The Yeti

by Mike Miller

  “No, I can--”

  “Please, you are the guest. I did not mean to test you,” said Zee as if reading Baxter’s mind. “I know your questions. The ‘why’ is that you are here because one of ours found you out there. So he carried you back to us, and thankfully those efforts were in time to save you from the cold. ‘How long’ is you have been asleep for almost a full day. ‘Where’ is the home of an old and simple people of the mountain. We have lived here for hundreds of years because of the warm weather.” Baxter muffled a reaction, uncertain if the man was jesting or not. “While we mostly live in isolation, we still have contact with the outside world, especially in trading for goods.”

  “Obviously,” interrupted Baxter. “Your English is superb.”

  “Thank you. I practice it a lot, but rarely am fortunate enough to converse with a native speaker. I am the oldest of our group, so they let me speak to the visitors. I admit it is a nice privilege.”

  “Is this the fabled Forbidden City, Shangri-La?” Baxter asked. “Or I have heard it called the Forgotten City too.”

  “What?” The old man was astounded. “Why, I have never heard the terms. That is ridiculous. There is nothing forbidden or forgotten here. Oh, those villagers and their gossip.”

  “My apologies,” Baxter offered. “But you are a holy people, like monks?” Baxter asked.

  The old man’s wrinkles dimpled. “I’m not sure what you mean, those words.”

  Baxter rephrased the question, “Are you religious?”

  Zee laughed apologetically. “I am sorry I still do not understand.”

  Baxter wondered how else to phrase the question. “Do you believe or think about forces and powers that cannot be seen or touched.”

  Zee’s face brightened. “Oh, yes. Certainly we do.”

  Baxter smiled at having earned a response, though the old man, who was obviously very bright, may not have fully understood the question. Zee said, “Do you believe in those forces too?”

  “Absolutely,” Baxter replied.

  “Good, we are both monks then.” Baxter felt no need to correct the man. He took it as a compliment, though slightly sacrilegious. “Now tell me, Private Baxter Griffin, who are you? Why are you here?”

  “Well,” Baxter ruminated, “firstly you may call me just Baxter. The ‘private’ and ‘Griffin’ needn’t be said every time.”

  “Fair enough, Baxter,” Zee acknowledged.

  “Well, do you want my whole life story, or just what brought me to your doorstep?”

  The little monk gave an indifferent shrug. “As you please.”

  Baxter leaned backwards and propped himself up with his arms. Rarely had he ever confided the whole truth of his existence with anyone, even his lovely wife or his companion Conrad. While still sorting out the introduction to his autobiography, the kindly Zee pleasantly offered, “One question is where are you from? Even in my years, I have never seen a man of your exact colour.”

  “Haven’t you?” said Baxter with a polite smile though the question of his race naturally chafed his pride. “I was born in Africa. The Sierra Leone. Are you familiar with it?” With a near condescending tone, Baxter spoke slowly as if addressing an idiot, which he instantly regretted. Zee showed no signs of being affronted.

  “Are they all as dark as you over there?”

  “Most of my kind, though we vary in shade like any other group of people.”

  The monk chuckled. “I would assume as much. What is your group’s name?”

  Thinking for a moment, Baxter said, “They have many names for us, most of which are insults. But the most common would be that I am black.”

  The monk scoffed at this and seemed offended. “Hardly. I’d say you are brown.”

  “Well, where the Europeans are called ‘white’ men, then my kind is ‘black.’“

  “You mean the British?” Zee played with his whiskers while envisioning one for discussion. “I would say they are more of a light pink.” Baxter tried to refrain from laughing, but when he saw another impish grin on his partner in conversation, he permitted the laughter to flow.

  Zee spun his cane like the hand of a clock, allowing it to expertly tap down on the stone ground. “But I understand. It is easier for people to make things simple. White, black.”

  “Exactly,” confirmed Baxter.

  “Are the white men enemies of the black?”

  “No,” Baxter thought of Murray. “Not all of them.” His head became woozy with recollections of the past. The more he looked at those splattered moments from time, the more they changed and shifted. Old Conrad hadn’t betrayed him, it was his dastardly lout companion Douglas who had deceived them both. Or perhaps that was just another of Conrad’s clever scams to excuse himself.

  “So how did you become one of the white men?” Zee interrupted.

  “Well, the British hardly bothers with who enrols, as they are always happy to have the bodies.” But then Baxter was taken aback by this man’s preternatural knowledge of the situation. “Now, how did you know I was with them?”

  “Your clothes were standard British army. You are not the first soldiers to come to our world, as there are often many in nearby towns.”

  “Of course,” said Baxter bashfully. “Well, I decided to join the military as one of the only options to make a better life for myself. In fact, I had hoped that...” Baxter caught himself, uncertain to admit that his new career was as a traitor and thief. “Someday I would find some sort of treasure to take home and retire from war.” The latest statement made him sad, for with the recent abandonment, his search for retirement seemed even farther away than the day he had enlisted.

  “Do you regret being a soldier?” Zee asked plaintively.

  “Sometimes, a little.” Baxter sighed deeply, a shiver ran through his body. “Yes. I do. I never imagined some of the things I would be ordered to do. As a child, these men would seem like shining knights. But the reality of the profession is quite the opposite. After awhile, I became numb to my life. And then one day, I wasn’t. I felt horrible, and that was the day I knew I had to leave.”

  Zee nodded with understanding. “Well, that is good, that you wanted to be good.”

  There was a small twinge in the recesses of Baxter’s mind, followed by a strange sensation Baxter had almost forgotten after so long. He wanted to cry. Joy at rescue, sorrow at his repugnant history, his eyes began to sting with tears.

  Zee could detect the onset of his companion’s misery. He interjected, “I have asked so many questions. It is your turn again. Perhaps there is something else you would like to learn of me?”

  A short sniffle was the only outward sign of Baxter’s lament. His mouth hung agape as he searched for words with which to fill it. “Yes, actually, I do have one. What do you know of the creature that stalks the mountain?”

  “What creature?” The monk’s white eyebrows bent into two question marks.

  “The giant white animal. Twice as tall as any man, horns and a tail. It has long claws and can run on the mountain walls.” Baxter became animated with his description, his arms stretching to encompass his recreation of the attacks.

  “I have never seen the animal of which you speak,” the old man said, and Baxter’s excited limbs fell limp with disappointment. “But I have heard a great many things about it.”

  Baxter raised his head at the joke, offering a wry smirk as a pittance for Zee’s humour. But the little man enjoyed the shenanigan far more than Baxter when it was at his victim’s expanse. His amused head and tiny shoulders bubbled up and down like a boiling pot of water. “Have you seen it?”

  “Yes,” Baxter said, his spirit dimming with the dark memories of its slaughter. “It killed everyone in my group except me.”

  Zee became sombre, examining Baxter with suspicious eyes, digging for truth deep into his heart. “Before we begin this part of the conversation, I believe I will join you for a seat.”

  With the butt of his cane resting on the stone floor, Zee lifte
d one leg up into the air and folded it under his buttocks. He grunted at the gesture, then settled onto his free leg with a squirm as if wiggling the appendage into a tight hole. With both hands tightly clutching the head of his walking stick, the old man proceeded to lift his other leg now up into the air, also folding it under his body.

  Baxter could not help but gape as the old man floated in midair, as if seated upon an invisible shelf. Before he could make a remark, Zee began to talk.

  “We call it the Yeti,” the old monk said as all frivolity left his face. “It is an entity older than we know, having existed long before our people ever settled here. As it predates everything we know, we believe it was spawned at the same time as all of the elements themselves. There are many versions of its origin, as it is something of a folktale to our people to entertain the children. But the prevailing story says that the creature was born from the same fires that created our world, yet it is a creature completely absent of fire. So in a way, one could argue that the Yeti is the opposite of life. Where if we have light and warmth in our souls, then the Yeti has none.”

  Baxter nodded softly like a student to a teacher. “How do you stop the monster?”

  The question rattled the old man. A slight wobble shivered through his cane, but he remained levitated in the air. “Monster?” he said dubiously. “I do not think it fair to call the Yeti such an ugly name.” The sentence was spoken in a tone almost approaching anger considering the generally genial voice of its speaker.

  Baxter wilted weakly, an odd moment for such a giant young man to timidly fold before such a hoary person of Zee’s age and appearance. “Please, forgive me if I have offended you. But I watched this Yeti kill dozens of men within a minute. Then when the grisly thing had finished, it feasted on their corpses.” Baxter began to succumb to emotion, his voice rising with fever intensity. “So tell me, if it is not a monster, then what is it?”

  Zee’s expression was transfixed upon Baxter, though his eyes glistened with thought. Two shrivelled eyelids covered his bright brown pupils, and his breath became audible in a wave of heavier puffs.

  “Would you call an avalanche that buries a village such a name? The snow falls from the sky and kills many men, but it is not a horrible monster. The snow is a natural part of the world that can destroy on one hand while creating on the other. I would say that the Yeti is simply another force that inhabits our world. You may not like what it does, but it is no more cruel than the sun or the rain.”

  Zee now focused his gaze squarely on Baxter. The old man said, “You have entered a world of death, but do not want to die. That is your problem, not the Yeti’s.”

  Baxter felt compelled to rebuke his host’s logic. “But the difference between the Yeti and the snow is with its mind. When the snow kills a man, it does not know it buries him to suffocate the air from his lungs, or freezes the blood in his veins. But the Yeti is not a dumb brute. I have seen the light of intelligence in its eyes, the same as I see yours. Perhaps the Yeti does not speak or write like we men, but it is still a murderer. I have seen the evil in its face and the enjoyment it gets from killing.”

  Zee nodded. “By that same rationale, you would call man a monster, a creature that often kills and destroys for selfish motives. But while many men commit evil, we should not say that there is something wrong with our kind. Decisions, actions, results, these things can be born from selfish and angry places. But we cannot condemn them for happening.”

  “To knowingly harm,” said Baxter, “that is evil.”

  Zee scoffed. “Which I assume you never have? The concept of good and evil is fascinating to me. We did not have any concept of this idea until our first Western visitor almost a century ago. While I think I now understand your kind’s need to label things as this or that, I do not agree with it.”

  Zee shifted his body and a soft pop signalled his wizened joints and muscles sliding into place. Baxter knew that he should not further agitate the chap with debate. “Still, I see what you mean,” Baxter said, though quietly condemning those views inside the privacy of his own mind. But Baxter still wished to discuss the monster. “How do you stop the Yeti from slaughtering all of you?”

  “Oh, that is easy.” The light smile that had vanished from Zee’s countenance since the beginning of this serious discussion had finally returned, which also warmed Baxter into a friendly return of the expression. “We do not. We find that as we’ve kept to ourselves, it leaves us alone. Usually, but not always. It never comes here, but is known to catch us out there. And that is the way things are.”

  Baxter nodded, still almost pitying this man’s naiveté. Despite the old man’s views to the contrary, it saddened Baxter to hear the fellow confess his losses.

  “Is that why you are here, to hunt the Yeti?” Zee then asked.

  “No, no,” Baxter said quickly. After a moment’s thought, he explained, “I am just a soldier. Following orders to travel into China.”

  “I see,” Zee groaned as he lowered his feet to the floor. Once standing again, he teetered back and forth to pump the blood back into his limbs.

  Sensing a conclusion to their conversation, Baxter rose as well.

  “You are welcome to stay with us as long as you like,” Zee said.

  “Thank you for that generous offer,” Baxter said. Perhaps a brief respite in this mountain sanctuary would do him well. One half of his mind wanted to pursue the traitors who had abandoned him, to avenge his honour and reclaim the treasure. Yet the other side of Baxter yearned simply for some overdue peace and relaxation. The return home to his wife would still come, and that was all he could be grateful for. For that simple goal, there was no need to expedite his journey before a full recovery. The thought made him burrow deeper into the comfortable confines of his heavy robe. “I do not want to burden you for too long.”

  “As you wish,” Zee said, his hands opened into the air to express an indifference to the length of Baxter’s stay. “I must go now.”

  “I should rest some more too,” Baxter concurred. “But thank you again for your kindness.” He bowed humbly to the Asian. “I am indebted to you.”

  The monk chuckled. “Nonsense. You owe me nothing. But please, tell me one thing.”

  “Anything,” Baxter readily agreed, eager to answer the request and repay a debt.

  “Were you not impressed by my ability to sit in the air?” Zee looked earnestly for approval like a small child who wanted dearly to impress his parents.

  “Oh, yes, absolutely,” Baxter said, blushing at the idea that he had not praised the feat throughout their talk. “I had never seen anything like it.”

  “It’s not easy,” Zee said. “Most visitors really enjoy it. But when you did not remark on the act, I thought my efforts were no longer worthy.”

  “Preposterous,” Baxter laughed, hastily searching for a reasonable excuse with his con man’s flair for inventive lying. “In fact, I was too astounded to say a thing. You left me speechless.” Though he had been willing to fabricate a lie, the comment ended up closely resembling the truth of the situation.

  “Good, I thought so,” the little man said with a smile. He turned and slowly shuffled away, his slippers softly swishing against the floor. “That is good.”

  Chapter XXXIX

  The Attack of the Damned

  “Heavens,” exclaimed the impressionable young Gregory, his head tilting back and around in its eagerness to absorb the entirety of the unnatural surroundings into which the expedition had just embarked. His group had entered a long, cylindrical cavern of raw ice and stone. The strange tube cut into the side of the mountain was partially covered with a small overhang of a ceiling, which, given the position of the sun, split the floor into halves of light and shadow. To their right, was vast, open atmosphere, so clear and bright that the temperature was almost warm. From this vantage, they were witness to a bright sky which blanketed endless terrain of jagged white peaks. The perspective was as if they were standing high on the tongue of a gia
nt shark and peering out upon rows of sharp teeth in the lower jaw. The walls and floor of the passage were covered with a thick layer of ice, where patches of a deep sapphire hue shimmered like blue clouds in a white sky.

  In the busy swivelling of Gregory’s head to incorporate all of these bizarre sights into one cohesive landscape, he stumbled. As Conrad watched the lad slip and fall, the accident was undoubtedly the result of the slippery footing taking advantage of the dulled senses of the boy in his hazy hangover from the previous night’s festivities.

  Once the boy recovered his footing, he nervously looked about to see if anyone else had noticed his clumsy stumble. While everyone else pretended not to and thus save the lad from any public shame, they all indeed had witnessed the blunder. They also noted a fall as such could not end with just the ground, but also slide them out into the never-ending abyss just to their side.

  Douglas had paused at the front of the expedition to examine his precious map for verification of their location, though his halting did not impede the militaristic advance of the Sherpas along the path. However, Molor’s keen tracking skills were unneeded, when every few paces, a splotch of dark blood indicated they were still venturing in the right direction.

  Since yesterday’s heavy indulgence in the opium, the entire procession had slowed their usual march. Conrad continued walking along the road with the half-dead caravan, since he did not know what else he could do to speed them up. Pretending to maintain his eyes forward ahead on the path, he skilfully engaged the periphery of his vision to watch Douglas out the sides of his eyes as he moved to pass him.

  The scoundrel nodded absent-mindedly to himself with one finger tracing a route in the topmost edge of the entire map. The chart’s material was even more discoloured now and becoming rougher than ever. Though Douglas still relied upon it for reference, Conrad thought its usefulness had ended at the site of the previous group’s demise. Conrad wondered if the man was just pretending to use the guide to mask the fact they were lost.