Fear and Folly Read online

“Tomorrow, yes?” Altan asked.

  “Tomorrow,” I replied, my voice as flat as the mist lake beneath us.

  Wisely, we had brought firewood up with us. There wasn’t a single blade of green to be seen along the ridgeline, nor any evidence that any had ever grown before. We saw a skeleton a hundred feet below, wedged between boulders. Altan was quick to dismiss it as a wild sheep.

  He prepared a fire and dinner while I sat in silence, my mind focused on a dilemma.

  “I take you to Dennard if you wish,” Altan said, reading my thoughts.

  I had considered this many times during my journey here. Part of me couldn’t fathom coming this far and not seeing my uncle’s final resting place, but another part wished to keep the memories in my head untainted. And yet a third voice told me that it wouldn’t matter, that seeing his skeleton would be no different from looking at the bleached, jumbled bones of the wild sheep below us.

  “Maybe before we head back to the village,” I said at last.

  I ate, then sat contemplating the unknowable repercussions of unmade decisions. New ideas flared as wildly as the flames. A wind had sprung up over the ridgeline, and now I felt its fingers through my coat.

  “No mist tomorrow,” Altan said, “but perhaps snow.”

  This comment sparked more concern. I threw the last of my tea into the fire where it hissed like the wind.

  “I best get some sleep,” I said.

  Altan remained seated, motionless, emotionless. I couldn’t imagine how he managed to brave nights as cold as these in his bivouac, though my tent seemed to afford little extra protection from the elements. As I lay drifting into dreams, the wind rose in pitch, screaming like a wild beast tearing at my tent or worse, much worse, a skeleton draped in shreds of skin, haloed in a spiral of golden flakes.

  When I woke, there was complete silence. My first thought was that the overnight storm had deafened me. I dressed and peeked out of my tent. To my surprise, the ground was covered in snow, a thick powdery blanket across the ridgeline. A soot-stained heap showed where the fire had been.

  I crawled out on all fours, taking a moment to blink colour into blinded eyes. To my left, something moved, a dark shape shivering. One of the horses. I looked more closely, eyes adjusting to the sharp light, and saw that it was nuzzling at something. Walking over slowly, I realised that it was a second horse, still and lying on its side, and hunched over next to it was Altan, a long straight blade raised in red hands.

  “What happened?” I asked, unsure what to make of the scene before me.

  He turned his head slowly.

  “It was the gold snow,” he said. “It come with storm. When I wake, I find it on this horse. It already dead. Already cold.”

  I looked, but I couldn’t see anything golden on the horse’s hide.

  “It melt very quick,” Altan said, following my gaze and thoughts. “And it kill even more quick.” He thrust his knife into the snow with rapid motions, leaving behind rust-coloured stains. “We take what meat we can. Some for breakfast. Then some we smoke for later.”

  My mind couldn’t cope with Altan’s matter-of-factness, his cold rationality. I was still absorbed by the dead beast before me and the large chunk missing from its side. Had Altan reacted in this way to Dennard’s death? Had he felt anything when he stumbled across his skeleton, or did he just heave it onto his shoulder like horsemeat?

  “Do we just leave it here?” I asked finally.

  “Yes,” Altan said, and that was it. He got to his feet and set about restoring the fire, sweeping away the snow, and casting aside the damp wood on top to reveal some dry timber below.

  I ate the horsemeat hungrily while staring blankly into the new fire. I couldn’t look at the body it had been cut from, nor could I look at Altan while he bit into his portion. In an hour, we were packed and ready to embark on our journey into the unknown valley. When we reached the top of the pass, I expected a thick mist to be lying at our feet. Instead, there was a valley there. It lay naked before us, pure and untouched. The ground levelled out a long way below. An almost perpendicular cliff separated us from a lush carpet of grass through which there curved a glittering ribbon of water. It sparkled like gold, but it was not the gold we sought, merely sunlight. The valley stretched on into ether, greener than the steppe we’d travelled across, unspoilt by the deadly caress of humanity.

  I found myself smiling and saw that Altan was, too. But there was the small matter of the cliff. I could see why my uncle hadn’t stood a chance trying to descend with the rocks obscured from sight. Even now, in bright sunlight, very few shadows marked the cliff to show where a path might exist.

  “I go first,” Altan said. I was grateful for those words but still unsure if I’d have the courage to follow. I’d come halfway around the world to solve a mystery and here, at the last hurdle, I was faltering. One wrong step and I could follow my uncle into certain death. And what if there was no mystery? Golden snowflakes? It sounded ludicrous, fantastic, the product of a delirious mind.

  Altan had brought a long coil of rope with him. He looped it around a rock jutting out near the edge and then tied the other end around his waist. He eased himself slowly over the edge without pausing and disappeared from sight.

  I bit my lip hard, tasting blood. I had done some climbing in my time, practised on the tors of my moorland home. But this cliff was in another league.

  “Come down now.” The words were faint, brushed beneath strokes of wind.

  I grabbed nervously onto the rope and tied it around my waist, testing the knot several times. With the air too cold for sweat, my grip was tight. One foot, then another. The cliff wasn’t as steep as I’d expected and there were enough juts to hold on to.

  Altan helped me down to where he stood, a thankfully wide plane cutting across the vertical axis. Wildflowers were now visible as soft sequins on the green, still hundreds of feet below. The water was purple velvet set with glittering jewels. For a moment, the valley’s beauty overwhelmed my fear.

  “We found him there.”

  Altan had to say the words twice to seize my attention. Fear rushed back.

  “Dennard? Where?” I asked. I looked around as if I would be able to see his bones or at least some dark red stains on the rocks.

  Altan’s finger pointed down and left. There was another ledge, narrower, its edge a crumble of scree.

  “How did you find him there?” I asked. “Wasn’t this all covered in mist?”

  Altan nodded but stayed silent for a moment.

  “That is only way down,” he said finally, and in my imagination I heard the squelch and crunch of boots landing on flesh and bone.

  “Follow,” Altan said. Taking the rope, he began to inch his feet across a thin sliver of rock, fingers grasping onto the tiniest irregularities in the cliff’s surface. I watched him with dread. If he should fall, I would be stuck. Forever. That fear soon passed when a greater one emerged – that I now had to traverse this space which wasn’t even a ledge, and that surely I would fall.

  I stood motionless for some time. Altan was patient but his jaw was set. Time was short. As if to mock me, the valley below began to exhale thin curls of white. They twisted like ghostly streams through the bright blue steppe of the sky, rising slowly up to where we stood. The first one that touched me felt like ice. I looked again, down to where Altan stood. We had not expected this side of the range to be so sheer. We needed to have made an earlier start to have had any chance of descending to where the cliff sloped out into valley below.

  I pointed up and Altan nodded, but only after a long pause. The mist was licking at our feet, thickening, curdling. He had no choice but to agree.

  It was a slow process climbing back up to camp, with the sun having fallen behind the peaks and the mist rising around us. Luckily, it levelled out just below the ridgeline like a dammed lake. We shivered as we strode back to the dead campfire. Altan fed it quickly back to life and our frozen limbs revitalised.

  Beyond the cr
ackle of flames, the night was deathly silent. So were my thoughts. I had come this far, seen a valley of incomparable beauty, but had been thwarted by the mist. What now? I ceased to think because I dreaded the answer. Was this to be it, the limit of my journey? Was I to go no further than my uncle had, and never solve the mystery of the golden snowflakes? Mind racing, I lost myself in the fire.

  Altan placed a few more twisted branches into the flames and stood.

  “I sleep now,” he said. “Wake me when you sleep and I go check on horses.”

  I nodded without lifting my eyes from a fire swirling with golden gleamings. By the time I stood, the night sky was iced over with crystalline stars. Reluctantly, I shook Altan’s shoulder and retired to my tent.

  Again, sleep was a stranger. My mind was made up that the cliff was impassable, and yet I wasn’t willing to leave either, to admit defeat. I had to explain the golden snowflakes, although I’d begun to wonder whether they were just a fable concocted out of thin air, like the mist beneath our feet. Slowly my thoughts, already despondent, questioned everything. The golden snowflakes. The dead horse. My uncle’s fall. The entire story.

  Everything began to point to Altan. Even that book from which he read each day. I had no idea what it said – my grasp of Mongolian was limited to the most basic greetings. It could be anything – a cookbook, a railway timetable.

  But why?

  Fear ran like ice through me. I shivered. But as afraid as I was, a greater foe stole up from behind. Sleep knocked me senseless. It must have been hours later that I awoke with a shock. A banshee wind was howling. My tent shook but the fabric held tight under a weight of snow. The world shook, the mountain gods vengeful at our trespasses. My earlier thoughts were covered by new worries. I felt concerned for Altan, out there in his bivouac beside a fire flattened with snow. I quickly put on my parka and beanie and stepped outside.

  My nose caught a hint of smoke but the fire was all but out, embers strewn far and wide, snow spitting off the fading heat. At first, I couldn’t see any further than its sputtering remains, couldn’t see where Altan lay. I turned my face from the blizzard and noticed movement to my left. The shadows mocking the rocks and my own tired and mistrustful mind created the image of Altan poised over another horse lying dead at his feet, black-tipped fingers bladed at its throat. There were two indistinct shapes, but on closer inspection they were both four-legged and both still alive.

  I circled the fire, one arm raised against the storm’s fury, until the dark hump of a sleeping bag appeared half-covered in snow. Altan was rugged up tight, beanie and hood cradling his head. I didn’t wish to wake him if he was comfortably asleep but these conditions were surely too fierce for even a hardened mountain man. My tent could easily accommodate him.

  With the storm only seeming to intensify, I leant down to shake him by the shoulder. That was when I saw it. A blur of gold shot past me. Then another. A quick painful glance into the rush of the storm was peppered with more golden specks. I would have looked and stared in awe if not for the blinding surge of snow which sped forth into my body like knives.

  I shook Altan’s shoulder with urgency, but he didn’t respond. I pushed the hood up from his face. He looked serene, eyes closed. Then his head fell back. Clumps of gold filled his nostrils. They fed at his eyes and hung from his lips like some bizarre mask. I slapped his face, softly first, then harder. I removed a glove and felt his cheek. Cold. Dead cold.

  Whatever I did after that made no difference in the torrent of the storm. I think I shouted, roared, screamed. I kicked and punched at everything and nothing. Finally, I slumped to my knees.

  I sat hunched for a moment until I saw golden flakes accumulating on my own jacket. Fear surged my limbs into action. I ran back to my tent, hurling off my jacket and zipping the tent shut in one swift motion. My mind whirled like the storm outside. And I regret to admit that most of my thoughts were selfish.

  This time, sleep could not master me. I lay tossing and turning until the wind eased and the first rays of light diffused through the tent, the dawn bringing me back to my senses. I peered out of my tent and saw blinding white sunbeams hitting a mirror of snow. I retrieved my jacket, shook it out. A glitter of gold cascaded from it but nothing substantial, nothing more than some transparent scales which evaporated as they fell.

  I couldn’t go near Altan – not yet – but I could see that his skin was already blue, verging on black, with the faintest veil across his face like a powdering of gold. Instead, I made for the horses. Both were alive and awake, snorting snow aside in the hope of a meal. I patted them both heartily, knowing that their survival meant my survival. One twitched its ears and whinnied. I leant closer and saw a clump of gold deep within one ear. I ran back to my tent and returned with forceps and a small tube for collecting specimens. I had to salvage something from this tragedy, something to shine a light on this mystery.

  The gold object attached to the horse’s ear took some dislodging. When it finally came free, a fine shower of gold scales feathered the air. I dropped it into the tube with shaking fingers. I would look at it more closely later, somewhere out of the wind and sun, but I did get the impression that the thing consisted of two gold flakes joined in the middle. The intimation was of a pair of wings with a body between, some peculiar and unique flying insect, perhaps a moth. How such a thing could survive in this savage environment was beyond me.

  Once sealed in the tube, I thrust the object into an inside jacket pocket and zipped it shut. I was already bathed in sunlight. There was much to do this day, much that was dreadful but necessary, before I could descend to the plains and return to Amarkhongor.

  Altan lay there like a mummified pharaoh. I set to work with bile licking the back of my throat. The loneliness of my geography intensified the horror but at the same time drove me to act quickly. I dragged him carefully from his sleeping bag and then proceeded to remove his clothes. No more gold bejewelled him. It had all melted away. There were no marks to show how he’d died. I found the red-bound book, the tale he’d read to me so many times, and placed it on his chest, respectfully folding both his hands over it.

  That was it. That was all that I could do. Normally a sky burial would involve dismembering the corpse, cutting off limbs to make an easier meal for the vultures, but I had neither tool nor stomach for such work.

  I said a few words over his body, random and futile in this place of death, but I drew some comfort and strength from them.

  Dispersing the snow, I managed to kindle a small fire to heat tea and bread. Then I packed my tent and saddled the horses, before taking one final walk to the top of the ridge. Below me, the valley stretched out as placidly as before. I could see no specks of gold nor slews of mist. It was as if the valley was calling to me, but I stepped back from the edge and returned to camp. I had to accept that I would never know what secrets the valley held nor where my uncle’s remains lay. And yet I had something valuable to take back with me, something which justified the journey, and ensured that Altan hadn’t died in vain. I patted my jacket pocket to make sure that it was still there.

  With everything sorted, and with the beacon of the sun guiding me westward, I led the two horses down the slope to the vast flat steppe below. Without Altan, the journey was slower but my steed was my compass and he led me back unerringly to Amarkhongor and the warm embrace of humanity.

  I barely knew more than a few words of Mongolian, but my feeble state and tears of exhaustion required no translation. The villagers fed and bathed me. I was given a bed and kept warm. Sleep was fitful and rife with delirium. When my senses returned, I gave myself permission to smile for the first time since Altan’s death.

  Looking over, I saw my jacket slung over a bench. Memory bit. I lifted myself too quickly, the earth turned around me. Shaking my head, I tried again, pulling the jacket towards me. Inside, I felt the outline of the cylindrical tube.

  One of the villagers appeared offering a thick soup. I put on my jacket and sipped, fee
ling its warmth seep into my every fibre. But then the village’s headman entered and urged me outside, practically dragging me out. Two government officials were standing there by a four-wheel drive, incongruous in their two-piece suits in this barren wilderness.

  I was still weak and swayed on my feet as they spoke to the headman. I understood nothing of their conversation or how they were aware of my return. Unable to keep standing, I lowered myself to the ground. One of the officials entered my ger while the other walked over to my horses and ran his hands through their saddlebags. When he was done, he came up to me, pointing, his voice in order mode. The headman returned me to my feet and then proceeded to remove my jacket, passing it to the official. I considered resisting but had no strength. The official found the tube in my inside pocket. He waved it at me with a questioning glance. I shrugged. What else could I do? He twisted the cap and removed it. I watched his eyes, his reaction. His eyebrows rose sharply, then sank just as quickly, as if he had briefly seen something rare and brilliant.

  I walked over to him and looked into the tube. There was nothing inside but an ash-grey powder, lumpy in places. The official said something to the headman, his voice raised, eyes full of surprise. He had obviously seen the truth for a split-second until the air or perhaps his warm breath had caused it to decay into dust.

  “Altan?” I asked.

  The official turned to me and nodded. He twisted the tube’s cap back on but placed it in his own pocket. It seemed that the government had now remembered what it had previously conveniently forgotten. I had no doubt that it would choose to forget again just as quickly.

  My only choice was to forget as well. Forget the golden creatures, whatever they were. Forget the storms, the valley. And Altan. I even had to forget my uncle.

  I watched the officials drive away in their four-wheel drive. As the air fell silent in their wake, the last rays of the day hooked briefly onto the distant mountains. A thin line of pure gold ran across the horizon, mocking my failure and my misery.