by Jason Letts
Only a few cautious steps were needed before the starlight provided enough visibility to reveal that a person controlled the light. Of all the people on that mountain, there was only one who could produce that kind of artificial light.
“Mira, I’ve found you!” Aoi said, hastening along the flat pathway to the girl with the flashlight.
“You shouldn’t have followed me,” she said. “You’re in danger now. He’s here somewhere.”
They hushed for a moment, trying to distinguish a shadow from the light clouds and dark rock.
“You shouldn’t have followed me. You’re in danger now,” mocked Neeko’s shrill voice, but the sound seemed to come from everywhere at once. Mira jerked the flashlight in every possible direction, tension radiating in anticipation of the impending fight.
Mira and Aoi jerked around at the rumble of falling boulders near the rock face. They couldn’t see anything though, and soon Mira again faced forward, startled to see Neeko’s dim form just in front of her. She swung her fist at it, but it felt like nothing but air. Neeko laughed.
“You’re a slow learner. You can’t touch me, and that’s too bad because it means you’ll never make it through the notch here to the top. You’ve tried so hard but it’ll all come to nothing.”
“You can’t stop me!” Mira hollered, exchanging the flashlight for the lighter and the aerosol can. Once again, she created a radiant torch and spun with it in hopes of igniting him. Aoi sprang back toward the ledge to avoid getting burned. All of a sudden, a stiff tap on the wrist made her fumble the can, which caught fire. Mira only had time to drop it and dive before it exploded. She screamed as she hit the ground and a piece of the can sliced through her leg. Aoi turned her back to it and covered her face. Mira wailed for a moment and bit her lip as she rocked on the ground. Neeko’s hoarse laughter took to the air from nowhere.
“I’m going to finish this.”
The thud of falling rocks came again, this time accompanied by exhausted groans. A green, glowing hand emerged from the ledge where Aoi had climbed up, and behind it ascended the girl with red hair and an orange uniform. She pulled herself up and began lurching toward those assembled on the heath. Looking exhausted yet determined, a toothy grin emerged on her face. “I’m so close!”
Seeing Aoi, her enthusiasm faded. On the ground, Mira wrapped her cut in a torn piece of clothing. A dim figure strode from the blackness beyond. Neeko faced her, and she raised her dripping green hands to his shadowy form.
“Are you enjoying this, Gloria, your one moment when you don’t mind driving away everyone close to you?”
This stoked her anger, and she roared back with an injured fury. “I’ll enjoy it more once I have my hands on you!”
She raced at his shadow, but before she even got close the figure kicked back like a horse, striking Gloria’s knee and sending her down. She swung her hand, flinging the green goop in the direction of the blow. A shot struck Gloria in the back, knocking her flat against the ground. She spun around, waving her hands in all directions, desperate to make contact.
Mira got to her feet and started inching along the wall
Aoi watched Neeko and his shadow’s effects on Gloria intensely. As Gloria struggled to defend herself against Neeko’s raining blows, Aoi stepped in and threw a punch at the empty air. The head on Neeko’s shadow jerked suddenly to the side and the rest of him fell over. Another rumble shook the ground close to where they were, rocks tumbling from up the mountain.
Gloria got up and Aoi immediately backed away to calm herself. Turning to spy the shifting rubble, Aoi’s face lit up, and then turned back to Gloria. Noticing that Mira was about to make it past them, Gloria moved toward Mira, who sidled along the rock face toward the far corner.
“Mira, look out!” Aoi yelled. Mira turned away from the wall to see Gloria barreling at her. Slimy green hands stretched out, and Mira tried to step back but bumped against the rock.
Just seconds from impact, something caught Gloria like a lasso around her neck. Her forward momentum stopped and she began to fall backward through the air. Mira looked up and saw Vern on the other end of the heath. She somersaulted in the air at him, toxic material flying everywhere.
“Don’t let her touch you!” Aoi shouted to Vern.
He dropped her immediately, right in front of Aoi, who grabbed her hands as Gloria struggled to get up.
“Hurry! I’ve got her!” Aoi shouted.
Mira took her first limping step away when Vern noticed her condition. He jogged up behind her, his heavy steps beckoning her to stop.
“You’re hurt!” he said, seeing the blood trickling down her leg below the wrapped wound.
“Not too different from you,” Aoi noted with sorrow.
“It doesn’t matter,” Mira said through her teeth, urging him to drop it. The pain marred her face, and she fought so hard to bury it. Vern couldn’t help but voice his wonder, unaware of the backlash it would provoke.
“Why, Mira? Why do you go on?”
All of the pain she held back vented through the slowly articulated syllables she screamed.
“Because I don’t matter!”
Her words left Vern speechless and he took an awestruck step back. Mira began to turn away when a crushing blow struck Gloria in the face. Aoi released her grip and Gloria hit the ground and lost consciousness. Taking a step back, Aoi tried to determine where the attack had come from.
“Where is he?” Vern called.
Leaving Neeko to her friends, Mira turned back to the narrowing ledge that led into Shadow Mountain’s notch. But his gray silhouette stood before her, an open mouth and large eyes fixed on her. No matter how little light touched him, she could still see his white hair and pale face, and in them she glimpsed her mentor, Flip Widget.
“You have no idea what I have waiting for you around that corner,” he whispered, the sound slithering into her ears from all directions at once. Mira’s revulsion reached a breaking point, and her hands trembled.
“It’ll only hurt more when it all crashes down on you,” she goaded.
He reached forward to punch her, and Mira ducked and swung her leg around to trip him, but no matter which direction he came from, she never connected. The silhouette’s fist jolted through the air. While the shadow appeared to attack Mira, Neeko’s invisible fist struck Aoi, whose right eye snapped shut. The impact made her head roll against her neck, the force of the collision lifting her off her feet and sending her backward over the edge. Catching the starlight in her black hair as she fell back, she sunk through the wafting white clouds.
“Aoi!” Vern hollered, diving over the cliff’s edge into the empty expanse behind her. Mira watched them fall, one after the other, over her shoulder. She held her breath, but neither sight nor sound of them came to her again.
“You always think it’s about you, don’t you?”
Neeko’s voice hung mysteriously in the air. Mira looked for its origins, but all trace of him had vanished. Mira knew, at least, the only direction he could have gone. Now that nothing but Gloria’s unconscious body kept her company, a cold loneliness crept under her skin that she hoped she would never feel again.
Chapter 15: Ascension
Every step she took with her left leg brought a biting sting, but the thought of losing after she had come so far hurt more, so Mira mustered a hobbling jog as she rounded the narrowing ledge. Holding the flashlight, she scanned for sudden drop-offs or weaknesses in the rock. The mist hung just below the lip of the ledge. There could be no way of knowing how far the fall would be.
Entering the notch, where a steady wind fed the clouds through a twisting passage near the mountain’s summit, she chased the wisps dreaming they would lead her straight to her father. The wind whistled and tugged at her hair, drawing her onward without revealing where it led.
The ledge narrowed until Mira felt her feet rub together to avoid slipping over. For a second, she thought she had reached a dead end, but she knew there couldn’t have been a
nother path. She turned to the rock wall to her right, which while not nearly vertical proved too steep to climb. Scanning it using the flashlight, she made out the surface’s uneven shape, a rocky spike protruding several yards into the air.
Breathing heavily and feeling the crushing weight of every decision, Mira took the rope from around her waist and made a large loop. Hurling it up, it caught the spike, and Mira yanked it tight so she could pull herself up. Taking her first step up the wall with the rope, she felt the weight of her body tug on her hands against the rope. If she fell back, nothing would catch her until she tumbled to the mountain’s midsection.
Making it to the spike, she prepared to toss the rope to the next formation in the rock. She started up and her body again relied on her grip, but a sudden pressure stabbed right into the wound on her left leg. She screamed and felt the impulse to touch it, but she clenched her jaw shut and kept her hands on the rope.
“You haven’t forgotten about me, have you?”
Neeko’s patronizing voice drifted through the weightless mist. Mira took another step, carrying herself up on her left leg and reaching higher on the rope. Before she could move again, she felt a surge of excruciating pain twisting into her leg. It felt like he’d ground his heel into her open cut. Though the searing pain saturated her mind, she swung herself to the side, hoping the rope would send his feet out from under him. But her attack had no effect. Settling back down, the taut rope extending in front of her, Mira advanced closer toward the spike.
An agonizing pain shot through her knee and up her right leg.
“Wouldn’t want that leg to feel left out,” Neeko laughed.
Holding tight with one hand, she swung her fist out through the misty air. Even the cloud seemed to slip around her balled fingers without making contact. In the dim haze, illuminated by only the stars and a flashlight tied to her hip, no trace of Neeko warned of his attacks or hinted at his location. Wary that he might strike her, Mira carefully climbed onto the second spike and prepared to lasso a third.
His voice again haunted her.”You’re so close, Mira! Can you see it yet?”
Instead of striking her as she pulled herself up, he cheered her on, but she winced just the same. More cackling laughter punctuated his taunts, which throbbed right along with the blood-oozing cut in Mira’s leg.
“Go, go, go!”
His sarcastic encouragements filled her with agitation and angst. If she saw him for only an instant, she told herself she would dive at him even if it meant falling. But he used only his invisible words to attack her ears. Mira surmounted the third spike, and after reclaiming the end of the rope scanned the side of the cliff with her flashlight. To her astonishment, it ended just over her head. Securing her equipment, Mira leapt for the ledge and fought through the fatigue in her arms to pull herself up over it. She saw the mountain slope upward into the mist.
“How disappointing! You’re not even close to the top.”
Mira rolled onto the ground and struggled to her feet. The clouds seemed thinner up here, or perhaps more starlight shone down. She sucked her teeth when she put her weight on her left leg. Limping forward, the constant pulsing agony ground away her resiliency and her hope.
“How do you know I’m not already there, at the top? You could be struggling for nothing. You could be thumbing the pin into your own heart for no purpose whatsoever.”
“I know you’d rather step over me at the very last moment so I’d have no choice but to watch you win with my very own eyes,” Mira hissed.
A ruffled snicker spilled out into the air, but Neeko was quick to mask it.
“Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it,” he sneered.
Mira trudged up the rocky hill, skipping on her good foot to try and gain some time. There had to be a way to win, as long as she believed in it. She couldn’t let herself down after vowing to accomplish it so long ago and enduring so much to get here. Though each step forward revealed only another step to go, she fought through them all, certain giving in would kill her.
Through the hanging wisps, Mira gazed upward and saw a faint glimmer stealing away from the darkness. An obscure shape formed in the distance, a rising precipice that hung slightly above the clouds. It was the top, where Mira’s present path grew steeper, shooting up into a column that had rocky fragments jutting out on all sides. As far away as it was, it felt so close. And Mira’s yearning to reach it drowned the drumbeat of her pain.
A strange noise took to the air, differing starkly from both the subtle wind and Neeko’s malicious chatter. The sound of throaty rippling rose, growing louder. Stepping through the haze in front of her and to the right, a mountain lion with blood dripping from its maw prowled the area. Mira froze, almost falling over as her legs stopped before the rest of her. She put her hand to her chest and waded through the fear in her mind for a solution.
The mountain lion tiptoed toward her, neither picking up speed nor flashing its teeth. Mira couldn’t run away, couldn’t hide, and couldn’t fight it. She could only stare intently, begging through her bleary eyes for it to leave her alone.
“What’s a matter? You scared?” Neeko taunted.
The animal stopped in its tracks and started bobbing its head this way and that. It sniffed at the air and finally cast a long hard gaze to Mira’s left. Still scared out of her wits, she dared to glance over at the musty fog. The mountain lion bared its teeth and sounded a throaty, harsh growl. It sprung forward a second later, its claws unsheathed, forcing Mira to flinch and duck away. But the fearsome creature didn’t pounce in her direction. Instead, Neeko’s squeals revealed she had nothing to fear for the moment. In fact, for the first time, she had struck upon a chance to overtake Neeko and rip the victory right out of his hands.
“What, not a cat person?” she wheezed as she broke into a limping gallop. Straining to keep her left leg from falling behind, Mira hurried along the gray stretch of rock. The cat noisily chased its prey over her shoulder, and Mira tried to peer through the mist to learn how long her chance would last. Grunting and roaring filled the air, but the mist shrouded them from her out of spite.
Searing pain ripped through Mira with every stride. She could never suck enough of the thin air into her lungs to satisfy her body’s need for oxygen. Her arms thrashed up and down, trying to kick up the pace. The grueling ascent seemed interminable, the obscure image of the mountain’s spire and its highest precipice hanging forever out of reach. Her exhausted and pain-stricken mind churned, yearning for an end to this journey.
Her solitary race dragged on. Panting, she feared her body would give out as she stumbled and kicked her way up the rocky trail. She noticed the noises from Neeko’s fight with the mountain lion had died away completely. Her mind couldn’t compute how long it’d been since she last heard them. There seemed such a great distance to run and such a monumental height to climb. She pushed her legs onward though their sluggishness made it difficult to stand.
Her mind, blank from fatigue, barely registered it when the base of the final outcropping came into view. The mist separated and revealed the mountain’s thin arm stretching into the profound emptiness of space. Ledges and rock fragments dotted it from top to bottom. Shuffling against the rock, Mira’s left leg dragged and skidded.
Scrambling on all fours to overcome the towering rock before her, she salivated at the promise of leaving the work for her arms when the steep climb began. Her bottom half had stiffened and turned feeble despite Mira’s will. There was no time to lose.
Extending her arm to catch the rock column that shot up in front of her, her body accelerated quicker than she expected. She never felt the push that sent her face first into the unforgiving stone. Smacking her head against it, the rock left her with a gash over her right eye. A broken moan escaped her lips as her legs slipped out from under her. Before she could come to rest face down on the cold stone surface, a screeching voice grated through her ears.
“Thought you could get by me? You’re nothing!
Didn’t I tell you? You’re fighting against something you can never beat! Only the greatest deserve this. You knew it was never meant for you.”
Unable to get up, Mira heard scraping and heaving as Neeko pulled himself onto the first rock ledge. It all slipped away from her then, her desire, her belief, her hope. She had nothing to comfort her but the dirt that clung to her skin. Expecting to pass out, she shivered and breathed.
Batting her heavy eyelids, she noticed a strange wrinkle in the stone stretching into a gentle curve. The line grew at both ends. It startled Mira, who lifted her neck just enough to see the shape forming in the rock between her arms. The lines ate into the rock, forming curves and circles, forming a face. Unable to believe the sight occurring before her, she realized the face looked an awful lot like hers.
The lines shifted and swayed within the rock like a thin sheet of putty. It looked alive, and Mira thought she could almost feel it breathe. Extending a shaky finger, she touched the lines and felt the smooth indentations that represented her hair and forehead. It had a forlorn, melancholy expression. She stared into her near-mirror image, frozen and vulnerable.
Mira’s gaze traced the soft contours of her mouth. The lips first pinched together, stretched out to the side, and then opened vertically. She watched the motion repeat a few times before the meaning dawned on her.
“Mira,” she said, mimicking the motion and whispering her own name.
Seeing her sister’s face in the rock touched the last nerve in Mira’s body that hadn’t gone numb. The swelling emotion choked her, and her eyes watered over. It felt like her heart had burst, sending a wave of mournful love crashing through her body. Her mind drifted back to the garden of Cloud Cottage, staring into a familiar face against her father’s wall of mist.
“Clara, I’m coming,” she cooed, but no sooner had she spoken then the image vanished completely. The lines filled in and she stared at nothing more than a smooth hunk of brown stone. Though the shape of her sister’s face had gone, the blind determination it instilled in her remained.