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Climbing the Highest Peak
It was well into the afternoon by the time they had even begun to shag the mountain, and as they made their way upward the sun soon began to sink behind the ragged fangs of high peaks to their west. The lower slopes stretching away beneath them on the south and southwest had long since become wrapped in blue shadow while the sun's rays continued to illumine the higher mountains in tints of pale red and orange. But finally even the tallest mountain surrenders to the night, and eventually the two boys and the sheep were walking in a twilit gloom. The first, brightest stars were just breaking through the brilliant dark blue sky that seemed not quite so far above them as it did in lower altitudes, and the enormous orb of the ever-full moon was perched on the eastern horizon, just waiting to crawl like an ivory-colored spider into the empty-skull interior of the night sky.
Cramp shivered in the sudden chill of the thin air that was as calm as if they were inside an enormous bottle. "Just how far is it to this place we're going, anyway?" he asked petulantly.
"Far enough," Pork told him casually. By now the path had once more narrowed so that they were forced to go single-file, with Cramp in the lead and the sheep trailing last in line. It had become steeper, as well, though nothing like the first few hundred feet. The path was cut into solid stone but it was covered with a dry white powder, as if the very cliff were made of chalk, slowly crumbling. Rainwater or perhaps the runoff from innumerable spring thaws had eroded a gully right down the center of the path, so that they were walking up a ditch cut as if by a knifeblade up the side of the mountain, higher on the outer rim than in the center. Cramp found himself thinking that walking there after a heavy rain must have been like wading up a waterfall. He hoped he would never have to try.
But for the time being, at least, it was dry, raising faint clouds of dust beneath their sandals (or hooves, in the case of both Pork and the sheep).
"Are we going to walk all night?" Cramp demanded as the trail became increasingly dark beneath his feet.
"Hey, it's supposed to be a test of manhood, remember?" Pork reminded him. "What kind of test would it be if it didn't have a few hardships along the way?"
"It's not a test of manhood for me," Cramp insisted. "It's just something those bossy old adults of yours are making me do."
Pork sighed. "Well, whatever it is, there's a meadow about halfway up. Or there's supposed to be, anyway. We can rest there for what's left of the night whenever we finally reach it."
"How far?" Cramp demanded.
"How would I know?" Pork asked patiently. "It's not like I've ever been up here before, you know, anymore than you have. This isn't exactly a popular trip or anything. Nobody goes up to the featherlizards' aerie unless they have to."
"How come there's a trail up here at all , then?" Cramp asked. "I mean, who built it? Who takes care of it? Why hasn't it just, you know, eroded right down to nothing?"
"You ask a lot of questions," Pork remarked. "Anyway, nobody knows. It was already here when we came. And believe me, that was a long, long time ago. I can't tell you who keeps it from falling apart, either. Back when I was a kid they used to tell me you could see lights moving along up here late at night, glowing against the light of the moon. I never saw them myself, but then I never looked too hard. It's kind of considered bad luck to see them. Anyway, they say the lights are the ghosts of the original builders, forced to spend eternity maintaining the trail until the final days when the mountain finally erodes down to dust and disappears beneath the ocean."
Cramp felt his scalp tingle as if something were running eerie, invisible fingers through his hair. "Ghosts?" he repeated uneasily. "That's silly."
"Probably," Pork agreed easily. "Like I said, I never saw anything up here, myself. It's probably just that whoever built this path did such a good job of it that it doesn't need any maintenance."
"Yeah. Probably," Cramp agreed. Though looking at the deeply eroded trail beneath his feet, he had his doubts. Obviously the weather did a great deal of damage, up there on the sheer face of the mountain. Somebody must do at least a little work on the trail every now and then to keep it from becoming impassable. But it was something he didn't really want to think about, so he made sure that he didn't.
The night grew increasingly cold and dark, but the moon rising out over the vast emptiness to their right cast enough silver-white illumination that they had no trouble seeing where to step without falling. The air became even thinner, so that Cramp was forced to wheeze and pant as if he were dying of pneumonia. He resented being forced to look so weak in front of Pork, who seemed to be handling the shag with no difficulties. Of course he was used to it, Cramp thought resentfully. He'd been born and raised up there in the middle of nowhere.
But if the young centaur was feeling superior to the small human staggering along in front of him he was careful not to let on. He merely walked at a leisurely pace along the path, his hooves clopping with comfortable rhythm on the dry, dusty rocks, leading the bleating sheep along on its leash as if he were a matron in a lowlands park taking her pet lapdog for a quiet evening's stroll.
Cramp's extremities began to grow numb with the cold. He thrust his fists into his tunic pockets, closing his right hand around the heavy thickness of the lion's fang, but there was nothing he could do for his bare toes or his nose and cheeks. His panting breath turned to crispy white fog, glittering eerily in the moonlight.
To keep his mind off his discomfort he glanced over his shoulder to Pork, who continued to walk along patiently at his heels. "Can I ask you something?"
"Sure," Pork said cheerfully. Cramp found it hard not to hate him for finding the shag so easy. He knew it was unfair, however, so he struggled to repress his resentment.
"How come it's always full moon up here?" he asked. "I don't see how that's even possible, do you? I mean, everywhere else we have these phases, you know?"
"Yeah, I know about the moon's phases," Pork said with a hint of amusement. "I've been down in the foothills a few times in my life, you know."
Well, as a matter of fact Cramp hadn't known that, but he let it pass. "Okay, then why?" he persisted. "I mean, why no phases up here?"
"I only know what they tell me," Pork said, as if apologizing in advance for what he was about to say. "But legend has it, it's because we're not on the earth anymore."
"Yeah, right," Cramp said skeptically.
"I know, it sounds kind of silly," Pork agreed. "But even so, the idea is, when you get high enough, you're - well, okay, physically you're still on the earth, that's why the Voice can still speak to you, but up here, the influence of the moon is so strong it never goes away. It's like, the moon goes through its phases down in the lowlands because it uses up all of its essence during full moon and has to withdraw until it renews itself. But up here, it only has to project its essence a shorter distance, so it never wears out. So it never has to wither back to nothing and be reborn."
Cramp thought this over as he panted his way upward. "That doesn't even make any sense," he said finally.
"I'm probably not explaining it very well," Pork admitted. "It all has to do with energies and essences and the - well, the spirit behind the material form. It's a pretty complicated theory and I never really cared enough to listen when anybody was telling me about it. I mean, who cares, really? Knowing it one way or another isn't going to change anything, is it? It's not like the moon is going to shine any brighter, whether we understand why or not."
Being naturally curious about everything, Cramp found that attitude hard to understand, but he decided there wasn't any reason to say anything. Pork was right about one thing, anyway. Whether they understood it or not wasn't going to change anything. In fact he was right about two things; he hadn't explained it very well, either.
He didn't have any way of measuring the passage of time except the increasing cold and the slow shag of the moon in the sky to their east, but it had been on the horizon at sunset and it was nearly directly overhead when the path suddenly folded back on itself, creating a small patch of fan-shaped ground at the elbow that was only slightly larger than the surface of a kitchen table. Bone dry and gashed by eroded gullies like the veins on a leaf, it was slightly cup-shaped, lower on the end from which they approached it. Cramp realized that they had come out atop a small spur on the mountain, falling away on three sides but allowing the unknown creators of the path to create a switchback rather than forcing the trail to continue straight forward.
"Okay, here it is," Pork said with a sigh of relief. "We can spend the night here and shag the rest of the way in the daylight."
Cramp looked in disbelief at the eroded, uneven, steeply slanted patch of dusty ground. "You expect us to sleep on THAT?" he exclaimed incredulously.
"Sure. Why not?" Pork leaned backward to unfasten his packsaddles from beneath his equine ribs. "It may not be much..."
"May not be much? It's not ANYTHING!"
"But it's the flattest bed you're going to find on the whole mountain," Pork finished stubbornly. "At least that's what they tell me." He slid the packs down onto the ground and began to dig through their contents. He brought out a flask of water and held it out to Cramp, who drank deeply and then passed it back. Pork drank after him and then, to Cramp's amazement, held it up to the lips of the sheep, who licked greedily as he gently tipped it so that the water trickled slowly out onto its lips.
"You got any food in there?" Cramp asked hopefully, dropping down to sit on the dusty ground with his legs folded beneath him. His calves ached with weariness and his hands trembled with cold. The 'meadow' may have been a pathetic little patch, but it felt good to be able to sit down.
Pork grinned and brought out a roll of something nearly as thick and as long as his forearm. It was dark, almost black in the cold moonlight. He tore off a ragged end and gave it to Cramp, who discovered that it was some sort of cooked, pressed meat. Biting tentatively, his mouth was immediately filled with a rich, spicy, unfamiliar flavor.
"Mutton sausage," Pork explained.
Pork made a doubtful face. "It's not like any sausage I ever tasted before."
Cramp shrugged. "Whatever you call it, it's all we have. Do you want it or not?"
"It's all right," Cramp admitted.
The ate together in amicable silence. Cramp even dug a small sack of grain out of his pack and let the sheep root around in it with its nose, bleating happily as it ate.
"Isn't that kind of a waste of time?" Cramp asked. "If I understand the whole point of bringing him along, the lizard things are just gonna eat him anyway."
"There's no reason why he has to suffer in the meantime, is there?" Pork asked. "Besides, the poor thing must be cold and hungry, just like we are. I don't know about you, but I don't like to see anything in misery."
Cramp felt mildly guilty for the simple fact that he didn't have quite that level of sensitivity. Not that he was cruel or indifferent, but he had never really thought about the suffering of animals all that much. It made him feel strangely crude and uncivilized.
"Well, I guess we'd better get some sleep," he said, to cover his feelings. "I don't suppose you have any blankets in that thing." He nodded toward the pack.
Pork laughed. "How many luxuries do you think my poor back is able to carry for you?" he asked.
"But it's COLD!" Cramp protested. "Way up here, a blanket's not exactly a luxury."
Pork shrugged. "So maybe we centaurs are just naturally tougher than you two-legged, big-footed types," he teased. "Anyway, if you want to keep warm you can cuddle up with the sheep. He carries his blanket right along with him."
Cramp frowned in the dark. The idea of sleeping next to a smelly, sweaty, half-wild animal didn't really appeal, but he had to admit that it was better than freezing to death.
"Well all right," he grumbled. "But he'd better not start trying to eat my hair while I'm sleeping."
Pork laughed. "Another good reason for feeding him now, then, isn't it?"
Cramp made a face but didn't bother to reply.
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Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2007 9:50 pm