Still not quite able to believe that we’ve reached the shore, I hesitantly stretch my legs downward. Soon the rocks at the bottom of the lake press against my feet—firm and unyielding. I exhale. Standing up, I gasp in relief; the water reaches just above my waist. We have reached the shore.
Ecstatic that I have managed to live through two of the three rounds in this phase, I jump into Arthor’s arms, whooping and screaming. “We made it!”
He squeezes me back, and we stand wrapped in each other’s arms for a long time. Not until I start thinking about how he’s got his arms around me do I feel awkward. It’s not that I’m attracted to him, and I don’t think he likes me in that way either. But standing so close to him, sharing this, not only physical, but very emotional moment, it feels so good to have someone who understands what I’ve just been through.
I let go. “Sorry.”
“No apology needed,” he says.
When I turn toward the shore, I see bushes and trees—foliage—but I can’t make out any more than that; the fog is still too thick. Eager to get out of the e-conda infested water, I wade toward land, and the instant my feet touch the raggedy, stony shore, I lie down onto the rocks, my legs still in the water. I don’t really care how they’re stabbing into my back or how I’m cold and wet. I’m safe. And I’m alive. No more e-condas will come after me, and I don’t have to worry that one of them might electrocute me or pull me down. How many young men lost their lives?
I press my palms to my eyes and release a laughing, crying sound, and with it, all the tension in my body releases. A moment later, it feels as if all my guts and muscles and bones have been scraped dry and pumped full of jelly. Though my survival has so much more to do with crazy luck than anything, the joy of having lived through the first two rounds is not any less.
When I finally resolve to open my eyes, I let my gaze wander up toward the sky, and there I see Devil’s Cliff. It hangs over me like a bad omen. The mountainside is a jagged and vertical sloped monster of a rock, and it extends to the heavens like a pillar of fire—the height dizzying—the red surface looking like it could be something from Hell. Many participants are already climbing up the wall, their fingers and toes gripping onto the edges of the rocks. For the life of me, I can’t see the top. The fog is still just as thick. Something tells me it could be much higher than what I dare to imagine. Or dread. How in the world I’m supposed to make it to the top of that mountain is beyond my comprehension. And with the sun soon to set, my muscles already way past spent, climbing Devil’s Cliff at night will be impossible.
There isn’t a single part of me that isn’t achy or sopping wet, but I can’t lie here all day. I scramble to my feet and look for Arthor. I find him standing at the base of the cliff reading a sign. Walking over to him, I notice that my legs sting, and when I look down, I see that they’re riddled with minor burns. However, all my pain is temporarily forgotten when I see the back of Arthor’s right leg. Part of his calf has a chunk removed. And we still have a cliff—the tallest cliff I’ve ever seen—to climb. But what’s even more mind-boggling is that he hasn’t complained about it a single time. I pause behind him. Will he be able to climb the cliff? My heart drops. If he can’t climb the cliff by himself, I’ll either have to abandon him while I continue to press forward or help him climb to the top.
Arthor turns around and points to the sign.
Fifteen-minute rest stop max.
Without warning, there’s a scream from above, and then a loud thud behind us. Instinctively, I turn to look—but stop myself—I know what I’ll find there, and I don’t want to see it. I never in my wildest imagination would have thought that I’d grow so callous about a dead teenage boy that I’d refrain from walking over to him and showing my respects. But I don’t. And I hate myself for it. Instead, I tell Arthor to sit down, and after he complies, I rip off a piece of my uniform to tie it around his injured leg. He moans a little when I cinch it, but stops when I stare him in the eyes.
Should I leave him behind? My chest squeezes.
I study the wrap, and it seems to help control the bleeding. He’s going to slow me down significantly, and most likely, he won’t be able to make the climb.
“Ready?” he says, gritting his teeth.
“Will you be…?”
He interrupts me, and says angrily, “Don’t worry about me.”
I force a smile, but suspect that it looks more like a pained frown. “Okay?” I walk over to the base of the mountain and press my palms against the red rock. When I look up, my stomach drops like I just swallowed a bag of concrete. Of course they had to put the hardest challenge last when we’re thoroughly exhausted. A lump forms in my throat, but I force it down and put on a stern face. I lean my back against the cold, hard surface of my next challenge. I need strength, and I need it now. Glancing upward, I see a dozen or so participants ascending the wall, moving slowly, clinging to the mountainside like spiders. I study their movements—their strategies—to see if I can pick up on how to climb the cliff. When I try to survey the best route to climb, I happen to notice a strange pattern of rocks. I hear Nicholas’ words in my mind. “All the things you need to succeed are within the obstacles…”
Every few feet there are protruding rocks—stepping stones up the mountainside. And all the guys climbing seem completely oblivious to them. I gasp.
“What?” Arthor asks.
I tell Arthor to come in closer and I show him what I see. The only problem is that the steps are just beyond reach of each other. Why would they go to such lengths to create those ledges if we can’t even use them? Then, from the wall, I see movement; a ledge protrudes out from the mountainside as another vanishes just a few feet away. The steps appear and disappear at timed intervals. If I can just figure out the timing, we can climb all the way up.
Suddenly a ledge juts out right next to me. Arthor and I look at each other.
“Let’s go,” he says.
Without hesitation, I climb onto it and offer my hand to Arthor. He takes it willingly. The ledge is about two feet wide, and protrudes about twelve inches—just large enough for us to fit. Clinging to the cliff with Arthor right next to me, I see the next step jut out a few feet away and about a foot above where we are. I spring across the divide and onto the next ledge. Normally I’d be able to land without a problem, but since my legs are rubber from running the marathon and swimming for miles and miles, I wobble a bit. Once I have my balance, I offer my hand to Arthor. He takes it. We continue on like this for a while: me moving ahead, and then pulling him up. I notice that he’s avoiding putting weight on his bad leg, which causes him to sway so much that I fear he’s going to lose his balance and fall.
“You all right?” I ask after we’ve been going for some time.
“I’m feeling a little weak.”
I look down at his leg and see the wrap I put on earlier soaked. “Just hang in there, okay?”
I turn to continue upward, but he grabs my arm. “Listen…if I don’t make it…if I fall…”
“You’ll make it. We both will,” I say harshly. Unwilling to have this conversation now, I press onward. From time to time, I hear Arthor puff. I assume he must have put some pressure on his bad leg. But I don’t stop. There’s no time limit to complete this first phase, but we need to get back to civilization before Arthor loses too much blood.
We climb in silence, the shadows growing blacker by the minute. I wonder how dark it will get, remembering that in the northern countries, it supposedly stays light through the entire night. I see a drone hovering just by us—a camera—and then just as quickly as it appears, it vanishes. Nicholas said they’d be here, snapping illegal shots for the media. I just ignore them. As we hop from step to step, the space on each step seems to be diminishing. I don’t mention this to Arthor, not wanting to cause him to worry, but as we continue to move upward, my fear is validated. The ledges are shrinking in size, and where it was fairly easy to stand together before, it has now become very challenging.
“They’re smaller,” Arthor says, studying the ledge we’re standing on.
He doesn’t ask the next obvious question out loud, but I know he’s thinking the same thing as me: a little farther up will the ledges eventually vanish? “Yeah, I noticed that, too.” With an injured, or partially removed calf muscle, Arthor won’t be able to make it to the top.
“Let’s just keep going,” he says.
I nod, but for whatever reason, I look down at the ledge. The next thing I know is that my gaze focuses past it and all the way down to the bottom of the cliff. My head spins and I grab onto Arthor’s arm.
“Careful,” he says, steadying me.
I take a deep breath and go to the next step, but when my first foot touches the surface, it slips, and I fall. Somehow, I’m able to grab onto the ledge and hold on. With my heart in my throat, my fingers white-knuckling the edge, I scream.
“Hang on!” Arthor yells. He hesitates for a moment before leaping to the ledge I’m hanging from. Landing on both legs, he cries out in pain.
“Hurry, please,” I say, feeling my fingers slipping on the smooth surface.
He turns so that he faces outward. Clenching his teeth, he bends down and grabs onto my wrist. “I can’t pull you up alone, so you have to find a way to get one of your legs onto the ledge.”
I kick my right leg up, however, it slips off the edge and I end up dangling in the air. I scream. Desperate to hang on, I press the bottoms of my feet against the mountainside to try to find a ridge to hold onto. The surface is smooth like glass.
“Kick your leg up and dig your heel in!” Arthor yells.
I swing my leg up again. This time I drive my heel into the step and it remains there. When I push off with my heel, it gives Arthor just the leverage he needs, and he pulls me up so I end up standing on the ledge, squeezing onto him for dear life. We stand like that for a few seconds, as I gather myself.
“We have to move on,” Arthor says.
Somehow, I manage to push the weak part of me aside. Looking up, I see another participant a couple dozen feet above us. He is also using the ledges, but he doesn’t have to share the small surface with anyone. From what I can gather, we’re about halfway to the top—our method has worked. But now, we have to come up with a better solution than to climb together on the shrinking steps.
“We have to split up.” I’m not quite sure how to bring up the obvious dilemma of who will get to go first, so I wait a moment, hoping he’ll suggest something.
Arthor nods absentmindedly with his eyes half-shut. I think he’s in so much pain and has lost so much blood that any suggestion is welcome. “One of us will continue on, while the other waits for the next wave of ledges to emerge.”
I should be the one to stay behind; I’m not as wounded as he is. Yet, I can’t speak the words.
“Just be careful,” he says, his face taking on the color of snow, and then he reaches for and steps onto the next ledge.
At first, I can’t believe it. What is he doing? We hadn’t agreed on anything yet, and he just assumed he would be the one to go first. Not that I think I should be the one, but at least he should offer that to me. Shouldn’t he? Without looking back, he continues onto the next ledge, and before I’m able to say anything, I feel the ledge beneath my feet move. Quicker than lightning, my heart instantly galloping, I find a couple of grooves in the mountainside, and hook my fingers into them. Unable to find any decent ridges for my feet, I just press them against the mountainside as best I can. I have no idea how long it will be until the ledge beneath my feet returns, but this I know: I will hold on and make it all the way to the top just so I can give Arthor a piece of my mind.
The groove between my eyes contracts as I watch him climb the next few steps. His movements are hasty and careless; he’s not taking enough time to prepare for the next step before he leaps. It will indeed be a miracle if he doesn’t tumble off the cliff. As for me, I’m stuck hanging until the next ledge appears.
After a few minutes, my forearms start to burn. It doesn’t take long before my fingers go numb, which really worries me simply because numb fingers can’t hold onto anything. I adjust my grip in the small crevice to try to relieve the pressure, but it only helps for a few seconds.
Arthor looks down at me and yells, “They’re getting smaller. A lot smaller. I don’t know about this, Heidi…”
“Arthor!” I yell, afraid we’re being filmed or that some of the other participants climbing the wall heard him. He must really be losing it to call out my name so freely. Then a scary thought occurs to me: maybe he’s out to get me and wants my secret to be discovered.
“Oh…sorry,” he hollers.
“Just shut up, okay?” I want to vanish into the rock this instant, fully expecting the other participants climbing the wall to call me out, or for a hovercraft to appear out of nowhere, beaming me into oblivion. After waiting for a few minutes for something to happen, I start to think maybe no one heard Arthor say my name and maybe no one’s coming for me after all.
A drop of sweat rolls into my eye and it stings. And then it starts to itch. When is the next step coming? I could be hanging here until the morning when I’ll fry in the sun and slowly die of dehydration. The gnawing feeling in my stomach has been there a while—I’ve just ignored it—and I’m weak. A moment of weakness could cause me to lose my grip or balance, and I would tumble to the rocks below. My achy fingers have held on way longer than I thought they were capable of and my right hand is cramping something awful. I breathe through it—pant—but I have to face reality: I just can’t hold on much longer. There’s no use in crying for help, for what good will that do? I look up again and see Arthor is at the top now. I should have been the one to go first. If he were any bit of a friend, then he would have offered to stay behind.
Trying to ease the cramp in my right hand, I loosen the fingers just a tad. Unable to carry the majority of my weight, my left hand slips. I drop toward the earth.