“Holy shit,” Adam said.
Calliope turned, took it all in, and clicked the camera back on. Hakan had lit the timber skeleton of the ark on fire, and the flames were spreading fast. Burning light flickered in the dark mouth of the cave, and Calliope got it all on film as Hakan marched toward them, a grim phantom in the maelstrom of white.
“Best to move now,” the guide said. “There will be a great deal of smoke.”
Adam turned to Calliope, speaking more quietly and hoping she could hear him, not caring if the camera picked up his voice.
“I get what you’re saying,” he told her, “but I’m still sorry. I never thought I was the kind of person who would do something like that.”
“Maybe you’re not,” she said, her back to him, filming the flames licking out of the cave mouth. “Maybe it wasn’t you at all.”
“Do you really believe that?” he asked.
Calliope glanced back at him. “Get out of here, Adam. And good luck to both of you.”
He nodded. Pulling up his balaclava, he started out along the guide rope at the quickest pace he could manage. The path had been worn down enough that it wasn’t too difficult now, and he made good time.
He thought of the dybbuk in his grandmother’s clock, and wondered what would happen to his own spirit if he died on Ararat. Would he haunt the mountain, lingering here forever, or would he be trapped inside an object himself, like that old dybbuk? Locked inside his camera, perhaps, viewing the same fragments of footage, little bits of digital memory that would be all that remained of his life?
He decided that he did not want to die here. He refused.
Head down, he held the rope so tightly that his knuckles hurt. His sins followed him every step of the way.
EIGHTEEN
Meryam wished she could go numb. Even with thick layers, wrapped in insulated tights and shirt, and a sweater with the right wicking, she felt the cold digging down into her bones. The cancer had not just weakened her, it had lessened her, eroded her flesh and muscle and the warmth her body normally could have regenerated on its own. Her limbs felt like hollow pipes, nothing but frozen glass, so easily shattered if she were to fall.
Teeth clenched, she kept descending. Tugged the climbing ax from its hold, planted it a couple of feet lower, dug the claws of her crampons into the snowy mountain face, then did it again.
As they climbed, she heard the occasional muttered or shouted profanity and glanced down to see people skidding downward thanks to a misplaced foot or an unreliable toehold. The angle allowed for mistakes, permitted anyone sliding downward to cling to the snow and rock face, dig in their boots and hands and climbing axes, and correct their mistakes. The wrong fall could break bones, or much worse, no question.
Her teeth chattered behind her balaclava. Bones aching, breath rattling in her chest, she kept moving, all of her focus on her grip and the placement of her feet.
The blizzard swept across the mountain face, turning the world into white silence. The storm breathed, the wind pushing and then holding its breath a moment before blowing again. When the gusts came hard enough, she had to pause and wait for it to stop clawing at her, and what little strength she had continued to be leeched away.
She could make out the two figures above them on the mountain. Hakan and Calliope were making steady progress. They were like ghosts, clothes coated in so much snow that they were white against white, only their constant movement separating them from the maelstrom.
“Hey,” Adam said, pressing a hand against her back as if he was worried she might just tumble.
Confused, Meryam glanced at him, saw the knitted brow just above his goggles, and realized that they had both stopped climbing down. The ice in her bones, the pain—oh, God, the pain—that she hadn’t allowed herself to feel, had made her stop without even realizing it.
“We’ve got a long way to go,” Adam said.
Meryam exhaled, a breath of mist sieving through her balaclava.
“I’m good,” she said, nodding.
She bit down hard on her lip, sharp pain waking her up. This was different pain, hot and stabbing, and as she tasted the copper of her own blood, it got her moving again. Toehold, handhold, toehold, tear the climbing ax out, smash it into the snow and rock a couple of feet lower, then start over again. And again. And again.
The numbness reached her thoughts, but she kept moving. Adam moved beneath her, and Meryam thought she would be all right. A thousand meters or so and the slant would change, allowing them to hike down instead of climbing. In her mind, she could already imagine pausing briefly at Camp Two to have something hot to drink, maybe even make a small fire. She’d burn someone’s gear if she had to do that to get some heat into her bones.
Something shifted to her right.
She glanced that way and blinked in surprise. Feyiz clung to the snow there, his head against the mountain. He had been below last she’d looked, but at some point, he’d stopped moving just as she had a moment before.
Even through his goggles she could see there were tears in his eyes.
“Feyiz?”
His eyes widened. He looked at her with such imploring sadness that she first thought he’d lost hope or become ill.
“I feel it,” he said, the words almost lost in a gust of wind. Snow built up on his hat and goggles and the collar of his jacket.
“What’s wrong?” Adam called loudly, starting to climb up toward them again.
I don’t know, Meryam wanted to say.
But that would have been a lie. She did know. She saw it in Feyiz’s eyes. There ought to have been terror there, but he did not look frightened. Only sad and resigned.
“I feel it inside me,” Feyiz said. “I can hear it laughing.”
His gaze hardened. A deadness entered his eyes and he stared at her, but she knew that it was not Feyiz.
He gasped as the demon released its hold. She saw it happen, the moment when he had control of his body back. And she saw the sorrow and hopelessness fill his eyes.
“No,” he said. “Oh, Meryam, the things it shows you…”
Feyiz tugged his climbing ax out of the snow. He cocked back his arm. She screamed his name, reached out and grabbed hold of his jacket, tried to scramble close enough to take his wrist, but she was too far away, too late, too weak. With a ferocious strength, Feyiz struck himself in the head with the ax, the point punching through flesh and bone and brain.
Meryam screamed her throat ragged. She kept her grip on Feyiz’s jacket as he slumped downward, head lolling back, his full weight dragging on her. Adam called her name and then she felt his arm around her waist, holding on, shaking her hard to make her let go.
Her fingers were so cold, so numb, that she simply couldn’t feel it when Feyiz slipped away. All she felt was the absence of his weight. She screamed curses at a God in whom she’d never believed.
Feyiz’s body spilled down the mountain. Meryam kept screaming. The air was too thin for hysteria and she couldn’t catch her breath between screams. Blackness swarmed in at the edges of her vision and she felt herself sag against Adam, suffocating in the darkness. Then the world was gone.
Blinking, she dragged in a breath and her heart began thudding in panic again. Adam was there, soothing her, talking to her in that comforting voice, as if he hadn’t stopped at all. Which meant she hadn’t blacked out very long, and that was good.
Long enough, though, that Hakan and Calliope had caught up to them.
Calliope had her camera out, filming it all.
“Fuck you,” Meryam slurred. She gritted her teeth, then bit her lip again, sending bright pain surging through her, waking her up fully. “Fuck you and that camera.”