THE LIGHT OF A'LEST

CHAPTER 23

Kara clung tighter to her pelt as the mass of fur whipped in the wind. It grew heavier and more laden with ice with each agonizing step she took. She didn't know why, but for a moment, she wondered if it would not be better without the thing. Something deep and primordial urged her to abandon that line of thinking. She'd heard stories of those who had frozen to death. Bodies found nude. Almost as if their last act was to hasten their deaths. Thankfully, the thought of Keko staring at her in a state of nature was enough to focus her mind elsewhere and abandon the strange inclination. Still, the dogged determination she displayed when they'd started up the mountains was gone. A distant memory. Perhaps not even hers. A memory of some other person. Someone with unshakable will. Someone who hadn't met the mountain.

     Keko slipped on a jagged outcropping and fell to his hands and knees. Kara stepped forward, knelt, and helped him to his feet, taking note of his ice-caked eyebrows. His lips. So blue they bordered on purple. She saw the frantic uncertainty in his eyes. A lasting look that told her he, too, was warring with his own doubts. She wanted to say something to bring him comfort but found her lips were stuck fast and far too numb to speak. There was an understanding look in his eyes. A solemn nod, and then they trudged on.

     The wind howled, churning snow and ice together, forming them into wispy ghosts that raced up and down the mountainside. Focusing on the rhythmic crunching sound Keko's boots made as he blazed the trail just ahead of her helped. Together, they'd walked all day, and as the storm approached, as dumb and as ridiculous as it sounded to her now, they had both decided it was better to continue at a slower, more manageable pace rather than to stop and wait for the storm to pass. The undulating sheet of ascending white before them seemed to pave the way to the heavens and kiss on the horizon.

     From what she could make out, the landscape ahead was a marred one. With outcroppings of crystalline granite and rows of small crevasses running in broken lines. "We have to stop!" she shouted. But Keko walked on, unable to hear her over the roar of the storm and the growing groan of the mountain. The very ground itself seemed to shriek, sending her vivid imagination into a tizzy. She had visions of the mountain as if it were some beast voicing its outrage that two mortal souls dared to crawl across its back. She half ran, half stomped through the knee-high snow, extended her arm to the barely visible outline of Keko's shoulder, heard the monster beneath the ground shudder, and felt herself falling through the air.

     Keko's silhouette roared from somewhere above. "Hold on!" Kara didn't need the reminder. Her breath was rapid, her knuckles white, her shoulders raging in anguish under the weight of the sodden pelt. She'd just managed to summon her spear and ram it into the ice and stone as she fell. But the novelty and temporary relief this brought faded as she looked down and saw her feet dangling just above an incalculable abyss.

     Keko lurched over the edge of the crevasse, nearly slipping and sliding over as he summoned his shield-light and slammed it into the ledge. Reaching down with his other hands, he strained.

     "I can't reach you." Kara looked up, her muscles straining, eyes frantic.

     "I'll be right back," he said.

     "Don't!" She screamed, the desperation in her voice causing her to almost choke, then whimper. "Don't leave me--please!"

     "Kara, Kara, look at me, look at me. I am not going to leave you. Not now. Not ever! Just hold on, okay, I'll be right back."

     Screaming, she lost her grip with one hand, then barely managed to re-grasp the staff before the other slipped. She looked up and saw empty space where Keko had just been. She felt her fingers slipping against the warm heat radiating from her spear. Then she looked down and readied herself to meet the monster in the mountain.