She won past the higher terraces of hill and found the so-called Kaka Skala, “bad stairs” indeed, steps partly hewn out of the rock and winding up Parnassos Mountain until they were lost in cloud. These she began to climb. No thought was hers to see the glory about her, the crags ghost-like in the moon, the abyss of glens black with fir and cedar, the heights which soared and melted into infinity, the starry sky—a grandeur hardly to be borne. Theria only knew that she was very lonely, that the grandeur was terrible. She seemed very small and childlike in that vastness, stumbling along ever slower, stopping sometimes with labouring breath, then pushing on again higher, higher.
In an upland meadow she passed a herd of cows, small wild things which fled trampling at her approach. She thought vaguely of the cattle of Apollo, which he kept on Parnassos and which of yore the baby Hermes had stolen. Of course, these could be no other cows. She shuddered at the supernatural creatures. Now she came to a fir wood, black like a cloak. The mottled moonlight sifted in at the edge pricking out fern-brake and rock, but within it was ebony. In such a place might the Bacchantes well go mad in worship of their god. With a sob she entered it. For the fear of being found was greater than her fear of the haunted place.
Theria lay down to rest among the mosses. Even her double terror could not contend against her utter exhaustion. At once she fell asleep.
She awoke in the dawn shivering with cold, hungry beyond telling. The fear with which she had gone to sleep, the fear of being found, met her at the door of waking. It made her get up and, though she ached in every bone, to push onward, upward into safer hiding. Sometimes she came to a bare stretch across which she stumbled in haste. For surely in such a place they would see her, and would catch her and drag her back and doubtless bury her alive. In this thought she forgot even her old grief for the loss of her god. Indeed she half believed that this present fate of hers was Apollo’s punishment which he had delayed so long.
Now again she must cross a bare upland. The sun was high and burning as it can burn only on such heights. She started across in the fearsome blinding glare, the sweat pouring from every member. Curiously enough, in the midst of the sunlight she saw moving along in front of her—a shaft of golden light! When she entered a shadow of jutting cliff the golden light endured in the shadow. If she paused, it paused. It was quiet as if a dream pervaded it. It seemed to smile as do those faces that peep from bushes or caves, which smile and afterward destroy.
Theria shrank back. It shrank with her. No evading it that way. A terror seized her. She wrung her hands. Should she run back to the forest? No, there it would only gain power. She tried to remember a charm against spirits which Baltè had taught her, but she had no memory left. Now a lofty cliff baulked her path. Against this cliff, facing her, the light stopped and stayed very tall and stately. It quivered, growing brighter to a focus, and suddenly out from it as from a sheath stepped a youth, tall as befits an Immortal and of beauty tender as the dawn. Golden were his tresses, golden his flowing vesture, golden his sandalled feet which did not touch the ground. But the quiver girt upon his shoulder was silver-white, silver also the bent bow in his hand.
Should she not know him, she who had known him so well? Up went her hands in worship; up higher yet her worshipping heart.
“Thou hast come to kill me,” she whispered. “Blessed art thou, glorious child of Leto. Not lightly shall thy dear Oracle be flouted and thy worshippers deceived.”
Apollo did not gaze upon Theria, else she would forthwith have died. But just above her he gazed, delicately smiling, and as he smiled, he toyed with his silver bow. Already was the shaft set on the string, and along that arrow back and forth ran the white fire which whensoever it reached the tip broke into flame. Now he nodded his head and spoke aloud: