The Mountain

It felt like I had been walking for months, although it had really only been a couple of days. I could feel my lungs burning with the ash that constantly cycled through the air, getting worse as I climbed into the higher altitude. For the first time during the journey, I regretted every part of me that had agreed to go, although I knew that deep down I would never turn back until the job was done. I could still remember my grandmother’s last words before she died, the women who had taught me so much in my life, giving me one last piece of information.

“Take it,” she had said, her voice barely audible as she unclasped a rusty golden heart shaped locket from around her neck. She placed it gently in my palm, and I stared at it, surprised that she would trust me with the piece of jewelry I had never seen her part with. It was so old and rusted I doubted it could even open, and yet I still leaned in closer as she whispered one last thing.

"Take it up the mountain and open it. Keep it closed until you get there. There’s something inside that could heal what’s been broken.”

There were so many questions I wanted to ask, and yet the second I opened my mouth to speak her eyes had already closed. I never got another chance.

I had been to the mountain only once before the fires spread and destroyed every living thing it could find. Since then, it had been considered a sacred yet cursed location, ridden with ash and lost loved ones whose skeletons were said to still lay burnt on the rocky ground. The legends circling it were sometimes beautiful or nightmarish, but yet here I was, climbing the one place us children had always sworn never to set foot on.

It had been approximately fifteen years since the world was officially considered “destroyed”, and the population, once consisting of billions, was reduced to only thousands. I was deemed one of the “apocalypse children” a child born after the fires had begun its ravenous journey across the world. There were few of us who claimed that title, since so many women now refused to have children, but those who did claimed it proudly. Sometimes people said that us apocalypse kids would be the birth of the new world, although I knew deep down it was just a story to provide any ounce of hope people could cling onto. The functioning ecosystem had been reduced to only a myth, and the small amount of vegetation that had not burned to the ground had been eaten long ago. Diets now consisted only of lab created substances that most of us couldn’t even remember what it was really made of. We all ate in anyway, because like my grandmother always used to say, “humans are resilient. They don’t give up easily.”

I wanted so badly to give up now, as my bloodied fingers grasped yet another rocky ledge and hoisted my body to the top. I could feel each of my muscles beg for some sort of relief, and yet I continued climbing anyway, breathing in the faint scent of grandmother that still clung to the scarf that was wrapped tightly around my mouth.

Why was this the last thing you wanted from me? I thought angrily, wincing as yet another tip of rock sliced through my hand, the blood dripping slowly down my arm. Why the hell do I keep going?

Automatically, my hand brushed against the locket that was tied around my neck, and I could almost hear her voice next to me, her face smiling slightly as she said, “they don’t give up easily.”

I gritted my teeth, ripping off a piece of my shirt and tying it around my hand to stop the bleeding. For one split second I considered disobeying her words, wanting more than anything to just collapse and let the ashes take me just like they’ve taken so many others. Instead, I grabbed onto yet another ledge, and continued climbing.

It was about a month ago when I made the realization that our recourses were starting to dwindle. The Bunker where I grew up had always felt like the safest place in the world to me, but as I grew older, I began to notice the true expression of suffering on everyone’s faces. Despite my grandmother’s words, I remember that throughout the years a lot of people did choose to give up. Our Bunker, which had once held a maximum of one hundred people, had been reduced to only thirty in a single year. Some people got sick, some people took their lives, and some just seemed to be so exhausted and defeated that they died in their sleep, no matter how old they were. My parents included.

The thought of relocating had always been on everyone’s minds for a long time, although the actual effort to do such a thing never happened. For the past year, the prospect of leaving and attempting to find other safety Bunkers had appealed more than anything to me. But grandmother had insisted that it wasn’t time for that yet, and I trusted her words more than anything else. But resources grew more depleted each day, and a part of me knew that the reason grandmother died when she did was because she stopped eating to allow other people bigger portions. Maybe, if we had just left when I thought we should, she would still be right here next to me. Or maybe we could have all died on the journey from inhaling too much ash into our lungs. In the world we lived in now, the prospect of death was possible everywhere.

But here I was, doing the one thing that grandmother had always seemed too hesitant for us to do. I was travelling, leaving the safety of my home to carry on the last thing grandmother had asked of me. And I was doing it alone.

Bloodied, bruised, and gasping for clean air, I reached for the final ledge, my fingers shaking so badly I thought for a split second that my body was officially past it’s limit. Clutching to the jagged rock, I heaved myself upward, my arms using the last bit of strength they had to heave my body to the flat surface. The ground was covered in a thin sheet of white particles, and as my body crumped onto it, I knew that the ground had to be covered in ash. I was vaguely aware of my scarf hanging limply around my neck, my face completely exposed to the outside air as I took in a shuddering breath. Instead of coughing or gasping, I only continued to lie there, my heart pounding in my chest against the locket that had somehow managed to stay attached to me throughout the journey.

I made it grandma, I thought, fighting against the urge to close my eyes as I tried to blink past the blur that was filling my vision. I did what you asked. I made it.

Again, I wanted more than anything to fall asleep and take what came next. I had no idea if I would ever wake up again, but the thought of it was almost a relief than a fear to me.

They don’t give up easily.

Gritting my teeth, I forced my trembling fingers to move and grasp around the heart shaped pendent of the locket. The rust was so thick that I had to dig my fingernail into the side, praying that it would open as I attempted to pry past the hard coating.

It was then that I heard it, a sound so faint that I had no idea how my ears even managed to pick it up. A whooshing sound directly above me, lasting only seconds but clear enough to pique my curiosity. With another shaky breath, I let the locket fall from my hand, slowly making my way onto my hands and knees. Ignoring the sharp jabs of pain and protest from my wounds, I brushed my damp hair away from my eyes, and turned my gaze upwards towards the sky.

Ignoring my fuzzy vision, I squinted my eyes, searching for the source of the sound.

It was probably my own head, I thought, my head spinning with the effort of trying to keep my neck craned, I’m dying, aren’t I?

But I wasn’t, and in that moment I was flooded with every sensation and scene around me. The air, it was clear. The ground, it was cold. The sound…

I watched as the creature glided above me, its jet-black wings sending it into a dive as it cascaded over the side of the mountain, only to propel upward back into view. I could make out every detail of its body, the silky wings, the small eyes, the hard beak. I knew exactly what it was, and yet every part of me doubted it was even real. There was no way it was real.

I blinked, but it was still there, circling above me as if it knew I was watching it. As if it was unsure if I was even real as well. A felt a sob escape my throat as I turned my gaze away from the sky, staring down at the ground that I had previously been lying in. It wasn’t white because it was ash, it was white because it was snow. The air wasn’t dirty because I was in a cloud, so high above the world that the fires could never touch this surface. And the mountain itself, the snowy ground, the flat stretch of ground that wasn’t made of hard rock, was covered in vegetation. Small green sprouts sticking up from the snow, the leaves coated and yet still growing. And the plants weren’t alone, they were surrounded by trees. Trees.

I covered my mouth in shock, ignoring the tears that made trails down the dirt covered in my face. There was life here. There was life left.

Eyes still running over everything around me, my hands grasped for the locket, bringing it up to eye level and yanking open the rusty pennant. My head was filled with grandmother’s last words, echoing them over and over in my head as my eyes focused on what was inside.

There’s something inside that could heal what’s been broken.

There was nothing inside except a small piece of paper, cut to fit the heart shape of the locket perfectly, my grandmothers fancy handwriting covering the paper with only one word. One word that once I saw it, made me finally understand.

Hope.