Ronald Malfi - The Ascent

—Come, she said, and you can touch me.

My eyelids fluttered. For a second, I thought I could actually see the sailboats, their masts rising like cavalry flags. But it was just snowcaps, countless snowcaps.

Above me, Hannah smiled, her skin radiating a tallow glow, her features pure and clean.

“Your hair … is short …” I grinned and it pained me to do it. “I … like it.”

—Come , she said and reached for me.

I touched her hand— her hand! — and felt her lift me off the ground. I dragged myself farther up the incline until my knees popped and my legs finally surrendered. In a jumble of skin and bones, I collapsed to the snow, panting. My body was freezing but soaked in sweat. I couldn’t breathe. With numb fingers, I located the zipper on my jacket, pulled it down. I popped open my shirt, buttons soaring through the black night, and exposed my chest. Beads of sweat coursed down my ribs, my forehead, freezing at the corners of my eyes.

“Can’t,” I mused. “Hannah … can’t … “

11

NO TIME. EARLY MORNING OR TWILIGHT—IT DIDN’T

matter. My eyelids gummy and nearly frozen, I pried them open to see a blurry figure advancing toward me. My vision was kaleidoscopic with snow blindness.

“Hannah …,” I rasped. My throat burned and I couldn’t focus.

The figure doubled, trebled, refused to center itself.

“Hannah …” I struggled. Then started coughing.

But it wasn’t Hannah. The figure was much bigger and darker than Hannah and walked with a noticeable limp.

Again, my heart began to race. My fingers tried to close into fists, but their tips had frozen to the ground, and I couldn’t get them loose.

The figure paused over me. I could smell old camphor and mothballs and stewed meats. I could smell the unmistakable scent of blood, too.

There were a series of tiny pops as I pulled my fingertips, now bleeding, from the ice. My hand shaking, I reached up to touch the bearded face. I tried to speak, although no words came out, and I had no idea what I was trying to say, anyway. It must have hadsomething to do with Hannah because it was Hannah I was thinking about. But I would never know for sure.

“Shhh,” the man said, gently taking my quaking hand by the wrist. He placed it on my chest, then reached slowly down toward my face. He had ten, twenty fingers on that one giant hand. My vision refused to clear up.

He covered my eyes and eased my lids down. I didn’t bother to fight him.

A moment later, I was unconscious and sailing like Münchhausen between the stars.

Chapter 17

1

I WASN’T THERE WHEN IT HAPPENED. BUT I CAN SEE

it nonetheless: the Italian countryside, cool in the stirrings of an early summer that promises not to be too overbearing.

The vehicle appears as a glinting beacon over the farthest hill. David is behind the wheel, donning ridiculous driving goggles, racing gloves, and a worn bomber jacket. Hannah is in the passenger seat, wearing a lambskin jacket and a cream-colored jacquard pantsuit.

She laughs, though I cannot hear her. It as if I am watching all this on television with the sound turned all the way down. Her hair is short, curling just at her jaw, and appears the color of new copper in midday.

There is a sound like a clap of thunder as the motorcar’s undercarriage collides with a mound of dirt in the road. David looks startled, and Hannah grips the dashboard, turning to David to examine his expression. David senses her unease and turns to her, offers a complacent smile, and perhaps even places a hand on her thigh. “It’s okay, love,” he says. “It’s not a—” “David!” she shrieks. David jerks his head back to the front. But it is already too late.

2

I OPENED MY EYES TO FIND MYSELF IN A SMALL.

ill-lit room in what appeared to be a clapboard hut. I lay on a bed of straw covered with a blanket of cheesecloth. My goose-down pillow was soft to the point of near nonexistence. Candles flickered from every corner of the small room, and a fetid, moldering smell—curdling goat cheese, perhaps—permeated the air. At the opposite end of the room facing my bed, there was a doorway with no door, but aside from a straw mat halfway down the hallway and walls the color of sawdust, I could see nothing.

Above my head and tacked to the exposed wooden rafters hung various thangkas painted in bright colors. The one directly above me depicted one centralized, bronze-skinned figure whose black hair was wrapped in a bun and surrounded by a halo. The figure was flanked on either side by smaller figures, one of them white as a ghost and wielding a flaming sword, the other pale blue and multiarmed.

An attempt to sit up sent a red-hot burning sensation through my torso. I pushed aside the cheesecloth blanket and found I’d been dressed in white linens. A tiny red star—blood—stood in the center of the linen shirt. I lifted the shirt to find the puncture wound below my belly button had been sewn shut with stiff-looking black thread. Gingerly I fingered the wound. I felt nothing; it was numb.

Footsteps approached from the hallway. I dropped my shirt as a great looming shadow fell on the wall of the hallway just outside my room. It grew larger as the figure approached. A large man dressed in black robes ducked beneath the low doorway and entered the room. He paused, his surprise at my consciousness immediately evident, then continued over to a small table laden with various vials and instruments spread out on a velvet cloth.

“You’re awake,” said the man, his back to me.

“I know you,” I said. “Your name’s Shomas. You were outside my cabin that night before we left for the Godesh Ridge.”

Without turning to face me, Shomas said, “Lie back down. You are still healing.”

I eased myself down onto the pillow. My eyelids felt heavy, but I refused to fall asleep. Instead, I trained my gaze on the thangka above my head.

When Shomas appeared at my bedside holding a vial of amber fluid and a syringe, he followed my gaze to the tapestry. “That is Shakyamuni in the center. He is flanked by two bodhisattva. The one with the sword is Manjusri, and the one with many arms is Chenrezig, also called AvalokiteŘvara, the redeemer of samsara.”

“What’s samsara?”

“Reincarnation.” Shomas plunged the syringe into the vial of amber fluid. Once he’d withdrawn a sufficient amount, he withdrew the syringe and gripped my left wrist with his free hand.

“Hey,” I stammered, “what’s that?”

“This is medicine to help you heal.” He jabbed the needle into my arm. “You have suffered the mountain sickness, dehydration, and hypothermia. Also, curiously enough, you were poisoned.”

“Poisoned,” I echoed, my eyes growing distant.

“Some sort of heart accelerant, apparently. Rather unusual.” He steadied my arm, his grip tightening on my wrist. “The cat may have nine lives, but man has only three. Three is the magical number. You have used up one of yours on this trip, my friend.”

“Two, actually,” I corrected him, thinking of the cave in the Midwest. “I’ve used up two.”

He did not look at me.

“Where am I?”

“Safe,” Shomas said. He emptied the syringe into my arm, then pulled the needle out. “You are in the village in the valley of the Churia Hills.”

“How … how did I get here?”

“We rescued you from the Godesh Ridge.”

“But … how?”

Shomas shuffled over to the table and set the vial and syringe on the velvet mat. From within the folds of his dark robe, Shomas produced what appeared to be a small silver button that he held between his thumb and index finger. It pulsed once with a strobe of white light.