MIHO AND I remain at the back of the crowd, walking slowly through the trees, always farther up the mountain, farther in.
We hike during the day, sleep on the warm ground at night. We walk for a long time, maybe weeks? Could it be months? It’s hard to say. But it’s very slow going. It didn’t take many days for the others from our village to find us, and now we walk together, a small cluster at the very back of this rustling sea of humanity. The old crew. We keep our distance from the rest, the way my house was always separated a bit from the rest of the town. John and Po, Miss B, Circe, and Misha. Miho and Adam. Me. Even Mary St. Clair. Together again. Everyone except Abe.
He went back for her. A sob catches in my throat.
No one walks at night, and at first it bothered me. I kept looking in the shadows, wondering if Kathy had somehow managed to trap Abe inside the mountain. If she did, I know she’ll come for us, and I don’t know if we have the fortitude to resist her without him. So I keep my eyes open most nights, as long as I can, waiting for her to emerge. What will I do if I see her? What will I do if she walks into camp and starts filling our heads with nonsense about the old mountain range, how things are better there? I don’t know. But if she does come back, I want to know the moment she arrives, so I keep my eyes open.
It is night, and we are all sitting around the fire. John gathers wood and makes a large pile. He will sit there and tend the fire all night. It’s what he does. Po sits at the edge of the light, carving something, humming to himself. Our eyes meet through the dancing shadows, and his gaze is softer than I remember. There is nothing there but acceptance. He nearly smiles, then looks back at his carving. Adam sits beside him, watching, occasionally asking questions about all this time between what happened before and now. Miho comes over and sits beside him.
“The air is thin,” Miho says.
“And dry,” Adam replies.
“We’re close to the top,” I say. Soon we’ll have to decide if we’re going to cross over the mountain without Abe and Lucia. On the one hand, this feels like a silly concern. On the other hand, crossing to the other side of the mountain feels like something monumental, something that should only be done with serious consideration.
I look over to where Circe and Misha sit with Mary. The three of them whisper to each other, not because they are trying to keep secrets but because it is a quiet dusk that calls for gentle voices. It is cool, but perfectly so, without a chill. If this night is like the last few, everyone will sleep on the ground without blankets. I try to stay awake as long as I can, on the lookout for Kathy, but most nights I fall asleep staring up through the forest canopy, at the stars that have become visible ever since we started climbing, wondering if I could have brought Lucia back with me. What if I had kept the knapsack? What if I had gone to retrieve it? I remember Adam kneeling on the rock island and, after that, Lucia running back to me. I remember her disappearing. It is something I see in my sleep, her sudden dropping, the entirety of her vanishing.
We scavenged for mushrooms and berries during our walk that day, and there is always plenty for everyone. Wild fruit trees can be found standing in the open places, and we help ourselves to apples and cherries. The path is not treacherous. But it does sometimes feel long and winding.
“Where are we going?” Misha asks the group, and we gather closer to the fire, the darkness growing deeper behind us like a steadily filling pool.
“Only a little farther,” I say, although I can’t know for sure. “We’re nearly at the top.”
John smiles. “Now this reminds me of the village.” He shrugs as if to preemptively ward off questions about why he’s thinking about the village. But I was thinking the same thing. And no matter how far up the mountain we walk, there is still a part of me that longs for the old days. Is it because Abe is gone? I can’t tell. I can’t sort these things out in my mind. Any thought of Abe leads to my eyes welling up, my throat aching.
“Up front,” Mary says, “before I came back looking for you all, I heard people say there’s a city on the other side of the mountain.”
“Like the village?” Miss B asks.
“Maybe,” Mary says. “Maybe better, without that old mountain looking over our shoulder all the time.”
Miss B shudders and moves closer to the fire. I look at her. She seems younger now.
“Do you think she’ll try again?” Circe asks. “Do you think she’ll try to take us back?”
There is a pause. No one wants to answer.
“I’m not going back,” Adam says. “No matter what she tells me, I’m not going back.” His is the voice of a child, convinced he has learned how to fly.
“What do you miss the most?” Circe asks.
“You’re full of questions,” Po replies, but good-heartedly, with a grin. A few of us snicker.
“No, really!” Circe smiles. “What do you miss? You first, Po.”
Po raises his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Me? I don’t miss anything.”
Po is a changed man. We are all changed. When we first met up as a group, soon after I stared out from the rocky outcropping, everyone eyed Adam with suspicion. They seemed to evaluate his every move, his every step, his every word. And that first night, when we all stayed together around one fire, an awkward silence fell among the dancing shadows.
That was when someone started talking, and it was the person I least expected.
Po.
He looked over at Adam and said in a firm voice, “I know what happened. I’ve asked around. We’ve compared stories. And I want you to know that I, that all of us”—he paused and looked at the group, received nods and sincere looks from everyone—“forgive you and your brother. That’s all behind us now. We’re ready to keep walking up this mountain.” He stood up, walked over to where Adam sat, and shook his hand.
“Oh, c’mon, there has to be something,” Circe insists now, staring at Po with laughter in her eyes.
He snorts, sighs, and stops carving. He stares into the fire, then looks around at each of us as he talks. “You know, I miss the plains. I miss the mornings, waking early with the light, and walking out into the high grass.”
We all sit quietly in the wake of this unexpected revelation. He returns to his piece of wood, the knife peeling away shavings like butter.
“I miss the big sky,” Mary whispers so that I can barely hear her.
“I miss the gardens,” Miho says.
“They’ll have gardens there,” I say.
She looks at me with surprise, and it’s the closest she has come to looking at me in that old way, back when we were friends. “How do you know?” she asks, giving me a curious smile.
“I don’t know, I just do. Big gardens too, inside tall fences, and you can spend all the time you want in there, harvesting and pruning and planting. There are orchards there, and quiet corners.”
“That sounds nice,” Miho murmurs.
“And birds,” I say, reaching out and patting my brother’s knee. “All the birds you could ever want, singing and chirping. You can sit there and watch them all day if you want.”
“I miss my oven,” Miss B says in a sad voice.
“I miss your oven,” Po says, and we all laugh.
A lightness moves in among us, binds us closer together, begins to heal these nameless things that have come between us. Circe, smiling, leans forward and throws a handful of dead leaves on the fire. They smolder and smoke.
There is a rustling in the woods down the hill from us, the sound a deer might have made if it was wandering up to see what the light was all about. But we have not seen any animals on the mountain. We all freeze.
“Anyone else hear that?” Mary asks, her voice a creaking door. A few of us nod. All of us stare into the darkness, and a shape emerges, the shape of a human being, standing at the edge of the firelight.
“Who are you?” Po asks, tensing up. John stands beside him.
The person falls to their knees, but they are now inside the light, and I get my first clear glimpse of who it is.
“Abe?” I stand, wanting to go to him but still holding back for the same reason that everyone else remains motionless. He is almost unrecognizable. His nose is broken and there is dried blood on his face. He holds up his wounded hands so that they do not touch the ground. His head is covered in deep scratches that have healed only partially. His clothes are mangled and torn.
But it is Abe, and we are all a rush of movement to get close to him. We bump into each other. Mary trips, picks herself up.
I’m there first. I stop, and everyone else stops with me. It’s as if we cannot touch him, as if an invisible barrier is around him.
“Dear one,” he says in a husky voice. He turns as if we’re not even here, looks over his shoulder into the shadows, and gives out a weak call. “Come along.”
A rustling sound in the leaves makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. We all flinch at the sound, wanting to retreat back to the fire. But we are frozen there, congregating around Abe.
He sways and calls out again, “It’s all right. Come out where they can see you.” He coughs, a low, wheezing retch from the depths of his lungs, and lifts one of his hands. A wave. A beckoning.
I hear the rustling sound again—the sound of a squirrel dancing on dry leaves, or a bird flapping its feathers without leaving the ground. And then she emerges.
Lucia.
Abe passes out, collapsing face-first onto the forest floor.
We stare at Lucia, look at Abe, look back at Lucia again. They both look like they have come through a battle, but she has healed quickly or perhaps did not bear the brunt of it. She is wispy, as I remember her, and ready to run. But she looks around at us, and when she spots Adam at the fringe of our small group, she can’t keep her voice from springing out of her.
“Daddy!”
A light rises in Adam’s eyes, like the morning sun easing up over a mountain, and he just stands there. That’s all he does. The two of them stare at each other in the darkness, the fire burning lower behind us. I can tell he is finally remembering everything. All of it. She takes a hesitant step toward us on her toes, and I can tell she’s holding herself back, until Adam lets out a sound like a laughing cry and runs to her.
She vanishes in his embrace, and he is whispering to her over and over again. We watch, unable to look away. I feel like my heart might explode.
“Abe,” Mary says. “We have to help Abe.”
We take turns sitting with him through the night, and when it’s my turn, I get on my knees and stare at his closed eyes. Circe and Misha took water from a nearby stream and washed him, so the Abe I am looking at is scarred and battered but no longer bloody. He appears to be sleeping. But I’m worried we might lose him. His breathing is so shallow. He seems so far away.
I reach over and take his hand. His weathered fingers are cracked and worn, and the wounds on his hands are wrapped in strips of torn clothes some of us donated to the cause. I want to say something. I want to say everything. But all I can say, with long pauses in between, is, “I’m sorry” and “Thank you.”
John and Po rise early, when the fire has burned low, and build a makeshift stretcher out of poles long enough for eight of us to hold, four on each side, bearing the weight of our friend Abe. More than a friend.
And that is the day we come to the top of the mountain.
At first the trees clear, the sky growing large above us, the ground more rock than dirt. Then there is a flattening, and we realize we are crossing an open space. We do not even take a moment to look back. I can hear the people who have gone before us exclaiming and shouting to one another as they make their way down the far side of the eastern mountain, and there is joy in their voices. Astonishment.
We come to the edge where the path begins its descent, and we stand there for a moment, every single one of us. It is a vision to behold.
“You’ve got to see this, Abe,” I say. Someone gives out a loud sob, but I can’t see who it is through my own tears.
“C’mon,” Adam says, his voice catching. He clears his throat and tries again. “C’mon. Let’s take him down.”
And we begin our descent.