As tears go by

// 32 Stella Maris

A white blanket of snow covered the mountain peak. The silence was overpowering. Around them, a never ending forest interrupted by outcroppings of rocks, and fallen trunks covered by mosses and lichens. Going up, the bushes gave place to silent, tall pine trees. After half an hour hiking, they stopped short. The trail was closed by a bar. A sign read: - Do not cross – Danger of avalanches and rockfalls- . That mountain was not a tourists' paradise. After the bar the winding trail was interrupted by fallen rocks. Impossible to go on. They had to inch on a tiny ledge, paying attention to the drop-off behind them.

After a few meters, they were back on the trail. "A few years ago this place was quite a destination. The reason was a dream-like jade coloured-waters lake just on the top of the mountain. Joy of joys, a nice wood all around. Now is a spooky deserted place. The mountain is crumbling under our feet."

After ten minutes walk on a vertiginous slope they found themselves on the top of the mountain wrapped in a cloud. Dawn was rising in all its beauty. Sunlight pierced through the vapour canopy like laser beams. Through a gap in the cloud, they had a glimpse of the iced lake. It was quite a view. The surface was a sheet of thin ice. The trees were thick on the edge of the lake. It was like they wanted to dive into the frozen, still waters. On the other edge of the lake, they made out the front side of a rundown building. On the facade of it, there was a sign reading "CLODIENSIS STELLA MARIS". Some small outbuildings were lined at the side of the main one. A small, dark, irregular square in the snow showed that one of them had burned recently. The gap in the fog closed in and the beautiful frozen lake and the buildings disappeared.

"At the beginning it was a children's home. Then it hosted a Cooking school. Thirty years ago it shut down. They wanted to make a five-star hotel but before reaching an agreement the mountain started to collapse. Now the area is off limits."

"There is a way to reach it?"

"Walking on the ice?"

"It doesn't look like a good idea. It looks thin as a sheet of paper."

Another gap opened in the fog. The ghostly building was back in sight. The windows were black holes, it was no possible to pierce through the darkness behind.It was spooky, but that black holes gave the idea of being piercing eyes, capable of seeing all around.

"Drop down, I saw a reflection coming from that window on the top right."

They knelt down behind the bush. They waited. Nothing happened. They waited another full five minutes. No report of gunfire. No shouts. Anastasya shrudded. The building was again behind the curtain of vapour.

"Perhaps it is just a piece of metal. We cannot stay right here in the open. I will find a path in the bush. Follow me at some distance," she said.

"Pavel, give her a walkie-talkie. Cellphones here don't work."

Pavel opened his knapsack, handed her a walkie-talkie.

She keyed the radio. It worked. "Karasho. See you soon." She headed towards the green wall of trees on her right.

Pavel and Kirill sat on a trunk and waited. The silence was absolute. The cloud wrapping everything set them apart. If a branch cracked, it would have been heard clearly at one hundred feet away.

The branches of the pine trees were so thick that it was like to inch through a frozen waterfall. On the top of them there was a layer of iced snow which sprayed down on her as she pushed through. The iced snow sifted down her neck and up the sleeves of the catsuit, worked its insidious way under her clothes. After a while she noticed she would have gone faster crawling, and she would avoid being sprayed by the iced snow at every step.