Sun-drenched afternoons didn’t have quite the same panache when they came with a terrible threat. Hiking in the high peaks had perils enough without worrying about melting snow. Melting snow meant loose snow, loose snow meant avalanches, and avalanches were bad. Even a hiker as inexperienced as Spiro knew that much.
“I’m saying there are easier ways to impress a girl,” Bastian said, rehashing his argument from earlier. It was still nearly two days to base camp, and he was a staunch advocate of conversational hiking. It became too monotonous, too easy to let one’s mind drift when hiking in quiet.
“We didn’t come here to impress her,” Spiro replied.
“Well I know I didn’t,” Bastian said with just the barest hint of a German accent. “My wife would not be impressed if I had.”
“I’m saying the point of the trip wasn’t to impress anyone,” Spiro clarified.
“What was the point?”
“To find the Yetis.”
“And did we find any Yetis?”
“We did not.” Spiro didn’t sound overly broken up about it.
“Any chance that’s because they aren’t real?” Bastian asked.
“They are almost certainly real.”
“Because your quack psychic told you they were real?”
Spiro shook his head. “That’s… not how I would have put it.”
Bastian slowed for a moment and pressed his trekking pole into the slope in front of them. He poked left, middle, right. Something about this piece of slope looked a little off. But his testing came up empty. No hunks of snow broke free, and nothing felt like a crevice hidden beneath the top layer.
“Everything ok?” Spiro asked.
“Yeah, just looked odd. Probably the light,” Bastian said. He stepped forward with care, and they crossed the suspicious patch without incident.
“So how would you put it?” Bastian asked.
“Well I’m not a hiking expert, but I would think the pole should just-” Spiro began.
“I mean the advice of your psychic that sent you to the top of a frozen mountain to impress a girl you met one time?”
“Bastian, I gotta say, I’m starting to regret telling you that,” Spiro said without venom.
“We’ve all done silly things for a girl,” the German responded. “Though this is… sillier than anything I’ve ever done.”
Spiro stopped and threw his arms up. “What do you want me to say? We didn’t come up here to impress her. It was an attempt at uncovering original source material.”
“From fictional man-beasts of the mountain?”
“They are not fictional,” Spiro said. “The path to their home was there. You saw it.”
“I saw a gap between two boulders that was packed with snow,” Bastian replied.
“Right where the psychic said it would be.”
“That was curious, I can’t argue.”
“They’re up here, somewhere.” Spiro turned around and looked back up the mountain. It was a gorgeous sight, black rock swirled together with snow so white it practically shone. His eyes scanned the dichromatic landscape. Whatever secrets it held, they had not been revealed on this trip.
Still, it didn’t feel like a total loss. The psychic had read the artifact, and she’d seemed to be correct. There had been a path between those boulders. According to her reading, there were steps cut into the side of the mountain on the far side of the little pass. The steps would lead down to the home of the Yetis. But that narrow pass was almost a quarter mile long. Even if they’d brought adequate shovels, it would have taken them a year to dig through.
And so he was forced to momentarily cross off another dead lead. Absently, he pressed his hand to the front of his jacket to feel the comforting bump beneath the thick, waterproof material. The ankh hung where it always did, and he felt a little of his frustration burn away.
“Why did you want to speak to the Yetis?” Bastian asked from genuine curiosity. He had spent most of the trip mocking the strange American with the even stranger quest. If the money hadn’t been completely outrageous, he almost certainly would have passed on the job.
But over the last two weeks, Spiro hadn’t altered his story one inch. Even when they’d reached the pass Bastian was certain did not exist, and it was very obviously impassable, Spiro hadn’t lost his cool. Instead, he’d made some notes in his notebook, flipped it shut and started back down the mountain without one complaint. Somewhere along this frozen path, Bastian had stopped seeing Spiro as crazy and started seeing him for what he was – unflappably determined.
“You wouldn’t believe me.”
“I might.”
“You don’t think the Yetis are even real,” Spiro pointed out. “So why grant me the premise?”
“I’m curious.”
Spiro sighed, and nodded. He turned back down the mountain and pointed. Bastian nodded and restarted their descent.
“From what I’ve learned, Yetis are a part of the first round of civilization,” Spiro explained.
“The first what?”
“That’s a larger conversation,” Spiro said. “So for now, just trust me that you and me, humans as we exist today, are not the first take. Long before Mesopotamia and Egypt and all the ancient cultures, there was an earlier civilized era.”
Bastian admitted to himself that he should have expected a bizarre answer. “How did it end?”
Spiro shrugged. “Haven’t the foggiest. When I find out, I’ll give you a call.”
“Ok.”
“Yetis are a remnant of that earlier age. Most of the people that lived then died out, but certain groups that lived in very remote areas survived. They hid because when one survives a planet-wide extinction event, killing the lights and locking the front door just makes like good sense.”
“I just thought of something,” Bastian said.
“Yeah?”
“I’m German, I studied at Oxford and the Sorbonne. I’ve climbed mountains on five continents, and I married a girl from California. I’m a man of the world.”
“And we’re all very happy for you…”
“Which is how I speak English,” he continued. “How were you going to communicate with the Yetis?”
Spiro opened his mouth to answer, but then it closed. That hadn’t actually occurred to him. He just figured it would work out. And then he laughed, because what else could he do? He’d failed his quest on the second step, without ever realizing that he was doomed at step three from the start.
“Didn’t even think of it?” Bastian guessed.
“Nope,” Spiro answered as he collected himself.
“Let’s assume, just for the moment, that you could somehow communicate with them. What were you looking to find out?”
“The earlier age was a lot like ours, from what little I know of it. But it differed in a few important ways, and one of those was its relationship with death.”
“You telling me Yetis are immortal?”
Spiro cocked his head and pondered that. “Huh. Hadn’t thought of that. Man, wouldn’t that be cool?”
“Spiro, you can’t possibly-”
“Nah, I don’t,” Spiro said, waving a dismissive gloved hand. “I’m saying the people who populated the world then were on better terms with death. And I thought the Yetis might be able to tell me something more about her… it. Something more about it.”
He’d thought he covered himself, but Bastian caught it. He turned back, up the mountain, at just the wrong time. As his lead foot hit the snow, it slipped on a patch that was more ice than powder.
A huge hunk of snow, four feet across, broke free. It began to slide down the mountain. Right out from under Bastian. With a shout, he fell back and to the side. There was a sickening crack in his right arm. And then he was hurtling down the mountain.
Their rope line pulled taught. Spiro had just enough time to process what was happening before the weight of Bastian yanked on his waist. He went down in his turn. The men slid down the slope, out of control in a pile of loose snow.
Spiro’s adrenaline burst to life. Somehow, he managed to grab his climbing ax and yank it from its clip. He rammed it into the slope and held on with a death grip. His torso slowed and his legs swung downhill. He shoved his boot heels into the snowpack.
They began to slow, but ahead the slope ended. There was no telling how far the drop might be on the far side. Spiro yelled with the exertion as he pushed against his momentum, legs pushing up, arm stretched way above his head, his grip on the ax threatening to break any moment.
It may have been luck, or Spiro’s quick thinking, or the two of them running over a deeper patch of powder that slowed their momentum. Whatever it was, they caught on something, Spiro’s heels dug in deep, and they sloshed to a stop.
Bastian hung over an edge. He grunted in pain, his right arm hung at his side, broken and useless. He was only a foot over the edge, but had no way of supporting himself.
“Bastian!” Spiro could just see his head over the lip.
“I’m… alright. Arm’s broken,” the call came back.
“Ok. I’m going to try to pull you up.”
“Hang on.” Bastian glanced down. The drop wasn’t actually too far, maybe fifteen feet. But he was semi-horizontal, and it was pure rock below. If he could land feet first, and roll properly… no. He might break something else, and he was already in a world of trouble with a broken arm and base camp still days away.
“Bastian, I can’t hold you forever. I have to try to pull you up.” Spiro tensed his muscles, exhaled and began to tug on the line.
“No! If the snow beneath you is loose-” Bastian yelled, but it was too late.
Spiro’s exertion shook loose a big plate of hard-pack snow. A little island of it, twenty feet around, began to split from the edge. Spiro watched in wide-eyed horror as it tilted forward, taking him and Bastian with it. He closed his eyes and wished her away.
“Not like this,” he whispered to himself as his body went vertical and he began to fall forward.
And then his fall jolted to a stop. His arms were pinned to his side. Then he was moving backwards, up the mountain. Moments later, arms wrapped around his waist and dragged him to safety. He looked down at himself to see his torso wrapped by a thick, handwoven rope. And the arms that held him were covered in white-and-blue fur.
Seconds later, Bastian appeared from over the edge. He was unconscious, probably passed out from the pain. And he was being pulled to safety, just like Spiro.
By a Yeti.
Once they were both on solid ground, the Yeti released Spiro. The rope fell loose around him, and Spiro sat up to assess the situation.
There were three of them. The one behind him looped the long, thick rope into a coil. He secured that to hooks built into the belt of his dark brown pants. Below Spiro, two more Yetis laid out Bastian and began to look him over. One whispered instructions to the other, and it quickly became clear they were planning to treat the hiker’s broken arm.
His savior Yeti placed a hand on Spiro’s shoulder. The man looked up, and they locked eyes. Spiro nodded.
“Thank you,” Spiro finally managed to say. “I’m alright.”
Yetis were not, Spiro realized, the enormous mountain bigfoots (bigfeet?) that he’d been led to believe. None of the three were taller than four feet. They were not bulky at all, but rather laced with trim sinew. Their fur was mostly white, but it was tipped with blue around their mouths, eyes, elbows, knees and ankles. Each had a set of enormous ears perched atop his head that Spiro thought looked pretty feline, like they belonged to a bobcat or a lynx.
Their arms were a bit shorter than Spiro thought was proportional. And he soon saw why. The Yeti who’d saved him dropped to all fours and approached the others. His paws were oversized and flat on the bottom presumably to allow him to walk on the snow. They conferred quietly.
“Will he be ok?” Spiro asked. He had no idea if they could understand him, but he hoped context would work where language failed.
The two kept working on the German, securing his arm to something that Spiro thought might be bamboo. He had no idea where they’d got it. Bamboo did not grow this high, way above the tree line.
After a moment, the third Yeti padded back up to him. He blinked a few times, and Spiro thought it might be some attempt at communication. He was no expert, but he knew from his vet that cats used different kinds of blinks to relay information to one another. He’d been taught to blink slowly at Nala when she freaked out as it could help relax her.
A moment of panic. He looked down to see his jacket had come almost entirely unzipped. The fleece layer beneath was caked in snow. He yanked his gloves off and dug into his layers, one by one. His heart raced from leftover adrenaline and fear. Then his fingers locked onto it, and he pull the little stone carving out.
The small ankh was still secured to its chain, slung safely around his neck. He exhaled deeply as relief bloomed inside him.
Whispering something, the Yeti nodded and pointed at the ankh. Spiro held it up, and the Yeti reached forward to press a single paw to the carving. Then it began to dig through the pouches attached to its belt.
“Does this mean something to you? Do you know who it’s for?” If the Yeti understood, it did not reply. It searched for something with great care in each of the little leather pouches.
A low, pained groan rose from below. Spiro turned his head to see the Yetis easing Bastian to a seated position. His arm had been tucked into a splint the Yetis had made from the bamboo and some kind of thin wire.
“Spiro…” Bastian said, too shocked to form a coherent thought.
“I think they know her,” Spiro answered. “This one’s looking for something.”
“They’re… I mean.. it’s Yetis,” Bastian said, his brain evidently not back to full speed.
“Yeah. They saved us,” Spiro said.
The Yeti in front of him whispered something in glee. It pulled a tiny pouch from its belt and handed it to Spiro. It was a leather pouch, hand-stitched from the hide of some animal.
“Is this… can I open it?” Spiro asked. The Yeti made no move, looked from the pouch to Spiro’s face and blinked twice, a pause, then blinked twice again.
“What the hell could…?” Spiro realized his fingers on his ungloved hand were freezing. There wasn’t time to mess around. He yanked on the pouch’s wire tie and dug his stiff fingers inside.
He pulled out a folded receipt. As he unfolded it, Bastian finally started to come around.
“Spiro, you were right. I mean, the psychic was… oh man. This is unbelievable.”
“It’s from her.” Spiro said, hardly listening.
“What is?”
“This,” Spiro said, lifting up the receipt.
It was from a dry cleaner in his hometown. Only one item had been tagged – a black cocktail dress. Spiro smiled so hard, little tears slipped from his eyes and immediately froze on his cheek.
He turned the receipt over. She’d scrawled a note for him.
Summoning Santa? Tracking Yetis? A glacial hike of peril?
And I heard you stole something from the Vatican’s secret magical stores?
Some explorer you’re turning out to be…
– Azra
“Spiro, what is going on?” Bastian asked. Then he groaned. His arm was not in good shape, splint or not. They needed to get back to base camp and the helicopter that could whisk him off to the city and a hospital.
Spiro looked up from the receipt to the Yetis. All three of them had gathered just to his right so they wouldn’t be downhill from him or Bastian. They whispered to themselves, then the one who’d given him the pouch smiled. It whispered something to Spiro that he could not understand, but Spiro thought that didn’t matter that much.
He blinked back; two quick ones, a pause, then two more. The Yeti nodded, and pointed downhill and to the left. Toward their base camp. Spiro nodded back, and lifted the receipt. The Yeti blinked, once, very slowly. Spiro had no idea what it meant.
Then all three turned and took off. They moved on all fours with incredible grace. In moments, they went over a snow drift and vanished.
“Spiro…?” Bastian was sounding a little better, but they still didn’t have a lot of time. And now Spiro would have to lead the way.
“Come on, let’s get you back to base camp pronto,” Spiro said. He stood up and stashed Azra’s note inside his jacket.
“What was that?”
“Yetis. Thought that was obvious.”
“I meant.. I know that. I meant what did they give you?” There was wonder in Bastian’s tone, just a hint through the pain and surprise.
“A note.”
“A note?” Bastian shook his head in disbelief. “So they do know English.”
Spiro chuckled. “It wasn’t from them.”
“It wasn’t?” Who was it from?”
Spiro dug his hands into Bastian’s armpits and hoisted the man to his feet. They made sure his legs were alright, and Spiro collected his climbing ax from where he’d dropped it.
“Her,” he answered as he started down the mountain, angling in the direction the Yetis had pointed.
“What’s it say?”
Spiro smiled as he walked. The trip didn’t seem so fruitless anymore. For one thing, he’d never been to the Vatican. But he thought he might pop in next time he was in the area.
“She’s impressed.”
Author's Note - This is not the first chronicle of Spiro's adventures. Hopefully, it is not the last. When the others become available, I will post an update regarding their whereabouts.
The Tall Tale Year 