It was breathtaking. Helpless, I collapsed in the sand, my arms quivering. My breath was coming in steady gasps now. My face was beginning to burn.
“It’s … beautiful,” I managed, my voice hitching. To my own amazement, I felt a laugh threaten my throat.
Hannah continued walking down the beach, one hand running along the shimmering, glossy stones along the breakwater, never oncepausing to look back. Somewhere farther up the beach, her image began to fade. By the time she reached the next outcrop of shuddering trees, she had vanished completely.
5
WHETHER IT WAS A DREAM. A HALLUCINATION. OR
something else, I may never know for sure. But in the morning I awoke in a fetal position in the sand, the surf lapping at my legs, dressed in nothing but running shorts. Peering over my shoulder, I could discern my footprints in the sand from the night before—only my footprints, though, and no one else’s.
Later that day, I carried a hammer and a chisel to the black stones along the beach, I started sculpting again. I sculpted for myself. Beneath the burn of a midday sun, I sculpted the rocks that lined the breakwater of the Chesapeake Bay. I carved, leaving in my wake things of sudden and unmistakable awe, of spiritual beauty. I sculpted for John Petras who was so close but never got to see the Canyon of Souls. I sculpted for Hannah, my Hannah, who had returned to me my ability to create artistic paradise, to bring Shangri-la to the world.
And I would show it to the world. I would do it for Hannah, my dakini, and I would do it for myself—finally, myself, letting go, forgiving myself—because it was what she wanted and what she had been trying to tell me all along. It was a gift of forgiveness.
Finished, hours or days or weeks or years later, I dropped my tools in the surf and wiped the tears from my eyes with shaking, gritty hands. Numb, my body trembling, I began to climb up the beach, pausing at the summit of the embankment to glance over my shoulder at the carved black stones, the white band of beach, and the glistening shimmer of the endless bay.
The view from the top was nothing short of breathtaking.
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Published 2010 by Medallion Press, Inc.
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is a registered trademark of Medallion Press, Inc.
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment from this “stripped book.”
Copyright © 2010 by Ronald Malfi
Cover design by James Tampa
Edited by Lorie Popp
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro
Printed in the United
States of America Title font set in Cacavia01
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Malfi, Ronald Damien.
The ascent : a novel of survival / Ronald Malfi.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-1-60542-067-7 (alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-60542-067-0 (alk. paper)
1. Self-actualization (Psychology)–Fiction. 2. Mountaineering–Fiction. 3. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3613.A4355A93 2010
813’.6–dc22
2010008942
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition