Naja Aidt - Rock, Paper, Scissors

“I can go on.”

After they’ve walked a stretch, the trail curves and abruptly ends. A narrow, grassy clearing followed by sheer cliff walls rises steeply above them. Climbing plants speckle the rock, blueberries or crowberry, maybe club moss. A partridge alights, flapping its wings. There’s no trail, but the area is demarcated in red, and you can see worn patches of ground between the markers where others have walked, or rather, crawled. At the summit there appears to be a kind of plateau. The wind cools Thomas’s sweaty body. His throat is parched, though he’d just gulped water. He wipes his hands on his pants. Alice and Luke have already begun scaling, and Thomas watches them balance their strong bodies perfectly, their thighs hoisting them steadily and easily upward. They don’t falter. They don’t need to clutch at the tussocks of grass before they leap like he does. His legs tremble, and he doesn’t dare look down. But then he does and it’s dizzying. All the way down. All the way down to hell, he thinks. If I slip, I’m a goner. If I make even the slightest misstep. A grave in the breezes. He sniff les, moistens his lips. Toward the west, the mountainside pitches steeply downward, and around two-thirds of the way there he can see a wide, fresh spring flowing into a waterfall. The water rages over the mountain, gushing into the empty space, foamy and roaring, white and angry, but he’s so far away that he can’t hear it. He realizes that, despite the heat, his teeth are chattering. He heaves himself up, from notch to notch, from one cluster of roots to another. It feels as though his upper arms can’t go on, as if he’s going to be forced to let go, to fall. Three eagles circle the mountain, riding the wind before swooping into the valley and out of his line of sight. He looks skyward. Forward, he thinks, one small step at a time, no more than that. Up to that rock, that tussock, follow the demarcated area. If he tilts his head almost completely back, he can see Alice’s ass. The soles of her shoes are orange. She’s cinched her windbreaker around her waist, and she strides confidently; she turns halfway around and looks down at him, smiling. “We’re almost there,” she calls out. He doesn’t have the faintest clue how he manages to scale the rest of the way, his heart pounding, sweat dribbling into his eyes, his breathing raspy. He coughs, and suddenly he’s clutching the edge and hauling himself over, and there he sees Luke standing with his arm around Alice. It looks as though he’s showing her something, pointing at a spot in the far distance. He’s removed his backpack. Thomas gets on all fours and then finally, gasping, he stands up.

“Look,” Luke says, “three eagles.”

“I saw them,” Thomas grumbles.

“Uncle Thomas! You made it!” Alice hops enthusiastically up and down.

“Of course I made it. What do you take me for?”

Alice grins. “Come have a look. You really can see the sea from here. It’s awesome, Luke! So awesome. Thank you for bringing us up here.” She strokes his arm.

“My pleasure,” he smiles.

They stand watching the eagles drift across the sky. But Thomas quickly sits down. Little by little he catches his breath.

“Doesn’t your mother live out here somewhere?” he ventures.

Luke nods curtly. Then he unzips his backpack. “I’m hungry,” he says.

“Yes, food! And we’ve got sodas.” Alice eagerly begins to unpack. Like a little girl playing at going on a hike, and that’s what she is, too, Thomas thinks. Just a little girl playing grown up. Soon I’ll have to convince her to play store.

Luke wolfs his food. He bites into his sandwich. His jaws grind at a measured, rhythmic pace. He doesn’t waste a crumb, his fingers don’t get greasy. Alice has kicked off her shoes. She’s sprawled out placidly, a blissful smile curling at her lips, her arms at her sides. “Ah,” she whispers. “Complete freedom.” Thomas digs into his sandwich. Rarely has anything tasted so delicious. A ripe tomato virtually explodes in his mouth; its acidic taste, its sweetness, its juice dribbling down his chin and onto his shirt, where it leaves a stain. The ham is salty and dry. The soda fizzes on his tongue. And there’s cheese. And a protein bar made with nuts and honey. They share the rest of the lukewarm coffee. It’s only at this moment that Thomas begins taking it all in. The plateau’s overrun with bristly grass. There are harebells and narrow-leafed thyme and varieties of cranesbill, white, rose-pink, blue. There are low-hanging, richly blooming baby blue eyes and saxifrage plants, with their tiny, yellow, distended inflorescence. There are cacti. Alice finds a small, unassuming white orchid dappled with wine-red dots. He’d had a short-lived passion for botany once, and this passion returns to him now. Plants in mountainous regions . Thomas scrabbles to his feet. Feels a tingling sense of joy scanning the countryside; the view is as awesome as Luke promised. You really can see the sea from here. The sandy beaches, a white belt running as far as the eye can see, and the water that almost seems to meld with the sky. He rotates 360 degrees and stares over the green forests, green lakes, green valleys, and green fields. Another mountain chain rising majestically, brown and gray. The snow on its summits. Everything is far away and deep down or high, high up, but also completely, incredibly close. Here, ants as big as fingernails crawl across Alice’s naked foot, here reptiles sun themselves on flat stones, here one of the eagles nosedives and comes so close that they can see its enormous wingspan and its sharp, curved beak. Thomas ducks involuntarily. He smiles at Luke, and Luke returns the smile, the smile sliding up his face; there’s a gleam in his eyes now, something Thomas has never seen in him: he’s exuberant, abandoning himself to the moment. The energy from the food now pumps through Thomas. Here they are at the top of the world, and unexpectedly, like a gift, he feels overcome with joy, which they share in common. Alice giggles excitedly. Luke joins in. An odd solidarity unites them. Because together they’ve reached the top, because together they are here. It’s suddenly very simple and very right. His endorphins rush through him like a cool, refreshing shower, like the first ripple of an orgasm, his fingertips prickle, his feet throb, he breathes deeply and exhales: I am alive, he thinks, I am happy; he laughs out loud and the others laugh, too.

They begin the descent. Now the others can see, if they look up, the soles of Thomas’s shoes. He feels his way forward with his feet, sliding only once. It’s faster going this way. He stays focused. He doesn’t look down. He leaps the last step and lands squarely. The return trip along the spine of the thickly-wooded mountain is far easier than it had been going up, though he can feel his thighs burning, and the ball of his left foot grows especially sore and tired. They walk side by side. Alice puts on her windbreaker again. They chat. The tone between them remains friendly, like up on the plateau. Thomas describes his new store. A little too frenetically, he talks at great length about how he plans to decorate it, how the old countertop will have to be sanded and varnished, how they’ll have to dress up one of the walls with a beautiful patterned wallpaper, maybe something with dark-blue and gold? The rest will be painted off-white. And the floor, should he paint it black? Or go with a dark stain? “The back room will be really comfy. You can see huge trees in the courtyard in there. The light’s incredible.”

Alice seems increasingly interested.

“If you need a hand renovating it, let me know,” Luke says.

Thomas scrutinizes him. “You mean that?”

He nods. “Absolutely.”

“That’s nice of you.”