Noah
Noah closed his eyes, bringing a fleeting moment of relief to the pounding in his forehead.
‘Noah?’ Rachel’s voice hammered in his ears. ‘Noah?’
He forced his eyes back open and staggered back to the sled. With each step his feet disappeared into crisp white snow and the ache in his calves spread up his body all the way to his eyelids. He longed to lie down and give in to the exhaustion swarming his body, but first they had to finish setting up camp, which meant pitching the tent.
Another shout from Rachel reached his ears. He didn’t catch the words before they were taken away by a gust of bitter wind that hit the back of his jacket like a shove. A dozen retorts danced on his lips but he didn’t have the energy to turn around, let alone shout them.
The mountain climb had been gruelling for all of them. To climb the sixty kilometres on foot would’ve been hard enough, but keeping the dog sled moving and upright as well had pushed all of them to breaking point. He’d lost his footing half a dozen times during the climb, once causing his sled, with him on it, to swing dangerously over the ledge.
Riding the sled in the final hour’s descent had brought little relief to the ache in his body, and now they were setting up camp with no reprieve from the icy wind, the sub-zero temperatures, or the exhaustion weighing down his muscles.
Noah glanced at the others. Frankie and Harry were wrestling their tent open in the wind. Greg had an arm around one of his sons. Noah could tell by the slumping shake of Edward’s shoulders that he was crying. Hell, Noah felt like crying too. The emotion of pure visceral exhaustion.
To one side he could see Molly and Erica working silently to pitch their tent, their shoulders sagging with the same tiredness he felt inside him.
Noah’s hand drifted to his pocket and he felt the familiar shape of the penknife pulling on the fabric. The longing was there, just like it always was, but Noah barely had the energy to stand, let alone wait for the rest of the group to fall asleep so he could press the blade into his skin and watch the blood pool in the cut it made. Hell, the pain wrenching at his calf muscles from the day’s hike was all the distraction he needed.
‘Get pitched up as soon as you can, Mushers,’ Lee shouted before stepping beside Noah and helping him unhook his tent from the sled. ‘You’ll feel a million times better once you’ve had some hot food and are out of this wind.’
Noah nodded but couldn’t summon the energy to reply.
With the tent under his arm he trudged back to where Rachel was waiting. She had her arms crossed, and even though every part of her face was covered, he could sense the impatient glare radiating outwards.
‘Here, take this end,’ he said in a voice ringing with annoyance.
She reached out and grabbed the corner of the tent with her left arm, keeping her right arm tucked beside her body. He tried to muster a whiff of sympathy for Rachel. She’d endured the same brutal uphill climb as he had, and she’d done it with an injured shoulder. But resentment seemed to require less energy than sympathy, it seemed, because all Noah could feel for Rachel was a begrudging bitterness.
It was her fault he was feeling this way. She’d dragged him on this insane challenge. And that was just the surface of his resentment towards her. Rachel had been pushing him to “get over”, “move on”, “deal with”, “bounce back”, “forge ahead”, and fifty other commands all meaning the same thing, all wanting Noah to do something he couldn’t do, be someone he couldn’t be.
Rachel had never voiced her thoughts on his decision to teach, but he knew she hated it. He knew by the complete lack of interest she showed in his course, and the light prattle about things at work that used to interest him, that she was trying to goad him back, as if he’d wake up fixed one day and return to the fold.
Why the hell wouldn’t she just give up on him? And now they were here and she had to go and get herself injured, leaving Noah to do twice as much work as everyone else.
‘You have to dig the tent line deeper, or it’ll blow away,’ he snapped at her, jamming the last pole into the dome structure and scurrying around on his knees to Rachel’s corner. Even as the anger spun in Noah’s head he knew exhaustion was at the root.
‘I’m trying.’
‘Just hold this,’ he said, passing the line of the tent to Rachel.
Noah dug his gloved hands into the snow, scooping out the hole for the tent line.
A fresh blast of icy wind buffeted the back of his jacket. It sliced at the nape of his neck where his scarf had moved, leaving a sliver of exposed skin. The wind caught in the fabric of the tent, sweeping it off the ground.
For a fleeting second it seemed as though Rachel’s hold on the line was tight enough, that the wind would give it up, and the tent would drop back to the ground. It didn’t. Noah dove over Rachel. She yelped in pain as he knocked against her shoulder and scrambled to reach the line as it tugged out of Rachel’s hand and flapped away with the tent.
‘Shit.’ Noah thumped the snow with his fist before forcing himself up and charging after the tent.
Ten metres ahead of him the wind died and the tent crashed to the snow, then bounced with the force of another gust propelling it forward. Noah gritted his teeth, ignoring the pain in his legs and back. They couldn’t lose the tent.
Noah had the sudden dizzying sense of running on a speeding travelator, moving in the opposite direction to the way he was going. However fast he ran, he wasn’t gaining more than inches in ground, whilst the tent, on the other hand, skipped and danced ahead.
Out of nowhere the wind died again and the tent bounced once more onto the snow. He had to get it before the next gust of wind. Noah registered the blue of another jacket moving in his periphery. Someone else was running to rescue the tent. Lee, he guessed.
Noah felt another blast of wind on his back. The red tent skidded across the ground. It was now or never. One more gust and the tent would be lost to the mountain. Noah launched himself forward.
The other runner jumped too and for the briefest of seconds they were both flying through the air like a scene from The Matrix.
They landed with a thud, in a heap of tangled limbs as the material of the tent flapped over their bodies, whipping their clothes as if punishing them for thwarting its bid for freedom.
Noah lay unmoving for a moment, catching his breath. He looked at the body lying beside him. A stray black curl lay across his goggles. Electricity shook his body. He was no longer exhausted but alive – lit like a fruit machine, flashing and blinking inside him.
‘Thanks.’ Noah lifted his goggles from his face. The sting of cold jabbed needles in his eyes but he didn’t care.
‘Ouch,’ Molly groaned, throwing off her goggles.
‘Are you all right?’ Noah asked with a grin.
‘I think so.’
‘Thanks for the help.’
‘Any time.’ She grinned back.
‘At least after that run we’re not cold any more,’ he said.
Molly turned her face to his. Her eyes gleamed as if they had bulbs inside them. He wasn’t sure how it started, or who started it, but laughter caught them both. It built inside him – a pressure building up and up – until he threw back his head and let it out. And the more he laughed, the funnier everything became. This ridiculous challenge he’d been dragged on, the pain gripping his abdominal muscles, his anger at Rachel, even the nightmares that jolted him from sleep like a cattle prod, all of it caused peal after peal of laughter to leave his body.
He opened his eyes and stared at Molly’s face. Her features were scrunched tight from the effort of her giggles. Her eyes locked on to his and as quickly as it had started the humour was gone.
‘Time to get this tent up?’ she half said, half asked, sitting up.
Noah had the desperate urge to pull her back down and beg her to lie beside him for a little while more. He had no right to ask – he knew that – but the thought was there tickling his voice box.
Just like the penknife, Noah thought to himself with none of the conviction he’d had at the airport. Molly was more than just a distraction from the darkness. She was a torch of bright white light in his head, and the more time he spent with her the brighter the light became.