Glacier Gold

by Crystel Greene

  “Lose the board, Justin, do you hear me? Do it now!”

  His tone brooks no resistance. I bend over to flick open the levers that keep the board attached to my boots. My hands are shaking, and it takes me half an eternity.

  Finally the second binding snaps open, and the same moment, the board drops away from me. For a few seconds, it’s poised on the edge of the stretch of ice that separates me from the afterlife, then it slowly tilts. With a soft scrunch, it starts slipping, and then it disappears down the crevasse.

  There’s no sound of an impact.

  I try not to think about what that means.

  THE CLIMBING is so much worse than I imagined.

  I keep slipping. Again and again, I find myself skidding back down the slippery ice wall, losing what modest headway I have made, the rope brutally cutting into my armpits.

  Always knowing that if Andi can’t withstand the pull of my two hundred pounds anymore, I’m lost.

  How much longer will he be able to stand the strain? How long till he’ll have to let go?

  But he doesn’t let go. There’s this one, terrifying moment when I feel the pull on the rope suddenly abate, and I skid back down till almost to the ledge, slightly to the side of it. But I stop there, swaying above the abyss, desperately angling for a foothold in the ice.

  And then I’m moving upward again. The pace is excruciatingly slow, but this time around, I do much better. I find dents and chasms in the wall to dig my boots into, and a few knobbly bits of protruding ice I can use as handles.

  While I’m going up, half climbing, half being pulled, a scary sound fills my ears, like a distant singing or whining. I’ve got no idea whether it’s the panic playing a trick on me, or the Gletschergeist.

  Eventually there are just a few inches left to conquer, just a few more inches, and my head will be above the ground.

  There. There, I can see the world again.

  And Andi.

  He’s crouching behind a giant ice block, his feet propped up against it for leverage. His face is a mask of utter strain. The rope is wound around his stomach, and he’s holding on to it with both his hands, still pulling me upward.

  Now my chest is at ground level. Now I can put a hand on the ground.

  Gathering my last reserves of strength, I dig my fingers into the snow and haul myself over the edge. Quickly I scramble away from it on all fours, then collapse onto my stomach, panting and shaking and relishing the feel of flat solidity under my body.

  The rope has gone slack. Gingerly sitting up, I loosen the sling around my chest and pull it over my head. I can feel my underwear cling to my body. I’m soaked in sweat.

  A wind has come up. It’s pushing at me with relentless fierceness, quickly cooling me down. I realize this is what must have caused the sounds I heard inside the crevasse.

  Andi hasn’t come over yet to greet me. He’s still sitting behind that big ice block. He must be completely worn out.

  And also he probably doesn’t want to talk to me right now. He told me to keep behind him at all times, and I completely understand why now. But I didn’t follow his orders and behaved like a total fool instead, forcing him to pull me back out of that crevasse and save my life. His hands are probably ruined.

  I am trying to pluck up the courage to walk over to him and apologize when I hear him utter a low, terrible groan.

  That is when I understand something isn’t right.

  As quickly as my wobbly legs will carry me, I stumble toward him.

  He’s lying on his back in the snow, his face a grimace of pain.

  “God, Andi, what…”

  Hastily I kneel down next to him to loosen the rope that is still wound much too tightly around his middle. Only then I see his right leg is twisted at an odd angle.

  It’s his right foot. It’s trapped under the ice block, and he can’t pull it free.

  In some part of my brain, I do the math and understand his foot must have gotten caught in a gap between the block and the ground in that moment when I felt the rope go slack. He’s been stuck like this for at least fifteen minutes. He has held on to the rope and saved my ass while he had his bones slowly twisted and crushed under that rock.

  “Wait, I’ll move that thing off of you….”

  The block is about double my height, an estimated half a ton of rock and ice. I push at the thing with all I’ve got. It won’t budge.

  Andi has stopped moaning. He clenches his jaw, fighting his pain.

  Kneeling down by his side again, I start frantically digging at the ground with my hands to free his trapped boot. The avalanche shovel attached to Andi’s backpack isn’t sharp enough to be of any use with this. What I’d need is a pickaxe. But all I’ve got is my bare hands, so I’m using them, just like Andi did for me earlier.

  The snow feels like concrete under my fingers. After half a minute, my gloves start tearing. But slowly, slowly I manage to delve deeper until I can wedge a hand in next to his boot. I try to pull, and he screams.

  “Sorry, man, sorry!”

  “Try again,” he hisses. But I don’t do that. Instead I resume the digging, ignoring the vicious sting of the cold in my bleeding fingertips. It’s the only way.

  And finally, finally I’ve created a hollow that’s big enough to allow me to get a grip on his boot and pull it free.

  He hasn’t screamed again, but he’s as white as the snow. And that must be frozen tears glimmering in his lashes, tears of pain.

  “I’ll call the emergency services,” I say, fighting down a surge of anguished compassion. “They’re going to send a helicopter. They’re going to take you down to the valley, to the hospital.”

  I’m about to get out my phone. Thank the Lord I put it into the back pocket of my pants instead of into the backpack—

  “It’s no use. They can’t come get us.”

  He has whispered it into the howl of the wind.

  “Why, what do you mean?”

  Letting his head fall back into the snow and closing his eyes, Andi points a gloved hand to the sky.

  I’ve been so desperate to get his foot out from under the damn ice block that I haven’t paid any attention to much else. Only now I see the sky is no longer gray.

  It’s a leaden coal black. I’ve never seen a color like this. It spans over us, a menacing vastness, like a dome of doom.

  “What’s happening? What is that?”

  “We’ve got to get to the cabin,” Andi says. “Now.”

  HE CAN’T walk. He can only limp, heavily leaning on me.

  And then it starts to snow. Only this isn’t snow. These are fat pieces of ice raining down on us, banging onto our helmets like they mean to smash the plastic. And it’s getting worse by the second. Within less than a minute, we are in the middle of a full-fledged hailstorm.

  I wouldn’t stand the slightest chance of finding the Mangeihütte in this chaos if I didn’t have Andi by my side, guiding me, telling me where to go. With his arm slung around my neck for support, he limps along by my side, shouting directions at me while I pull him along through the hip-deep snow.

  It’s a stretch of flat terrain of no more than three hundred yards or so that separates us from the cabin, but it’s the longest distance I’ve ever had to cover.

  The snow is almost too deep to keep going, and the hail is everywhere. After a while Andi’s arm starts to slip from my shoulder. Eventually he stumbles and breaks to his knees. Desperate to keep him with me, I haul him back up to his feet. With a cry of pain that reaches me even through the din of the storm, he doubles over. When I open my visor to tell him I’m sorry, I swallow a mouthful of ice.

  I struggle to keep him upright and to somehow catch a glimpse of his face to see how he’s doing.

  He lifts a hand to try to open his visor too. With stiff fingers, I help him, trying to shield his face from the hail with my flat hand.

  “Forget my foot, Bennet!” he shouts at me over the storm. “Just use your muscle now and pull me along. I don’
t care if it hurts, okay? Just get us out of here!”

  I signal to him that I got it, then close his visor. My own visor is stuck and won’t shut properly anymore. I can’t see anything through the hail anyway. I’ve got no idea where the cabin is, so I just plow ahead, hoping I’m still on track.

  Andi is dragging himself along next to me, but he has stopped talking. The trouble with the tripping has gotten worse. It’s not just his injury apparently; something doesn’t seem to be right with his coordination.

  When he collapses yet again, something spears through me, pure agony at seeing him like this. It’s followed by a burst of fierce determination. Hoisting him up from the ground, I take him into my arms.

  Keeping him pressed to my chest as if he were a child, I walk on. I’m slipping and stumbling, swaying under his weight, but I keep moving.

  Andi feels almost lifeless in my arms. I don’t stop to check if he has passed out. I know I have to find the way on my own now. Blindly I struggle on through the spearing hail. The storm echoes in my head, an all-invading, triumphant clamor, an evil force that wants to see me fail.

  But I don’t.

  I don’t know how it happens, but suddenly we are there, right in front of the hut. I almost bump my head against the low roof. Tears of relief well up in my eyes, instantly freezing to my skin, adding to the mask of ice and frozen snot on my numb face.

  Unseeing, I feel for the door, for a handle. There is a wooden frame; there is something that feels like an iron bolt. Adjusting my grip on Andi’s limp body in my arms, I slip the bolt back with one hand and use my shoulder to push at the door, expecting it to resist.

  But it opens without the slightest hitch, like the cabin has been waiting for us, ready to give us shelter.

  I collapse in the doorway. Letting Andi slip to the floor, I turn around, too exhausted to even get up. Still on my knees, I push the door shut on the raging storm.

  THE CEILING of the cabin is so low I can’t stand up straight. The walls consist of coarse, splintery beams. The furniture is two bunk beds, a wooden table with two rickety benches, some shelves and a cupboard, and an ancient-looking oven in the corner.

  Susi said the Mangeihütte wasn’t fancy, and indeed it isn’t.

  But it’s solid and dry, and it saved our lives.

  For now.

  I’ve helped Andi remove his helmet and lie down on a bottom bunk.

  He’s still in his damp boarding gear. Those clothes might be high-tech snow wear, but they aren’t designed to withstand a blizzard. Soaked like they are, they offer no protection against the cold in the cabin. But it won’t help if he gets out of them either.

  There are no blankets anywhere, not even sheets. There’s nothing but the bare mattresses.

  Andi is awake, and his gaze is clear, but he’s obviously in pain. Again and again he utters suppressed moans. It seems he can’t rest his foot on the bed. He has drawn up his leg, holding his knee, awkwardly balancing his foot in the air.

  I stand a few feet away, uncertainly looking down at him.

  “Tell me, what can I do?” I ask at last.

  It seems to cost him a great deal of strength to just turn his head to look at me.

  “Maybe you could try and find something you could use for splinting my foot?” he says hoarsely.

  “Yeah, okay,” I reply, grateful there’s something I actually can do.

  I search for a bit in the basket of firewood next to the oven and find a flat log that’s about ten inches long. Using a knife I find in a drawer, I rip up my neck warmer to create a makeshift bandage.

  Kneeling on the floor next to Andi, I untie his boot and then carefully slip it off his foot. I remove the damp sock too, then, trying to make my touch as light as feathers, I take his ice-cold heel into the palm of my hand, place the log lengthwise to the inside of his ankle, and start fastening it to his foot with the neck warmer. Carefully I wrap the elastic fabric around his foot and ankle until it seems to be reasonably stabilized.

  Supporting his calf with one hand, I gently lower his foot onto the mattress.

  “Okay?” I ask, anxiously watching his face.

  “Yeah. Yeah, that worked,” he says, gingerly settling back, exhaling with obvious relief. “Thank you.”

  “Great,” I say, but I keep kneeling on the floor next to him, like I’m waiting for more instructions.

  I am waiting for more instructions.

  “Do you still have your phone?” he asks, his voice not much more than a whisper. “Call the Mountain Rescue Service: 140.”

  I pull my phone from my pocket and dial the number. Thankfully, the lady taking the call speaks English. When I tell her what happened, she asks me to wait a moment. I put my cell on speakerphone. When she’s back, she tells me they’ll send a helicopter to come get us as soon as possible. But that’s not going to happen before the storm lets up. Until then, there’s nothing they can do for us. With just a few more hours to go till sunset, that means we’ll most probably have to wait for the helicopter till the next morning.

  I’m still digesting this information when she asks if we need medical counseling. I look at Andi, and he shakes his head. He looks a sick gray in the twilight.

  I tell the woman it’s okay.

  Fuck, it so isn’t.

  I CALL Carl next. The boys need to know I’m alive and to tell Mr. Fankhauser his son is too.

  “Oh my God,” Carl keeps saying. He doesn’t say, “If only you’d listened to us.”

  If only I had. This feels like it might be the last time we’ll ever talk. This feels like the end, with the blizzard raging like a cosmic monster outside and the hut at minus twenty degrees or something, and no one anywhere near us to help.

  And Andi has closed his eyes.

  HE HAS drifted off for just two minutes or so when he stirs again. In a weak, cracked voice, he asks me to help him go take a leak.

  There’s a tiny cubicle in one corner of the hut containing a primitive toilet. It’s just wood and dampness and newspapers instead of toilet paper. No light. The saving grace of this excuse for a bathroom is that it doesn’t smell. It would seem it’s just too damn cold for that.

  The darkness is a good thing too, obviously. Andi needs me to support him to prevent him from losing his balance standing on one foot, but all I catch from the proceedings is a faint gurgle in the depth of the toilet. He pulls his snow-soaked pants up himself.

  When I help him lie down on the bunk bed again, I feel that he’s shivering. In the scarce twilight coming in through the windows, his lips look a blackish blue.

  Shit, he’s much more vulnerable to the vicious cold than I am. He hasn’t got my muscle mass, plus with his injury, he hasn’t been able to move and keep warm like I have. His body temperature has clearly dropped way below what’s healthy.

  I don’t know much about medicine, but I’ve seen enough movies to know exposure and hypothermia and shit can kill a person.

  I wish there were something, just something in this darned cabin that could be used as a blanket. Something he could wrap around himself in place of his damp clothes. But there’s nothing, not even a towel.

  He tries to say something. He’s having trouble talking through his chattering teeth, and it takes me a while to understand what he’s asking.

  He wants me to check the first aid cabinet in the cupboard and look for a space blanket.

  There’s a flashlight on the oven. I switch it on and put it on the table. Like this I’m able to see what I’m doing without wasting my phone battery.

  After a bit of rummaging, I pull a plastic bag containing a folded piece of silver fabric from the cabinet. It’s a man-sized sleeping bag complete with thermal insulation.

  This is good, this is very good.

  I’m going to get him inside this bag now.

  He’s got to strip down for that first, though.

  When he tries to slip out of his jacket, he can’t do it. His hands won’t obey him. Part of it is the strain he suffered whe
n he pulled me from the crevasse, I suppose, but for the most part, it seems to be the cold. It’s affecting his movements.

  It’s pretty obvious it’s me who’s got to undress him, and soon. But I don’t dare say it. Eventually he asks me for help again. His speech is slurred. I don’t know shit about medicine, but even I get that this is a really bad sign.

  Shit, I’ve got to get him into that bag, and quickly.

  I start with his jacket and shirt. Clumsily I pull and tug at sleeves and hems. Eventually he sits on the edge of the bunk bed, bare-chested, trembling all over, his skin covered in goose bumps. I swear I’ve never undressed anyone in worse circumstances.

  I tell him to lie down on his back, then quickly unbutton his snowboard trousers and try to pull them down without hurting his foot. Surprisingly I manage it at the first try.

  Okay, next the thermal leggings. This is going to be the trickiest part.

  When I reach for the waistband, he bites his lip. The waistband resists, like it would, forcing me to slide a finger underneath to make it move. I’m touching his pleasure trail. All I can do is focus on keeping my hands away from his dick. I can clearly see its outline under his boxer briefs. The damp elastic fabric reveals more than it hides.

  He draws a shuddering breath. For a second our eyes meet. Fuck, this is so bad I feel tears prick behind my eyeballs.

  And to think this is what I wanted, damn it. Getting to strip him down in this damned mountain cabin! When I knew he wasn’t ready, choosing to believe I knew better than him what was good for him.

  To think that that is why we are here.

  It’s me and my stupidity that landed us here, with Andi injured and hurting and about to freeze to death.

  I’m a monster.

  “I’m sorry,” I croak. “I’m so sorry.”

  And I mean everything, every part of my fucked-up plan to get him to sleep with me.

  “Just do it, Bennet,” he mumbles. “Just get it over with and get me into the damn bag.”

  Yeah, obviously this isn’t the time for remorse and asking forgiveness and shit. Without any more ado, I peel his leggings and briefs off him. Somehow I manage to not brush against his groin and to keep his ankle safe too.