“How does it feel?”
“Hurts. I feel a little light-headed. I think I lost some blood.”
“I can’t believe how tough you are — everything you managed to do, and with that wound—!”
She waved a hand. “Sleep. I need to sleep. Tomorrow, we’ve got a major climb ahead of us.”
“You aren’t going anywhere with that wound. We’ll stay here until you’re better.”
She lay back. “If we stay here, we’ll die. It’s as simple as that.”
47
Gideon awoke. The rising sun streamed into the little cave on the cliff face. He could hear the cries of seabirds wheeling about. Amy was still sleeping. She looked flushed.
He sat up and clutched at his brow. His head was pounding, and there was a terrible taste in his mouth. He drank from one of the canteens and took stock. They had two liters of water, the last two granola bars, and two pieces of pemmican-like food, wrapped in banana leaves, given to them by the Indians. The medical kit still had plenty of bandages, antibiotics, and painkillers.
He crept to the edge and peered over. They were perhaps two hundred feet above the sea. But from the vantage point of the cave it was impossible to see upward. From the silhouette he had seen of the island the night before, it was at least a thousand, maybe fifteen hundred feet high.
When he turned, Amy had awoken. He put a hand on her forehead. It was warm.
“How do you feel?”
“Not bad,” she said.
Gideon didn’t believe her. He gave her the canteen, and she drank deeply.
“Let me take a look at your wound.”
She lay back. He unbuttoned her shirt and pulled it aside. The bandages were already dark with fluid. She winced a little as he removed them. Gideon tried to hide his fright and concern. The wound was still closed and he didn’t dare remove the surgical tape, but he applied more Betadine and some topical antibiotic ointment and put on a fresh dressing.
“Thanks.”
“Amy, you got that saving my life. How can I thank you?”
She just shook her head.
“How did you know to rescue me?”
She took a deep breath. “iPhone took me down the beach to a cave. But it was iPhone’s behavior that tipped me off. He seemed to get more and more nervous. When it started to get dark, I tried to question him and he was evasive. That’s when I began to fear something bad was going to happen to you. I confronted him, and while he denied it, he really started to sweat. So I pulled my gun out of the bag and tied him up. And then I went looking for you.”
“Thank you.”
She said, “Did you see that huge skull?”
Gideon stared at her. “You mean, you saw it, too?”
“Damn right I did. It took me a moment to realize — that it was the skull of a Cyclops.”
“And I thought it was just a hallucination.”
“Hic sunt gigantes. ‘Here there be giants.’ The map didn’t lie — there were Cyclopes living here once. They were going to sacrifice you to the Cyclops god.”
“I was so zonked, I was ready to have my throat cut without protest…I feel like such a fool.”
“You were drugged.”
“They gave me a black root to consume. That’s got to be the true lotus. It was incredibly powerful, made me forget everything, made me feel so wonderful I never wanted it to end — just like what happened to Odysseus’s men.”
“So what was the pod they gave us?”
“A fake lotus, a ceremonial substitute? Or maybe the aboveground part of the plant.”
Amy licked her dry lips. “There’s something else — something I should have realized earlier…You know this Phorkys Map we’ve been following? Phorkys was a minor Greek god of the sea, a son of Poseidon. Just as Polyphemus was supposed to be the son of Poseidon. In other words, Phorkys was the brother of Polyphemus, the Cyclops. If that doesn’t connect Phorkys to Odysseus and the Cyclopes, I don’t know what does…”
She was rambling, sweating, her forehead beaded. Gideon felt it again. “You’re running a temperature.”
“I know. As soon as possible — before I get any sicker — we need to finish this climb. Because I am getting sicker.”
“You can’t climb in your condition.”
“I can do it now. In another six, twelve hours, maybe not. I’m coming down with a fever. It’s getting worse. We can’t stay here. There’s almost no food or water. We’ve got to shoot for the top right now. Otherwise we’ll die here.”
She struggled to sit up, grabbed her drysack.
“This is crazy,” Gideon protested.
“Crazy, yes. Our only option, yes. Just follow my lead. We’ll climb fast and free.”
Gideon looked at her. This was one determined woman. Nothing was going to change her mind. And as he mulled over the problem, he realized she was probably right. They had no other choice.
In silence, they ate the last of the granola bars and drank some more water. And then Amy started climbing up the rock above the cave.
The pitch was terrifying, an almost vertical face of volcanic rock, but with plenty of cracks and bubbles that made for good hand- and footholds. Gideon followed below her, watching where she put her feet and hands and trying to follow suit. He asked a few times how she felt until she told him to shut up. She was doing well, it seemed to him: climbing steadily, silently. The birds cried, the surf thundered below, the wind swept over them. And still they climbed. As they rose, the difficulty varied, depending on the verticality, but the dizzying space below became only more terrifying. Five hundred feet, he judged; six hundred, eight. He tried not to look down, but it was necessary in finding footholds. They couldn’t see up; there was no way of knowing how much farther it was to the top. Gideon’s arms ached and he wondered how Amy could do it. He could see a dark stain spreading on her side, staining her shirt. The wound had opened again and was bleeding.
She began to slow down, fumbling longer for hand- and footholds.
The clouds started rolling in, and there came a rumble of thunder. It began to rain. Several times Amy slipped, rocks tumbling as she hung by both hands for a moment while her toes sought a purchase. The rain came down harder and began streaming down the sides of the cliff, adding a slipperiness to the climb, carrying water and debris pouring over them, getting in their faces and eyes every time they tried to look up.
Amy slowed further. Even in the easy stretches she began to struggle, and at times she stopped and swayed. There was nothing Gideon could do. He was deeply frightened for her — but she was right: they had to keep going.
They finally came to a large, horizontal crack, which Amy crawled into and immediately collapsed. Gideon followed. They were soaking wet and water was now pouring down the cliff face in miniature waterfalls, the wind lashing the rocks.
Gideon saw Amy’s face for the first time in hours. She looked awful — pale as ivory, her lips blue, her eyes clouded and jittery.
“Rest,” she muttered. “Rest. And then more climbing. Must be…must be close to the top.”
It was clear to Gideon that Amy wasn’t going anywhere. He said nothing but reached out to feel her forehead.
She drew away. “I’m fine!” She shivered again. “Rest. Then climb.”
Gideon laid a hand on her forehead anyway. She was so hot it frightened him. He rummaged in the drysack and removed the medical kit, took out some ibuprofen and offered them to Amy.
She took them.
Next he brought out the bottle of amoxicillin. There was another antibiotic in the kit, labeled azithromycin. Should he give her both? Or would that have an adverse effect? Was the wound getting infected? Or was the fever some kind of bodily response to the injury? God, he wished to hell he knew more about medicine.