still Eurydice felt as if she has always known this part of him, deeply hidden as it were. Then her lover was not a god, after all. Just a man, mortal and fragile as any other.
“It’s me”, she answered, her voice a mix of shock and disappointment, but also sorrow. Her lover has failed his test. Like so many times ago.
Still she wouldn’t blame him. She was surprised with herself with not blaming him, knowing she would be stuck in damnation all over again because of his failure, but she knew he could never go through this anyway. The spotlight was death for him. He would never succeed in a task like this, as he always wanted to run away once all glances were turned toward him.
Still he came so close. He was at the threshold to aboveground, farther than any shade could’ve went.
Yet he turned.
But he came so close.
But he turned.
“Orpheus”, she called a last time as the world down below called to her, her soul dragged down as a brick back to the river, back to the wall.
As she fell, the last glimpse of Orpheus, the man who was once her lover – once bright and powerful, now vulnerable and fragile, lost as a child crying for their lost mom – became engraved back of her eyes as he desperately called to her back. The last sound her dead ears heard was his voice, once clear and bright, now wavering away as the dawning sun cast growing shadows aboveground:
“Eurydice…”