The Ascent (12 page)

After peeling off the extra layers of my clothes, I slipped away from camp and passed through low-hanging moss where I urinated on a patch of saxifrage. From this height, I could hear the rushing of the river and see its meandering tendrils glittering like slicks of oil beneath the shine of the full moon. Beyond the hills, the tendrils convened into a single strong-flowing current that dropped perhaps one hundred yards beyond the valley into a steaming, misty gorge.

Hannah would have been speechless
, I thought, feeling a dull pang deep inside me.

Back at camp, the Tibetan guides were doling out mugs of brown rice and fat red beans.

I claimed a mug and shoveled a spoonful into my mouth. I hadn’t realized how hungry I’d been until I swallowed that first spoonful.

“Here.” Hollinger handed me a tin cup. “Careful. It’s hot.”

“Thanks.” The cup warmed my hands, and the tea tasted like basil.

Hollinger nodded and walked over to his tent. Grinning, he planted an Australian flag outside the tent door, then peeled off his sodden boots and proceeded to rub his toes on a straw mat.

I looked across the plateau and tried to make out the distant mountains, but it was too dark to see anything that far away. I could see Andrew standing on the precipice, his hands still on his hips, gazing out over the valley. He was briefly silhouetted against the moon. It was impossible not to think of that night in San Juan … which inevitably made me think of Hannah. I chased the thought away.

Petras sat down beside me, busy with his own bowl of beans and rice. “You’ve got some stamina.”

“I’m still wide awake. I could go another ten miles.” Truth was, as long as I was active and exerting energy, I didn’t think about drinking. Now, sitting here in the dark while the world slowly wound down, I felt my tongue growing dry and fat and that old urgency causing my

throat to convulse reflexively.

“Save it for tomorrow,” Petras advised.

“Hey,” I said. “What was it you were going to say earlier today? About the guides and Andrew? You’d heard them say something—”

“Beyul,”
Petras said, staring into his bowl. I heard his spoon scrape the bottom.

“What is it?”

“It means ‘hidden land.’ They’re believed to be places of middle existence between our world and the next. Some lamas have spent their lives seeking out these places, interpreting the
beyul
to be a sort of paradise, a Shangri-la. Others believe it is where the earth is weakest, where our world is physically capable of touching the next. Many others think these hidden lands are not meant to be found and that the spirits—or nature itself—will prevent travels from uncovering their locations at all costs. I once read a book by a lama who said he was guided for a full year by a female spirit—what he called a
dakini—
in search of a
beyul
hidden beneath a glacier. He never found it, and he nearly died of exposure in the process.”

“That’s unfortunate,” I said, yet my mind was still echoing with the concept of a female spirit, the
dakini
. “After a whole year with nothing to show for it.”

“On the contrary,” Petras said. “He was one of the lucky ones. You see, most lamas who set out to find a
beyul
die trying to find it. Or they simply vanish and are never heard from again.”

“Yeah?”

“And sometimes,” Petras continued, “you may be standing in the heart of the
beyul
and never even know it.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because you aren’t attuned to it. Your spirit isn’t ready or capable of accepting it.”

Jackals howled in the distance. I jerked my head and could see the wreath of mist rising over the plateau. It was nearly impossibleto make out the trees below, and the winding, glittering river I had witnessed less than thirty minutes ago had now vanished.

“Is that where we’re going?” I asked. “The Canyon of Souls? Is that supposed to be one of these
beyuls?”

“I honestly don’t know. And as far as we’re concerned, I don’t think it matters.”

I barked laughter and shook my head. “You’re fucking with me, right?”

“It’s the truth as I know it, anyway.” He motioned in the direction of the two guides, who were asleep under a canvas lean-to. “I believe that’s what our buddy Andrew was discussing with them earlier this afternoon.”

“How do you know all this stuff?”

“I’ve been out here before. A few years ago, I came by myself and spent nine months with a rucksack over my shoulders. Spent many nights in the Western Hills, in Pokhara, and made friends in Thamel. It was a good way to clear my head, and back then I needed my head cleared. It was a rough time, but I guess we all go through that at some point.” Petras faced me. “You all right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You’ve been rubbing your leg the whole time. You get hurt?”

I was massaging the scar on my left leg. It didn’t hurt; it had just become an unconscious habit. “No, I’m fine.”

Across from us, Chad whipped out a harmonica and began playing some unrecognizable tune. Someone laughed, and someone else—possibly Shotsky—told him to shut the hell up and where did he think he was, the old West? Right on cue, Chad told his heckler to go fuck himself. Again, laughter from some disembodied voice.

I sighed, smiling and shaking my head. “This is going to be a long couple of weeks.”

Petras leaned over and squeezed my shoulder. It was such a brotherly gesture that it caught me off guard and rendered me temporarily speechless. “Get some sleep,” he told me.

I watched him rise and shamble over to his own tent, the bonfire

causing shadows to dance across his broad shoulders.

After he disappeared through the flaps of his tent, I shifted my gaze out over the grassy plateau, black and still in the night, to the waning fire. Beyond the fire, I could see Andrew. He was perched on a large outcrop of white stone, his legs folded beneath him, his back facing the moon. He looked lost in meditation.

1

IT WAS NOON. ACCORDING TO SHOTSKY’S WRIST-

watch, and on the third day of the hike when we reached the bridge spanning the cliffs. It was an unsteady rope bridge, like something out of an Indiana Jones movie, suspended at least five stories over a chalk white river. Great fronds waved along the riverbank, but they did not fully conceal the display of jagged white stones, slick with lichen, that hugged the wet earth.

Chad tossed a rock over the side of the cliff; we all watched it plummet to the frothing waters below. Chad whistled but didn’t say anything.

Once again, Andrew spoke with the guides. It had become his custom to pull them aside and speak in hushed tones whenever the spirit struck. This hadn’t bothered me at first, and it wasn’t until I heard one of the guides say something to Hollinger in crude but understandable English that I began to feel uneasy about their discussions in Tibetan. I thought of Petras’s story about the
beyul
and how some secret places were never meant to be disturbed. This, coupled with the fresh memory of Shomas and how my room had been ransacked, did not sit well with me. It seemed none of us knew much about the Canyon of Souls. It wouldn’t be unlike Andrew to lead us into danger.

“We cross here,” Andrew said.

The guides were already securing lines to the moss-slicked rope handholds. The bridge wobbled unsteadily as they did so.

“They’re sure this bridge will hold?” Curtis said. He eyed the wobbling bridge as dubiously as I had.

“It’ll hold. Besides, we’ll lose too much time climbing down and trying to cross the river.”

“He’s playing loose and fast,” Curtis muttered as we secured our gear.

“But he’s right about losing time if we had to climb down and cross the river,” Hollinger said.

“That bridge don’t hold,” Curtis said, “we all might be in that river, anyway.”

One of the guides went first. He traversed the slotted wooden planks with seemingly no difficulty, the palms of his small hands just grazing the ropes at waist height.

“Thirty-three seconds,” Shotsky commented, staring at his watch. “From one end to the other.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but he moved damn fast.”

“Thirty-three,” he repeated, ignoring me. “What’s thirty-three seconds?”

Chad laced up his boots at the edge of the cliff. “Don’t tell me you’re actually afraid of heights, Donald.”

Shotsky scanned the length of the suspended bridge. “What can I say?” His voice was small, and I could hear the dryness in his mouth when his throat clicked. “I needed the job.”

Andrew crossed second. He moved confidently and without concern. At the midpoint, he paused and called to the rest of us, “It’s a sturdy bridge.” Twice he stomped his boot against the planks; both times we all winced collectively. “We don’t need to go one at a time. Space it out, leave about ten or fifteen feet between each of you. It’s strong enough.”

“Strong, strong,” echoed the guide who’d remained on our sideof the bridge. He pulled at one of the ropes to bolster his authority. Judging by his urgency, I assumed this had been the guides’ suggestion from the beginning and was most likely the essence of their discussion with Andrew.

“Later, mates,” Hollinger said, moving up from the back of the queue. He proceeded to cross, both hands gripping the ropes. His steps weren’t as certain as Andrew’s, but he moved at a decent pace.

Moments later Chad stepped onto the planks. “I’m next.”

“Wait a couple seconds,” I told him. “Give Hollinger more space.”

“He’s got enough,” Chad said, seizing the ropes. He tested their bounce by shaking them, which caused the guide to scowl and wave his hands.

“Hold up.” Petras dropped a hand on Chad’s shoulder. The force must have been harder than it looked, because Chad swung his head around, his eyes wide as saucers. “Tim’s right. Wait a second.”

Chad slipped on his mirrored sunglasses and wisely kept his mouth shut.

“Okay,” Petras said once Hollinger had covered a sizable distance. “Go.”

Chad moved onto the bridge.

I glanced over at Shotsky. He was watching every step Chad took with mounting distress.
You’ve got to be kidding me
, I thought. I gripped a fistful of his parka. “You okay?”

His gaze bounced from me to the bridge, me to the bridge. “Doesn’t look too safe. I’m maybe the heaviest guy …”

“Here,” I said, setting my pack on the ground. I unwound a spool of line and ran it through one of the grappling hooks at my hip. I extended the line, latched it onto one of Shotsky’s hooks, and tied it off in a figure eight. I tugged on it and it was strong.

Shotsky laughed nervously. “So this means if I fall, you’ll fall, too, huh? Kill the both of us instead of just me, right?”

“You can go back,” I said, my voice low. “You don’t have to be

out here if you don’t want to do this.”

“Yes,” he said dryly, “I do.”

I was about to ask what he meant when Petras clapped my shoulder. As I turned, he intercepted the line from my hands and ran it through two hooks on his harness.

“Thanks,” I said, but Petras had already turned away.

Curtis followed Chad. We waited for Curtis to go beyond the bridge’s midpoint before Petras stepped onto the bridge. Shotsky may have been the most overweight of the bunch, but John Petras, with his massive frame and shoulder span, was by far the heaviest.

From where I stood, I could hear the planks creaking beneath Petras’s boots. There wasn’t enough rope length between us to provide the requisite fifteen feet, so as the slack on my rope picked up, I moved onto the bridge. I glanced at Shotsky over my shoulder and said, “Thirty-three.”

“Thirty-three,” he echoed and audibly swallowed a lump in his throat.

Beneath me, the bridge seemed to swing from one side to the other; I had to maintain white-knuckled grips on the ropes to prevent this, and I could feel my fingernails digging into the meat of my palms after only five steps. The groaning planks beneath Petras’s feet less than two yards ahead of me did not help settle my unease.

I closed my eyes and listened to the rushing water below, the sound of the wind rustling the palm fronds and the rhododendron leaves. Last night’s sleep was hard and dreamless: I dreamed now, imagining I was floating high above the earth, no bridge beneath my feet, just the air and the babbling river, white and frothing, and the swaying fronds that were so big they looked prehistoric—

The line at my back went taut. My eyes flipped open, and I told Petras to slow down as I glanced behind me. Shotsky, taking up the rear, was moving too slow.

“You gotta step it up a notch, man,” I called to him.

“This pace feels about right,” he said. I did not like the quakingin his voice.

“Shotsky, the slower you move, the longer you’ll be on this bridge. Do you understand?” I turned to look at him.

He nodded but did not increase his speed.

“Shotsky,” I said again, and that was when the plank beneath my foot snapped.

The world blurred as I rushed downward, feeling the jagged edge of the busted plank tear my cargo pants. Reflex caused my hands to spear out; I grabbed one of the vertical ropes, which briefly arrested my fall yet caused the bridge to pitch on its side. I heard Shotsky moan and saw John Petras bound toward me. The busted plank was at eye level. What looked like blood seeped into the wood. My blood? I had no idea.

“Hang on!” Petras shouted.

The rope was slick with moss; I lost my grip and felt the world pull me toward its center.

With all this gear on my back, I’m going to drown
, I thought. A second later, I felt the concussion of striking the surface of the water. My bones rattled in my skin. For a moment, I thought I had somehow missed the river completely and hit the embankment, and I was now splayed out and broken on the jagged white rocks covered by a mat of fronds.

But then I felt the icy waters claim me, seeping into my clothes and attacking my flesh, and I couldn’t see a damn thing. I was fucking blind, and I was drowning, blind and drowning.

2

I AWOKE BESIDE THE RIVER. PETRA’S FACE IN MY