Uzma Khan - Thinner Than Skin

My eye eventually did adjust, and I began to see variations in the tint. Brown from black, burnt sienna from gray. There were rain puddles and the occasional snow melt, but, amazingly, the rocks were not too slippery. We were lucky the rain had stopped. I was glad for the sensation beneath my rubber soles, the way my toes nudged into corners to assess the size and stability of the foothold, the way my fingers scraped the edges of a cliff to assess the height. I knew I was in a rhythm when I stopped checking my watch, when even knowing I’d stopped couldn’t entice me to check. My chest opened wide and the cold rushed in with teeth, leaving me raw, invigorated. I didn’t attempt to catch up with Wes, Irfan, or Farhana, whose mountain legs would no doubt take her higher than us all. I’d catch up with them, with her, eventually. I’d say all that I’d rehearsed. For now, there was plenty else to do without worrying about the nuances of human disclosure.

Over time, the sky moved closer. I could see stars, bright fragments of ice the width of my nail, at times so close I felt I could grasp them in my nail. Ultar’s silhouette was not etched in stone. It moved when I moved, and with each step, the sky of ice chips slid higher or lower around its pointed shoulders. Her pointed shoulders? Why not. All beautiful things are feminine to me, and Ultar, at this height, was suddenly beautiful. She moved when I moved. Below me, the Hunza River curved around her rotating feet, like a jingling anklet.

I could also hear scratching and scraping. Someone lay down on her back then heaved herself up; someone else jumped, or tripped. We were only five but we made enough noise to better keep each other in view by ear than by third eye.

But Ultar did not carry sound to us the way we received it.

It must have been an hour after we’d left when I thought I heard Farhana fall. I was heading up a boulder that shook beneath my weight and I knew I had to leap across quickly or it would give. I let it give. It rolled away from me and I fell. When I stood up and wound around the path where I thought Farhana had lost her footing, I found no one. I’d left my pack where I tumbled. I retraced my steps — holding my headlamp in place with one hand — but couldn’t find the pack. I crawled on my knees and cut my free hand; I felt it ooze. I waited, listening for the river, listening for footsteps. The river now flowed in angles rather than curves, like a child skipping down a flight of stairs. Apart from this, I heard only the occasional stone fall. “Farhana?” I called. But I’d already lost the direction from which I thought I heard her.

“Farhana?” I called again. In the distance I heard a faint, vanishing call, and now I moved faster. From where had it come? To my right. Yes, I was sure of it. I climbed recklessly now, the stones rolling under me and into the river that was perilously near. I knew I could slip if I did not slow down, but I did not slow down. I knew if I slipped no one would hear me, and I knew I did not know where I was heading. I knew it was no longer toward Farhana, for by now she must have moved on, but still I did not slow down. I could still hear something, though I could not say what. Perhaps a footfall. A leopard? I began to feel afraid. Something was breathing near me, I was sure of it, and from its step, I knew it did not wear shoes. I hurried on, till the river was above me — though, how could it be? How could I hear the sound of running water from high in the sky, a sky that had pulled away from me as surely as I was pulling away from those velvet paws, that ravenous panting? A waterfall? No, there were no waterfalls on this mountain. The soft padding began to fade; the wet wheezing began to slow. In its place was a sound I’d heard earlier, of a river flowing not in curves but in angles, and then I saw a figure skipping up a flight of stairs, a small child receding in a burnt sienna world, in a rusted photo print. Her back was to me but she was tilting her head to the side, as though she knew I was watching. I could hear hooves— click click click , the most delicate mincing steps — followed by the joyous ring of a bell.

At last I stopped. It was only when I stopped that I realized I’d been following her, she who did not exist. There was nothing there. I was imagining this. There were no shepherds on this mountain at night. No hungry leopards. And Farhana had probably not fallen at all.

Ultar muted the footsteps that were upon me before I had a chance to move away. It was the escort, and he was carrying my pack.

“You dropped this,” he said.

“Thank you.” I sat down, disappointed and yet strangely relieved. Disappointed it wasn’t Farhana. Relieved it wasn’t a ghost. Disappointed too to find myself missing human company, when I’d believed myself content to make the beauty of the night and the challenge of the climb, for now at least, my only companions.

I leaned against a cliff wall, wondering vaguely if I would have followed the phantom all the way into the chasm ahead.

“This is not a good place to stop,” said the escort.

I couldn’t hear Farhana. How would I carry out my plan to court her on this mountain?

I was about to ask if he knew where the others were when I heard the rumbling. My palms lay flat against the gravel and that is where it seemed to start, just beneath my skin. I pressed harder, listening with my hands, as though, by bearing down, I could balance myself and stop the tremor. Only now did I realize that the wall against which I rested was wet and crumbling and that I sat alarmingly near the edge. The rumbling grew louder.

“Turn around slowly,” he said, “without standing up.”

I did as I was told, keeping my hands on the gravel, leaning forward while turning toward him. At that moment, a bolt of lightning fell over Ultar’s edge, illuminating the mountain across the gorge. It was Ultar’s height, and it even spit into a series of needles and minarets in the same fierce angles. A second bolt: I saw a rock the size of a house charge down the mountain’s side. A third: the rock smashed into three pieces as it bounced on the slope. When the largest piece disappeared into the chasm, the lightning in the sky and the rumbling under my palm ceased.

If I were on that side of the ravine instead of this one, I’d be dead.

I halted, unable to lift my hands off the gravel, unable to move at all. I knew if I leaned back again the wall could break, knocking me over the edge. On the other hand, my position right now was ludicrous. I was leaning forward at about a 40-degree angle and to my left lay emptiness and to my right a dark figure on a dark mountain was still waiting for me to turn. I grew increasingly dizzy. If I did not pull away, I could still fall, without even breaking that wall.

“I felt it clearly,” I said, clinging to the gravel with my fingers. “The rumbling.” I was breathing so loud whoever was climbing that mountain would surely feel it. Perhaps it was my own heavy panting I’d heard earlier, just before I saw the girl.

“We sometimes think we feel the other side. I would not worry. At night, Ultar seldom slides.” He paused. “But I would not stop here.”

He disappeared into the night.

It was three-thirty in the morning and it was silent. I was checking my watch compulsively now. I was beginning to feel the altitude. I stopped for water, often; I chewed on biscuits. My lungs no longer felt clean but swollen. So did my feet. They were heavy; my shoes were heavy. The pack on my back, even heavier. Worse, I was beginning to get the same feeling as in Kaghan, and even Gilgit. I was being watched. Perhaps by Ultar’s jinn, or Ultar’s double, rising menacingly behind us like a shadow. I was alone, but I was not. I told myself it was nothing, just the residual panic of nearly falling into the chasm. I had nearly died. That was all.