by D. H. Dunn
Under his breath, Drew began to laugh as Jang took a step back. The laugh was for show, and he suspected they both knew it.
Somehow Nima’s people had saved him again. The reprieve would be temporary. Jang would be coming for them, that was now certain.
With Carter at his side Drew slinked toward the exit, certain he had only made things worse.
November 2, 1951
Road to Lhangang Temple, Nepal
Though Wanda had thought herself to be an experienced hiker, the pace set by this young Sherpa woman was proving difficult to match. The weariness of the night’s events was starting to seep into her bones, adrenaline giving way to fatigue, to say nothing of her heavy pack, laden with half of Carter’s equipment along with her own gear.
Even though she looked to be half Wanda’s size Nima managed the American’s gear in addition to her own, as if Drew Adley had packed nothing but air. Wanda’s pack felt like it was filled with iron, each chilling blow of the Himalayan winds seeming to add more weight while sapping her strength. The rough, dirt path, the ramshackle rope bridge they had crossed, the yak droppings everywhere―it was getting to be too much.
Wanda forced herself to push on. If this woman could do this, so could she. Her father’s legacy depended on it. Even her strange abduction would need to fall by the wayside, the Sherpa’s claim of Yeti snowmen along with it.
“The key to saving our homeland” his letter had said. Papa, what could you have possibly found here?
If there was an answer up that mountain―be it an answer for him or for her homeland―she would find it. There was simply no other option. She was the last of her family, the last of her father’s line. If she failed, there would be no one to carry on.
When Nima finally stopped to pull a canteen from her pack, Wanda tried and failed to suppress her sigh of relief. In other circumstances the Sherpa might cut a humorous appearance with her solid, squat form and functional bowl-haircut. Nima’s expressive eyes and ever-present smile worked against that, rendering the woman lovely and endearing, almost despite herself.
Even with the consistency of that smile and the sparkle of those eyes, Wanda was not sure Nima was finding her as endearing. She was slowing them down, she had noticed Nima repeatedly reducing her pace to avoid getting too far ahead. In the presence of the Sherpa’s boundless energy, Wanda felt as if the path were made of glue. Glue mixed with hidden stones that she seemed to trip on every fourth step. It would be madness for Nima not to be frustrated, even if she didn’t show it.
Wanda allowed her pack to fall to the ground, kicking up a combination of trail dust and snow. Wanda rummaged through it for her canteen. Pushing her father’s notebook out of the way, she wondered after its twin. the one lodged in Carter’s pack, sent by her father to him for his eyes only.
Could Papa have really trusted that man more than her? This strange man who had never been mentioned by her father in any of his letters, yet seemed to know more of Papa’s recent life than she did. The notes she had found buried in the snow may never have been intended for her eyes either.
Pulling the metal canister out of the pack, she looked up to see Nima staring back at her, fists raised as if she meant to fight her.
“Okay, fire hair,” the Sherpa said, that crooked smile never leaving her face. “Before I bring you inside our temple, you are going to answer some questions.”
Emotions fired off inside her, Wanda filing and channeling them as she had always done. This was surprising, but observation was the prudent course. Watch, study, and react; as a woman of science should do.
Wanda looked back at the small woman for a moment, keeping her expressions calm. In the short time she had known Nima she had found her to be strong and resourceful, but also emotional and unpredictable.
She had options. Her revolver was safely tucked in her right pocket, she could access it quickly. But for now, Wanda preferred to focus on more peaceful strategies. This woman was not only her guide, she had saved her from an abduction. The reality of that episode was one Wanda was still struggling to process, the idea of a Yeti notwithstanding.
She took a long drink from her canteen, the cold water constricting her throat but easing her thirst. She forced her breath to remain steady, her hands still.
“All right.” She kept her voice calm, trying to sound as non-threatening as possible. “Nothing to get excited about. I’m happy to answer any questions you’d like.”
Nima took a step closer. She looked up at the Polish woman, her eyes as intense as the peaks that surrounded them both.
“There is much you have not told us,” Nima said. “I will not go into the Khumbu with secrets between us. I will know the truth of what you are looking for and why it is so important to you.”
Wanda suppressed the urge to laugh. She had nearly as many questions about what she sought as Nima did. Nima might be better off asking Carter Bruce, though he seemed determined to keep his vow of secrecy.
“Is my fee not sufficient?” Wanda asked, screwing the cap back on the canteen. “I have made it clear my goal is personal and important to me. That is no longer enough?”
Nima shook her head, her dark hair falling lightly over her brows.
“No, it is not. It does not make enough sense to just search for a body after all this. The cold and snow. The Icefall. The Yeti. These should stop you, but they do not. I do need your money, but I need my brother and my friend more. I need your truth, not more secrets. If not, you can go back home to your Poland.”
Wanda sighed, the cold wind throwing the sound back at her. Home was a word that shot past her defenses, racing to her heart like a bullet.
“Home?” She asked. “There is no home for me in Poland, Nima. Nothing in Warsaw but an empty house. My father was all I had left. My mother, my sisters―all dead. Some from German bullets, others from Russian. My father wrote me, told me he had found something here. near Everest. Something that could change the world. In our hands, we could perhaps use it to help restore our homeland’s place in the world. Leverage against the giants who would draw our borders for us.”
“Here?” Nima favored her with a confused glance, then looked around the wintry landscape. The moonlight overhead glistened off the snow and ice, diamonds in a sea of blue and white. “What could be here?”
“You mean other than a snow man you say can . . . vanish away?”
“The Yeti is real.”
“And perhaps what my father found is, too. I am here, Nima, because I have nothing to lose. This is my last secret, I am keeping nothing else from you.”
“But the notebook,” Nima said. “Drew did not like what he saw in it.”
Wanda shoved her canteen back into the pack, pushing her father’s leather-bound book aside. She looked past Nima, to the mountains beyond. Everest scraped against the sky, the lesser peaks surrounding it like guards assigned to protect the great mountain’s treasure.
“Then I shall be honest with you, Nima. It is what I do not see in it that frustrates me. It speaks of something he found here, on or near Everest. There are notes referring to a gate . . . a gate in the snow. He seemed to feel there was some great power behind it.”
Nima nodded, all pretense of violence now absent from her eyes.
“The mountains are homes to the gods,” she said with confidence, as surely as if she were describing the temperature of the snow at their feet. “Like Chomolungma on Everest. They protect great power.”
Nima’s eyes left Wanda’s for a moment; it was her turn to look off into the mountains. Wanda needed this young woman’s help, she needed her trust. She kept her hands open, her eyes fixed on the Sherpa’s. She then shoved the notebook down deep into her pack, closed it and pulled the straps tighter than needed.
Papa, didn’t you trust me?
“There are more details in Mister Bruce’s notes from my father,” Wanda said, thrusting her hands into her jacket. “He chose not to give me all the information he had, but I have told you all I know. T
here is something powerful here―somewhere near Everest.”
Nima stared at her again, then unclenched her fists and allowed her hands to dangle at her sides. Wanda noted Nima’s gloves looked much thinner than her own, almost threadbare.
“Your father, you believe his story?” Nima asked.
“The last time I saw my father he and I were climbing Rhys, a mountain in Poland. It is a beautiful place, though I admit these mountains of yours surpass it. He told me after the war he had started investigating magical things, the occult. I did not understand. He seemed eccentric, but happy. After all he and I had lost . . . I was happy for him.”
She knelt. Keeping her eyes on the young Sherpa’s face, Wanda pulled her right hand from her jacket, clutching a rolled-up collection of rupees. She showed the bills to Nima.
“These are yours, now. If you want them. I overheard part of your discussion with your American friend. I know why you need this money, and I know what it is like to lose someone you love, to fail to protect them.” She thought of her mother, her sisters. All gone, lost to the madness of wars and the lies of peace.
“Give me three days on that mountain, Nima, just three days. Get me past the Icefall and let me look for whatever it is he found. Take the money now, if you need to.”
Nima’s eyes stayed upon hers for a moment, then lowered. She shook her head. “Pay me when the job is done.” Then she slowly pushed her hands back in her jacket pockets. One hand returned and she held it out to Wanda; six bullets lay in her palm.
“I took these from you,” Nima said, “back at the bar.”
Wanda laughed, not bothering to suppress her surprise. She accepted the bullets and dropped them into her own pocket.
Nima seemed to consider this for a moment. Wanda watched the smile on her face change, growing even wider. Her eyes squinted as she grinned.
“We laugh together,” Nima said. Wanda could see something darker behind the light in her eyes, some bitter obstacle Nima tried to climb past with her joy. “That is good. Always remember to laugh. If we die tomorrow, we will be glad we laughed today.”
Wanda felt her own smile drain slightly. If the stories about the Khumbu Icefall were true, there was a very real possibility they could all die tomorrow, just as Nima said.
“Is that a Sherpa saying?”
“It is my saying!” Nima said, laughing again and clapping her hands. “Okay then, we will guide you. Now we need to take your gear into the temple. For a puja, to bless them for the journey to Chomolungma.”
“Chomolungma?” Wanda asked as they resumed walking. Ahead, the temple was coming into view, a construct of platformed buildings clinging to the side of one of the many mountains in the area. She had seen others on her journey from Kathmandu, though this one seemed smaller and less sturdy in its construction. Still, the small flickers of yellow and orange in the far-off windows promised warmth and safety.
“Mount Everest,” Nima said back over her shoulder. The woman had resumed her maddening pace, as if the brief tension had recharged her. “Chomolungma. The goddess. She lives in the mountain; she is the mountain. She will take care of us as long as we respect her. That is why we must perform the puja.”
Wanda nodded appreciatively as Nima guided them to the temple. She could feel her heart beating more forcefully in her chest with each step. She was closer now―closer than she ever imagined―to finishing her father’s dream.
That she might find her father’s body was a wish so illogical she barely allowed it space in her mind before sweeping it away, with the other fantasies. She was not young like Nima, she was a woman in her late thirties. A woman of science, after a fashion. The only dream she would focus on was of a free Poland. That was what her father would have wanted.
She looked past Nima and the temple to the massive form of Everest, the peak dominating the clear sky and blotting out the stars with its broad form.
Just two sentences, his last words brought to her by telegram as if it had been a simple correspondence.
Come to me on Everest and seek the Under. There is the key to saving our homeland.
Now he was gone, and perhaps only these mountains knew his secrets.
3
“You don’t have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals.”
—Edmund Hillary
November 2, 1951
Path to Khumbu Icefall, Nepal
“If not for that old woman, I’m not sure where we would be, eh, Drew?”
Carter’s voice echoed between the canyon-like walls of the great peaks that surrounded them. The worn rocky path through the valley was not hard to follow in the moonlight. Looking back, it was easy to trace the few miles back to the lights and tents of Gorak Shep. If Jang was following them, there was no sign of it.
“Yeah,” Drew said. The weight of Dorjee’s actions felt like a mountain of its own on his shoulders. He almost wished Jang was on their tail, that would mean he wasn’t back there bullying Dorjee and Gyalzen.
If Jang dared to. Drew suspected Jang still wanted to win the hearts and minds of the people of Gorak Shep, if he were to regain the position he lost due to the recent revolts in Kathmandu. Killing a few pesky Westerners was one thing, killing the old local couple who ran the only bar in the region was another.
Drew and Carter each carried a flashlight in their hand, though neither was lit. He pushed the motorbike along the path, the weight of the bike adding to his exertion. When they made it to the temple, he’d ask one of the lamas he knew to take a look at it. He supposed it was the carburetor.
“Those were some interesting moves you used on Shamsher, Mr. Bruce,” Drew said, picking up a stray stone and tossing it across the path.
“You’re not the only one who’s familiar with war, son.” The British man laughed, pulling a pipe from his pocket and placing it between his teeth. “And it’s Carter, please. You’ll remind me that I’m growing old even more than this damn cold does.”
Drew watched as the older man lit his match, cupping the flame against the wind with practiced care. “Certainly, Carter,” Drew said, pulling in a lungful of cold air. Feeling the aches running through his bones, he was glad he, Nima, and Pasang had slept most of the previous day or the stiffness would be worse. “How did you know I had been in the war?”
Carter laughed, the smoke from his pipe carrying into the breeze. “Well, the tattoos on your arm are a good start. Then there’s your age, you’re American, all that. More so though, how you handled yourself back there. Jang pulled that weapon; most people have never seen something like that pointed in their faces.” He paused again, pulling on the pipe. “You’ve seen death.”
“More than I’d care to,” Drew said, trying to push the images of Artie out of his mind. His brother’s blond hair blown by the sea wind, standing on the deck, his laughter the night before the battle. The sound of the torpedo striking below decks, right in the armory, right where Artie was. The vibration of the explosion, the sudden shock of the water.
“Nothing you need to talk about, lad,” Carter said, his brisk stride over the dirt path rapid enough that Drew was having to focus to keep up. “War’s a terrible thing, no doubt. You risk your life saving something, only to find you’ve been changed too much to return to it. Maybe that’s what brought you here?”
It was tempting to tell him the whole story, to tell someone. Pasang knew parts of it, mostly the parts connected to the sinking of the USS Machias and Artie’s death. When the boy pressed for more detail, he had admitted there was a woman he had met in Kathmandu, but that was all Pasang had gotten out of him.
What was he supposed to say? That he had met some mystery woman and now wandered the Khumbu valley hoping to find her again? That after leaving the States a year ago he had found himself in Nepal as if he were destined to meet her? To spend one night, one small section of hours with her and have that be the only period of his life where he had felt happy,
understood? Only to have her vanish the next day?
He was sure she was here, in the mountains of the Himalayas, though Pasang would never believe why he was so certain.
When Nima had found him dying alone in a crevasse, he had intended to tell her the same truncated version he would later give her brother. Yet with Nima, somehow the story was easier to share, and he ended up telling her everything. Nima being Nima, she had accepted the whole thing without a second’s doubt, magic and all.
Still, he wasn’t about to tell some Brit he had just met, no matter how much he reminded Drew of his father. At least, who his father had been before . . .
“Something like that,” Drew said. “After the war, after I came home, Oregon just didn’t make sense to me anymore―and I didn’t make sense to anyone there. Especially not my family.”
No untrue words there. By the time he finally returned home, his mom had already succumbed to her despair. Thinking both her boys were gone was too much for her. After that, Dad and he could barely speak without shouting, and the silence was somehow worse. Even without the strange draw of the woman he’d later meet in Kathmandu, he couldn’t leave Oregon fast enough.
“We go where they have to, don’t we?” Carter said. He paused his brisk pace for a moment, kneeling to look at a juniper bush growing beside the road. “My story is much the same, lad. Soldiers, sailors, witnesses of death are what we are. Spent most of my life preparing for war. Short of old Henryk―Wanda’s father, that is―save for him, I don’t think I’ve had a friend in the world for lifetimes, and it has suited me just fine.”