I forced my stiff body to move one last time. The three-quarter moon illuminated the area all around and I crawled in the direction of the plane. From the ground I couldn’t see much so as I approached I forced myself to stand on shaky legs.
What I saw appalled me. The plane was almost completely covered with snow. The door I had flung open was buried and its exact location hidden. I would have to dig again.
Where the energy came from I’ll never know. It seemed that working right up at the edge of total physical collapse was the only way that I could keep terrible thoughts of María from driving me mad. I let burrowing occupy my complete attention. For the next few hours it became my raison d’être. Even when a stitch forced me to rest, my mind continued to urge myself forward.
Light was reflecting up from the east and the sun was rising when I finally found her. Or perhaps she found me. I had cut a passage to the plane; great white mounds piled high on either side. Now I was inside and I knew it could not be long. In the still dim light I saw a slim bare hand sticking out of the snow. Before I knew what I was doing I had clasped it, registered its hard coldness, its lifelessness. Tears tumbled down my grizzled cheeks. All my desperation was over now and I felt empty, purposeless, defeated. The one thing I had vowed to myself and to María was that I would not leave her, that I would be here for her. She and I would meet our fate together and in each other’s arms.
But when it counted most I had failed her, totally failed her.
I uncovered María and had just enough strength left to pull her out of the cabin and lay her outside on top of the snow. Then I lay down beside her and closed my eyes, still holding her hand. I prayed for another avalanche to bury us both.
I woke to the feeling of sun on my face, drying my clothes and warming my blood, encouraging it to circulate through bruised, weary muscles. From the position of the sun, now blinding my bare eyes, it was around noon. I had slept for several hours.
My first thought was a practical one. María remained as stiff as board, rigid like the mountain itself, but that would not continue for long. I would not subject her to the process of decay. Quickly I pulled her over to the shade beside the plane, burrowed a deep hollow in the snow and buried her. I packed additional snow on top and created a burial mound. Again I kept my mind blank, my hands moving automatically. At the end I tried to think of something to say, even just in my head, but there were no prayers left in me. Later I broke a piece of spar off the plane and marked her grave.
A little of the fuselage was still clear of snow and I propped myself against it. Forced some snow into my mouth and sucked it to liquid. My eyes closed of their own accord and I dozed fitfully.
In my dream María came to me. I was sitting in the same place, my back against the plane, and looked up. There she was, completely well, walking towards me. Smiling her big broad grin, long black hair framing her perfect oval face, long legs moving easily in tight denim. We had both been smothered in snow but had survived. She had been somewhere else entirely so it had been easier for her, just a little bit of snow to shrug off. You know these things in dreams. Now she was returning to me.
There was a low rumble. It took me long seconds to figure it out. Then I did. But I was paralyzed to the spot. Dream was turning to nightmare.
A second avalanche rained down from behind me. It swept over the plane, an unstoppable white wall of death. María was gathered up, enveloped, swept away. I fought to get up and still couldn’t move. I opened my mouth, screamed “María!” and felt my heart pounding like a hammer. Then the mountain of snow fell on me too and I was buried for the last time.
I stirred and awoke. The light was fading and the night setting in. I shivered and rose, crawled into the plane. It was still possible to stretch out in here and would be a little less cold than outside. I no longer had the seat covers or the towels for extra warmth.
Now that it was time to sleep I couldn’t do it. My sunglasses were buried where I’d put them last, under the pilot’s seat. I dug them out and found them broken at the nose bridge. The sheets of aluminium and the two water bottles were still on the front passenger seat. I cleaned the snow off them and they were fine. The Swiss Army knife was safe in my coat pocket. With nothing else to do I closed my eyes and tried to drift off but my mind was too active.
The night was endless and in my hollowed out cavity the air became ever more stale and stuffy. The temperature plummeted. Eventually I sat up and wriggled my fingers and toes, rubbed my face with my hands to keep warm. The frantic activity of the past twenty-four hours that had so exhausted me had at least staved off pangs of starvation and my deep longing for food. Now the hunger rats were back and gobbled relentlessly at the inside of my gut.
Through lidded eyes I watched the damp blackness inside the plane slowly give way to the pale light of dawn. Around eight in the morning I crawled outside. It was darker than usual with an overcast sky and flurries of snow swirling around me. A niggling wind blew snow into my bare eyes and stung my face.
The blizzard continued throughout the morning. I scooped up the thin layer of fresh snow and used it to quench my thirst; broke off harder lumps of snow to numb the gnawing in my belly. My thoughts flittered back and forth from María to what I would do next. I had survived the worst the mountains could throw at me. But it wouldn’t do me any good. I would now grow weaker all the faster and die a slow death with no-one to bury me. If the storm really were to cause another avalanche, I knew that this time I would have neither will nor strength to fight it.
In the middle of the afternoon the blizzard died right down as fast as it had appeared, leaving an eerie silence. No second avalanche after all. The sun came out from behind clouds and I hastily set out the tin foil and water bottles. My hands worked away, carrying out the necessary actions, despite my head saying no. I realised my survival instinct would never stop while I still drew breath.
And poor María, isn’t this what she would have wanted me to do? My thoughts turned again to her. I expected tears but instead my mind tugged in a different direction. Something had nagged at me since the minute I’d found her. I’d chased it away but now, for the first time, I allowed my thoughts to go where they wanted. María had given me a way out, a way to survive and get off the mountain. But dare I take it? Did I even want to take it?