A Path Less Travelled

"There is courage in him, Rufus."

Erica stroked the young man's hair, brushing it away from his flickering eyelids.

"It's a fool's courage. I'd wager he's never been afraid before." Rufus pulled his sheepskin tighter around his shoulders, thick fingers bunching into the soft wool, and stared down at the twitching youth with hard eyes. "Now he is very afraid. His courage will not stand in for the scars he ought to have."

"Perhaps it will not. But perhaps he will be brave enough to trust himself to be brave. He came to this place, after all." Erica plucked a gladiolus stem from her hair and carefully wrapped the young man's soft, grasping fingers around it.

"Bah. It's not as though it's difficult to get to." Rufus waved one calloused hand in dismissal, and his sheepskin fell off his broad shoulder. He shivered for a moment as he pulled it back up, critically eyeing the dark entrance to the cave.

"It is harder in this sort of weather, I suppose," he muttered. "It's damnably cold outside."

 "You can judge that better than I," Erica said as she tugged the young man's waterlogged sandals away from his feet. "Walking the path here isn't the hard part, Rufus. You know that. He's followed my call here, my labyrinth-thread. It's the finding out about it that's difficult."

"It's not that difficult. I found it."

Erica looked at Rufus with such pity that he had to turn away.

"You helped him here," she said to his broad back. "You saw him falter from your window and you ran out into the tempest to save him. You brought him here instead of taking him home."

"Here was closer!" Rufus snapped.

"There is a fire in your hearth, Rufus. There is a loaf of fresh bread on your table, meat hanging in your larder. There are healing herbs in labelled jars and more than enough space for this boy. There could have been nothing here and it's still where you chose to take him."

"It was closer," Rufus said as he turned to look at the young man. His voice was calmer now, softer. "Do you truly think him a boy? He seems old enough to be carving his own space in the world."

"You and I both know that age is not measured in years. Why did you bring him here, Rufus?"

"I suppose you have the truth of it there." Rufus looked at the palms of his hands, the familiar patterns of callous, the scars that told his stories. "I feel like a younger man. Wrapped in an older one and driven by one older still."

Rufus didn't look up from his hands for some time, and when he did he could feel a vast sadness upon him, grey and smothering.

"You cannot be real," he heard himself say. "You cannot be here, in this storm, in this season, with those flowers in your hair."

"Why did you bring him here, Rufus?" she asked again.

"He must have tried so hard," Rufus said, reaching out and almost touching the youth's skin. "He must have walked the whole way in this storm. He was so close to this place and had such good reason to turn back. Such good reason not to walk this path at all, in this storm, wearing a summer cloak and broken sandals. He did not turn back, do you see? I could not turn him back myself."

"You turned back," Erica said. Rufus felt as though she had known him once as a girl, and he had spurned her affections.

"I did. I was not- I was not prepared for my journey. I got sick in the rain."

"You got better, Rufus. Why did you not come back sooner?"

"I was afraid you would be here. And afraid you would know my cowardice, and afraid you would see the cowardice in that, too. I was afraid."

"You put your fear aside for him," Erica said, glancing at the young man. His breathing was shallower now, Rufus realised.

"He's younger than I. I wished, sometimes, that I could come here again for the first time. That I would not falter. I saw myself in him." Rufus spread a hand across the youth's chest; his skin was clammy and warm.

"He is braver than I was. But I would wager that he is very afraid."

"Of course he is," Erica said. "He may be dying. He has finished his journey none the less. What did you believe, when you read of my cave? What did you imagine you would find?"

"I don't know," Rufus shrugged. The youth convulsed violently the moment Rufus lifted his hand from his chest, slamming his heel violently into the stone, and Rufus quickly replaced his hand on his fevered skin. He looked up at Erica with panic and a question in his eyes, and she shook her head.

"His time grows short. What did you want to find here when you came the first time, Rufus? Quickly, now."

"Hope." Rufus' voice came out almost silent, underneath his breath. "I wanted to find hope. I wanted to know I could be something magnificent instead of just me."

"So you read of an ancient cave and believed. You researched a forgotten goddess and sacrificed to her. You left your home and travelled halfway across the known world. You walked until you collapsed, in a winter storm and a summer cloak, to find me and ask if you could ever be someone extraordinary?"

"Yes." Rufus sagged as he understood.

"You helped him on his last few steps, Rufus. You are the part of this young man that he needed to walk his path. My gift to him is you."

Rufus nodded in silence before standing, ignoring the sudden stillness of the boy on the stone floor.

"Can I leave him the sheepskin? He'll be cold otherwise."

Erica smiled then, really smiled, and Rufus felt midsummer's warmth.

"Of course you can," she said, and kissed him full on the lips. He felt his life flake away as she pushed him gently down to the floor, as his wrinkles unfolded and his scars vanished, as the callous on his palms became soft as a scholar's grip.

He was not surprised in the slightest when she rolled him into the youth on the floor, not alarmed when they seemed to share the same space for a moment. There was no fear at all. He did not have to be brave.