The mountain kept a close watch on its group of visitors as they pushed on against the oncoming wind, heads bowed as if in deference to the snow and ice. They walked in close file, one behind the other, shrinking into their vibrant expedition suits. From above, it would have looked as though a giant, colourful worm were making a path over the rocks and ice. There was only the steady, rhythmic crunch of their crampons striking and cutting into the ice underfoot, sometimes in time with each other, sometimes in syncopation when someone lost their step. They were not yet at an altitude that required them to rely on oxygen tanks to keep moving, but they could already feel the effect of the thinner air. Breathing was harsher and somehow unsatisfying, as though they couldn’t quite fill their lungs. The final camp before the summit was within sight, but seemed to stay just as far away as they moved towards it, like trying to walk towards the end of a rainbow. Negative thoughts of not making it, of having to turn around, knocked and asked to be let in. Underfoot, the blank snow gave away no clues, offered no distraction. A choice would have to be made sooner rather than later.

The camp lay on a col below the final push, on a flat saddle between the two peaks. The only thing to break up the landscape of spiky rocks and harsh ice was a few pitched tents where the climbers would make a brief stop to rest. The wind tugged at the poles of the tents and made a shushing sound as it rippled the polyester. To one of the climbers, it sounded like leaves in a forest from his homeland. To another, it sounded like waves and reminded her of the last time she had seen the ocean. She could just about remember how it looked when a wave rose up from itself and curled over before falling to rejoin the rest. The way it generated a bubbling foam that pushed out to distribute itself on the sand. She remembered only beaches with sand. Two of the group pushed ahead, outstripping the Sherpa at the front of the group. They seemed to gather energy as they moved, kinetically charged.

The group split up into their travelling parties: two groups of two and one of three. They each entered their designated tents. They pulled down the zips, shutting out the protestations of the mountain. The two Sherpas remained outside. Silent sentinels.

In the blue tent was the group of three, all male and approaching middle age. They pulled back their hoods once inside and took off their sunglasses.

“Your nose is all red.”

“So is yours. Gonna have some weird tan lines.”

“Better than frostbite.”

“True.” He asks what they’ve all been wondering, “Reckon anyone else will drop out?”

“Maybe that little one, she looked like she was struggling. She was arguing a lot at Camp Three with her partner. What about you guys? Getting cold feet?”

“Terrible pun. And nah, I’m not worried. We’ve made it this far.”

“There’s still the descent.”

“The Sherpas will look out for us.”

“My head hurts.”

In the orange tent was the couple the three men spoke of. They sat in thick sleeping bags facing each other, not arguing but not speaking either. They looked at one another as though they were trying to see through something, to uncover a new face in the one they had known all this time. He thought about those Magic Eye pictures that used to drive him mad as a child. He always wondered if people made up that they saw a hidden image there, because, as hard as he stared, he never did. As he looked at her, framed in orange inside the shelter of the tent, he thought there might be an image behind the face he had come to know as well as his own, one that he now couldn’t unsee.

He thought about the forests again, how they could rise over your head and block out the sky, how everywhere you looked there was life, giving sound and meaning to the landscape, how the peace he had held within him had left the day they felled the last tree. He looked at his partner and saw in her face only things that were now burnt and ended.

She looked back at him, at his eyes that had once so reminded her of the ocean. They were the colour of waters that bring force and agitation, that wreck what they come into contact with. They were the unknowable sea. The sea that threatened to pull you down if you got too close. She remembered the first time they had made love, when things were still hopeful, or perhaps they had seemed hopeful because they were younger and freshly in love. She had felt herself entirely, willingly, given over to him. Like lying in the shallows and letting the tide play its dragging game with your body. In and out.

Outside the tent, the wind picked up and reminded them it was there. The forest disappeared. The ocean faded. The mountain was all around them. There was only the other person in front. With no dreams ascribed to them to hide the truth anymore.

In the green tent, the two youngest group members talked without a break, as though unaffected by the thinner altitude. Their eyes shone, and they sat close enough to feel the restless energy of each other reverberating back like a current.

“It’s even better than I imagined. I just thought the others were over-exaggerating.”

“I know. I didn’t think it would feel so real. The air here… I can really feel it getting harder to breathe.”

“Good thing we trained as we did.”

“Right!”

The two young men paused for a moment and listened to the wind gather snow and throw it against their tent. It sounded like sand.

“I hope we see the old guy. That would be a story to go home with.”

“As I said before, we don’t even know if he’s really here. It’s probably just a marketing bit to get people to book on.”

“It’s a known Easter Egg! People have seen him before the summit. They say he sometimes helps people who get lost on the way down. He knows the mountain better than anyone.”

“He’s like the Sherpas then?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“What if he’s like us?”

“He’s not like us. Think about it, how could he be?”

“Why would he be here then?”

They sat with this thought, reclaiming the silence. They changed the subject and began to reminisce about previous years and previous Trips. The different landscapes they had seen: rainforests, deserts, and other remote places. They were young enough to have no memories of these places outside of the Trips, except for what they had seen on Screen-Walls and Simulators when they were still at school. They, in contrast to the rest of their cohort, had eagerly awaited each history class, arriving early to get seats at the front and leaning as close as possible to the images on the Screen-Wall. It had brought them together in their school days and initiated their friendship. They were not like the others. This much was clear, even back then. When the Trips started to become widely available and affordable, they began a yearly tradition. Neither had ever said it out loud, but they looked forward to almost nothing else for the rest of the year.

The Sherpas went to each tent to collect the climbers and ready them for the final summit push. The seven suited figures formed a line and began to move. The wind had died down and seemed to have changed direction, pushing a gentle hand at their backs now rather than throwing its spite in their faces. Still, progress was slow. Each climber felt their feet hang heavy with each step, as though the respite in the tents had added an unseen weight. They drew deeply from the oxygen they now carried with them, trying to summon the energy they had felt in the earlier stages of the expedition. The pace began to feel painful. The gaps between the climbers grew as each tried to stay with their travelling party. The Sherpas flanked the group, looking to each climber individually at intervals, checking for signs they might be in trouble.

The two young men were at the end of the file, keeping in step with one another. The one in front stopped suddenly, causing the other, who had his head down, to collide with his back. Unable to speak comfortably, he tapped his shoulder in question. What? His companion grabbed his shoulder in return and pointed a heavily gloved hand. Look there.

In front snaked the line of the ridge, where the fixed ropes would lead them in single file to the summit. The hand pointed left of the ridge line, where they could partially make out the beginning of a steep gully. In the gully was a red figure, crouching in the snow. The young man gripped his friend’s shoulder harder. He pulled the oxygen mouthpiece to one side to ensure he was understood.

“It’s him.”

Without waiting for a response, he replaced the mouth piece and broke from the shared path, carving his own in the snow. He headed directly for the red figure. His companion looked ahead to the rest of their group. The gap between them was steadily widening. He fought an internal struggle for a moment before heading towards the gully himself.

They reached the red figure together, out of breath from the push. When they were a few metres away, they noticed that the figure in red was not the only figure on this part of the mountain. The red figure was standing over a body, lying partially covered and motionless in the snow. The body wore an expedition suit that was open at the chest, which, though it looked new, was of a style many decades out of fashion. One glove lay on the floor, next to a bare hand that was bone white and wax-like. It looked as though a small tap would cause it to shatter. The red-suited figure knelt and closed the suit, fastening it up to the neck. He didn’t appear to have noticed the two men approaching. They felt like intruders, observing this scene, unwilling to interrupt the elegy of the silence. Eventually, curiosity spoke.

“Who is he?”

“Someone from a memory,” The red figure stood and turned to them. “Someone who stayed with the mountain.” His suit was of a newer generation, but still outdated. His face was mostly obscured by heavy, ice-crusted facial hair. He carried no oxygen or climbing axes.

“Are you the Guide? Are you part of all this, too?”

“Severe hypothermia. He became lost on the descent in a white-out. I wasn’t there when he started taking his clothes off. I found him like this then, his eyes filling up with snow. He always looks exactly the same.”

The young man tried again.

“Is it true? This Trip… It’s yours?”

He didn’t seem to have heard the question. He directed his words past them, looking to a space in between them, where the mountain carried on in its endless white expanse.

“I chose to stay too. They let me choose, and I decided to stay. I thought I wanted more time to climb, to be in the mountains. It wasn’t true. I was scared.”

“Scared of what?”

“That there would be nothing else.”

He looked at them then. As the wind picked up, it breathed a sound like the high-pitched call of a bird. Around him, the snow swirled and eddied, as though unsure where to land. A few flakes collected around his eyelashes, waiting to melt or be blinked away. His eyes were a washed-out blue. Snow-bleached.