With whitening knuckles, my fingers desperately gripped the lumpy features of the cliff-face. Acid burnt through the muscles in my forearm as I thrust my second hand upwards, clamping onto the next chalky rock. I tried to breathe slowly, taking in the clear air and resisting the terror that whispered through my thoughts. A valley of green fir trees blanketed the horizon in both directions, stirring far below me like an ocean of wood that I would surely drown in. Hannah’s body was hovering above mine, attached to the cliff a meter from me. Panting a little, I let my weight rest into my harness and squinted up at her through the blaring sun. “How much further?”
Her warm face appeared from behind her lean body. “Not far now. You’re doing great, keep it up.”
“Where should I put my hand next?” I asked, feeling our height twist something in my stomach.
“Ok, you want to push yourself up with your foot and then grab the ledge that I’m standing on now. Just wait for me to go over the top first – I’m right at it now.”
“Ok,” I sighed with relief. My legs were beginning to shake and my fingertips were threatening to slip from the rocks. Just a little further now.
I watched her scurry over the top and disappear behind the tufts of grass that formed the cliff’s hairline. For a second I panicked, realizing that now I clung to the cliff-face alone, the forest whispering far below my feet like an elaborate textured carpet. I heard Hannah whoop with excitement and felt myself relax a little. I was going to make it. My first vertical climb.
But as I began to reach for the next rock, the yelps of excitement coming from the top turned to screams of blood-curdling terror.
Unintelligible yells.
Branches snapping.
Bodies hitting the ground.
Wild slapping vegetation.
Agonizing moans.
“Hannah?” I was frozen.
Birds screeching away.
Deep grunts.
Torturous cries.
The sound of something heavy thumping across the earth, vibrating into my fingertips.
“Hannah!?” I screamed, my voice strained and of a pitch I’d never reached before. “Hannah!?”
And then…silence.
Gasping in horror, I clung to the cliff-face, my eyes darting across the line of grass less than a meter above me. Time mocked me with every passing second as I ached for a response – a word, a sound – anything.
Something was rustling the vegetation, thumping around – and then I saw it. From behind the line of grass emerged a head: monstrously large and led by a great twitching snout. After sniffing the air for a few moments, the yellow eyes looked straight down at me.
I could only bare to look straight at it for a moment. Its eyes seemed to claw into my soul. My stomach collapsed in on itself as my frantic heart tried to escape from my rib-cage.
What do I do?
And then the unthinkable happened. My lifeline – the rope keeping Hannah and I attached to the cliff-face, snapped and came flailing down beside me like a dead snake. The harness around my waist loosened drastically and I pressed my face up against the rock realizing that now, only my own strength kept me from falling.
My fingers screamed in agony, still gripping the dusty clumps that pushed out from the wall of rock. My breathing came in petrified gasps. I could hear the bear moving about above me, and then what I can only imagine to be the breaking of bones. The sound was enough to make me throw up. I watched my sick plummet to the earth below me, disappearing below the tree tops.
I had to climb. I had to.
With my muscles threatening to spasm, there was no way I could make it down in time before my body gave in and I would fall from the cliff. Hannah was surely dead now. It was madness to climb up after her. But perhaps the creature was moving away? Perhaps the attack had merely been in self-defense? She must have had a cub with her to attack Hannah like that.
The grass was quieter now, the air still.
My right hand reached above me, to the rock where Hannah’s foot had rested moments ago. High on adrenaline, I pushed at my left foot and lifted my body slowly. With no harness to comfort me, I felt exposed and vulnerable. A gust of wind could kill me.
Something within me suddenly decided that I did not want to die. Not like this. Not here.
I paused and still heard nothing. So, grunting in pain, I threw my hand into the line of grass and inched my feet up to the next ledge. Every limb that momentarily left the cliff-face felt like a heavy weight that would pull me down to my death. Shaking furiously now, I gritted my teeth and pulled my torso up over the grass, hooking the ground with my ribs.
Whatever blood the adrenaline had managed to pump through my body now drained away at the sight that met me. Hannah’s mangled body, some of it here, some of it there, strewn across the grass in a gory splash of pink and red. My face collapsed into the dirt and my entire body convulsed as I threw up again.
Half of me was still dangling off the cliff. I screamed at myself to move. I forced my leg to lift, to step, to push. The pain had numbed itself but the weakness of my body was unbearably slow as I dragged it up onto the plane.
Panting violently, I lifted my head and observed my surroundings. A clearing, where Hannah’s body lay, before a thick and broad forest. At the line of the forest stood the bear with a small cub stumbling beside it. They were headed into the vegetation when the mamma stopped, turned, and looked right at me.
I knelt there, panting, waiting, unable to think. I could see her muscles tensing, her body turning slowly towards me, stepping in front of her cub. For a moment we just looked at each other.
“Go away!” I heard myself yell. She kept staring at me.
I pushed myself to my feet, wincing and starting to cry. Rising to my full height, I lifted my arms above my head, stumbling a little and trying not to fall over.
“Go away!” I repeated, something catching in my voice.
She grunted and nuzzled her cub towards the forest. When the cub was a few meters into the vegetation, she finally turned away from me and disappeared into the shadows.
My arms fell beside me and I stood there staring into the forest for a moment in utter disbelief. I could hear my own heart-rate pounding through the vessels in my ears. I must have been holding my breath because now I was wheezing loudly, trying to catch it again. Then I fell to my knees and wept bitterly, my fists curling around tufts of grass and ripping them out at the roots.
Hannah…
“You’re alive,” I told myself, “You’re alive.”