Love At The Peak

Everest is known for the enchanting effect it has on climbers. And this magic had drawn Elena Carter from her humble London flat all the way to Camp 4 in Nepal.

It was the off-season for climbers, yet there were still a dozen people with her. And finally, the peak stood before her in all its glory.

She looked shocked... but wait, she wasn’t looking at Everest.

She was looking ten metres to the left of her camp, at what seemed like a snowman-like structure. But it wasn’t like any other snowman.

It was a frozen man.

After a minute of shock, she ran, stumbled, got up, and ran again. As she got closer, the exposed hand became more evident to her.

Her guide, Nuru — a Sherpa, again! — ran after her, because losing a client after coming this far was far from ideal. Then he saw the man too.

Elena started digging through the snow with her hands. Her high-quality, expensive grip gloves were perfect for this, yet Nuru’s woollen gloves still beat her to pulling the man out.

She knew he was alive because there was a warmth in his hands that felt far more human than corpse-like. Still, to confirm, she placed her fingers on his wrist.

And her belief in miracles was restored.

Because even though faint... there was a pulse.

As the others had already begun their final ascent toward the Hillary Step, Elena and Nuru had no choice but to bring the man back to camp.

The multiple layers of jackets he wore had become even heavier now, drenched with snow. So Nuru decided to lift the upper half of his body while Elena took the legs.

She tightened her grip around his legs and, for the first time, looked properly at his face.

It had almost turned purple, and his closed eyes looked strangely gentle, as if he were merely asleep. His nose and cheeks were stained with a reddish-blue tint from the cold.

She found herself imagining how beautiful this man must have looked when he had arrived here, carrying dreams of summiting the peak.

Meanwhile, Nuru took one quick glance at thestranger’s face and thought about how ugly and hideous the boy looked.

The camp was at least ten degrees warmer than the outside. She laid him on top of her sleeping bag and started rubbing his left hand to restore the blood flow. Nuru began working on the right one.

Within thirty minutes, his face had turned more red than blue.

For Nuru, it was a wasted day — a complete rearrangement of plans for climbing Everest, along with the headache of rationing their food supplies. But for Elena, it felt historic.

This was the adventure she had desperately needed. What could be better than climbing Everest? Saving a man’s life on the way.

She looked at him in the soft glow of sunlight while enjoying the hot chocolate Nuru had made for her.

Meanwhile, Nuru was trying to feed the man some soup he had originally prepared for himself, but with no luck.

The whole day passed like this. Eventually, Nuru grew bored and went out to look for the returning climbing party to make some quick cash, while Elena stayed just outside the camp, taking in the view of the orangish-gold peak.

Many locals believed that gods lived on this mountain, and she could only think that they had chosen the most perfect place imaginable.

It was peaceful beyond words.

She sat there enjoying her instant cup noodles. There was not a single soul in sight, nor a single sound. She could almost hear the silence itself.

Until suddenly, it wasn’t silent anymore.

A faint sound, like someone talking in their sleep, reached her ears. At first, she thought it was just a gust of wind. But no — it was coming from inside the tent.

And with equal parts fear and excitement, she left the noodles behind to freeze and rushed inside.

She was thrilled to see that his eyes were open.

The frozen man was finally alive.

And he was trying to say something.

She moved closer to hear him better. And she did — but the word wasn’t what she had expected.

What do you expect from a man rescued from the edge of death? A thank you? The names of loved ones? Questions about where he was?

But no.

He said just one word. Probably the most important thing for any human being.

“Wa...te...r.”

She sat there, slightly shaken, trying to make sense of it all, when he repeated,

“Wa...te...r... pl...ea...se.”

She quickly poured some water from her thermos flask and offered it to him. But his hands were still too weak to hold the cup.

So, she carefully adjusted his head and brought the cup closer to his mouth.

He drank so quickly that she could hardly believe her eyes. But when the same thing happened three times in a row, her shock slowly turned into amazement.

She even gave him some soup, and once he had regained a little strength, Elena decided to ask a few basic questions.

“What’s your name?”

“Ethan. Ethan Walker,” he replied, looking into her hazel eyes while she stared into his snow-blue ones.

She couldn’t help but giggle a little. A Walker who couldn’t even sit properly right now.

“Do you know you almost died?” It wasn’t a very good question. But then again, she wasn’t a very good girl.

He just smiled. A smile that somehow looked beautiful even on his chapped, cracked lips — though it hid an unbearable amount of pain behind it.

Elena decided to pause her questioning. Maybe she wasn’t such a bad girl after all.

After a couple of minutes of silence, he finally spoke. “Thank you. Thank you for saving my life.” Now that he had spoken a full sentence, she could clearly hear the London accent in his voice.

“Wait a minute… where are you from?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer. And she wasn’t disappointed when he replied, “London.”

Saving someone was already a big thing. But saving someone from the same city, in such a dramatic landscape?

She could already imagine the newspaper headlines.

Elena was thrilled.

“But what happened to you? How did you get separated from your team?” she asked.

The last climbing team had passed through at least twenty-four hours ago, which meant he must have been buried there for that long, she thought to herself.

“Was it an avalanche? Or just one wrong step?”

He gave that same sad, dangerously attractive smile again.

She really shouldn’t have been thinking things like that right now.

“I mean… there must have been some kind of accident?”

Nobody willingly buried themselves in snow. And she had already seen enough proof of that along the climb — bodies frozen into the ice, people caught while trying to escape, looking like horrifying sculptures trapped in time.

But the words he spoke next were far more terrifying than any frozen corpse on Everest.

“It… wasn’t an accident.”