The Great Alone

How? She couldn’t reach his feet.

Climb. How? She had one good arm and the stone wall was slick and wet.

On rocks.

She found some large flat rocks and dragged them to the wall and stacked them as best she could. It took forever; she was pretty sure that twice she passed out and awoke and started again.

When she had built a stack that was about a foot and a half high, she took a deep breath and stepped on top of it.

At her weight, one of the rocks slid out from under her.

She fell hard, cracked her bad arm on something, and screamed.

She tried four more times, falling each time. It wasn’t going to work. The rocks were too slippery and they were unstable when stacked.

“Okay.” So she couldn’t climb layered rocks. Maybe that should have been obvious.

She slogged to the wall, reached out to touch its cold, clammy surface. She used her good hand to trace the wet stone, feeling for every bump and ridge and indentation. A little light bled down on either side of Matthew. She burrowed through her pack, found a headlamp, put it on. With light, she saw differences in the slab—ledges, holes, footholds.

She felt upward, sideways, out, found a small lip of stone for her foot, and stepped up onto it. She steadied herself, then felt for another.

She fell hard, lay there stunned, breathing hard, staring up at him. “Okay. Try again.”

With every attempt, she memorized a new bump in the wall of the crevice. On her sixth try, she made it all the way up, high enough to grab his backpack to steady herself. His left leg was terrible to look at—bone sticking out, torn flesh, his foot almost backward.

He hung limply, his head lolling to the side, blood smearing his face into something completely unrecognizable.

She couldn’t tell if he was breathing.

“I’m here, Matthew, hang on,” she said. “I’m going to cut you loose.” She drew in a deep breath.

Using the pocketknife blade, she sawed through the pack’s straps, shoulder and waist. It took forever to do with one hand, but finally she was done.

Nothing happened.

She cut all the straps and he didn’t move. Nothing changed.

She yanked on his good leg as hard as she could.

Nothing.

She pulled again, lost her balance, and fell into the mud and rocks.

“What?” she screamed at the opening. “What?”

Metal snapped; something clanged against the rock.

Matthew plummeted, banged into the wall, thudded hard into the mud beside Leni. The pack landed beside her, splashing mud.

Leni scrambled over to him, pulled his head onto her lap, wiped his bloody face with her muddy hand. “Matthew? Matthew?”

He wheezed, coughed. Leni almost burst into tears.

She dragged him through the mud to the saucer-shaped rock. There, she struggled and fought to get his body up onto the indented stone surface.

“I’m here,” she said, climbing up beside him. She didn’t even realize she was crying until she saw her tears splash on his muddy face. “I love you, Matthew,” Leni said. “We’re going to be okay. You and me. You’ll see. We’ll…” She tried to keep talking, wanted to, needed to, but all she could think was that it was her fault he was here. Her fault. He’d fallen trying to save her.

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