by HM Waugh
The walls of the valley creak and groan and mutter. I feel it in the bones in my head, like a hound’s claws on a dirty slate floor. We shouldn’t be here. Fairytales and imaginary agreements aside, this is a dangerous place to be so close to thaw.
Father might’ve saved his gotals from becoming dowry, but that doesn’t mean they won’t die up here. Doesn’t mean we won’t either. The blue sky is spreading above us, and the sun now shines blindingly on the snow. I’m frightened of the restive music it makes the snow play.
I look back at Uncle and steel myself, dropping my eyes to the ground. ‘The conditions are dangerous, First Uncle. Perhaps we should …’ I stop. What could we possibly do? Try to go back, and die in the night? Build a snowcave and hope?
‘You’re a fool, Last Niece. Keep walking before we all freeze.’
I hunch my shoulders and take a careful step. Snow spills like a waterfall from my boot and races down the sheer slope. My leg shakes. What with the cracking noises and the free-flowing snow and the music, my nerves are frayed. The pasture looks very far below. I can’t wait to be down there, but equally I don’t want to get down there as fast as I will if the whole side of the mountain comes with me.
I lead us on a long zigzag down the slope, turning only when I feel we have to. This way, I hope we can avoid walking over snow that has come down from us walking above.
The sun beams down, the snow glistens. The music gets louder. Each step has more of a crunch, as we break through the thin veil of ice the sun’s warmth has produced.
I feel the slopes above groaning with the weight of all they hold.
I swallow. Ahead of me is a clear stretch. It promises an easy path down towards the valley floor. I don’t believe it. The slope above it is heavy with snow, almost hunching over us. I can hear muttering, waking.
Suddenly I don’t want to choose that path.
I look back, at an angle below my previous tracks.
That way doesn’t look good either. The surface undulates, hinting at sunken boulders that could twist an ankle or catch a boot. But it murmurs more gently than the other.
I nod. This is the best way.
I step forward on my chosen path. We’re more than halfway down now, and I’m shaking with the effort of reading these slopes.
‘Niece! What are you thinking?’ Uncle is already limping, having slipped down the side of a rock hidden by the snow.
I bow my head. ‘First Uncle, I believe this is the safest way.’
His expression hides behind his icicle-clad scarf. He stares so long the mountain beats in time with my heart.
‘You’re a fool.’ He stalks forward, passing me by a handspan, onto the unblemished snow that chills my soul.
I reach out an arm. ‘First Uncle, please don’t go that way. It’s wrong.’
He turns and stares at me, right into my eyes, like he’s never seen me before. ‘No, girl. You’re the one that is wrong. Look at you.’
I do. My clothes echo his, roughly woven wools, brown, red, once white. They are filthy from a winter where water is too close to freezing to wash. I don’t see what he sees.
Uncle raises an eyebrow as I fail to respond. Then he turns and sets off across the virgin slope. He steps carefully, a man who has lived his life amid this snow, but I hear the discordant jangle his passage sets off in the music. How does he not?
I back further away from the slope he walks across, heart slamming my ribs. ‘Uncle!’
But he won’t stop.
I should follow. I must follow. I’ve been taught this all my life. Respect my elders.
The gotals mill about at the point where our paths diverge. ZuZu puts a tentative hoof forward, as if to follow Uncle. I step back once more. ZuZu turns to me, and I tap my hand against my thigh.
Once. Twice. Don’t go there, ZuZu, not with the life that grows within you.
She nods at me, nods and turns back towards me, lightly following my footsteps until she’s before me. Nips at my pant leg.
Danam’s wide eyes look like they’re working overtime to take in all that’s happening. Uncle over there, me here, and all the gotals poised around me.
‘What’re you doing?’ Danam hisses.
‘I don’t know,’ I whisper. All I know is fear. Fear for Uncle. Fear of Uncle. Fear of that slope. Fear of what Father will say when he hears. ‘Not going that way, that’s all I know.’
Danam swears into his scarf. ‘Then what am I supposed to do?’
‘You come with me!’ bellows Uncle. He stamps his foot, glaring back at me and the mutineering gotals.
His anger breaks the peace. And these mountains, so high above the babble of the world, love peace.
Uncle’s voice is too loud.
Uncle’s foot is too heavy.
The slope above him goes quiet. No murmuring. No music. All is still, frozen in that tiny moment, and me frozen with it.
Then a thunderous crack echoes. I stumble backwards.
The gotals mill in panic, pushing me further back.
Uncle hears the crack too. He knows what it means. He must. He looks to us and yells, ‘Run!’
But he doesn’t try to. I guess he realises there’ll be no winning this race for him.
The roar comes now. Growing ever louder.
‘Danam!’ I yell. He stands, frozen. ‘Danam!’
It’s as if he cannot move.
‘Third Nephew!’ I command. ‘Here! Now!’
It works. Danam leaps back from the edge, where the snow is already beginning to flow like lowland honey. Jumps from the path he was on, to the new one I’ve forged. Together we flee as quickly as we dare from the avalanche, with the gotals forging ahead of us. The snow is slipping beneath my boots, slowing me with each step. It is catching us. I feel the energy of its fall, growing and multiplying.
I feel it when the snow takes Uncle into its embrace. Feel when his energy ebbs and is absorbed back into the mountain.
And I run.
Ahead of us, the slope bends around a small ravine. Beyond, the snow lies quiet. Danam’s slowing. He staggers, rights himself, chest heaving.
I push him onwards. ‘To the other side!’
Does he hear me above the grinding roar? He keeps running, anyway. So difficult now. The edge of the slip has caught up to us, tearing at the snow beneath our feet. I can’t see for white.
Each breath comes harder, and I rip my ice-clogged scarf from my face. The white enters my lungs, hurting where it hits.
Danam is slowing.
I keep pushing him. In my head, I urge him to move faster. Chant in time with our steps. Until it is all I can focus on, all I can hear.
I stumble around the ravine, stagger to a halt. We both collapse, ragged breaths spiked with ice.
‘Are we safe?’ he cries.
Can’t he tell?
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he can tell and we’re not safe. Maybe that’s why the gotals are still running. But I’ve stopped now.
The snow is soft, moulding against my body as I lie back, gasping. I watch the motes of ice and snow dance above my head, in my head even, as the lack of oxygen shoots sparkles across my vision. Eventually they slow, fall gracefully to join me on the mountain. Eventually the panic of our breath quietens, the cold blue of a late afternoon sky shines clear above.
We must be alive.
In fact I’m certain I’m alive. Otherwise I wouldn’t be feeling so cold.
‘Danam?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m freezing.’
‘I’m frozen.’
I smile, cold lips cracking, then remember Uncle. The grin falls from my face. ‘We need to get to the hut.’
There are fast deaths in the mountains, like that dealt to Uncle. But there are slow deaths too. Just because we missed the avalanche, doesn’t mean the snow won’t take us. We need to get out of these lengthening shadows. I haul myself into a sitting position.
To my right, the valley has changed. The once-white slope we were just wal
king across has shucked several dragons’ worth of snow and is now dark with newly exposed rock. No sign of Uncle. No sign of our panicked run. It is as if we dropped here from the sky. Our footprints have been swept clean right to the point where we stopped.
I count frantically. Three, four, five. Yes – six. Six gotals, standing with bowed heads, round bellies, legs askance. They all made it through.
Father must have known this trek would be risky, but surely he wouldn’t have made us go if he’d thought it would be like this.
He loves those gotals.
Chapter 4
We don’t need to open the door to the shepherd’s hut. It’s been pushed open by the weight of a winter of snow. Snow we’ve spent the last shards of daylight digging away. For a while we were digging in the wrong spot and only found rough rock walls.
Now we can get in. Although the inside isn’t much better than the outside. But it’s the best option we have. And at least it should extinguish that feeling I’ve still got, that we’re being watched.
Stupid imagination.
I turn to where Danam leans on his herding stick. ‘Should we bring them in?’
He straightens and taps his stick twice on the packed snow. One of the gotals looks up from devouring the sparse wires of grass our work has unearthed. She looks down again just as fast.
I shake my head, hiding a smile. Gotals. My tired legs protest as I head out to help Danam, tapping my hand on my thigh as I go. Not an ear twitches.
It must be the shock or the thin air or both, but Danam giggles. I can’t help but join in. This is ridiculous. We’re trying to save these contrary creatures and they treat us like the dirt between their cloven hooves. I walk over to ZuZu. She flicks an ear and I know she knows I’m here.
‘Come along now, Zu. Get inside before the night-cold starts stalking.’
ZuZu stops eating and my hopes rise, then she chooses a different mouthful and starts again.
‘She’s not going to listen to you,’ Danam says.
‘She has to. Come on, ZuZu.’ I pat her flank, and she waggles her tail in mild protest. I’m so cold, so tired. My sense of humour freezes. ‘Just get inside!’
ZuZu looks up again, snuffs an apology into my leg, and darts inside. The other five follow meekly behind her. I’m sure gotals have royalty, and she’s it. I sigh. Danam keeps laughing.
Once inside we need to secure the door again, or we’ll freeze. Snow has fallen in through the open doorway, but it doesn’t take long to clear. Admittedly, we don’t get rid of all the snow. What would be the point? We just kick it to the side and get both our backs against the warped wood of the door. It protests against the frozen dirt floor, but scrape by scrape we manage to close it. Icy wind slithers through the cracks. But it beats the door being wide open. If it snows again in the night, and it probably will, we’ll just have to open the door and dig our way out again.
Inside smells of cold and stale air. It’s as dark as the empty tombs on the old path to Dragon Mountain.
The wind whines, the gotals bleat, and the snow cocooning the roof chitters like fingers up and down my spine.
Father will be sitting down to a hearty meal of lentils and potato right now. The dung fire in the centre of the dining area will be glowing. The sleeping rooms will be warm from the animals stabled beneath. Second Nephew will be scrubbed as clean as he has ever been, smelling of honey, bowing as he invites the Sepels to share the family hearth. Tonight will be for greeting and celebration.
It is tomorrow that the talk will turn to dowries. Tomorrow, the Sepels will survey Father’s holdings and appraise his stock and decide what they would like Father to gift them. And they’ll never find out about these six beautiful gotals, heavy with kid.
That’s why we’re here. I know that.
Is it worth it, though?
A flare, and a spark briefly illuminates Danam’s nose and forehead. Then darkness. He strikes his flint again, and this time the spark holds in the dry grass he’s arranged on the floor. He touches a candle to it. The wick catches, and he hastily blows out the precious grass.
The room comes into view, large by our standards. It could fit two people lying end to end along one wall, and four people along the other. There are seven chairs in one corner, gathered by a table that has collapsed in the winter neglect. In another corner sits a wooden chest, unadorned and practical. And a second door beside it. That is all.
‘We should go look for him before nightfall,’ Danam says.
I blink. ‘Uncle? But he’s already gone …’
‘We can’t be sure.’
His eyes judge me and some instinct makes me say, ‘I saw it happen.’
It’s a lie, but inside I remember all too well the feeling of his life releasing, the way he changed the song the snow sang. Listening hard, I can hear him still, in the breath of the mountains dancing around us. And I’m sure he’s happy we’re safe. He was a hard man, but he wouldn’t wish us released to the mountains like him.
How does Danam not feel any of this?
‘Sunaya?’ Danam’s staring at me like he has seen a ghost.
‘What?’
He takes a step backwards. ‘What did you and I try to do when we were seven?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Just tell me!’
‘Are you feeling okay?’ Maybe the climb has affected him. We should eat, drink, rest.
His face hardens. ‘Just tell me.’
‘Alright, alright. We tried to fly like golden dragons off Timbu-wan’s waterwheel shed, and broke her butter pot.’
He stares at me, then nods. ‘Good, it’s you.’
I take off my pack and unfold the casing, looking for something quick to eat. ‘Of course it’s me. Why would you think otherwise?’
‘Your eyes. It must have been the light. I thought they were white. I thought maybe you were dead and a spirit of the Ice-People had taken your body.’ He looks sheepish, but I’m not judging. He stares at me in the flickering light of the candle. ‘It must have been the light,’ he repeats, nodding.
He’s scared. I don’t blame him. I’m scared too. This whole place feels … wrong somehow. Enough to make even a diehard adventure-lover like Danam start believing in myths. I grab some dried meat strips and hand him one. There aren’t many left. First Uncle had been carrying most of our rations.
We have a whole cycle of the moon to survive up here before anyone else might come from our village.
We munch on our strips. I stare at the dirt floor, eyelids drooping as the chill of winter seeps into my body. I shake my head, force myself to stand, move around the hut. The other door leads to a much smaller room where the most senior family member sleeps, usually Father. I’ve never been in there. I check inside. Empty. It’s furthest from the main door, and although the rough stone walls radiate cold, no breeze cuts through the gaps. This is where we need to spend the night.
All of us.
I feel the weight of generations of disapproval – gotals in the inner room?
But I’m past caring. The gotals will be warm. I call out to Danam. ‘Bring your ground mat in here. And mine.’
He gathers them up with slow movements. He nods his head to the small room, one eyebrow raised. I shrug. Because it is this or die. I hustle the gotals in after Danam and his second eyebrow joins the first. The gotals mill around inside, confused and probably hungry. I’m already breaking about three unbreakable rules by putting us all in this room. So I figure, why not make a clean cut of it?
The sack of fodder I hauled up here is heavy. I empty a quarter of it on the floor, in the centre of the area not blanketed by our ground rugs. A cloud of gotals descends immediately. The rest of the fodder I try and put up on a high shelf back in the main room, but I can’t reach.
‘Here, let me do it.’
I turn to see Danam, surprised to notice he is half a head taller than me. When did that happen?
As a child, each time my birthday came and pulled me
up to be the same age as him, I would celebrate. Then, mere months later, he would shoot ahead by a year again and laugh and laugh at my annoyance. It took me many birthdays to understand I would never overtake him in age. I’d salve my disappointment by reminding myself I was taller than him. Except now …
He grins as I pass him the bag, like he knows what I’m thinking. I ignore him and turn to sort through the chest. Thank the Dragon, it is filled with dry clothes. My underthings are soaked with sweat. I shuck off my freezing layers and replace them with the warmest things I can find, a fresh woollen shirt and woollen tights, covering those with a knee-length tunic of thick weave. It’s too big for me, but I couldn’t care less. The tunic, in its marching patterns of blue and green and purple, is as bright and cheerful and comforting as Mera. It reminds me of hours sitting in the sun, surrounded by the mountains I love so much, weaving with her. Telling stories of Ice-People that don’t exist. I put my cloak back on – there is nothing as warm as that in the chest. Danam finds a woollen shirt, thick trousers and a short tunic, and as he changes I hang our wet gear over the chairs. The clothes fight me, already freezing into the shapes they were when we tossed them on the floor. My breath steams like the thermal pools in our neighbouring village. What I wouldn’t give to be in one of those. Danam is shivering as he ties his cloak back on.
There’ll be time enough to sort things out in the morning.
We go back into the little room and pull the door shut. The candle flickers with our movements. It’s a small room. Six pregnant nannies and two people make it packed. It’s already noticeably warmer. Danam and I lie down on the mats, huddling together, tucking our coats around us, our rugs over us. He blows out the candle.
Exhaustion is my spinning head, the pulsing of my leg muscles. I feel the mountains looming all around us, sense the murmur of the snow as it settles back into the comfort of a freezing night. At least something enjoys the extreme chill. I feel Danam’s shivers against my back, but they become less violent as his breathing settles.
‘We did well,’ I murmur.
Danam snuffs against my neck. ‘Yeah, we did. Hey, Sunaya?’
‘What?’
‘Ice-People aren’t real, are they?’