by D. H. Dunn
Nima’s teeth had begun to chatter. In all her time in the Khumbu, in the worst of winters, even on Everest, her teeth had never chattered before. The cold was not the greatest she had ever experienced, but combined with her state of exhaustion, it was wearing her down.
As a group, they stood at the edge of the stone outcropping, each of them shivering, holding their arms and stamping their feet. The wind blew more fiercely, the winter portal above them having picked up intensity yet again. Kater stood closest to the edge, looking across the dark crack that separated them from the other side. Adorning the walls on either side of the canyon, the dozens of portals winked and pulsed, indifferent to their predicament.
The old man held his thin arm aloft against the gale, his gloved finger pointing at what looked like a deep crater across the chasm, from which emanated a pulsing red and orange glow unlike any Wanda had seen in the Under. “There,” he said, the single word a cloud in the icy air. “My sister is below that light. That is the glow of the asan rasha, her crystal cocoon.”
Next to him, Merin nodded, her hand on her chest. Fighting to speak against the gale, her words came in short bursts. “Yes. Same light. I was there. I saw.”
Drew was peering across the chasm, at the dozens of meters between the edge of the rock on which he stood shivering and their goal on the other side. “Too far to jump,” he said. “Kater, those blink tubes you mentioned. Could we blink across?”
“They don’t work here, remember?” Nima said. She had joined Drew at the edge, coiling their climbing rope in her hands, measuring length by length with her arm.
“Perhaps it is short enough to toss a rope across?” Perol asked. Limping, she pulled herself over to the edge to join Nima and Drew. Nima felt a spark of hope build inside her, Perol had already shown herself to have a strong and accurate arm. If the rope were long enough, perhaps they could use it to climb across. Provided they found a way to anchor it on the other side.
Nima’s heart fell as Perol gauged the distance and frowned. “No. This distance is too far to jump and too far to throw, the rope is too short.”
“Perhaps we could tear clothing into strips to add to the rope?” Pasang asked.
“Not sure we could trust our lives to torn strips of cloth,” Drew said, putting his arm on Pasang’s shoulder for a moment. Nima watched as Pasang leaned into Drew, taking support from him.
“We’re freezing to death as it is!” Kater said, stamping his feet. His hands were shoved deep into his pockets, his posture hunched.
Nima continued to pace the length of the cold stone away from the group. While the others continued to debate their options, she focused on the myriad of portals lining the wall across the chasm from them. Some were inert, but dozens were open, windows to worlds she couldn’t imagine.
The windows were small from this distance and she squinted to peer into them. Most of them would lead to places warmer and drier than where she was now, they would be free of the danger of the cold at least.
One, far up on the wall of stone, had a greenish-blue tint to it, and she imagined it led to world that was all ocean. Nima had never seen an ocean, but her grandfather had told her of them. What would it be like to be surrounded by fishes and water? How would it smell? She supposed it would smell nice. Pagaga had spoken often of how he loved the smell of the sea.
Closer portals had details she could make out. One showed a world of green leaves and grasses to run in. Another featured wind-swept rocks with red sand blowing past them. It was night in some, and she could see clouds and moons, so like her own, and yet so different.
Her eyes drifted back to the portal showing the red sands driven in the winds. It was one of the portals closest to the ground across the divide. Had she seen that before? She looked behind her and there it was, right at ground level. In both she could see large crimson rocks and boulders, sand blown by a fierce wind. They were not the same rocks and boulders, but both portals seemed to focus on the same place.
“Pasang! Drew!” she called. “Come here.” She stopped pacing as the pair rushed over, Wanda close behind. The rest continued to stare across the divide, save for Kad who was nearby picking the small mushrooms that clung to the cold stone.
Nima pointed to the portal of red sands on their side, then to its twin across the chasm. Drew smiled, pulling Nima into a hug and kissing the top of her head.
“Don’t be too quick to celebrate,” Wanda said. “I agree these two both likely go to the same world, but where on that world? The one we see here could be kilometers from the second portal. Hundreds of kilometers even.”
“It’s still worth a try,” Drew said. “We can’t stay here much longer. Even if it doesn’t lead to the other portal, it may lead somewhere more survivable.”
Merin ran to them, a look of excitement on her face.
“There is a good chance the two gates are close together, Nima. According to the lore I have learned, most portals are concentrated in a small area of an Out.”
“Then all we need is a crystal to allow passage,” Wanda said, looking at Kater. “Judging from the color, I’d guess a red one?”
Merin nodded her agreement. Kad walked over and began peering into the gateway, the frown crossing his face looking just as unusual as the excitement had on his mate’s.
“Kater?” Nima repeated. The old man kept his distance, his hand moving to the pouch that held his crystals.
“These are valuable resources,” he said, folding the bag shut. “We do not know what we might need in the future and―”
“Just try to open it, damn it!” Drew said, grabbing the old man by the collar of his cloak. “We’re not going to sit out here and freeze with your immortal ass. You need to get across there just as much as we do, and if you didn’t need us, you’d have left us behind. If you can help, get the hell over there and help!”
Drew released Kater in the general direction of the red portal, Nima quickly running to Drew’s side. She had never seen Drew this angry before, though her own patience with Kater had reached its limit as well. Drew gave her shoulder a quick squeeze and then stepped away, walking slowly back to where the others were gathered around the red portal.
Kater had fished three reddish crystals out of his pouch and was kneeling before the oval. Comparing each of them in turn to the crimson image of the portal, he selected one and returned the other two to his satchel.
He appeared to Nima to be attempting to hide the method of working with the portal, but Wanda was right next to him, notebook in hand. Nima chuckled at this sight.
“I believe I have been through this Out before,” Kad said from behind her. His voice was grim, free of the usual mirth she was used to hearing.
“You have?” Nima asked. She wondered how many of the portals in the Under Kaditula had been though. She reminded herself she should ask him for more stories of his travels. “What was it like? It looks different than anything I have seen.”
“The harshest of my travels,” he said, shaking his head. “If it is the same Out. A difficult task from Upala. My visit was brief, for fear of my life I returned. I saw little there you do not see. Wind and sand, red upon red. Little air to breathe, and what there was felt like ice in my throat. My feet had trouble keeping the ground. It was nearly my death there.”
“Kater’s opened the portal.” Wanda exclaimed. Nima and Kad ran to Wanda and Kater next to the portal, the rest of the group following them.
Kater was sitting on the ground, his hand holding the crimson crystal loosely in his fingers. Wanda was kneeling next to him, scribbling furiously. The portal itself still showed the same world, and through the mists the the other portal could be clearly seen.
Both portals seemed to exist on some great mountain. Nima could make out its height against the lower lands as the wind and grit flew by.
Nima gauged the second portal about ten paces in, through which she could see the interior of the Under and the crater containing what they hoped was the final path to Upala.
Pasang stood next to her, his mouth open. Nima grabbed the rope from his slack hand and wrapped it around her waist.
Drew’s hand was on her own in an instant.
“Nima. What do you think you’re doing? Let me do this.”
“I should be the one to go,” Kad said. “I am the scout here. I have been to this place before.”
“That’s why it must be me,” Nima said. “Kad says the air is poor there, very thin. Just like Everest, just like the Khumbu where I have lived all my life. There’s no one better than me to go through this.”
“I am Sherpa, too,” Pasang said, the tone of defiance in his voice was one she knew well. It was the same tone he would use to protest to Ama that he could help in the fields too, that he could tend to the yak with Nima.
She fixed Pasang in her gaze, seeing the man he was growing into rather than the boy who had tagged along behind her for so long.
“That is why you must stay, Pasang.” She could have tried to be stern, to sound like Ama. That often worked with her brother, but he deserved better.
“But Nima―” he started.
“I will call you Kikuli no more,” she interrupted. “You are a man now, Pasang. And if I fail these people will need you even more.” She took his hands in hers, surprised at how small her fingers looked to her. “I know you can do it. Drew and the others will need you to get them home.”
He squeezed her hands, nodding as he looked down at her.
“Besides,” she said with a grin, “you know you cannot talk me out of something I want to do.”
Kad put his hand on her shoulder. “Good luck, scout,” he said. Nima blushed and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Behind him, Merin nodded at her and smiled.
She handed the end of the rope to Drew. Nima guessed she had been on the other end of ropes with Drew dozens of times now, over crevasses and through icefalls. There was no one who made her feel safer, no other hands she’d want on the rope more.
She stepped closer to the portal, the red mist swirling slowly at the edges. Wanda stepped up next to her, pushed something into her hand, then began checking the knots around her waist to make sure they were tight.
Nima opened her gloved hand to look at Wanda’s gift. There sat a small pencil, the end of which was littered with teeth marks.
“For luck,” Wanda said, now shoving the pencil into Nima’s pocket. “I only have a few left, though, so I want it back.”
Nima laughed and stepped directly in front of the portal. The rope felt snug around her waist, and she could feel Drew’s strong grip keeping the line taut. She cast a sideways look at Kater, who had his head down, his lips seeming to mouth something.
The old man looked up at her, his eyes sharp as daggers. She expected him to speak, but he remained silent.
Ahead of her the image of the strange crimson world was now only an inch before her eyes, all wind and sand.
Drew’s eyes looked into hers. She could see the worry and concern, but also the understanding that he would not talk her out of it.
“Go fast,” he said. The smile on his face was a lie for her benefit, but the dampness in his eyes was true. “No time for sightseeing.”
“Don’t let go, big brother,” she said with a smile. “Once I get to the other side, I’ll help pull the next one of you through.”
Nima took one more breath, pulling in the cold, damp air of the Under. Exhaling, she lifted one boot off the icy stone and stepped through the portal.
25
“We were no longer able to judge the horror of it all.”
—Maurice Herzog
It took Nima a moment to realize she was laying on the ground. If any time had passed since she took that first step, she was not aware of it, but now she was prone and gasping for breath.
The air around her was bitter cold, the temperature being far lower than even back in the Under. The wind whipped into her face as she tried to look up, gaining only a second’s view of the portal entrance in front of her before she had to look back down. In that brief moment she had seen her surroundings.
She was prone on a knife’s edge, a thin, brown outcropping of rock on a mountain unlike any she had ever seen. The ridge fell away to either side of her, thousands of meters down to a rust-red plain. Nima thought this mountain might be higher than Everest, higher beyond any peak she could have imagined.
The sight was so beautiful, it had been a pain of its own to tear her eyes away.
The sand was everywhere, stinging her like a hundred wasps. She wanted to cry out, but she knew that would only make things worse. Each part of her was dry as dust, all moisture swept from her the instant she arrived. The wind pushed at her, she was so light she thought she might fly away.
She put one hand forward, gripping the cold dirt and pulling herself up into a kneeling position. On Everest, she had forced herself on past exhaustion, one step at a time. Here it would be one hand at a time. One finger, if need be. She focused on the people who needed her.
Sliding her right hand forward across the stone, she thought of Pasang. Over protected by Ama, and then by her. Never truly on his own, never seeming to be able to find his own way. Now in the Under, he seemed to have found a new strength. The man he was growing into needed her to help him this one last time.
Her left knee came next, her right hand moving with it to complete a single crawl forward.
Drew kept the rope taut around her waist, letting out slack as she needed it. She coughed once, her mouth instantly filling with particles of fine dust, robbing her of precious moisture.
Another knee forward.
What would Drew do when they got back, assuming they did at all. Would he keep searching for his mystery woman? Drew seemed happiest when he had someone to help, but with Pasang saved and her father’s farm freed from Jang, who was left to help?
Nima pushed into the driving wind for Wanda, who only wanted to help her people and her country.
She slid her knee another inch toward her goal for Kad and Merin, who deserved to see their children again.
She moved her hand forward so Ham’s sacrifice would not be for nothing.
She gritted her teeth against quitting so even Shamsher’s family might know his fate someday.
The red sand was cold between her fingers, her wind-blasted skin rough and coarse. Her hair, her ears, her mouth, everything was losing moisture. Her eyelids felt like they were scraping across her eyes. She shut them, the other portal was only a few meters away now. She would have to reach it without looking.
Another breath in, her lungs heaved at the air that contained no fuel, no substance. It was like breathing nothing, each gasp merely filling her with emptiness. Inside the darkness of her eyes, a white light began to flash, like lightning inside her head to match the wind thundering in her ears.
Like a statue, she was frozen, bereft of the energy or will to move. She could not open her eyes, but she was sure the portal was only one more motion away. She felt Drew tug on the rope, seeing if she was all right, but she was not all right. There was nothing left to move for.
A voice came into her head, speaking Sherpa but with the lilting accent she had come to know as Polish. What will you do, Nima? The voice asked. She had moved forward for everyone else―for Pasang, for Drew, for all of them. They needed her to get through this, to save them, but didn’t she need something for herself, too?
She gritted her teeth hard enough to make her jaw creak. She pushed her arm forward and felt it pass through the portal. Her fingers landed on the damp, sand-free stone of the Under. She gripped the rocky surface, her fingernails threatening to break off as she pulled the rest of herself through.
Nima felt the air temperature shift as she translated fully back into the world of the Under. For a moment, the air felt warm and moist against her skin, a relief from the stinging dry winds of the red world.
She lay on the warm stone and coughed, her throat so dry and parched she felt like she was exhaling sand. Weariness be
gan to build inside her like a tide, and she found she did not have any strength to push herself away from the portal.
She rolled onto her back, her eyes closing as sleep began to beckon. She could lay here and rest, recover her strength. Perhaps for just a moment.
Panic pushed her eyes open. If she let unconsciousness take her now, it might never release her. The others were still depending on her, trapped on the other side. Pasang and Drew, Wanda. They all needed her to be stronger, to help them all get home.
Holding her breath to summon one last bit of energy, she forced herself into a sitting position. Reaching to her waist and tugged on the rope there, to let the others to know she had made it and was ready to help the next person through.
Nima exhausted body would have to wait. There was still work to do.
Nima woke next to a large crater, her eyes focusing on a strong orange glow which emanated from within the gouge in the rock before her. Snow had begun to drift into the room on the wind, and she watched as it covered the bottom of the narrow hole along with herself, the light from the crater muted by its growing depth. Every so often a flake would gently land on her cheek, only to stay there as her body lacked the warmth to melt it away.
After crossing through the world of red sands this felt like a dream. She thought she recalled anchoring herself by straddling a large, tall rock. She had grabbed the rope and pulled to assist Pasang as he crossed, though she could not imagine her remaining strength had amounted to anything.
After Pasang had emerged coughing and sputtering, crawling out of the crimson portal, Nima had been shocked by his appearance. Her brother’s face was red and abraded from the blowing wind and sand, and he made a whooping noise as he collapsed to the ground, pulling in air in huge gulps. Faster than she thought possible, Pasang recovered and crawled over to her, putting his own hands on the rope, his strength allowing hers to fade.
After that, she could not remember anything. She was now lying next to the crater with no idea if she had crawled here or been moved. Her eyes fluttered as she examined the pile of bodies around her, each of them exhausted again from the exertion. She made out Drew and Wanda as they lay nearby, their chests slowly rising and falling, both unconscious from their ordeal.