Zeus was highly displeased with Sisyphus. Daring to approach young goddesses! But killing wrongdoers was so boring. He decided instead on another punishment. Carry sniveling squirmy human girl urchins to the top of the highest mountain, to be repeated endlessly. After he set it in motion he smiled with satisfaction as he saw Sisyphus with his charge, starting the long climb. He could check in after a hundred years to see just how that Sisyphus was suffering, but for now turned his attention to other matters.

But Hera saw too, and thought Zeus was being too harsh. Flirting with impressionable young goddesses wasn’t so bad. They needed to learn how to fend off the advances of unscrupulous young gods who could overpower them. The goddesses could easily handle any mortal who got fresh by use of their own budding powers.

Hera didn’t dare to change the punishment Zeus had devised, but she added a few things here and there. Those young girls Zeus was providing for Sisyphus were human beings, and they hadn’t done anything wrong. They had to be allowed to grow up. What’s more, being carried would be boring and uncomfortable, and the least she could do for them was provide some opportunities for rest and pleasure.

The land of the punishment was dry and bare. Everything she added was set in lush greenery.

“Here is your charge. You know what to do.”

Sisyphus sighed. He did know what he had to do. He had to carry her to the top. All the way to the top. That is what Zeus had decreed.

The girl looked to be about two years old. Brown hair, brown eyes, little average girl body. She wore a gray T-shirt and gray shorts, the same outfit that he wore. Like him, her feet were bare. She frowned and only glanced up at him briefly.

He took her in his arms, but she didn’t lie back like a younger child. He shifted her to his hip. She looked at him with curiosity.

“What’s your name?” he asked. He meant to be friendly, but the task ahead weighed on his mind, and he couldn’t muster a smile. She didn’t answer.

Then there were the stairs. The steps were rock, and the passing of many feet had smoothed them in places. There was no end in sight above, just stairs and mountainside disappearing into the haze. When he turned around, after a thousand steps, haze shielded his view of the base of the mountain or any land beyond. He had climbed this staircase before, he knew, and more than once. But his memory of earlier trips was patchy, and some details seemed to be different each time.

After a time -- short or long, he could not tell -- the steps came to a landing -- a circular landing twenty feet in diameter. These he remembered clearly from past trips. He thought of them as “oases”. Through an arch to the left was an area of lush vegetation, perhaps ten yards wide and thirty yards deep. He knew he was not allowed in there; it was a thought that Zeus had put into his head, surely. To the other side was a low column against the wall with a stone bowl on top, and from a hole above water trickled into it. It was a sort of drinking fountain. Next to it was a semicircular stone seat carved into the mountain rock. The girl hopped down and vanished under the arch into the greenery. Sisyphus was thirsty and drank lustily, then splashed water on his face. He was tired. He sat on the bench and closed his eyes. After a rest -- a brief nap or a long sleep he could not tell -- he woke to the girl tapping him on the knee. Her face was more relaxed. He knew what he had to do. He picked her up again, put her on his hip and resumed climbing. She soon fell asleep, and slept for some hundreds of steps, but then woke up.

“My name is Anna,” she said.

“I’m Sisyphus,” he puffed.

She started talking then, nothing of importance, just little things. Sometimes she asked him a question. He was breathing hard, climbing such stairs and with something to carry as well, so he kept his answers short, a word or two after each breath. As she talked he began to get a sense of Anna as a distinct person, not just a girl. She fell asleep again, and then woke. Then they came to another oasis with the same layout. Anna went off to gallivant around the lush green area to the side, and Sisyphus fell asleep. After some length of time he sensed her presence in front of him and he woke up. He knew what he had to do. He needed to pick her up and put her on his hip again, but he was tired.

“Any chance you could walk a little bit?”

She shook her head. “You have to carry me.”

“How far?”

She shrugged. “All the way.”

That’s what the answer had always been before, but it didn’t hurt to ask.

He woke after one of his sleeps and Anna was in a different outfit. Instead of a gray T-shirt and shorts she had on a sky blue T-shirt and brown shorts. Sisyphus’s outfit had not changed. Did she look a little bit older? He wasn’t sure.

Although he got to switch her from hip to hip, resting one arm at a time, his arms still felt very sore and over-used.

“Could you ride on my back? That would be much easier on my arms.”

It appeared Anna had never ridden on anyone’s back before, but once settled down she seemed quite content and even preferred it. She wriggled against his back once, and he felt a little emotional warmth. She was his companion for the duration of the climb. It was nice to have some human contact.

His arms felt much relieved, but his legs had to work just as hard. They ached.

At the next oasis she disappeared to play in the green garden once more. It fit the pattern he remembered from before. The higher they went, the larger were the areas of greenery. He realized he was drinking at each stop, but he had eaten nothing. But he was not hungry, nor had he felt the need to relieve himself since they began the journey. He shut his eyes where he sat, and slept a time that might have been long or might have been short.

He woke to a voice, “Come on, wake up. It’s time to go!” It was Anna, who was nudging her hip against his knee. He realized that he had felt her tapping before but had fought against waking up -- he was so tired! At least he had the little reward of seeing Anna looking at him with an affectionate smile before his work began again.

His legs were sore and aching. He felt like he had great heavy chains around his ankles, but when he looked down, there were just bare legs and bare feet. He realized that if the time he was sleeping had been long, it had not been any help in soothing the pain in his legs.

Before too many rest stops had gone by, he woke and her outfit had changed again. Now she was wearing a skirt of many colors and a white T-shirt. He also knew without question that she was bigger than before.

“Your outfit is different now. Did you change clothes?”

“Oh, it is different, isn’t it! No, I didn’t change. I guess it just happened. Time to get going.”

“A little more rest?” She folded her arms and frowned at him. He rose wearily, she climbed up onto the seat behind him, and from there onto his back. He realized they hadn’t met a soul on the whole trip. No one had passed them coming down, and they had neither overtaken nor been overtaken by another party as they climbed.

He also realized there had been no night time on the whole trip so far. No dusk or dawn. Had all the trips been like that? “Does night time come while I’m resting?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Never any night. That’s funny, isn’t it!”

Her smile as she said that melted his heart. Through all the weariness, he realized he was very fond of Anna. She was way bigger now -- 9 or 10?

The air was neither hot nor cold. It was warm. So were the stone steps beneath his feet.

He enjoyed the warmth of human contact behind him, but the joy was overshadowed by the thought of this extra weight he had to carry. But what could he do?

Another landing. Anna dismounted and without her weight he thought he might float into the air, but he did not. Water, dreamless sleep -- he had no idea how long he slept.

Anna wasn’t just a little girl. Her garment was now very light fabric and he could see through it. He couldn’t help seeing that her chest was no longer completely flat.

His legs still ached, but he realized he hadn’t been thinking about it. He must have gotten used to it by now to stop thinking about it now and then. When he stopped to rest, he felt how his calves and thighs were as hard as iron.

“Do you know how old you are?” he asked.

She laughed. “How would I know that?”

Sisyphus shrugged. “When we started you were a little girl. You’re not a little girl any more.”

“We kids are supposed to grow, aren’t we?”

Very true. But it would have been nice if they had gotten to the top when she was much smaller. Was he going to end up carrying a grown woman? Or -- the thought made him uncomfortable -- an ancient crone?

A few oases on, she emerged with a green see-through garment extending down to her ankles, with a few vertical slits that allowed unobstructed glimpses of her body within. A lighter shade of green than the greenery in the oases. Was that a flicker of unease when she looked at him?

At the next landing he looked longingly into the greenery where he was not allowed. He was to touch nothing but stone on this journey. Stone, and a girl -- incidentally, now and then.

A similar robe but tan this time. She looked decidedly uncomfortable looking at him. Why would that be? After glancing at him she looked down. That meant -- might she have a crush on him? A beautiful girl like her, and a dusty, exhausted man in a gray T-shirt and gray shorts. But he felt a little refreshing spark inside thinking she might be thinking of him that way.

At the next landing he woke by himself, before Anna woke him. Where was she?

“Anna?” he called, and then when she didn’t answer he called again.

He looked into the green area but she was nowhere to be seen. By now the green areas were so big he couldn’t see the back. What if she had gone? Up, down, or magically sideways? He felt confusion and fear. But he could think of nothing to do but sit. His fate was to climb, but it was only to climb carrying her, not just to climb. Resting his weary bones was certainly appealing until his future became clear. No divine directives had been planted in his head to handle this sort of situation.

He thought about her as he sat. Anna was now nearly full grown in height and girth. She had never been a cylinder, but her deviations from that shape became clearer. That girth included widening hips and a narrowing waist. Her chest had breasts where it had been flat before. But along with extra height and girth came weight. Oh, how well he knew her weight!

To walk without that weight would be a dream, but to walk without Anna was a prospect that filled him with grief. He loved her, he realized. He remembered there was this broader world in which living was a rich experience with far more variety, and it was true of childhood as well as adulthood. Here things were much simpler. During her forays into the lush green at each oasis, she was having a somewhat richer life, though her answers when he asked what went on there were not very informative. She had no interest in talking about it. But he took care of her in the one way that was his path in life -- he carried her. There was a parental aspect to what he was doing, but it didn’t feel quite like that either. What father spends time with his daughter by carrying her on his back, ever upward? And he didn’t feel like her father, even an adoptive father. What was he, then? He was the one who carried her. All the way to the top. Where was she?

Anna walked out of the green paradise.

“I was so worried!” he said. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine!” she said, but she scowled. Now she was dressed in a sort of pink garment of a type he had never seen before that ended at mid-thigh. The fabric was very thin, but as it fluttered in the faint breeze, it confused his vision. Just to the side of where he was looking it seemed he could see her naked body, but when he focused on any spot it was just pink fabric. Between her legs he thought he could make out some downy hair, though when he looked he saw just pink cloth. He felt a premonition of lust, but damped it down quickly. His job was to carry her to the top. There was no place here for lust. There were stone steps to climb.

At the next oasis, he fell asleep as soon as he sat down, and slept a time that was, as always, perhaps short or perhaps long, and Anna woke him up, dressed as before. She sighed, and looked decidedly more annoyed with him than happy and friendly.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” she said with continued annoyance. Then, “I’m tired of climbing.”

He felt a flare of anger. “Climbing? You’re riding! I’m the one who’s climbing!”

When he stopped to think about how his body felt, he wished he hadn’t. His back was sore, his thighs and calves and knees and ankles were sore -- worse than sore. They were on fire. Even his toes were sore. He was weary. So terribly weary.

“OK, I’m tired of riding.”

“What shall we do instead?”

He knew there was no option of doing anything else, and apparently she did too. She stepped around behind him on the bench and leaned forward onto his back.

Sisyphus rose and resumed climbing.

“Something’s different,” said Anna from his back. “The air is different. The sound is different.”

Sisyphus felt some differences too, but he was too weary to process what they were.

“Look behind!” she said.

Sisyphus saw it, then -- an ocean of clouds. They had been climbing through a misty haze, and now they were emerging from an ocean of clouds. Mist from the inside was cloud when viewed from the outside. Above them was blue sky.

“And look there!” she said, pointing up. And some distance ahead -- half a mile? -- the mountain seemed to come to an end, and there was nothing to see but sky.

With spirit soaring, Sisyphus might have started bounding upwards, but his body would not allow it. He kept climbing at the same pace. Behind him, Anna spouted a torrent of words, sharing her hopes and fears and plans for what to do when they reached the top. He in his weariness didn’t even take in much of what she said. He still had to get them there. When there were ten steps left, he paused. The sudden sensation came to him that he couldn’t go one more step. But then with an act of will that felt like it came from the depths of his soul, he took that one next step, and then another. His legs started shaking. At the top step, he tumbled forward, and Anna tumbled over his head onto -- grass! She rose to her feet and ran off. But Sisyphus marveled at the feel of grass under his face and fingers. Having delivered his cargo, it was evidently permitted for him to touch it and walk on it.

When he stood, the absence of Anna’s weight felt like a miracle, but his body was still exhausted. As he surveyed the scene, he saw that he was at the edge of a rough circle, perhaps a hundred yards in diameter. And all along the edge of the circle, in both directions, there was nothing past the edge but sky. He trudged forward. Anna met him coming back the other way and urged him to come forward to a depression in the center that had more than just level grass. There were a few trees. There was a patch of luxuriant grass on a raised area that surely was a bed! There was a water fountain, much as they had encountered all along the ascent. But there was a fountain feeding a much larger bowl -- a bathtub! The water flowing in was decidedly warm. It looked very inviting. He pulled his gray T-shirt over his head as he contemplated that bath. He had his hand on his shorts, but then realized Anna was right there.