"Okay. See you tomorrow noon at the latest?"
He drew himself up, affronted. "You hitting the Park Service up for a
totally unauthorized ride in a department vehicle?"
He grinned. "You got it. See you then. You
he yelled at Mutt.
Mutt looked longingly at the helicopter, pleadingly up
at Kate, and barked a resigned negative. Dan shrugged.
"You're both nuts. See you later."
She labored up the slope, panting in the oxygen-thin air. She climbed
ten steps in the powdery, shifting snow, rested ten, climbed ten, rested
ten. Mutt walked when she did, stopped when she did. It was the first
time Kate
had ever seen Mutt look even remotely tired.
Every thousand feet or so she forced food and water
down both of them, marveling all the while at their luck. Angqaq Peak
was not a technically difficult climb, so long as you stuck to the route
up Nicolo Glacier, between Carlson Icefall and the East Buttress. But it
was high and the air was thin and the weather was usually for shit, with
winds that had broken a 110-mph anemometer just a month before, and
temperatures that combined with those winds to result in chill factors
routinely registering at minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit and lower.
But not that night. That night was a night out of a fairy tale. A full
moon had risen two hours after sundown, and moonlight reflected off the
snow and ice, lighting the landscape so that it was almost impossible
for the two climbers to stumble or lose their way. There wasn't a hint
of wind, and where the light of the moon did not obliterate them, stars
shone like holes burnt into the fabric of the night. It was cold, clear
and absolutely still, and the journey up was turning into more of a hike
than a climb.
A continuous ripple of rock, rifts of ice and high folds of drifted snow
had hidden the summit from them almost all the way up, which was why
she realized it. She halted, breathing hard, one mittened hand on Mutt's
head.
They stood together at the top of the world. Mikiluni Peak on their
right, Mount Kanuyaq on their left, the Child at their feet, the rest of
the jagged summits gathered at a respectful distance before Angqaq's
proud and disdainful zenith. Challenging from below, from above the
mountains seemed almost deferential. Kate looked from them to the moon
and the stars hanging far above, and for the first time, she understood
the true allure of mountain climbing.
There was elation, there was triumph, there was pride in achieving the
summit, yes, but most of all there was a shift in perspective. From
below, the view was of the
mountains and the heavens, equally unattainable. From
here, it was the mountains below and the heavens above
and herself in between, herself, an insignificant, puny
little mortal between immortals. A glint caught the
of her eye, and she turned her head quickly, to catch the
last glimpse of a meteor streaking across the sky in
thin smear of astral dust. The heavens were alive, too, as alive as the
earth below. So frost was right after all,
she thought. The best thing we're put here for's to see.
Another part of her protested, Is that all? Not to do?
Only to see?
"It's enough," she said out loud. "More than enough.
If your eyes are open it's a full-time job.
Slender tendrils of feathered aurora felt their way down from the north,
shedding their cold glow over
the broken arctic landscape, ephemeral ribbons of confectioner's sugar
spun into pastel strands of pale green and red and blue and white.
Closer they crept, and closer, until they were directly overhead and
of gossipy comment over the broken scene below.
Instinctively, Kate fumbled beneath her parka and
around her waist. The old Eskimos thought that the Northern Lights
reached down and snatched people away, but that you could protect
yourself against them with your knife. It was one of Ekaterina's
favorite stories, and she had told it over and over and over again to
the small
granddaughter perched on her knee. It was only a story; still, the hilt
of the knife felt solid and comforting in
Kate's hand. She looked up again, marveling in the light and color, at
the sound. After a while those sounds began to work together, to take on
a rhythm, and without conscious thought Kate began to move with them.
She half crouched over legs bent at the knees and her feet stamped
lightly against the hard-packed snow, in time with the aurora.
red band arced down and she lunged forward to meet
it, daring it to snatch her up. A tendril of green shifted and swirled
above her, and she flung up a hand and sketched her homage against it.
One white finger tickled the surface of the snow at her feet, and she
danced with it, step for step. Agudar, master spirit, keeper of the
game, loomed white and round far above and shed a steady glow over them
all, and in the light of that steady glow the spirits of the dead
gathered round to bear witness, but Lottie was not among them.
Lighthearted, joyous, Kate matched steps with a band of red that swirled
and wrapped back upon itself above her head.
The light increased in the east, and the aurora slipped away in search
of other dancing partners. Kate's feet slowed, and stopped, her breath
coming hard in the thin air. Mutt came to stand next to her, and
together they faced into the rising sun, watching as the pale gold of
morning slipped over the knife-edged peaks, spilled into the valleys,
sparked against the distant blue of Prince William Sound. The sky
their way over the horizon to crown the new day with cold fire.
And the sun rose full up into the sky, and the night fled into the west
and all magic with it, and Kate was abandoned at the top of a white
world stripped clean and polished by the clear, honest, merciless light
of morning. She felt stripped and polished herself, refined down to her
essential elements. It was as if she had been roused from a long sleep
filled with dreams to satiate desires both subtle and gross, only to be
greeted by a new world with more promise than any dream. Or perhaps it
was only that she looked at it through new eyes.
She smiled at this unaccustomed flight of fancy. "I do believe romance
is getting the better of me this morning," she told Mutt. "Sorry about
that."
Mutt's expression indicated that, romance not with standing, they had
pressed their luck far enough and it was more than time to get the hell
off Big Bump and back to where a reasonable person, four-footed or otherwise, might
expect to find food and shelter when a storm blew up unexpectedly, as
storms were prone to do, and especially here.
Mutt was right. Kate took a last, pensive look down the eastern sweep of
the Quilaks, appreciating as never before
how vast was the interior of
the North American continent, and how high nineteen thousand feet was. A
thought occurred that made her groan beneath her breath. "You know what
this means, don't you?" she told Mutt.
Mutt looked puzzled, and Kate said sadly, "God help us, it looks like
Middle Finger for two, babe."
She shrugged into her pack and, Mutt at her side, began the long trek down.