Mountains

MOUNTAINS

I

They drew nearer. The mountains appeared larger, much larger, than they had from that distance of hours before. Soon, they seemed incredible and immense, dwarfing Anne, Ruben, and Raul to tiny specks of near-nothing. Was this a fool’s errand or a suicide climb?

And it hadn’t even started yet.

Ruben glanced over at Anne. “Are you sure about this, Anne?”

She didn’t return his glance. “Am I sure?This is hardly the time for second thoughts.”

Anne noticed the doubt in Raul’s expression when he glanced toward her, even as he tried to hide it beneath an overly-patient smile. He didn’t give Ruben that same smile, she noticed. She guessed Raul had never embarked on this sort of climbing venture with a woman. If this concerned the man, Anne decided, she shouldn’t bother herself to care. Between her husband’s death and the undertaking before her, she would do it anyway, all else be damned. No obstacle would stand in her path.

They plodded and climbed across rocky terrain. They bypassed numerous jagged rocks and boulders in their path of travel to the north, skirting the mountain’s perimeter. Anne and Ruben looked upward to the powerful, looming sight of the mountain before them, and it did nothing to lighten their spirits.

They traveled through the day across the brown and gray rocks. In time, a light rain pattered down around them. A dirty gray mist infiltrated the air.

Raul moved past Anne and Ruben into the lead. He produced a small compass, checked it, surveyed their surroundings, and tucked the compass away. They kept moving. For the remainder of the next hour-and-a-half, none of the three spoke. Anne withdrew to her thoughts.

Did this Mourner’s Cradle even exist? Possibly not. In the great scheme of things, Anne recognized beneath the overwhelming mountain, she didn’t know much of anything.

Her mind roamed into the disheartening likelihood that she chased a foolish whim, but as she had previously asserted, it was too late to turn back now. If her husband had toiled for disillusion, she would scale the mountain and confront that enlightened disappointment in his place.

At the base of the mountain, Raul stopped, holding up a hand. “We start climbing here,” he said, and turned to face them. “It is best we get ready.”

Ruben set his pack down on the rocks, opened it, and began pulling out wads of clothing and climbing equipment, which he set to one side. Observing Ruben, Anne did the same.

After a quick round of instructions from Raul, they geared up accordingly. Anne moved behind a mound of rocks to change as all three stripped away the old clothing and transitioned into the bulkier, more insulating wear. Anne removed her wedding ring and shoved it into the bottom of the duffel bag.

Once finished, they crammed the rest of their unused articles back into the supply packs and confronted the mountain.

II

Over the next hour, the temperature plunged. A layer of snow became visible. Some distance higher, ice crunched beneath their upward steps. The wind whistled into their ears, which were at least shielded by the hoods of their thick coats.

Rope connected them. The crampons affixed to their boots offered the relief of additional traction when the climb’s slant steepened.

Each of them wore one of the green supply packs, and Anne continued to carry the bag containing her husband’s documents and camera, as well as her wedding ring. She had looped it around one shoulder. Ruben thought this was a bad idea, but he hadn’t tried to argue with her about it for long. Both knew he wouldn’t have made any progress if he had.

The climb became a rigorous vertical ascent. Soon, their gloved hands gripped ice axes, cracking them into the ice repeatedly until Anne’s muscles burned from the effort.

Between the exhausting labors of the climb, she had little room to sort out how much time elapsed during their fight up the mountain. Would the entire climb be this difficult?

Ruben had some past recreational climbing experience. It wasn’t much in the face of these treacherous mountains. Raul had the true experience here. They heeded his instructions to the letter.

A sense of relief came when they saw a ledge some distance above. Raul climbed onto it first, helping Ruben and then Anne up to the stretch of standing ground. Anne and Ruben stopped here to gaze out to the rough curve of brown-and-white landscape below.

The harsh wind chapped one side of Anne’s face. She attempted to huddle away from it, and it slung her sandy blond hair across her eyes. She sighed and reached up with gloved fingers to brush the tangled hair back. When the wind relented, she turned to see Raul standing against the mountain wall and Ruben looking out from near the brink of the ledge.

Holding her hair back from the wind-frenzy with one hand, Anne walked toward Ruben. She took another glance to the rocky lands far and wide below.

“We’re a long way from St. Charles,” she said.

“I hope this is worth it,” he said. He lifted his eyes to the sky. “It’s getting dark. Soon it will be worse up here.”

Anne shifted in the snow. Ruben walked past Raul and surveyed the area above.

“I guess we’ve waited here long enough,” he said.

They resumed the climb. The winds attacked them with renewed ferocity.

Anne hammered her axe into the ice, focusing on the areas Raul and Ruben had gripped before her. Her muscles burned against the coldness. Her breaths became shorter and more rapid, she noticed. She felt a touch of lightheadedness, but pushed herself to continue the climb.

Years before, Anne reflected, long before Damon’s dedication to the Mourner’s Cradle had commenced, she and Damon had maintained a regular fitness routine. They often took a morning run and sometimes a longer bicycle ride on the weekends. There had been a few hiking trips, a couple of which were along mountain trails. She remembered doing some rock-climbing then, but it counted for little in comparison to this feat.

Then there was that heavy red punching bag, acquired in used condition from an estate sale during the later days. Damon seldom used it. By that time, he had already been ostracized by the archaeological and historical research communities, and he remained far too busy with his work.

He had reason to worry. The past had returned to destroy him.

His research had supplanted the Keller Expedition, a grievous mistake, and this example was dredged from the past, hefted high, and emblazoned in bold across every page of Damon’s dossier. As a result, funding became nearly impossible. Cornwell, with whom Damon had reached an informal agreement on a true exploration of the possibility of the Mourner’s Cradle, withdrew.

Both Damon and Anne knew the source of their distress. Its name was Brock Keller.

Damon’s hours of study had multiplied. Many of his other activities diminished, abandoned in favor of work. During that time, Anne struck the heavy bag plenty of times, often until her knuckles were almost as red as the bag. When she rode her bicycle, she sometimes strayed off the standard course, pushing hard until the exhaustion hit her and forced a slow, inevitable return home.

Her harsh physical rigors had been an outlet for her frustrations. At least they had helped to keep her in decent shape. She couldn’t imagine how much more difficult the day’s climb might be otherwise.

Powdery snow pelted down from the others climbing above. Anne blinked and lowered her head to keep the falling snow from her eyes.

Chafed by the coldness, the strain of the climb, and the uncertainty, Anne’s thoughts pushed against the haze of time for another faraway place. Only days before that, her husband sat in the chair of their storage room, which had transformed into his private study. He sat surrounded by stacks of books, writing, working, internalizing.

What had she said to him? Had they even exchanged words that night?

She had brought him a drink as he worked, a glass of cola with ice. He took the drink and leaned against her. Their eyes met as innumerable times before. Words seemed unnecessary.

She went to bed. The next morning, he was gone.

She lay in an empty bed. Her thoughts and emotions were a crushing weight on her chest. She could barely breathe. She couldn’t remember escaping that empty house, but she remembered standing in front of her husband’s coffin. Then she heard Keller’s voice, and turned to see him shamelessly standing there with his neatly-combed hair, blue suit, and calm, smug face.

The man thinks he’s won. The thought came to her like icy steel. The hatred had seized her then.

It fueled her climb up the icy face. When Ruben next looked down at her, something in her stare gave him pause.

From above him, Raul glanced down. “What is it?”

Ruben returned to the task of climbing. “Nothing,” he muttered.

III

Once they reached the next ledge, as before, Raul helped Ruben upward. The two of them pulled Anne up over the edge. A short span of ice wall stood in front of them. They climbed it to a lengthier, broader area of inclined ground.

Ruben stepped close to Anne. “Are you all right?” he asked her.

“No,” she said, her eyes toward the snow of the ledge.

Ruben looked down. “I’m sorry. It’s a bad question.”

Anne raised her head and turned her eyes, sorrowful and tired, to Ruben. “It’s all right, Ruben. I’m trying.”

Raul studied the mountainside ahead. He nudged Ruben and pointed toward the top of the incline that supported them, where they saw a large vertical crack in the icy rock face.

“Shelter there,” Raul said. He trudged upward toward it, and they followed.

The crevice opened into a cave. Numerous naturally-formed vertical furrows lined the interior walls, which glinted crystalline with ice.

It proved better inside the ice cave than outside with the wind and snow. Ruben and Anne took refuge against the cave’s left wall, sitting down. Anne’s muscles felt like lead. She feared she might not be able to get up again.

Raul produced a small portable gas burner and began heating it. He packed glovefuls of snow into a round metal container and set it atop the burner. With no explanation offered, it soon became clear that Raul was melting the snow for water. Once done, he poured the liquid into small travel cups for them. They had a refreshing drink while Raul refilled the metal container with snow.

He produced a pouch of some pasty, chunky mixture. Once another batch of snow had melted, he mixed it with the water to create a sort of soup.

“Don’t worry,” Raul said with that smile he meant to be reassuring, but to Anne fell flat. “I will take good care of you.” He returned his attention to the soup.

Anne wished for warmth. It had already been a long, difficult climb. The journey seemed as unlikely and impossible of a task as there might ever be. For all of her resolve, the sense of its possible futility kept returning to her.

She was paying Raul well, and Anne knew she would have to pay Ruben for his aid once this was over. Still, she couldn’t imagine anyone would be so desperate for money to put themselves through this ordeal. With Ruben, at least, she knew it wasn’t about money, even if he had mentioned it before. The man did have to make a living, as everyone did—everyone who hadn’t been born into a lofty bank account like Keller. Fair payment for Ruben was the least she could do.

Between shivers, with her hands bunched in her lap, she turned to Raul and asked, “How much longer until we get there?”

“There is still quite the climb,” Raul responded, not what Anne wanted to hear, but she appreciated his frank honesty.

Anne struggled to remove her pack. Her hands and arms were stiff. Ruben saw her difficulty and moved to assist. Together, they pulled Anne’s green supply pack free and set it aside.

Anne placed the duffel bag in her lap and unzipped it to reveal Damon’s papers and the maps, including the patchwork map that Damon must have created during his last days. The camera hid somewhere beneath all of it.

She examined Damon’s crude patchwork map and the marking across it, three X marks surrounding what Damon had believed to be the general location of what he had called the Mourner’s Cradle. Even if her husband had drawn the map with a precise hand and a sharp mind, it struck her like something out of a child’s pretend treasure hunting adventure.

She didn’t know what substantiated Damon’s fixation, but she knew Damon. Now that he was gone, his void was hers. For the moment, going over the patchwork map gave her something to do, a reason to move her hands, which she considered a good thing in this cold.

Raul glanced over, but quickly returned his eyes to the almost-finished soup.

Anne continued poring over the map. Still beside her, Ruben raised his head with a sudden motion. This drew Anne’s attention. She laid her hands down against the map, crinkling the paper.

“What is it, Ruben?” she asked.

He didn’t respond. He was listening. Raul looked up from the soup. He heard it also, as did Anne now. She sensed an unusual change in the cave’s air. Penetrating the cave’s silence, even through the wind outside, was a rhythmic, disquieting crunch, crunch, crunch.