by Susan Cliff
That was before he joined the Free Syrian Army. Before everything fell apart.
In her dream, she was following him. He was weaving through the crowded market, staying one step ahead of her. He skirted around traffic and ducked into an alleyway. He was tall and broad-shouldered, easy to spot but hard to catch. She ran after him and found a dark-haired stranger in his place.
She fell to her knees and wept.
Then his strong arms wrapped around her and she was safe again. She hugged him closer, clinging to his lean form. She pressed her lips to his warm neck. He inhaled a sharp breath.
She woke with a start, her limbs tangled with his. Her mouth on his skin. Only it wasn’t Khalil. It was Hudson. The two men were about the same size, with rangy builds, but they didn’t feel the same. Hudson’s body hummed with energy, as if he had a live wire inside him. A spark of passion, ready to ignite.
They didn’t smell the same, either. She didn’t remember what Khalil smelled like, but this wasn’t it. This was a heady combination of rough wool and male heat and earthy minerals. She moistened her lips, tasting salt. His grip tightened on her upper arms. A vein pulsed at the base of his throat, where her mouth had touched.
Sleeping with Hudson was a bad idea, but it wouldn’t ruin her reputation. Her marriage to Khalil had already done that.
She eased away from him, moving as far as she could in the cramped quarters of the tent. Although she’d attempted to keep as much distance between them as possible, they’d drifted together in the night.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was dreaming.”
“About your husband?”
“Yes.”
He scrubbed a hand down his face. It was chilly inside the tent, especially now that they’d separated. “How did he die?”
“He was shot on the outskirts of Palmyra with a group of opposition fighters.”
“He was in the rebel army?”
She nodded, swallowing past the lump in her throat. “He left the university to join them a few months before graduation. I begged him not to go. I said he would get shot the first week.” She sat forward and reached for her boots. “He lived more than a year.”
Hudson braced his weight on his elbows, watching as she tied her laces. She couldn’t meet his eyes. Her emotions were on edge, she was sore from the hike and she hadn’t slept well on the hard ground. He seemed impervious to discomfort, but he’d been trained for extremes. She couldn’t imagine the conditions he’d endured in the torture cell.
He didn’t ask any more questions. She unzipped the front flap and looked out. Aram was awake, keeping watch as dawn broke over the horizon. She could see her breath in the cold air. Before she left the tent, she grabbed her wool poncho.
It was still difficult to speak of Khalil, to dream of him and remember him. She’d loved him so much. After his death, she’d buried herself in work at the hospital in Damascus. They’d needed all the help they could get. The day of the air strikes, she’d stayed on duty for forty-eight hours. She’d seen things she could not bear. And, like many medical professionals before her, she’d fled the carnage and never returned.
She’d walked to Jordan. She’d worked in a tea house to pay for room and board. The weeks had passed in a blur of nothingness. Then she’d received the devastating news about her brother and his wife. She’d picked up the broken pieces of herself and returned to Syria, for Ashur’s sake. She’d planned to bring him back to Jordan, but the roads had become impassible. They could travel only one direction, toward their ravaged homeland.
She pushed aside the memories and collected water for breakfast. Hudson thought the refugees were ill-equipped for this journey, and they were. But they wouldn’t give up. Everyone here had a story of hardship and loss. A lifetime of diaspora. They were all seasoned warriors, the same as him.
She visited the women’s tent, which was crammed with six females sleeping head to toe. Two were her cousins’ wives. Although Layah felt uneasy about sharing a tent with Hudson, she couldn’t fit here. She also suspected he would try to leave the group if given the opportunity. She needed to keep him close, but not too close. He was a virile, attractive man. If she wasn’t careful, she might find herself in a compromising position. Again.
They shared a breakfast of hot tea and dehydrated eggs. Hudson finished his rations quickly. She knew it wasn’t enough to satisfy him. She hoped they could hunt at some point, because the food wouldn’t last. They had milk powder, bouillon cubes, dates and several handfuls of dried meat. In three or four days, they’d have nothing.
She approached him for a consultation while her cousins broke down the tents. “How far will we go today?”
He glanced toward the snowy mountaintop. “How far do you want to go?”
“I want to reach the summit.”
“The summit is the high point. We want to cross at the lowest elevation.”
“I want to reach the crossing place, then.”
“We can’t get there in one day.”
“Why not?”
“You’re a bunch of amateurs, and I’m still recovering. We’ll be lucky to cover half that distance.”
“Will we get there tomorrow?”
“I doubt it.”
“When?”
“Let me see the map.”
She retrieved the map from her pack and presented it to him. It showed natural topography and nothing else. No roads, borders or towns. She’d marked a dotted red line along the route she wanted to take.
“What the hell is this?”
“It is a suggested path.”
“You don’t have the other maps?”
“No.” She’d left them behind on purpose, because she thought he might try to take them from her and use them to aide an escape.
He stared at her in disbelief.
“I think we are here,” she said, pointing to a spot.
“You think?”
His reaction didn’t surprise her. She’d anticipated this argument yesterday. She folded the map and put it away.
“How am I supposed to be your guide without GPS or a real map?”
She gestured toward the peak. “What more information do you need? We are climbing this mountain in front of us.”
“We’re traveling through a conflict zone,” he said in a low voice. “I need to know which side of the goddamned border we’re on.”
“We will cross in an area too remote for fighting.”
“Then what?”
“Then we will all be free.”
He narrowed his eyes at this claim. When she touched his arm imploringly, he shook off her hand and walked away. She told herself it didn’t matter what he thought of her as long as he cooperated, but that was a lie. She wanted him to like her for personal reasons. She wanted him to like her because she liked him. The spark he carried within him had caught inside her. She found him thrilling, from every angle.
She had to smother this feeling, of course. It was an insult to her husband’s memory, and it made their journey all the more difficult.
They left camp just after sunrise. Her sore muscles warmed and became loose again. Ashur didn’t complain about the hike, which concerned her. She remembered his silence during the long walk from Syria. They’d traveled over a hundred miles together, hardly speaking.
When they reached the snow line an hour later, Layah paused. Hudson didn’t. He kept right on going.
“Do we need the crampons?” she asked.
“Not for this.”
“Why not?”
“They’re for ice or hard-packed snow.”
She followed him across the thin white layer. The powder crunched beneath the soles of her boots and the hard ground. It was cooler here than in the village, but not cold. Sunshine sparkled on the snowdrifts in the distance. Soon she was perspiring beneath her wool poncho. Hud
son started to pull ahead. His stride was longer than hers, his natural pace swift and steady. She couldn’t catch him.
He glanced over his shoulder to watch her struggle. A muscle in his jaw flexed with impatience. He shrugged out of his pack and removed his fleece pullover. “Take off a layer,” he said, when she joined him. “You don’t want to sweat up here. Damp clothes will lower your body temperature.”
She removed her pack and shed her poncho, instructing the others to do the same. They drank sips of water and started hiking again. Ashur took the second position instead of Layah. She lingered behind to make sure everyone was okay. Hanna smiled and nodded. This was a grand adventure for her. The Yazidi girl had probably never left her village before.
At midmorning, they reached the base of a snow-covered slope. Hudson paused to test it with a long stick.
“Now do we use crampons?” Layah asked.
“It’s still too soft,” Hudson said. “I’ll have to kick steps.”
“Kick steps?”
“It’s like making a set of stairs in the snow. You follow my footprints.”
She studied the slope warily. “What if someone falls? Do we need ropes?”
“No ropes,” he said, sounding confident. “On snow, being tied together is more of a hindrance than a help. This slope isn’t steep enough to bother with a fixed line. If someone falls, they’ll slide down a few feet and get back up.”
She nodded and put on her gloves. He was the expert.
He took out his ice ax and sank the point into the slope to anchor himself. Then he kicked two steps in the snow, repositioned his ax and moved up. It was a methodical process that he seemed comfortable with. When he’d formed about ten steps, he gestured for her to start climbing after him.
She began the ascent, her pulse racing. It wasn’t as easy as it looked. Even though he was doing all the work, she struggled to keep up. Her pack felt top-heavy, her boots stiff and clumsy. Cold seeped through her gloves. She was afraid to look up or down. The climb stretched on, never-ending.
By the time he pulled her over the edge of a plateau, she was trembling from exertion. She collapsed on her back, sucking in cool air. She hadn’t realized how difficult it was to climb over snow. She imagined several more days of slow, steady ascent.
Ashur joined her on the plateau. The others followed one by one. She dragged herself upright to study their surroundings. They were stranded in a sea of jagged peaks and slopes, flanked by a stretch of gritty, gray-streaked snow.
“That’s a glacier,” Ashur said in Arabic.
“Are you sure?”
“I’ve seen pictures.”
The glacier appeared to follow the path of least resistance into steeper terrain. It was a mix of volcanic rock, blue ice and ashy-looking snow. It resembled a raging river, frozen in time. With crampons, they could travel over the surface.
They shared a lunch of dates and flatbread, taking a much-needed rest.
“Can we go that way?” she asked Hudson, pointing to the glacier.
“It would be faster, but more dangerous.”
“I want to try it.”
He stared across the icy expanse, contemplative. Although he claimed he was still weak from the months of captivity, he didn’t look it. He glowed with health and manly vigor. Maybe it was the light reflecting off the surface of the snow that flattered him. Maybe it was the spectacular backdrop. He seemed very much in his element, framed by rugged mountain peaks. “I thought I was giving the orders up here.”
“You are.”
He fell silent, the corner of his mouth twitching. It dawned on her that he was enjoying himself. He didn’t like the way she’d forced him into this journey, but he was clearly relishing the experience. He was the type of man who embraced challenges. His strength and resilience were undeniable.
She smiled back at him, her breath hitching with excitement. His gaze darkened and tension spiked between them. His words suddenly struck her as suggestive. She wondered if he wanted to order her around in the bedroom, not just on the mountain. The idea made her jaw drop.
He laughed at her scandalized expression. She knew then that danger was the spice of life for him. It was an aphrodisiac that allowed him to let go of his anger toward her and focus on the pleasure they might share together.
While she stood there, remembering the feel of his hard body against hers, a snowball came hurtling from Ashur’s direction. It hit her right shoulder and exploded over her chest. She gasped in outrage.
No one spoke. The Yazidi girl’s eyes widened. Seconds passed.
Layah did the only thing she could do. She dropped to her knees to scoop up some snow. Her cousins followed suit. So did Hudson. In the next instant, snowballs were flying everywhere. There was no escaping the onslaught. Layah launched hers at Ashur, who ducked to avoid it. The Yazidi grandmother was standing behind him, so she took a cold blast to the face. Ashur doubled over with laughter and got pelted by multiple assailants. Cousins targeted cousins. Hanna lobbed a snowball at Hudson.
At the end of the battle, they were all grinning and out of breath. Layah had snow in her ear and her hands were frozen, but she wouldn’t have changed a thing. Because she hadn’t seen Ashur this happy in years. She hadn’t seen him play. The war had taken everything good they’d both ever known, and left them with only each other.
Hudson helped Ashur to his feet, brushing snow off his jacket. Ashur didn’t protest. Maybe this was the beginning of a truce between them. Layah stuck her hands in her pockets, her throat tight.
“We need to gear up if we’re walking over the glacier,” Hudson said. “Do you have crampons and harnesses for everyone? And goggles?”
“Yes.”
“How many ice axes?”
“Three.”
“That’s not enough.”
She held his gaze. They didn’t have enough food, either. He knew that, because he’d examined the contents of every pack. “I want to get over these mountains quickly. There is no safe path.”
He studied the surface of the glacier, his brow furrowed. “We’ll have to travel in roped teams, and watch out for crevasses. Most are exposed, and easy enough to avoid, but some are hidden under a layer of snow. The risk of falling is significant.”
She nodded her agreement. They unpacked the gear and decided on three teams. The leader of each team would have an ice ax. The others would hold tent stakes and hope for the best. Hudson showed them how to self-arrest in the event of a fall. Layah translated his words for her cousins, but the physical demonstration was easy to follow. She admired his form as he modeled the proper technique.
Hudson chose Layah and the Yazidis for his team. The other two teams were led by her cousins. She helped the women with their harnesses before donning her own. Then she attached the crampon spikes to her boots and found her snow goggles.
Before they set off, Hudson checked their gear. He knelt to adjust Layah’s harness, giving it a hard pull. She flushed as the straps tugged between her legs. Nodding, he clipped her to the rope with a carabiner. He repeated this process with every member of the group. Then he used his ax to hack some notches into the side of the glacier. It was a similar process to kicking steps in the snow.
After he made a safe access point, he climbed the ice stairs. The Yazidis followed, then Layah. They walked a short distance across the top. The surface of the glacier wasn’t as slippery as she’d imagined. It was grainy and rippled, covered in a frozen layer of snow. Her crampon spikes crunched with every step. She felt like a true adventurer, and smiled at Hudson, pleased with their decision.
He waited for the other teams to join them. Then they moved forward once more. He started slowly, testing the conditions. The glacier seemed rock-solid beneath her feet. She didn’t fall behind or let the rope go slack. There was about three meters of space between each team member, which limited conversation,
but they were all within shouting distance.
So far, so good.
She glanced over her shoulder at Yusef, who flashed a grin. He was her favorite cousin, calm with a gentle spirit. Aram was more like Ashur, quick to anger. They both appeared comfortable in the lead positions. She turned back around and came to a halt. Hudson had paused with his left fist in the air. The stop signal.
She made the signal to the two other teams.
“Crevasse,” Hudson shouted at her. “We can step across it.”
She translated this message for Hanna and Yelda before they moved forward. There was a fissure in the snowpack, about the length of her arm. Hudson stepped over it easily. The grandmother went next, after a short hesitation. The girl leaped with grace.
Layah peered into the crevasse before she joined them on the other side. It was four or five meters deep, with smooth turquoise walls and strange, bulbous ice formations. She wanted to climb inside for a better look, but they didn’t have time to explore. She took a big step over the gap and continued forward.
They encountered a second crevasse around the bend, also exposed and narrow enough to cross over. It had a slightly wider gap, which meant they all had to jump to the other side. The grandmother slipped and almost lost her footing as she landed. When she regained her balance, Layah moved forward.
The next crevasse was wide and shallow, with broken chunks of ice on one side. Hudson lowered himself into the space and climbed up the ice blocks against the far wall. At the top, he offered a helping hand.
“We have to look for a place to camp,” he said, giving Layah a boost.
She glanced at the late afternoon sun with surprise. She was tired, but invigorated. They were near the summit. She prayed they would cross over the mountain range tomorrow. From there, it was all downhill.
They hiked on, searching for somewhere to stop for the night. Her stomach growled with hunger and her muscles ached from overuse, but her main focus was on their sleeping arrangements. She wondered if she’d drift into Hudson’s arms again. Would he try to keep his distance, or pull her closer?