The Cloud Maker

Chapter 28

Wind scorched across the mountainside, whipping the loose fabric of the tent’s fly-sheet into a frenzy of movement that clattered like gunfire. Shara and Bill sat huddled together, rocking backwards and forwards in a vain effort to stay warm. They had draped the sleeping bags over their thighs. Snow collected in the folds like piles of icing sugar.

‘Come on, Luca. Come on,’ Bill muttered under his breath. The wind buffeted against his hunched shoulders, slowly stripping away the last vestiges of warmth. By his side, Shara’s whole body convulsed from cold. Her lips looked waxy, with a bruised tinge to them, and her eyes were squeezed tight against the blowing snow.

Bill reached up, pulling the fly-sheet a little higher above her shoulders. He knew there was precious little time left before she became fully hypothermic. The misgivings he had been feeling about her were suspended, replaced by an urge to protect her from the terrible cold.

‘He’s not coming back, is he?’

The words sounded slurred, dropping out of Shara’s numb lips.

‘He’ll be back.’

As she closed her eyes again, Bill twisted his neck round in the direction Luca had taken. The horizon was just a blur of streaming snow, with no distinction between ground and sky.

‘Please God, let him come back,’ he murmured, fighting to stop his own body from shaking.

At first, Shara barely registered the arm lifting her off the ground. Then she tried to stand but her legs buckled underneath her and Luca had to force her arm over his shoulder and take her full weight.

‘Let’s go,’ he yelled across at Bill, who uncurled himself and staggered to his feet.

With his other hand, Luca grabbed Shara’s canvas bag and began half-pushing, half-dragging her through the snow. They trudged off in the direction he had come, heads held low against the storm. Every few steps Shara’s knees would give way and Luca grunted from the effort of keeping her off the ground. A little further on, he stopped. Taking his GPS from his pocket, he peered down at the small, grey screen, damp from snow. Then, a few seconds later, they were on the move again, following a slightly different bearing.

Shara was beginning to slip from Luca’s grasp, her body a dead weight on his shoulder, when a huge wall of rock suddenly loomed over them. Luca followed its course, running his gloved hand along the side before stopping twenty paces later and swinging off his rucksack. Bending low, he pushed it under an overhang of rock.

Checking that Bill could see him, he flattened himself against the ground and slithered underneath, pulling Shara down with him by one arm.

Inside, it was dark and perfectly quiet.

After the incredible noise of the blizzard, the sheer absence of sound felt disorientating, as if he had just lost one of his senses. From inside his jacket pocket, Luca pulled out a small, plastic lighter and with numb fingers, managed to spark the flint and hold his thumb down on the gas.

A bubble of light swelled inside the cave.

It was much bigger than he had thought, almost high enough to stand up in. A strong, acrid smell hung in the air. Wriggling forward, he made space for Shara and half-dragged her through the opening. Pulling her deeper into the cave, he propped her up against the side and wiped some of the snow off her face. She was trembling violently, her cheeks ghostly pale.

‘I can’t… I can’t…’

‘It’s OK,’ said Luca. ‘We’re safe. Everything’s going to be OK.’

Tears trembled on her lashes but didn’t spill. Shara just stared ahead with a stunned expression as Luca reached into the top section of his rucksack and pulled out a miniature Petzel head-torch. He squeezed the elastic band over his forehead and thumbed the switch across, filling the cave with the white light from the high-powered LEDs. He then pulled out his own sleeping bag, tucking it around her legs.

‘I’m going to get the stove going,’ he said, just as a rucksack was flung through the gap and came crashing down on the floor beside them.

Bill hauled himself under the lip, before collapsing inside. After a moment’s stillness he turned, plugging his rucksack back into the entrance and sealing out some of the wind.

Luca crawled forward on his hands and knees, pulling out the metal MSR Whisperlite stove and laying it carefully on the bare rock. With shaking hands, he pumped the plastic top, injecting the fuel into the line, and sparked the lighter underneath. After a few tries, the fuel caught with an orange flame and faint trails of black smoke belched out from the top. There was a popping sound as the stove tried to draw through the fuel, then all went silent again.

‘Shit,’ Luca said, blowing on his fingers to try and warm them up. He pumped the stove again, trying to inject more fuel into the line, and ignited the lighter once more. The flame leaped up, then faded into smoke.

‘Try mine,’ Bill said, swivelling round and undoing one of the straps on his rucksack. A second later he turned back with the stove and two spare fuel bottles in his hands. Luca didn’t look up but with thumb and forefinger unscrewed the bottom nut on his stove, opening up the fuel value completely. He sparked the lighter and with a sudden ‘whoosh’ the stove ignited, filling the cave with its gentle roaring and sending yellow light dancing into the farthest shadows.

Ten minutes later they were all gripping mugs of hot tea, quietly watching the steam curl upward by the wide beams of Bill and Luca’s head-torches. Shara was tucked further back into the cave, cocooned in her sleeping bag, her arms and head just visible above the thick down feathers. Her cheeks had regained some colour, but her face still looked drawn and exhausted.

‘Thank you,’ she said softly, staring directly ahead. Bill and Luca looked across at her.

‘I wouldn’t have made it out there without you both…’ She stopped, choking on her words, and huddled deeper into the sleeping bag to hide her tears.

‘You did well out there,’ Bill said, blowing on to the surface of his tea. ‘That was some nasty weather.’ He looked at her sympathetically for the first time since they had set off that morning. He understood all too well how the hours of strain and fear could catch you by the throat. There was always a point on any expedition when you got emotional, and so far Shara had shown nothing but self-control.

He took a noisy sip of his tea, then grinned.

‘Luckily we have Luca here who, in a storm, in the middle of God-knows-where, still manages to come up with this place. It’s better than the bloody Ritz, mate.’

‘Yeah. We were lucky. It would have been impossible to dig a snow hole out there in that wind.’

Bill nodded slowly. If it had just been Luca and him, they would probably have made it through till dawn by toughing it out. But with Shara in tow it was a different story. They both knew that if they hadn’t found the shelter of this cave, the cold would have probably killed her.

Luca fell silent, absent-mindedly stirring a packet of dehydrated food into the saucepan before glancing towards the back of the cave.

‘I think there’s a draught coming in from over there,’ he said, leaving the saucepan and pulling the lighter from his jacket pocket. The flame leaped up, then pulled sideways as the airflow drew across it.

‘There must be another entrance somewhere farther back…’

He got to his feet and was starting to edge his way towards the back of the cave, his head bent low against the ceiling, when the food started bubbling by his feet. Curbing his curiosity, he knelt back down and began carefully spooning it out into three small plastic bowls. As he handed one to Shara she tried to decline, feeling too tired to eat, but Luca pressed it into her hands.

‘Eat it. It tastes horrible, but it’ll do you good.’

Bill was spooning his into his mouth without comment. Within a few minutes he had finished and, with a yawn, was settling deeper into his sleeping bag.

‘You know, as hotel rooms go this one’s not bad, but you might have chosen somewhere that smelled better,’ he said, sniffing the air a few times.

‘I was a little pushed for time,’ Luca replied, his eyes flicking to the back of the cave again. He sat with his shoulders bent forward, as if the wind was still blowing behind him.

Bill sniffed again.

‘What is that smell?’

‘Whatever it is, I’m not going back outside to find somewhere else.’

Luca gently took the bowl from Shara. She had only eaten half, but her eyes were already starting to close.

‘You’ll feel better in the morning,’ he said to her. ‘I’m sure the storm will have blown itself out by then.’