The Everest Files (21 page)

With that he melted back into the shadows of the cave.

I made it down the ladders with just enough light to guide me and slept soundly in my tent that night. In the morning Dawa prepared me fried eggs and chapattis and later we went into Kami's room so I could say goodbye.

‘Give my love to Shreeya,' he murmured. He seemed weak after the efforts of the previous day, slipping in and out of a state of sleep but still able to give me that beautific smile.

‘He needs a few days of absolute rest,' Dawa told me, ‘Then he will be fine again.'

I trusted his judgement. Kami was well cared for. I kissed him on the forehead by way of parting.

I packed away my tent and Dawa gripped my hand hard. A military handshake from an old soldier.

‘It has been a pleasure to have you here,' he said sincerely.

‘Thank you.'

He helped me to put on my pack and I set off down the trail. On the forest edge, I took one last look back at the bungalow – that curious place which was at the same time a sanctuary, a hospital and a prison for Kami.

Then my eyes tipped skywards, to the dark smudge high on the cliff.

Brennan's final words re-ran in my mind and I prayed for Kami's sake that they would not be true.

Three days later I got back to Shreeya's village. It had been a tough trek; the journey had been a wet one with no porter to help with the load. Non-stop rainstorms had turned the track into a muddy slipway and I was relieved to make it to the safety and warmth of the village that had become my temporary home.

I went straight to Shreeya's house and gave her the news about Kami. Naturally she was overjoyed to hear that Kami was alive, but the tragic circumstance of his paralysis was something she had never contemplated and I could see it was as huge a shock to her as it had been to me.

‘Can he be cured?' she asked, her face white. ‘Will he ever walk again?'

I had to tell her no.

Shreeya devoured every detail of my tale then more questions spilled out: who paid for Kami's keep? What food did he eat? Could he breathe alright?

Then the question that moved me the most:

Could he laugh as well as talk?

‘Yes,' I told her, ‘he can laugh like you or me. His mind is still positive. And he talks of you above all else.'

This last statement gave her great comfort and she shed a few small tears. Her aunt, who had sat through all of this saying nothing, now took up her normal stance which was to whine at Shreeya. I couldn't decipher every aspect of what she was saying but it was clear she hated even the slightest mention of Kami's name in her house.

The scolding went on, Shreeya trying to ignore it. I was longing for sleep. The long trek back to the village had exhausted me and I knew that the next few days would also involve some hard travelling to get back to Kathmandu. But the increasingly tense mood of the evening was putting me on edge, and I knew instinctively that Shreeya and her aunt were gearing up for a fight.

As I went to my room I heard distant thunder rumbling across the valley. Through the splits in the wooden shutter I could see intense flashes of lightning. The sour tone of the conversation in the kitchen had degenerated into a bitter row, interspersed with tears and recriminations.

I heard Shreeya run to her room. A door slammed. Then there were footsteps and a painful sounding thud as the aunt dragged Shreeya from her bed with a series of curses.

I had grown used to these arguments, sometimes continuing late into the night, but the intensity of this fight seemed somehow on a different scale. Normally it was only the aunt's voice I could hear, nagging at Shreeya, brow-beating her as her niece sat soaking it up.

But tonight Shreeya was giving as good as she got. And that wasn't going down well at all. Nothing infuriated the aunt more than Shreeya answering her back, and tonight she was really going for it. The two of them got more and more shrill, rising in intensity as the aunt's voice stepped up to become a sort of continuous irritating whine.

As the storm hit its peak, the argument went nuclear and I knew I could no longer stay out of it. A beating was in progress in the kitchen and Shreeya's cries were blood curdling. Pots and pans were flying. I heard the heavy iron cauldron hit the floor.

I hurriedly pulled on some trousers and a T-shirt and ran down the stairs to the kitchen.

The scene was truly awful, Shreeya with her hands clutched against her head, bent into a submissive posture as the aunt slapped and scratched and ripped out clumps of her hair. At the same moment the storm hit its peak, the claps of thunder coming every few seconds, great waves of hail beating like bullet strikes against the slate roof just inches above my head.

‘Please! You must stop!' I tried to pull the aunt away from behind but she stood her ground, jabbing me with a sharp elbow in the guts and yelling every Nepali curse under the sun. I seized her again and all three of us fell in a jumble into the corner of the room, smashing against the table and collapsing it immediately.

The paraffin lamp went flying, the glass windshade shattering on the floor as flaming paraffin spread liquid fire over the compacted earth. The aunt was so hysterical she seemed hardly to notice, the beating continuing as Shreeya screamed at me to put out the flames.

I grabbed a blanket, threw it on the floor and smothered the heart of the fire. Then I grabbed another and beat at the edges until the flames were extinguished. The room filled with black smoke, occasional dazzling strobes of lightning punching through the gaps in the shutters as the storm still raged.

The awful stench of paraffin and burnt yak hair filled the room.

The aunt backed off as smoke filled her lungs. She threw open a window and leaned out in the search for clean air. I gave Shreeya my hand and helped her up. She stood there, white-faced and in shock, staring directly into the beam of my headtorch like it had hypnotised her.

Ugly bruises were already flowering on her neck.

‘You are not my family,' she told the aunt. The woman did not reply.

Shreeya went to her room once again and this time the aunt did not follow. I cleared up some of the mess in the kitchen while the old woman stared out of the window at the fading storm.

I left her there, still gazing with disturbing intensity into the night, went to my room and folded the sleeping bag around me. Gradually, the storm burned itself out, thunder diminishing until it was the merest hint of turbulence somewhere to the south.

The house was quiet but I was sure nobody was sleeping.

The first grey whisper of dawn brought a quiet knocking at my door. Shreeya entered, already dressed, her face filled with light despite the dark bruises that the beating had given her.

‘I am going to go to him,' she said simply. ‘You have to tell me how … '

Once the words had been uttered I saw the beauty of her decision and the breathtaking courage that had enabled it to happen. Shreeya was right to escape from the poisonous grip of her aunt. The woman was a parasite intent on destroying her spirit. Also Shreeya was clearly still emotionally tied to Kami and there was nothing to stop them being together. Above all, Shreeya's presence would give Kami new hope, help him to move on from the long shadow of Brennan's expedition.

Everything about it was right.

‘I will take you,' I offered. I could re-arrange my flight, find a new air ticket home if necessary. Anything to help.

‘Thank you, but no,' she replied instantly. ‘I want to go alone.'

I explained just what an undertaking the journey was. The long climb into the hidden valley. The leeches. The lonely nights in the forest.

But she shrugged these things off with a smile and I saw in her eyes a shadow of that extraordinary self-conviction that had enabled her to save those snow leopards all those years before.

I brought out the map and explained to Shreeya the journey I had made. I gave her a day by day account of the trek into that wild valley, mentioning some of the landmarks along the way.

‘It is more than seventy kilometres' I reminded her.

‘It could be one thousand and I still wouldn't care.'

More questions followed, far more practical than those of the night before. Where could she find water? Was there food for sale in that final village? Did I meet kind people along the trail? Were there any dangerous rivers to cross?

Suddenly we heard the sound of the aunt, stirring in her room.

‘I have to move quickly,' Shreeya said.

‘What are you going to take with you?' I asked her.

‘Just this.' Shreeya showed me a little wrapped up bundle of clothes.

Seeing that sad little collection of possessions I shook my belongings out of my rucksack and gave it to her. Then I thought further and added my tent, two water bottles, a rain jacket and a handful of local currency. She accepted these gifts with simple grace, placing her few possessions into the pack and adding some biscuits and dried fruit.

We crept down the stairs, moving carefully through the animals' night quarters where the chickens were just clucking out of their sleep.

Shreeya eased the creaky old wooden door open and we hurried through the village, past the sealed-up doorways, past the curled-up dogs – too sleepy to bark an alarm. Down to the village well we ran, the dawn air filled with intense scents of damp earth and animal dung. I filled the two bottles with clear, cool water and placed them in the side pockets of the pack.

‘Do you want me to show you how to put up the tent?' I asked her.

Shreeya glanced nervously back at the village where her aunt could even now be discovering her empty bed.

‘There is no time. I have to hurry.'

I walked with her to the place where the fields began. Then it was time to part. We stood for a few moments, neither of us sure what to say or how to conduct ourselves. Then I embraced her and she hugged me back warmly for a moment or two.

Then she was searching for something in her bag.

‘I want you to take this,' she said.

And she handed me the shrine bell, a gesture that touched me so deeply that I truly had no idea how to respond.

‘Kami would want you to have it,' she said. ‘For everything that you have done for us. And who knows, maybe one day you will be able to give it to someone who can take it up there, to the home of the gods where it belongs?'

And with those startling words she took a couple of paces backwards, then turned and began her journey. I watched her for a while as she trekked confidently along the path, her small figure traversing along the valley side and then turning the corner so that she could no longer be seen.

An unstoppable wave of tiredness swept over me at that moment, the virtually sleepless night catching up with me. I yawned deeply and thought about heading back to the aunt's house to rest but then decided I couldn't face the inquisition which would inevitably follow.

Besides, Shreeya's gift was now in my hands and I needed to think about things, so I trekked up one of the narrow pathways which flanked the village, heading for the pretty little meadow which looked out across the whole of the Himalayan range.

The place that had been a secret refuge for Kami and Shreeya.

The rains had finally stopped and the ground was drying out fast. When I reached the glade I found the place was carpeted with so many wild flowers I could hardly take a step without crushing one. Thistledown was floating lazily upwards and the sky was alive with swifts.

I found a resting place on an old log and sat there with the shrine bell cradled in my hands. I looked at it closely, noting the age-polished teak of the handle, the delicate engravings which chased about the bronze.

There was plenty of cloud about, the normal morning mists and fogs. But gradually it began to shift as the sun got the upper hand.

A fleeting peephole opened up. A hazy summit revealed, far higher and greater than seemed possible.

Everest again. On show. Peerless and proud. I wondered if, in that moment, I was the only person in the world to be looking at that home of legends, birthplace of great glaciers, of mighty meltwater rivers.

And, for some, place of broken dreams.

As I thought about it, I realised that this was the third time I had seen the peak. The first time had been from the aircraft window at the beginning of my journey, an encounter of absolute innocence, the peak had meant nothing more to me than a photo opportunity at that point – spectacular though it had been. The second had been from the vantage point of Alex Brennan's cave, a moment loaded with the emotion of what I had learned about Kami's journey – and filled, in a real sense, with his pain.

How much darker had the mountain seemed on that second view; seen through the magnifying lens of the tragedy that had befallen Kami. A place of dangerous obsession, a testing ground in which even the strongest of men were found wanting.

A changer of lives. And not always for the good.

And now? The third time to gaze on that summit. The most dangerous time of all. Because now, much to my surprise, the mountain was speaking to me directly. A line of communication had somehow been opened, lighting a fire inside that I could never have imagined. My heart began to race. I felt my breathing quicken. I turned the shrine bell over and over, then clutched it tight in my hands, wanting to keep the metal warm as I dared to imagine ...

And I felt my blood run as cold as ice.

Because the mountain was calling …

Calling …

And I did not know if I had the power to resist.

END OF BOOK ONE

Writing a book is rather similar to climbing Everest. A long hard slog filled with unexpected dramas, cruel twists of fate and the constant fear of failure. And you never see the summit right until the end!

But it's worth it when you hold the finished book in your hand.

With this first book in the The Everest Files series I have been fortunate to have the support of some remarkable people so let's start from the beginning. First off, my heart-felt thanks to Brian Blessed; without his passion and love of Everest my own summit experience would never have happened. Next came the germ of the ‘Everest Files' story, and a fruitful ideas session with Fee Dickinson at a rather good pizza house in Tring.

Fast forward a few years; writing draft after draft with the help and inspiration of Chris Bradley, Sim Canetty-Clarke, Nicholas Crane and Steve Varden. My super literary agent, Alice Williams, then entered the frame with tenacious commitment and charm.

Among my Oxford friends Sarah Darby and Sorrel Pitts have never wavered in their belief that the book should be published. In their precious spare time they have given valuable advice and Sarah kindly created the chapter heading illustrations that have added considerable charm to the book. That legendary traveller and writer Hilary Bradt was also a source of encouragement and hope in the dark times when we really struggled to find a good home for this book.

Thanks also to the others that have helped the concept grow: Jon Stefani and Seni Glaister for cool mountain inspiration; Nigel Barlow and Angie Kaye for a good glass of wine; Dave Cousins and his wife Jane for a pair of Mexican underpants (don't ask); Asif Moghal and Geraldine Colclough for aiming high; Gill Lewis for a whole load of laughs and Ruth Eastham for two cups of tea.

Above all I am blessed with the love and support of my family so a big kiss and hug to; Anna, Tom, Ali, Greg, Daniel, Ariadna and my mother Sheila. I absolutely could not have done this without you.

Finally, I reached the summit and found a mountain-crazy publishing team that really believe in the book, and the series it has now created. So my sincere thanks to Jon Barton, Nathan Ryder, and the award-winning team at Vertebrate Publishing.

Hold on tight, guys. It's going to be a wild ride!