by M. G. Harris
Dad shouts back, “It’s in the path of the avalanche. We need to move.”
He leads us out onto the lip of the glacier. We scramble up the two feet of ice, then start walking—first Dad, then me, then Ixchel. We zigzag across, taking tiny steps. One second the air is still; the next, there’s a roar of freezing snow.
Another deep rumble. It’s strong enough to shake us off our feet. We’re thrown back against the mountain. We lean against the slope, dig our boots into the ice. When the tremor passes, Dad shouts, “That was good. Keep doing that when it quakes.”
As I prepare to pull myself to my feet, I glance upward. I’m slightly surprised to see a light aircraft circling the top of the volcano. I hadn’t heard it before, over the wind. I point it out to Dad. He looks up curiously. “Vulcanologists, probably,” he says. “They like to take photos of the crater when we get seismic activity around here.”
Then, to our amazement, a tiny figure falls out of the plane. It flips and floats around in a crazy, eccentric manner for a few seconds. A parachute opens, a brilliant blue canopy behind the skydiver, yanking him skyward.
“What the … ?” shouts Dad in disbelief. “That guy is crazy! He’s gonna get himself killed!”
The blue parachute floats gracefully toward the summit. Passing the crater, it turns. We watch, paralyzed with astonishment.
Attached to the skydiver’s feet is a snowboard. The parachute lowers him toward the leading edge of the crater. He suddenly releases the chute. He free-falls and lands on a huge bank of powder snow. There are other climbers close to his position. We’re transfixed with horror as a layer of snow begins to crumble and collapse. The skydiver snowboards right through the chaos. Snow billows around him, almost obscuring him completely. He thunders on ahead, leaving a snowstorm in his wake.
Part of me is thinking that it’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Another part notices that climbers are being knocked down in the first wave of rushing snow.
“That’s done it now,” says Dad. It’s the first time I hear real fear in his voice. “Use your ax to get a hold on the ice. And hold tight, kids! Hold on tight!”
There’s no possible way to make it off the glacier in time. The avalanche doesn’t seem to be headed straight for us just yet, so I don’t quite understand my father’s panic. I hurl my ax into the ice as hard as I can manage. Ixchel does the same. Our eyes meet. We’re both white with fear.
The snowboarder sails across the glacier in one long heelside turn. He swerves out of the path of the tumbling snow. He’s headed straight for us, getting closer by the second. Dad stares in disbelief.
“This guy is out of his mind …”
Only now do I see what’s really happening here.
It’s Madison.
I struggle to pull my ax out of the ice. Dad shouts at me, “Josh! Stay where you are! Leave it there!”
“We need a weapon,” I shout back, grappling with the ax, which won’t budge. My leg feels like it’s on fire from all my twisting movements. I glance over my shoulder just in time to see the snowboarder careering toward me. In one outstretched hand is a knife.
He carves up the snow between Ixchel and me, cuts through our rope with his knife. He flips around sharply, turning back toward me. In the next second, he grabs hold of my backpack, drags me along behind him. The rope attaching me to my father snaps taut for a second. And then I feel his weight added to mine. The snowboarder slows down. He brakes to a standstill. I can’t see his face behind the helmet and snow goggles. Hearing his voice confirms my worst suspicions.
Madison.
“Give me the backpack, Josh,” he yells. “I only want the Adapter.”
He leans forward with the knife, slices at my backpack. One strap breaks free.
Just as Madison reaches to cut the other strap, the volcano shakes—the most powerful tremor yet. I wobble for a second, lose my balance, and then fall flat on my face. When I look up, I don’t even have long enough to dread its arrival; a wall of snow is plummeting down the mountain, headed right for us. The last thing I see is Madison tipping over, falling like a bowling pin.
The roar is deafening. I bow my head and clench my jaw. The snow hits like a massive punch to the face. I’m lifted right off the ground and hurled down the mountain. I’m tumbling, head over heels. Sheer panic floods me. Pain roars like a furnace in my thigh. My mouth and nose fill with freezing dust and snow. I lose all sense of time—my fall could have taken one second or twenty. All I’m aware of is the wild current of terror.
The maelstrom of whiteness dumps me on top of my backpack. I’m somewhere down the glacier, buried in snow. For a few seconds I lie absolutely still, amazed that no bones seem to be broken. I’m covered by at least a foot of snow, but the fact that I can still see sunlight through it gives me hope. I scratch and carve my way out. I push my head and shoulders through the crust of snow, searching for signs of Ixchel, my father, and Madison.
I’m almost at the edge of the glacier’s tongue. Another twenty yards and I’d have been flung into the rock field. The snow has settled over everything. The entire glacier is blanketed with an eerie silence. It’s partly because I’m still muffled with snow. I use my fingers to scoop snow out of my mouth, nose, and ears, and spit out the rest.
I can’t see anyone else near my position. Much, much further up the slope I spot some movement. One or two of the climbers who fell in the first little avalanche seem to be emerging from the snow. I feel a stab of anxiety. That was the group of high-school kids. Where are the rest of them? I look over at where the second hut had nestled against an outcropping of rock. It’s gone—buried in a deep slew of snow.
I manage to stand up. That’s when I realize that the rope is still around my waist. It seems slightly loose. I tug at it, gently.
It tugs back, slowly at first. Then with a violence that sweeps me off my feet, it yanks hard at me. I’m pulled right under the snow and dragged along for a second. I’m screaming all over again; my mouth jams up with snow.
Then I fall. Into the ice.
A crevasse.
The idea is so bloodcurdling that I clutch at the walls of the cleft in the ice. I fall about two yards before my hands find an ice ax sunk deep into the wall. It isn’t mine or Ixchel’s, and the handle is slippery, frozen. I grip hold of the top of it. My feet scramble in a furious attempt to find a foothold.
The rope pulls at my waist, even harder this time. The downward force is relentless. It takes all my strength to keep from falling. I can’t see anything below me but snow. But I know that someone’s down there, further down the crevasse. Either Ixchel … or my father.
I try calling out. “Dad … ? Ixchel … ?”
There’s no answer.
My cheek numbs, frozen against the wall of the crevasse. I don’t move an inch, in case I lose my balance. I’m trembling from the effort. I don’t even dare use energy to yell. The snow silences everything. I channel every ounce of strength I have into not slipping further into the crevasse. The ice ax is saving me—it’s so deeply buried that it supports my weight. But I can’t climb—can’t move. The rope around my waist squeezes and pulls at me, as if it might tear me in two. Gradually, I come to the shattering conclusion that whoever is on the end of my rope is hanging freely. Possibly unconscious, possibly even dead.
And when I realize that, I realize who it must be.
If it were Ixchel, I think I’d be able to take her weight. I think I’d even be able to drag her up.
This weight is overpowering me. It has to be my dad.
The idea sends me into a wild panic. I can’t help myself screaming, “Dad! Dad! It’s me, Josh! I’m up here! I’m on the rope!”
There’s no answer. I feel tears of frustration welling up. If only I had a knife, or could spare a hand to free myself of the rope …
But the only thing stopping my dad from falling deeper into the crevasse is me. Just below me, the gap in the ice narrows. Snow has collected around the bottleneck. T
he rope disappears into that snow. I can’t see anything beyond.
I can do nothing but cling to that ice ax. And pray.
Then I hear his voice. It sounds icy, cold as the layers of frozen dust that separate us.
“Josh. Listen to me. Can you climb up?”
“No … no,” I say. My voice quavers. “I can’t move, Dad.”
There’s an agonizing silence.
“I’m gonna cut the rope now.”
I scream. “Dad, no!”
“Listen!”
I force myself to be silent. Already I’m struggling with tears. I’m beginning to lose sensation in my lower limbs, where the blood supply is choked off by the rope.
“Rules of the mountain, Josh,” I hear him say, wearily. “I may have forgotten everything else but … I remember that much. I won’t pull you down with me.”
“No … Dad … ,” I sob.
“There’s no other choice for me. Now be brave.”
“Please …” But I’m barely whispering now.
And then in a voice which seems to cut like a knife through the freezing air he says, “Josh … this isn’t over.”
Without any warning, the pressure around my waist goes slack.
The fear of being torn apart vanishes.
The weight pulling me down has disappeared. I cling tightly to the edge, my mind racing with horror. I listen for any sound of my dad at the bottom of the crevasse.
I hear nothing.
Dad’s cut himself loose.
My father saved me. But where is he now? I feel useless, utterly lost.
A wave of blank despair hits me. I want to give up right now. Hard on the heels of that thought is another older, colder voice.
Stop crying, you baby. Get out of this place while you still can. Or else what he did will be for nothing.
I blink my tears away and drag myself up, sniffling. The crampons on my boots scratch deep into the ice. I feel a foothold and inch a little higher. My fingers hunt around for a handhold, until I find a small crack in the ice. I finally get the nerve to let go of the ice ax and scrabble upward until I can lodge a knee onto the ax. That helps me to push a little higher still. Finally I stand on the ax. At a stretch, I can just reach the lip of the glacier.
I crawl out of the crevasse. Every movement of my wounded leg against the ice is pure agony. But I manage to ignore it. I keep crawling on my belly until I’m far enough away from the edge. Then I turn onto my back, sit up, and pull on the slack rope that now dangles into the crevasse.
There’s something at the end of the rope.
I hear a faint rattling sound as some object scrapes the ice on its way up. I pull even faster, threading rope through my hands. Until I’m holding every inch of rope.
There, tied to the end of the rope, is the Bracelet of Itzamna.
43
There were twenty-four climbers known to be on the slopes of El Pico de Orizaba when the earthquake hit. Twenty-five if you include Simon Madison.
Twenty of us made it off the mountain alive. Including me and Ixchel.
They found only three bodies. My dad’s was the first. He was at the bottom of an ice crevasse, his neck broken. They sent a climber down after him, attached to a winch, and pulled his body up. Two other bodies were found a day later, buried deep under the snow. Their jackets had avalanche-detection systems. They were both high-school students from Mexico.
They still haven’t found the third high-school kid. I’ve overheard comments about waiting until the snow melts, in spring.
There was no sign of Madison. No one saw him come down the mountain; no one saw him alive again on the glacier. He simply vanished into the clouds of snow.
If my dad hadn’t cut himself free, I’d have fallen with him. Maybe the fall would have killed me, maybe not.
Someone asks how I’m feeling.
I don’t feel anything.
It’s as though everything poured out of me on the mountain. I’m emptied, exhausted, numb.
At least no one wants to tell me how to feel. We’re all in the same boat. Sixteen-year-old boys hug each other and cry for their lost friends.
Dark words are spoken about how the weather conditions had looked dangerous. Everyone’s wise after the event. No one’s sorry for the lost snowboarder. The avalanche, they figure, may not have been his fault, but he sure made it worse.
I’m staying at a fancy hospital for a few days to recuperate. Montoyo arrived with Benicio, only hours after the rescue operation. Tomorrow, Mom will be here.
Ixchel was one of the first to be found. As soon as Madison cut her rope, she ran off the glacier, toward the hut. She was caught by the edge of the avalanche that hit the hut, but wasn’t buried too deep. Like me, she was able to dig her way out. By the time she surfaced, some of the high-school kids were on the surface of the snow. One of their party radioed for help. Ixchel called Montoyo.
I suppose I should feel something more than relief at seeing Ixchel. But that’s just the problem.
I feel nothing.
It’s as if the air around me has been sucked away, replaced with dead space. Between me and everyone else, there’s this vacuum. When I try to talk, everything gets swallowed up. It comes out monotone, monochrome.
I hardly notice when Montoyo comes to see me. I’m lying on my bed in a hospital in Veracruz. During the avalanche, my leg wound opened up. It bled pretty badly. They had to stitch and bandage it all over again. Susannah has been sitting with me ever since they brought me down from the mountain. She says very little, but strokes my hair and tells me that I’m very brave.
Brave? What does that even mean?
Montoyo asks for time alone with me. He won’t let me lie on the bed just staring into space.
“Sit up, now. You can do that much.”
I can’t meet his eyes. He stares at me for a long time, and then pats my back and sighs.
“This is gonna be a tough time for you, Josh. Believe me, I know.”
I turn slowly to face him. “What do you know?”
“You’re in pain. That’s something we all go through.”
I shake my head slowly. “This is something different.”
Montoyo nods. “This is shock. And it, too, will pass.” He pauses. “What you need to understand, Josh, is that your father’s fate is something beyond you. It’s out of your hands.”
I gaze at Montoyo. “He didn’t even know me. Did Ixchel tell you? He sacrificed his life for me. Even though he couldn’t remember I was his son.”
“He sacrificed himself because it was the only thing to do. He knew the hazards of the mountain. Most importantly, he knew you, even if he couldn’t remember. You can be sure that knowing you were his son made that choice much easier. A father doesn’t think twice about a decision like that.”
“I want to cry … ,” I say in a low voice. “But I can’t anymore. Why?”
“You spilled a lot of blood and tears on that mountain. It’s enough. Don’t cry too much for the dead—they see it. And it hurts them.”
I glance up in surprise to see Montoyo nodding solemnly. “How can your father’s spirit leave this place,” he asks, “if you won’t let him go?”
“What about my mother?”
Montoyo sighs. “Well, that’s another matter. I will help you there. I believe the time has come for her to know—about everything.
“Your father lived a marvelous life. He was greatly respected in his field of work. He had a wonderful family. A son he can be really proud of. He discovered Ek Naab—and through him, we discovered you. Through him and you, we have the Ix Codex; we can prepare for 2012. Think about that. It’s a life to celebrate.”
Slowly, I nod.
“And you … you did amazing things, Josh. You found the Adapter, found the Revival Chamber—the one written about in the Ix Codex. And you found your father. I underestimated you. I didn’t think you were ready for all this. Well, maybe you are.”
But he’s so wrong. Madison almost killed me,
three times. If he really wanted me dead, I probably would be. I don’t know how to defend myself properly. I do things without thinking them through.
“I don’t know how … but I led Madison to that mountain,” I whisper. “He as good as killed my dad, and those kids.”
“The avalanche was an accident waiting to happen,” Montoyo says, shrugging. “With all this strange weather we’re getting—there’s not usually so much snow. People who climb mountains take great risks.”
I’d never really considered the risks. All I can remember is how badly I needed to know what happened to my father, who killed him.
I feel a distant sense of regret, thinking that if I’d just ignored those postcards, or Arcadio’s letter, my father might still be alive.
“Josh,” Montoyo says, “one of the rescue workers returned your possessions.” He hands me the iPod, my regular cell phone, and a watch. I take them, hardly looking at them as I mumble my thanks. “Was there anything else?” Montoyo asks, with care. “Did your father give you anything?”
I stare at Montoyo, make my decision.
He’s not getting his hands on that bracelet.
“He didn’t know me,” I say blandly. “Why would he give me anything?”
Montoyo examines my eyes closely, then nods a few times. He pats my back again. “Okay, Josh. Take it easy. We’re gonna take care of you. And your mother too. We’re gonna take good care of you now.”
He leaves me then, and I lie back on the bed, wincing at the constant pain that spikes through my entire body.
The Bracelet of Itzamna lies safely hidden under my mattress. No one knows I have it. Except maybe Ixchel. She knows I’m holding something back. When we told Montoyo about how we found my father, and what he told us, I was careful to point out that Dad didn’t offer to let us touch the Bracelet. As far as Montoyo knows, the Bracelet is still somewhere on the volcano. Discarded, lost in a deep fissure of ice.
Maybe Arcadio sent me up the mountain to get the Bracelet. If I’d never showed up, my dad might have stayed there forever, never remembering who he was. Or maybe he’d have died in an avalanche. The Bracelet is the only part of any of this that makes any sense to me. Until I decide what to do with it, that bracelet is mine.
