The Climber

By Maylan Schurch

One step and my left foot was on the solid ledge; another, and the ledge turned rotten. My weight had swung too far out, and there sprang into my chest the great panic of the climber who knows that he is about to fall, and that no matter how much he scrambles and screams and prays he will continue to fall, tumbling and bumping and bouncing down the mountainside to smash to death in some dark crevasse below.

The ledge broke, and my foot kicked savagely down. I tipped, and the sun and the sky and the mountain wheeled twice around me. I made no sound, because I thought I was dead.

But then my chest was caught and squeezed by a rough fork of branches, leaves slapped my face, and after a great shuddering had stopped I saw that I was caught in a gnarled bush growing from the cliff below the ledge.

I twisted my head and looked downward, and far below I saw misty-green meadows and a silver river. Around and above me was the blue afternoon sky.

I called and called, and each time I released my breath I felt like I was slipping and each time I gulped in more air my chest pained. I called until my voice was raw, and still I rattled the breath in my throat in case someone should hear.

But the rest were far from me. In the early afternoon I had dawdled behind them and then slipped away along an ascending path, delighting in the sunshine, trailing a nimble goat for a while, scarcely looking down, always climbing. And then I had reached that narrow ledge, and taken one false step.

And now, since there was nothing to do but see the meadow darken and the sun depart, I watched them to take my mind off the pain in my chest and the numbness in my lower body. Once I tried to move to get more comfortable, but a heart-stopping crack among the branches warned me not to move again.

I looked down again. A shadow covered the meadow below. I fancied I saw something moving by the river. Were the others there already? I called out to them, gathering the shreds of my voice and sending scream after painful cream down into the valley. But how could anyone hear?

“Don’t move,” said a familiar quiet voice above me.

Great spurts of blood flooded into the veins of my ears. My heart leaped with the voice, and I twisted among the branches.

“Don’t move,” said the voice again. There was a scraping above me, and I felt cool gravel and a few sharp stones strike my head.

“Don’t struggle.” The voice was very close now. “I’m almost there. I’m going to lift you up. Do not struggle. Do you understand?”

And I felt His hand clutch my fleece. I was lifted, and my hooves crushed against His chest as He embraced me, and together we sobbed in the night.