WE INCHED OUR way up the ledge, small pebbles falling in front of us and disappearing into the fog. Soon we were so high up we couldn’t hear them hit the ground. Every so often I stopped and waited for Adam and Miho to catch up—Miho always looked calm, sometimes closing her eyes, taking centering breaths. But Adam grew less steady the higher we went. His legs trembled from exhaustion and fear.
I thought about the view we would have if it wasn’t for this impenetrable cloud we were climbing through. The short, dusty space between the cliff and the bog. The long brown water that Lucia and I had crossed together, and the thread of a canyon that led to the final, frozen river and the island of rock where Adam had knelt. Could we see it all from here if the clouds cleared?
I doubted it. There was something about this place that seemed to operate outside of reality, as if the journey into the abyss was actually taking place inside of me, in a place you couldn’t see from far away. I thought that if the clouds cleared, we would probably see a long emptiness, a dreary landscape, and maybe a small brown puddle.
But the clouds never cleared. Adam constantly wiped his hands on his torn pants. He licked his dry lips quickly, like a reptile. I could count the ribs in his side. He looked up the ledge at me, his eyes wild, before looking at Miho. Sometimes the mist was so thick I couldn’t even see her.
There was a particularly narrow section of the ledge, and after I shuffled my way through it, I waited to make sure Adam would be okay. He came sliding along, his feet scraping the stone, and small bits of dust and tiny pebbles bounded off the edge. At the space where the ledge was less than the length of his feet, he balked. Trembled. Swayed out but somehow caught his balance by bracing himself against the cliff face.
He froze.
“Adam!” I moved back down toward him, but the change in direction threw me off for a moment, and I nearly fell. “Miho!”
She came up, a calm look on her face. “You’re fine, Adam.” Her voice sounded like a gentle breeze moving through the mist.
“I can’t,” Adam said, the words coming in short bursts, his lips pursed. “I can’t.”
She reached up and took his hand. He looked so shocked by her touch that it nearly sent him over. “We can do this together.”
If she wanted to kill him, I thought, this was when it would happen.
But she didn’t. She spoke quiet words to him, so smooth and low I couldn’t hear them, the way a trainer speaks to a spooked racehorse. He nodded, seemed to find himself, and shuffled one side step, another side step.
“Take his other hand,” she told me.
I hesitated, because if he fell, I didn’t want him dragging me over the edge with him. But I thought of all those years, all that time I spent waiting for him in that stone house. This was my brother, my long-lost brother, and if I returned without him, what was the point?
I took his hand, and his fingers felt the same as mine. I had the strangest feeling, almost like vertigo, that he was me, that it wasn’t him we were leading out of the abyss, but me. I took my eyes off the ledge and looked over at him as we moved along, and I wondered why I wasn’t happier in that moment. I had waited so long for him. And now we were leaving, escaping the abyss, both of us alive. But I couldn’t shake this deep sadness, so heavy it nearly pulled me off the ledge. It turned every breath into a sigh, every thought into a spiral.
Miho held his other hand. Our eyes met, and it felt like the first time we had really seen each other in that place. She was sad, I could see that, and disappointed. I couldn’t help but feel that it was there on the narrow ledge that all of my lies finally ended whatever it was we had been so close to having.
That was how we made our way along the narrow ledge, sliding up until we reached the place where the path widened. We fell to the ground with exhaustion and relief, sitting side by side once again, our backs to the cliff. I reached into the knapsack and took out the water container. It was nearly empty. I handed it first to Miho, and she took a small sip, the tiniest of draws. She licked her lips, trying to spread the moisture around, and handed it to Adam. He took a large gulp, and I could see his throat lurching. I closed my eyes and imagined the coolness of the water, the smoothness of it running over my tongue, silk on the sides of my throat.
Adam handed it to me, but I knew before raising it to my mouth that it was gone. I sighed and pretended to drink, because I didn’t want Miho feeling sorry for me. But nothing came out, not even a trickle. I held it up for an extra moment, then put it slowly back into the knapsack. I glanced over at Adam. The smallest drop rolled down from the corner of his mouth, but I could not tell if it was water, sweat, or the buildup of moisture in the air. It was now on his skin, drifting down. It was like a globe, like a small world to me. He reached up and wiped it away.
Without saying a word, we stood and trudged upward, the abyss now to our right, the clouds thinning as we climbed, until all at once we were in clear air again. Clearer air than I had seen at any point inside the mountain. I could nearly see to the far side of the round abyss. Once again, the clouds filled the abyss like drifts of snow.
A realization snapped into my mind like lightning. “Miho,” I asked, “are they waiting for us?”
“Who?” she said, her voice cracking. I didn’t think it was from lack of water.
“The rest of the group. Abe. Kathy.”
“Why would they wait?”
“You said the rest of them went east, but do you believe that? Or are they waiting for Adam?”
“Why would they wait for Adam?”
I stopped walking and turned on her. “Can’t you answer a simple question?” I demanded. “Why do you keep asking me questions in return? Are they waiting for Adam? For revenge?”
She shook her head, but her words were less assuring. “Maybe, Dan. I don’t know. They said they were leaving.”
“But they wouldn’t have gone far unless they forgave him. They wouldn’t have left the town behind unless they were free of that.”
Adam glanced back and forth between us. We were talking about him as if he wasn’t there. “It’s okay,” he said in something like a whisper. “It’s okay. I’m getting out—that’s all that matters. I remember now. Remember it all. What can they do to me that’s worse than this place?”
Miho and I stared at each other for quite some time, as if we were feeling each other out again, trying to decipher where each of us stood, whose side we were on, and who we should be concerned about. But Adam seemed genuinely unaffected by the conversation.
Up we went, up and up and up, and finally there was the top, way ahead of us on the curving path, up above us like the lid of an eye. The roaring of the river became audible in the still air, a kind of fearful rumbling. I had tried not to think about how we would cross.
Once we scaled the path and stood at the top of the great abyss, we all looked down over the ledge, the clouds far below us, nearly invisible in the shadows. Lucia came to mind, little Lucia with her soft face and quiet eyes. I had to turn away.
We followed Miho toward the Acheron. She walked straight to the river, made a sharp right at the bank, and kept moving. Up ahead, I saw Karon’s boat.
“How?” I began, not knowing what else to say.
“I found this boat on the far side when I came in after you,” she said, shrugging.
“Did you see Karon?” I asked.
“Who?”
“The man who belongs to the boat. Or the woman who was with him?”
“I didn’t see anyone,” she said. “Help me turn it around.”
The three of us grabbed the smooth wooden sides, and in our weakness it took a great effort to drag it, turn it, hold it. There was Karon’s one small oar, the bench where I had sat at the front, the bottom of the boat where I had passed out. Across the river, above the foaming white rapids, I could see the far bank, the trees.
“Didn’t you go to the house?” I asked Miho.
She shook her head. “There was no way I was going in there. Are you kidding?”
“Sarah lived there,” I said quietly.
“What?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing.”
As usual, Adam watched us, his eyes taking us in, his long black hair swaying like a pendulum.
I felt a sort of numbness as we climbed into the boat. I imagined it was the same feeling someone might have before they take their own life, knowing the end of all things is only moments away. I couldn’t see us surviving this river.
We all shifted our weight together as best we could, and the boat lurched once, twice, three times, four times. Finally we were in deep enough to drift, and already the current yanked us downstream. Adam and I sat in the front and Miho perched in the back, small yet strong with the oar, thrusting it in and pulling, pulling, pulling against the current.
The white water was rough and choppy. I noticed then—and it seemed a strange time to see such small things—that the wood of the boat was smooth, and the metal sheath that held the bow together was burnished from so many crossings, bearing dents and scrapes from collisions with rock. The bottom of the boat was slick with a kind of black-green algae, like moss, and slippery as ice.
On the far side, in the direction Miho fought to take us, I thought I saw Kathy waiting.
I stood to get a better look. I slipped, striking my head again, and darkness took me under.