FALAHA'S JOURNEY: A Spacegirl's Account in Three Movements

Episode #54: The Man Who Climbs (Interlude)

"Come!" the powerful tail wind hails me.

Now I can clear the icefall in one burst. It's barely past the middle of the night, and the wind tells me the route up through the terrain between the icetowers. It is what we call the 'breath of the mountain'. The base camp is long behind.

I notice an eerie movement at the side of my vision, a ghastly cloud, a shimmering, circulating mass of ice particles, and a figure amidst the snarling plume of airborne crystals, shaped by the updraft of the wind current.

"Here again?" I ask him, smiling. "You never get tired of it, do you?" For a second, within the swirls, I catch a glimpse of the familiar pale face. Tonight, he is smiling. I salute him with my ice axe, telling him, "Indeed, a refreshing night to ascend."

Just as I go, an impressively huge serac collapses not far behind me and I feel the glacier crack under my feet.

So close.

And I am excited, my body keeps going.

The serac zone is almost over. These massive ice blocks have a habit of collapsing abruptly and without warning. There is very little one can do except prepare for potentially being trapped or crushed to death. It is impossible to run away, or even know which way to run. Crevasses are another danger here. Exposed crevasses may be easy to avoid, but the ones buried can form treacherous snow bridges through which an unwary climber can fall. Then, of course, the entire area can collapse. The icefall is a constantly changing structure.

I finally reach the foot of the large icy wall—the last one before I enter a vast, flat area of endless snow with crevasses hidden everywhere. Due to deep snow and whiteouts the weather can turn this path into a difficult one. I decide not to camp here, so I remove my crampons on this climb and move forward.

Soon I am at a rocky patch before taking on another ice wall. This is where I will camp. This is also the last chance to get a decent, prepared meal. From here on I will be surviving only on instant snacks.

I've been climbing mountains since I was seven. Took after my dad. He taught me everything about mountains, be it a rock formation, or an icy cliff of the highest peak. He died in an avalanche during one of our ascents when I had barely hit fourteen. His body was never found. Since then I've preferred climbing alone. My mother and my sister loathed me for this, even if neither of them said it openly at first. They couldn't understand what my dad and I saw in those mountains, which devoured countless numbers of climbers. I didn't ask them to understand. But they couldn't forgive my father after all, so they frequently took it out on me. No matter what I said or did—I was always wrong. Stupid, weak, and useless. Before any of us noticed, an invisible thick wall was already separating us. Regardless, I continued doing what I loved the most, rarely setting my foot home. It didn't feel like home at all.

After Father's death, sometimes I was chased out of the house, so I spent plenty of days and nights outside with what I had on me. Out in the cold, I wished I would fall ill and die. Of course, none of that happened, not even close. And ending my own life didn't fall well with my ego in the first place; the idea always seemed awkward to me. In the end I gave up on dying, and Tarry's parents gave up calling me to their home, so often he tagged along. This continued until one day Mom threw my belongings out of the house; from that day onward I was camping in the mountains, homeless, moving around with a basic survival supply. Though it ended when I was given my own apartment as a recruit of the MDF, and things got better after my sister entered another, stronger kennar and both women moved out to their new home, leaving Klia.

Since birth I had been expected to take my father's place and lead our kennar. But lead it where? What was I supposed to do with these hundred-something people? Watch us slowly disappear? Maybe I really am weak, running from everything into the mountains.