The Void

It all started wonderfully. To climb was her life, her dream. You could say it was the movie’s fault, arousing a quiet curiosity, that when appeased to the smallest extent, flourished into a insatiable passion. Her first visit to the cramped town rock gym opened a door she could never shut again.
The heights, the glorious spirited winds were nourishment for her soul. The mountains became a drug, once tasted, there was a need for more. But it wasn’t easy for a young high school girl to escape the gilded cage to see the untamed beauty few come to know.
She sat on the window seat in her room, on the third floor of her house, staring at the desolate rain as it raced to hit the ground on a suicidal journey. A magazine, glaringly bright against the dim scene before her, sat in her lap, calling her to read again. No, it offered too much hope. No. That dream was for later. It couldn’t. Well, maybe. She picked it up lovingly, longingly, fearfully.
There it stood trapped in a photo. Everest. Its icy plume a war banner flapping in no breeze but in a deadly wind. A challenge saying climb me if you can, my summit is for only a few. A dream. A hope for reality.
She sat looking— not seeing —for a long time. Thoughts tangled themselves like her unruly hair, plans started, but gradually a common strain appeared. A faint gleam appeared in the gray eyes, and one corner of her mouth twitched upward.
“Juli, come set the table!”
A young girl jumped off a window seat, dumping a magazine to the floor, and in that instinctual response to a mother’s call, losing hold of all the strands she had been weaving together. They fell from her mind as the pages slapped the ground.
***
“You all set?”
James Rien watched Juli check over her harness and knots. The eyes of gray ice flicked over everything, concentrating.
“Yeah. On belay?”
“Belay is on.”
“Climbing?”
First hand on the wall.
“Climb on.”
Go.
She reached and slipped, hanging by one hand. Juli pulled herself back to the rock wall and shut her eyes. Her dance partner was predictable here, outside he would waltz away, daring her to keep up. Eyes opened, flashing like a glacier in the morning sun. Reach.
At the end of the climbing session, she washed chalk from her hands, rubbing at the rough calluses. A strand of frizzy chestnut hair danced before her vision. With an frustrated sigh, Juli tucked it behind her ear. A quick shower and some clean clothes, made her look somewhat human again.
“Juli, wait up!”
James, her instructor, grabbed her arm as she turned just before the door.
“Just wanted to say, good job today. Wow, that even rhymes—”
“Yeah, I know. You’re a poet and didn’t even know it.”
“But really, you’re starting to get it, the magic, I mean. Climbing with everything.”
“Thanks, that means a lot.”
“But do remember the value of leg muscles, they will last longer than arms. And when you were on the green taped route, there” a finger jabbed into the air, “you could have finessed your way around, saving energy, instead of muscling over. It’s all about that really, going farther, and still having enough to get back.”
“Okay.”
“Well, make sure you keep up the exercises I showed you. See you next week?”
“Yeah, bye.”
***
A black void obstructed the pinpricks of light littering the sky. It was an immense shape, emanating power and fullness though its appearance was of that which is not.
Juli gazed up, uncomprehending the Fate that was reaching to play with her game piece. She failed to see the chess board, but no human can see it and live.
She blinked her eyes against the bitter wind and groped for the frozen zipper of her tent. Mt. Everest. She was here. So close and yet so far away. Camp III. One more camp and then the summit. Don’t think. Just sleep.
Juli let her tired body fade into that half dream state, the closest thing to sleep to be found. As her weary soul tried to reach the realm of rest and recovery, she watched her thoughts perform acrobatic dances. Drums beat rhythmically against the tent, and another warm body moaned. With a name, a name, no, can’t remember. It was turning cartwheels out of her grasp.
It had taken everything to get here. The tears, the begging from her very soul, the fights, the desperation, all for a distant dream. But it happened. She broke her parents’ grasp and chose to fly. And how she loved it. And she had gotten more than a mountain, she had found him. A fuzzy image slid into her mind’s eye. Him, standing against the Icefall, framed against those dazzling seracs, stabbing into the pale blue sky. That smile, bright as the ice, a prism of colors. Matt.

***
“Okay, let’s go.”
“Umm... I’m all here. I think. Outer gloves, I packed the stove, I — yeah. Up now, I guess.”
Matt grinned down at her, white teeth glinting in the light of her head lamp. Suddenly she felt a little less groggy.
“Come on girl, we’ve got a date on that summit.”
He was from a different climbing team, but they were scheduled to summit the same day. What luck. Her partner, Alice, was distant and annoyed to be stuck with a seventeen year old girl. They avoided each other as much as possible even though their guide assigned them to climb together. Alice preferred to rope up with one of the Sherpas, since “Children can’t be trusted with lives like this. She might not be able to stop a fall. I don’t plan on dying.”
Everything was in her favor, as she and Matt were a now a rope team bound by trust as well as the light purple rope extending between them. Step. Crunch. Each breath was coming harder. Oxygen. Five more steps. Stop. Try to appreciate the view. Look at him. Hands touch. Move on.
They stopped on a little ledge to drink a lemonade and chicken broth mix. The mountains are a separate world where nothing lives and all who enter find a dimension of themselves that the sea level version would find repulsive. He looked at her, his face obscured by all the fancy warm gear. Suddenly his face was very close.
“Juli.”
Very close. Hand moving her face mask out of the way, the other moving his. And then — warmth, water was poured over what she never knew was dry, so simple, but here, took energy, a gift not easily spent.
“Oh Matt.”
“Don’t say anything. Let’s keep moving.”
***
Death Zone. That’s what they all call it. Brain cells starve and each minute is a minute spent dying. Juli looked at the creatures around her, bundled in endless layers of synthetic material, the oxygen masks giving each an alien quality. The last stretch of this perilous journey wavered in her vision through the swirling mists of vapor and time. She vaguely remembered she was supposed to feel awe at this or pride, but her ability to feel was exhausted to primal instincts; get to the goal, survive, Matt. The last was not even to be considered love or lust, so intangible, indistinct, that is just was the bare recognition of a need for him. Why, she didn’t remember.

***

It was time. Mental checklist: crampons, oxygen mask, tank, gloves, goggles, water...
With an apprehensive sigh, Juli stood and turned her tired but defiant eyes to the summit waiting for her. Alice crawled out of the tent behind her, grunted at the black void and went to find the Sherpas.
“Matt. Time. Ready?”
“Yeah.”
No talk. Just move. Even breathing took concentration. The eastern sky paled revealing an endless sea of jagged peaks thrusting their dangerous heights into the smooth heavens.
The wind whipped about her, the most uncomforting embrace. They were balanced on a knife edge, a ridge so thin, a missed step could start a fatal slide. They passed a snowy mound trying to ignore the lump of clothing frozen to it. There was no sorrow for whatever soul had inhabited it at one point, that capacity was gone. It was the fear or a similar fate that pushed itself through the fog of exhaustion and depravation.
Juli lifted her eyes in a risky glance to measure the distance left. The ridgeline swept downward in a dizzying dive. No, that can’t be. Up. The summit was up.
“Juli, sweetie, look at me.”
The pale gray eyes turned to him, dazed.
“Matt, are we here? I mean really here. Not just at the top, but here.”
“We’re here.”
“Good. I should take some photos.”
None of that great euphoria from the movies. No inspiring music as a the camera turns taking in a vast panoramic view. They lied. It takes too much energy. But what Juli felt was somehow greater - smaller - but greater. A true sense of accomplishment. The deepest desire fulfilled. It was not a passionate emotion, hardly an emotion at all, it just was. Done. Just done.
***
Done was an understatement, Juli thought. The return trip — everyone always forgot about that. A year had passed since then. An endless eternity. The appetite of that black void had taken more than she had to give, leaving her an empty shell. The only company were the taunting visions that plagued her starless night.
The cornice had held him, but not her. What luck it was in one of the few spots that climbers went unroped due to conditions.
“I don’t even remember anything. Just white. Alone. God, the cold! WHY?! WHY!? I can’t even see them anymore. My mountains. They were so beautiful, so —” tears welled in dull eyes, the color of an overcast sky.
Alice had found Juli unconscious on a ledge an hour later, and with the help of the Sherpas, somehow defied the merciless mountain to rescue her. The rescue was famous. She just wished it had never happened. Let Alice have her fame. She was balanced on the brink of death, trying to fall, but society kept her alive.
I’m surrounded and so very alone, she thought, I was almost gone, part of me left and they can never get me back. I’m in no realm, just trapped in between where no one belongs.
Doctors called her survival a miracle. They didn’t get it. She was dead. What had been her passion, still was, was denied, she was drying up like a desert, trapped by her incapacitated flesh.
***
The TV rambled in the background as usual in her monotonous existence. Nothing, then a voice that plagued her mind, spoke to her ears.
“I’m proud to be the youngest man to climb all the 8 meter peaks.”
No. NO! But it was. Him.
The reporter asked him another question, that voice said more, loudly, a grating sound, tearing at the old wounds. He had left her behind. A thief, murderer. Maybe he could have soothed her pain, holding her to him. Instead he never came back.
The dream world was all she had now but dreams were everything she had been denied. She had sought lonely places, but not to be alone. She had left the cage of civilization only to find herself in a smaller one.
Potential is exalted. Dreamers pushed so society can revel in their accomplishments. So the lazy can feel pride for man’s superiority and dominance in this world. No one remembers the failures. They are pushed around, taunted, others feed on their pain, leaving behind a more crumpled spirit. Then forgotten. The successes are marked, failures erased. For are not wars remembered by their generals, not their beaten soldiers?