The
sound of water hissing on hot stone broke the kiss, though Will lingered for
just a moment longer, his tongue gently touching the softness of her lower
lip. Drawing his head back, he looked
into her eyes, gratified to see she seemed a bit dazed, glad the kiss hadn’t
just affected him. Reluctantly, he moved
around the fire, kneeling to carefully tilt the MRE away from the heat. As he prepared the second packet, he glanced
across the flames, and got a jolt that seemed to spark something in his chest
when their eyes locked.
Slowly
raising a hand to her lips, she murmured, her voice husky, “That was the
best…apology I’ve ever had.”
Will
smiled. “It was the best…apology I’ve
ever given.” Then he bent his head to
stop staring at her like an lovesick dog, leaning the second meal on the stone
before carefully adding more wood to the fire.
Eva
noticed how Will dealt with every task: easy and
assured, calmly getting the job done.
It was clear he was very familiar with this kind of life. She wasn’t sure what to think about him, this
great kissing man, who had just knocked her right off her feet. Cocking her head, curious, she asked, “Why
are you here?”
He
spared her a quick look as he poked the fire, adjusting it to keep one packet
warm as the other cooked. Quietly he
said, “I guess you might say I’m on a pilgrimage, though after ten years, I may
be less a pilgrim than a nomad.” Will smiled, though it was no more than a
movement of lips, and didn't warm his eyes.
“Ten
years?” She couldn’t keep the
incredulity out of her voice. “Why? What is it you’re still looking for after all
that time?”
“It’s
a very long story,” he said abruptly, “and not one I particularly want to talk
about.” He frowned, then muttered, “I
don’t know why I even told you that much.”
Snorting,
Eva said, “Yeah, you really overwhelmed
me, spilling your guts like that. I
don’t know how I’m going to handle all that information.”
Will
tried to glare, but couldn’t stop the grin as he took in the flash of
irritation in her eyes, the hint of impatience with his attitude. “I didn’t mean to piss you
off.” His voice deepened; somehow she
felt the vibration across the fire, in her stomach as he said, “Guess I'll need to apologize some more.”
“We’ll
be holding off on that, Donovan,” she said quickly, then scowled when he laughed out
loud.
Raising
his hands in surrender, Will acquiesced.
“Okay, okay. We'll start with
dinner.” He waited a moment, then
casually murmured, “We’ve got all night to work on…apologies.”
Eva
drew breath to sputter, then noticed the twinkle in his eye and the effort he
was making not to laugh again. Relaxing,
she smiled sweetly. “Yes, we do,” she
said softly, “a long…very long…cold night.”
When his eyes widened, and she heard a loud, gulping swallow in the
sudden silence, she burst out laughing.
For a second he wasn’t sure which way to go, then the sound of her
laugh, low and slightly rough, led the way for him. Laughing with her, he prepared to dish up.
^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
Later,
Will gazed at Eva as she sorted through her things—the mountain of things she had
squirreled away in her clothes. He still
couldn’t believe it. “How
did this come about?” he asked, gesturing to her possessions. “Have you always travelled this way?”
Smiling,
she shook her head. “I was in Pokhara,
getting supplies, arguing with the Tourism Board about a guide, acclimating to
the altitude and I was befriended by this old woman at the hostel where I was
staying.” She paused, remembering the
ancient, wrinkled face, the toothless grin.
“I was having trouble with my pack—one of the load bearing straps had
gotten ripped somewhere between Australia and here. I didn’t want to buy a new pack, but I
couldn’t get the strap fixed properly. Then this
woman sort of took me under her wing.”
“You
speak the language?”
“No,
but her great-granddaughter could speak English.” She laughed softly. “I ended up being more than just their paying
guest. They just…enfolded me into their world. The food was wonderful, the family was huge; so
nice, so helpful and kind.” Her voice
had dropped to a near whisper.
“What’s
wrong,” Will asked softly.
“Oh,
nothing really. They were just good
people. Poor, but rich, you know?”
He
had his own memories of people with nothing, and yet with everything that truly
mattered. “Yeah, I do.”
With a little smile, Eva began arranging her things in small, organized piles. “The old woman, Nima, showed me the amazing
usefulness of a native skirt and coat.”
Her eyes sparkled in the firelight.
“There are more pockets, nooks and crannies in these clothes than you
could possibly imagine.”
“I
couldn’t have imagined if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
“Turns
out, however, there is one tiny flaw in this mode of travel.” Eva
said quietly. When he raised a brow in
question, she said, “I’m so used to my pack, how it feels on my back, between
my shoulders, the balance, the weight; I know how to walk with it. I wasn’t used to having all my things in
pockets and compartments, so when I got hit with that huge gust of wind, I just
sailed right off the edge of the mountain like some clueless amateur.” She looked gravely at Will. “If you hadn’t been there…”
“But
I was there.” He paused. “When I was getting you off that rock, what
did you mean about being hurt on so many levels?”
The
corner of her mouth turned up a fraction as she gave him back his own
words. “It’s a very long story and not
one I want to talk about.”
“Okay,
I deserve that,” he conceded, but he waited, patient in the silence.
She
was quiet for so long, Will thought that was the end of it. He built up the fire while she fiddled with
her gear, making more small piles, sorting into groupings that made sense to
her. Balancing
her pockets, Will thought.
Finally, “I guess you might say I’m on a pilgrimage, too.” Taking a deep breath, her voice low and quiet, “I used to be a mountain climber. I’ve been all over the world, climbing was all I knew, what I loved. About six
years ago, I was on an expedition in Alaska to climb Mount St. Elias.” She shot Will a look when he softly
whistled. “That’s a legendary climb,” he
murmured.
She
nodded in agreement. “I was with a group
of eight. Two of the climbers should
never have been allowed to be part of the group. Once it was clear they were too disruptive,
too cocky, they should have been sent back.
They were overbearing, wouldn’t listen to the guides, insisted on doing
things their way, constantly questioned every decision. They were a real threat to the success of the climb, and a danger to the group.”
Something
was tickling in the back of Will’s mind.
Why did this seem familiar, a tale he already knew?
“At
the start of the second week, we were approaching our last base camp to rest up
for the final push. That night there was
an bad argument between the lead guide and the two men. Nick was adamant that the group would wait,
rest, relax before attempting the summit; they wanted to climb the next morning.”
“Nick? Wait, I know this. Nick Barlow.
He was killed—” He stopped, saw
the stricken look on Eva’s face. “God,
you were on that expedition?” She just stared at him over the snap and
crackle of the fire. The story was
coming back to him, the details, the senseless loss. “Those two guys went out
on their own, got in serious trouble, and Barlow had to rescue them, isn’t that
how it went down?”
“We tried to persuade him to wait for more
rescue personnel, but he was the experienced lead on the scene, and it was his company, his expedition,
his responsibility. He knew if we waited for outside help, it would be too late.” Her voice trembled. “Nick died saving one man, the other was already dead when Nick found them. Later, the
families of the two men sued his business partner and his estate. In the end everything was lost: Nick, his business, everything.”
Will
knew there was more, some detail he was missing, though maybe it wasn't important now, after so much time had passed. What did matter was Eva. He couldn’t believe she'd been on that fateful trip. It had to have
affected her, deeply. Gently, he asked,
“Why are you walking the Annapurna? What
are you looking for?”
“Truthfully? I don’t know anymore.”
He
cleared his throat, unsure what to say. “Talk
to me, Eva. Tell me what you’re doing
here, how I can help you.”
Shadows
under her eyes, a weariness in her voice, Eva stood, stretched her stiff
muscles, rubbed a sore spot on her thigh, no doubt bruised in her fall, then said
quietly, “I need sleep, Will. Can we do
that now? Maybe talk tomorrow?”
^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
Nick hung
upside down by a leg tangled in his climbing rope; the only thing at the moment
keeping him from a thousand-foot fall.
Eva could see he was bleeding from a bad gash in his chin, the blood
running in a red furrow into his eyes, dripping off his forehead. She lay on her stomach, braced with ice
screws, ropes and her ice axe, and looked into the crevasse with horror at Nick,
hanging 20 feet below her with no way for her reach him. His rope had snagged on a jagged edge of rock
inside the deep cleft when the ice bridge had collapsed. Without that accidental snag, Nick would
already be gone.
“Nick! Nick, can you hear me?” She didn’t know how to get to him, how to
pull him to safety. She wasn't even sure he was alive. Her heart thundered with fear. “Nick, god damn it, answer
me!”
As his body
hung, swaying gently, Eva thought she heard a sigh, maybe a soft moan. “Nick, it’s me, Eva. Come on, talk to me if you can. Help is coming! You just have to hold on.”
She was half
in the crevasse herself at that point, feeling the deep, eerie silence of the
blue ice, hearing the slight creak of Nick’s rope as he moved in a ghostly
breeze that seemed to come up from far, far below, sending chills into her
soul. How could this be happening? My fault, my fault, my fault!
“Eva.” The whisper seemed to waft out of the frigid air, ethereal, insubstantial. “Sorry…”
The harrowing dread was
unbearable. “Nick! No! Stay
with me! Nick!”
There was an
odd tremble in the snow under her belly, small crystals of ice drifted past her face and
fell in sparkling flashes toward Nick.
And then the crevasse seemed to shift, the rope holding Nick loosened,
and slowly, snakelike, in a slithering nightmare of motion, it uncoiled from the rock. As she screamed his
name, over and over, Nick fell, gently, gracefully, into the depths of his frozen tomb.
^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*
“Eva! Oh god, baby wake up. Please wake up!” Will was rocking her tight in his arms, close
enough he could feel her heart jackhammering in her chest, her mindless screams
thick with horror and grief, pain and loss.
They
had gone to bed in his little tent, cozy and warm from the fire, and though it
was almost agony to lay so close to her, he consoled himself that at least she
didn’t object when he spooned in behind her, tucking her body into his. Murmuring into her hair, he told her it was
to keep them both from hypothermia. Her
snort made him grin. They had fallen almost immediately to sleep.
Until
the screaming.
He
rolled her over, took her face in his hands and began to kiss her frantically,
whispering nonsense words, kissing her eyes, tasting the tears. Her screams became moans, the moans gasps,
and finally she seemed to hear him. “Eva? It’s Will.
I’m here, you’re not alone.” Her
breathing was harsh, ragged, but at least she was awake now. Still
kissing her—gentle, soothing touches—he breathed into her ear, “What was it?
Tell me what happened.” Her
body began to shake in the aftermath of the nightmare so he drew her closer still, giving her all the warmth
he could.
“Nick,” she moaned.
“You
had a nightmare about Nick?” Again that
niggling thought, that detail of something he just couldn't grasp.
“I
saw him fall. I was there when he fell.” She hung onto Will’s shirt, her fists tangled
in the fabric as she wept.
“It
was just a nightmare. Hush now, it was
a bad, bad dream.” And just like
that, he remembered. His heart lurched,
he looked at her, and he remembered. “You were Nick’s business partner. You’re the one who was sued, lost the
business, lost everything. Oh, Eva.”
A tormented whisper. “Yes. Me. I lost the business, my home,
everything.” Her voice was raw from
the screams. “But I didn't care about that, none of it mattered. How can anything matter after you've killed your husband?”
