The Sharp End

“Just… act like you’re at home – relax, take a deep breath. We’ll be done here soon,” Tom whispered into her folded ear.

The white she-wolf raised an eyebrow, and then ground her teeth in reply, as if to say – yeah, clearly home here. The third generation of an experimental species; tinkered into existence on a whim, because they simply could? She thought it was absolutely ludicrous.

Caged among a maze of sprawling buildings, ‘here’ was a trap; a wilderness devoid of her kin. The rush of market sellers was no companionship; under their colourful canvasses men and women poured over all sorts of exotic smelling produce – some things sweet, some savoury, others earthy or even spicy. All the scents drove her mind into a buzzing flurry of sensations, overwhelming her quivering snout with the amorphous, pungent aroma of an entire city of people scurrying through the daily races – until they saw her.

She couldn’t blame them for staring, but she still wished under her breath that they, please, would just – stop.

“Amelia, it’s okay – it’s just instinct talking. They’re harmless, there’s nothing wrong – they’re looking because you’re beautiful,” said Tom.

She hoped that like the first flowers of spring pressing up under the snow, that they indeed found her beautiful.

Of course, that was not the case. A wolf with a pelt as white as snow is the byword for blending in; she even cast a shadow over them all, her height a sign of her breed. There was nowhere to hide; worse, above the crowd she could hear it all. Dancing upon her head, her tall ears flicked at the swelling crowd’s every word, trying in vain to bat them away.

They weren’t all hurtful, she knew that much Spanish, but every time she heard lobo, she just wished for silence, and how she didn’t need to be climbing up a cliff face to receive it.

Lobo. Their eyes scrutinised her slender muzzle, curling the smooth, appealing skin into dark furrows fostering distaste.

Lobo. Their hands tensed, either holding children back, crossing themselves, or pointing with all the dread sentence of fate.

Lobo. Their mouths barked, pink tongues flashing behind their teeth.

She did not need to understand the growing flurry of sounds. The very air around them lost its cool nature. It became heavy, oppressive, forbidding. From the faint quiver in their eyes she could tell that she was the first of the ‘new species’ they’d ever seen. She began to hunch her shoulders. The attention, though harmless, was clearly unwanted – feeling all those glistening eyes fixed on her, her skin crawled.

“Just stop,” Amelia whispered, but Tom had his back turned to her, holding the camera up somewhere else. People were beginning to cluster around her, asking questions, demanding answers.

A long, trailing breath broke from her lips. Her amber eyes lost their sharpness, her focus glazed over the crowd, up towards the sky. A thin wisp of cloud sailed overhead, and she hoped, somehow, that she was weightless. How small this all must look from there. She couldn’t wait to get to the mountains – her limbs twitched impatiently – to be alone, high above, hidden from the metropolis of sprawling faces that gawped, gaped, and pointed.

“Amelia?” Tom grunted, tilting his head slightly. He saw her now, and finally gave up his shoot. “We can go if you don’t feel comfortable.”

The she-wolf’s eyes flashed towards the man at her side, seizing the escape of his words. She nodded, her eyes turning into the watery orbs of a confused puppy losing the mysterious sheen that made them so alluring. The sounds, the scents, speech – they all screamed at her senses. She envied Tom, craved his humanity, his ability to belong amongst it all.

But you’ll never be like him.

 “I hoped that I’d be fine,” she mumbled – her wolfish tongue and muzzle getting the better of her.

“It’s okay,” he said quietly, reassuring her with a consoling turn of his head to check on his pack-mate.

“You wanted to get some film of me and the kids…” she murmured again.

“It’s a climbing video – don’t worry about it,” he said again, brushing it off. He waved for the van, which spluttered into life as it coughed black smoke from its exhaust.

“Hey, Amelia?” Tom asked, pushing himself close, in front of the strangers. “We’re going.”

Reaching out with a pale hand, Tom held her paw with his lithe fingers, clasping around her leathered pads, and the thick, clawed fingers. She gave his hand a brief, faint, squeeze. Through it she felt the beat of his heart quicken.

“I’m sorry for taking you here,” Tom winced, regret worming its way across his face. “I should have known this would happen.”

Everyone; every single human being was foreign to her. Yes, in a single intake of breath she learnt of even their most intimate secrets, but such understanding could never be consummated. She was a wolf. Everyone reminded her of that – even when she climbed, it was a spectacle, a selling point – the thing that funded this very trip. The first wolf climber – and a female no less, to climb some unexplored wall of rock in South America. That’s what made the money.

“It’s not your fault,” she replied, “it’s not theirs either.” She stole a sigh of relief as she saw the crowd dissipate behind them, dispersing back among the stalls.

Amelia noticed Tom flinch at her words. A thread of guilt drew his face into a brief grimace, and brought a flush to his lips. In an attempt to hide it, he squeezed her paw again.

As they made their way back through the quiet alleys, Amelia’s mind wandered back to that moment on the flight over. Leaning across the isle, Tom had gently held her paw. He became bold enough to look into her eyes, and whisper, just so she could hear, “Pity I’m not a wolf.”

Amelia remembered looking at him strangely, and under her piercing eyes, the bravery in his heart faltered – Tom let meaningless words wrench themselves from his lips in his fluster. “You know, I can only be your second, even when leading a new route-”

She didn’t give him the chance to recover, to say what he meant to confess. By that point, she had dropped his hand.

Back in the present, this was the first time she had let him hold her since then. Amelia even allowed Tom to bow her with a touch upon her nape, ushering her inside the van’s open door. She’d spent the evenings guessing what he wanted to say – she knew it was love, but it was difficult, and she didn’t know how to deal with it. It raised too many questions that had no easy answers, so she pushed it out of her mind.

Safely caged inside a metal shell, contained from the human world out there, a sigh of relief crept from Amelia’s muzzle. Out of sight, behind layers of metal and glass, the rest of the world would let her be. Humans gave everything a place; the wild animal lives in the wilderness, the human lives in the city, and the two should never cross. That was why the crowd turned – even the wolf that had learnt to walk and talk like man was still a wolf, and could never be allowed into their homes. In her heart, she hoped Tom would realise this and give her up. Instead, he kept fawning over her, clattering about as he struggled to find the van’s missing seatbelts. As the vehicle rattled into motion and she rejected his support, and pressed her black snout against her shoulder, resting her muzzle there.

She said not a word, listening to the indicator as it clicked rhythmically and the rumble of the engine as the van pulled out onto the road swarming with traffic.

“We got some nice footage at the market – y’know, show off the country, some smiling faces…” Tom decided, trying to coax her out of her shell.

Head bowed, she rested the tip of her muzzle in the rough, unkempt fur around her neck. She breathed deeply, inhaling her own familiar scent, the aroma helping to reassure her of her physical being. Breathing in, her nostrils flared audibly, catching a concerned look from Tom. She didn’t let him look her in the eyes. Despite their guarded corners, black by her lupine heritage, he would see they held the beginnings of tears.

I just want to be someone else. I don’t want to be this.

Tom continued with his speech. “Don’t worry; I’m sure you’ll love the climbing. All those table-top mountains, untouched – it’ll be good for you.”

Perhaps she was beginning to believe him. Her ears perked up as she felt the prophecy in those words – a tell-tale sign of when a hopeful thought struck her.                                           

Just as his smooth fingertips hovered over the glossy wisps of fur, she emitted a low growl. It drifted through the air, the sound rumbling through her throat until her anger withered, but still smouldered inside.

“My good?”

She remembered his words on the plane – Pity I’m not a wolf. I’m always your second. Upset, her emotions twisted his mistake into vengeful words. He didn’t care about her, he didn’t want her, he just wanted the glory the ‘world’s first she-wolf climber’ received. Unwittingly, he’d stabbed her in the heart.

Tom just clenched his jaw, shooting Amelia a sour look. “I can’t fix the world’s problems,” he replied, his voice treading a thin, ungentle line.

Amelia couldn’t bear the guilt of looking at him, not after the spiteful thought she chose to believe. Instead, she poured her bitterness upon their transport. The back of the white minibus had Spartan fittings – Tom had confirmed the seatbelts were either missing or purely cosmetic. The seat covers lay ripped open like the yellow insides of some weird carcass, spewing chunks of foam across the muddy floor.

“Death-trap,” she muttered, her white teeth flashing in the rear-view mirror, causing the driver’s brown eyes to lock with hers.

“Death-trap?” The driver asked, before vigorously shaking his head, grinning cheekily. The gesture was unfathomable to Amelia; it was rude to show your teeth, and with such small, flat things you’d want to keep them hidden.

The wolf cocked her head slightly to the side, picking the limp excuse of a seatbelt in her claws.

“It’s alright – he’s driven many guys – trustworthy – I got his number from a few other climbers I know,” Tom waved his hand, in some sort of laissez-faire invocation, determined to prove to himself at least that all was well.

“It’s okay! The French clients say c’est la vie, we all die,” the driver laughed, spinning the steering wheel round and round. It was as if the suspension had totally gone, but she felt herself warming to the man, his cheeky little smile – he was cheerful, no matter what he saw in the mirror.

“You don’t look surprised to see me,” she replied, doing her best to swallow the irritable rasp in her voice, hiding her teeth with a pink tongue.

“You friend, no?” He dared to make eye contact with the wolf in the rear-view mirror. “Okay with me! But some people don’t get on – you must take care!” He nodded vigorously, his eyes showing a genuine window of care within.

“Yeah?” she questioned, sensing the words to come. She fancied she knew all the things people said – being all too familiar with the slurs, even back home. “I’m not here for trouble. I’m here to climb.”

“Yeah!” The driver grinned, responding enthusiastically as if he didn’t notice the worry his previous words caused. “You don’t know! They don’t only get nervous around you – some pay a high price for your body to-”

“Wonderful!”

“For medicine,” he cheerfully interjected, pinging the little tree-shaped air freshener hanging from the mirror.

Amelia grumbled some wordless, wolfish expression, resting her head in her paws.

“Grind your bones up. Mince your tongue into a paste. Take your blood with vodka -Wolf’s Breath. Other bits, well they-”

“I don’t want to know,” she growled, chewing the words like the neck of a silly deer that had allowed itself to get caught. The driver took the hint, but no offence.

“Keep safe, please!” The man smiled, nodding his head slowly, as if in prayer. “I am happy for you in my country.”

“The point is, Amelia,” Tom said, leaning back against his seat, his hand snaking towards her, “we may be here for the climbing, but trouble doesn’t care about that.”

“At least you won’t get stuffed,” she retorted, no longer bothered to argue with him anymore – she wanted to just curl up and sleep, drown deep inside herself, and be alone.

“Someone would still pay for my wallet with a bullet,” Tom muttered, pressing his index finger upon his forehead.

“Shut up,” she grumbled, pushing his hand away. She tried hard to supress the smile his words brought to her face. She felt his fingers briefly curl, as if into claws, as he snaked them through her fur until they could touch no more.

“I hope the climbing will be good,” Amelia said quietly.

“Don’t worry about that,” the driver smiled. “Climbing in Venezuela is like nothing else.” His words trailed off and lost their conviction, and a strange lurk appeared at the corner of his mouth, as if a question seemed to tug at his lips.

“Spit it out,” Amelia demanded, curling a white lock of her mane around a single black claw.

“But why does a wolf come to climb?”

The she-wolf blinked, her amber eyes flashing quickly in the rear-view mirror. The driver had taken her by surprise – not even Tom dared to be so upfront. A frown curled its way across her brow like the ripple over a previously still, but deep, lake. Her heart stirred, a soft, affectionate flurry, one that came when a long-held desire was met. He was being as blunt – as he would to anyone else.

“That’s not your question,” she smiled – a genuine one that radiated some warmth. “You meant to ask, why? Because a wolf does not climb - it is not meant to climb?”

“Amelia-”

“I should ask the same of you,” she turned to Tom who sat still, utterly refusing to meet her gaze.

“Why climb?” She laughed in a weird, whooping half-howl, snapping her jaws together with a loud clack, her tail arched against her back.

Under her breath, in a whispered prayer only her ears could detect, she answered. “When you’re three hundred metres up a rock face, everyone becomes that tiny speck. And it’s sublime. The rock, she doesn’t judge.”

She caught Tom’s eyes peering across at her, and with a glare, forced them to look away.

“I don’t have to justify everything I do,” she announced, not speaking to the driver at all, but Tom alone.

***

Imposing through the clouds, the mountain reached high above the two climbers, literally, as an imperious wall of rock. The Pemon, the native tribe of the place, call such peaks a tepui, literally, ‘the house of the gods.’ It was a phrase that resonated in the mind of the she-wolf. Appearing prostrate under the looming walls of vertical rock, more supplicant than climber, Amelia slunk away, seeking to claim a moment alone.

She still hadn’t forgiven Tom, and once the climb had begun, they would be quite literally tied together. The prospect left the white wolf clenching her jaw.

 Calming herself, Amelia breathed out slowly, freeing a long, tapered sigh from her muzzle. In the pale morning sun, her white fur danced on the cool breeze, her breath trailing from her muzzle like the clouds overhead. Her eyes trailed over her surroundings, drinking in the details the wilderness had to offer.

There was a beauty that couldn’t be denied here, and no one to spoil it, no one else to judge. The scents were fresh in the cool morning air, untouched by the baking sun. The world rolled out before her, in plains of green and brown, the city she came from brushed away beyond the horizon. Instead, a perfect island of stone reared up from the jungle, its flanks vertical, as if it had been thrust in revolt from the rolling plains of vegetation beneath, which now, eons after that argument, began to climb up its flanks, clinging onto whatever it could find, begging it to come back.

The remote scene sent a shiver arcing along her spine, and she tried to swallow the lump in her throat, a word that refused to be spoken. Instead, her throat rumbled, growling in contentment, like a wild thing that had returned home.

Tom’s familiar scent drifted through the air, calling her back in ways words could not. With a reluctant sigh, she set off towards him with a slow step, drawn to him by the distinct jangle of gear that fractured the peace.

As he came into sight, Tom clipped the noisy brace of hexes to the side, their sound reminiscent of cow bells. They were weird bits of metal, designed to be crammed into some crack in the rock to protect a fall – life saving, but wholly apart from nature.

 “We’ll take the whole rack of cams,” Tom said quietly, failing to acknowledge Amelia’s return as he clipped each piece of protection onto the empty gear loops on his harness. The cams dangled there like a brace of weird syringes tipped with a large, semi-circular head, rather than a glistening point.

After a childhood of growing up seeing so many of the latter, Amelia instinctively wriggled in her skin whenever she saw them, no matter how often she told herself that a cam is not an injection.

“Big wall!” Tom grinned. “Ready to beat it?”

The she-wolf hid her unease, ignoring him by picking out the knots in the rope with the tips of her ebony claws. The morning sun swept low across her lithe form, her glossy coat shivering like white-hot metal.

“I don’t want to carry extra weight,” Tom continued, babbling to himself. “We can just haul it up on a line. Just think, Amelia! No one’s been here before!”

“Which means,” Amelia warned, seeking to take him down a peg or two, “No nice, solid bolts to clip into. I don’t want the first ascent to become one of those stories told as a cautionary tale.”

“Which is why I brought all these cams,” Tom replied, shaking his backside and along with it, the gear attached to his harness, like he had a tail. He didn’t notice her tone.

“You’re a lover of the things,” Amelia murmured under her breath. “I can’t trust them one bit.”

He paused, frowning. “You still hate cams, even after the fall on Muir Wall?”

For a moment, every muscle in Amelia’s body tensed. She felt herself falling through the air. Usually her falls were over before there was any time to scream. This one was longer. Everyone in the valley heard that terrified howl, and the memory of it sounded much worse in her head – rattling about, unable to escape her skull.

“I shouldn’t love gear just because it did its job,” the she-wolf replied curtly, handing Tom the other opposite length of the rope. “Tie in,” she growled. It was clear that Tom was oblivious to her right to be the first to touch the rock.

This trip was about me, after all.

“You know that fall would have killed us,” Tom grinned, waving the very piece of gear in front of him. He kept it as a lucky charm, even though it was Amelia’s to take.

Amelia let the rope fall at his feet.

“I don’t like my protection moving.”

“Another instinct thing?” Tom teased, snapping his teeth. Amelia knew he was trying to imitate her, though it always seemed painful to her, when a human tried to mimic a beast he was not.

“I’m not alone on this,” she growled, pushing the rope through her belay plate. Her hackles bristled. Just get up the wall, away from me.

“Whatever. I’m still taking at least two sets,” Tom huffed, his manner reeking of self-assured confidence.

Amelia tried to swallow the comment, but it just burst out between her fangs, serving only to sharpen her tongue. “They’re yours to take. You paid for them.”

A long breath rattled its way out of her muzzle. She sat down, attempting to compose her venomous thoughts. It’s all become an emblem – of what little money I have, all because my generation was the last to be held back from higher education, I was stuck doing manual labour while he had an office of his own and was on call to clients in California. My kind almost certainly built it for him!

A deep breath brought the cool morning air into her smouldering heart, her black snout flaring, her ears pointing sharply back against her head as she took a step round. Spying his shadow move towards her from the corner of her eye, her lip quivered, and gave way again. “First She-Wolf climber,” she muttered, grinding her teeth.

Only after a couple of minutes did Tom speak. He knelt down at the corner of her vision, making himself small, and in a voice that made her ears flick with surprise, spoke tenderly.

“We climb together. The gear is as much yours as it is mine.” From the way his eyes shifted about, even though they were partly obscured by his sunglasses, it seemed that he struggled to say how he actually felt. The way his gaze lingered upon her body spoke only of his affection, and the desire to become closer to her.

“Let’s just go,” she replied, brushing him away with a nonchalant manner, as if it were true that there was nothing to say.

“You first,” Tom breathed, unclipping the gear from his harness. “This is your moment, not mine. I’m here to support,” he smiled, taking off his aviator glasses so she could see his eyes.

For a second, she hesitated, but didn’t smile in reply.

You should have known better.

***

The moment Amelia touched the rock, her spirits lifted – the coils of tense muscle, faintly visible underneath her pelt, slumped, the weights contained within ebbing away. Each breath was long and deep, no longer snatched in a quick breath that searched the air for some tell-tale scent. Far above the world, far above all the staring pairs of human eyes, she was free, and every moment to her sang of her joy.

From below it was clear how effortlessly the wolf moved, how her lithe form seemed to play a trick in the light, and flow over the rock like a ribbon of cloud. The black faces of rock etherised her, made her body shimmer into that of a ghost. Her paws seemed to find grip where there was nothing, her feet seemed to step on the very air. She was all grace; not a strained muscle nor a tell-tale clench of the jaw.

If she thought the world around her was beautiful, she was wrong. She was the pearl; all else was the dull shell that kept her secret, tightly shut to anyone else. With every movement, she climbed higher, away from Tom, oblivious to all his vain, human cares. The meditation on the rock set her free, even from Tom’s amorous glances from below.

The joy of a blank wall is to discover afresh, to spot the minute features that betrayed a way to the top. Amelia’s amber eyes glowed at the challenge, sharpened by the sun. In this moment, the generations of lupine ancestry remained undiluted, despite the artificial origins of her people. When once her four-legged ancestors spied the herds for a single fleck of weakness, Amelia used that same sight on the rock, which in homage, melted and betrayed its secrets, as if the primeval upheaval that formed it had only newly set.

The tiny holds that forbade a push too hard gave way to her gentle demeanour. She learnt to forget about the objective, the trip, the humans, even Tom. The anchor at the end of the pitch, the gear she needed to place, the eventual summit – all melted, and dripped away from her body like invisible drops of rain.

High above, she was stuck in a slow dance, a mindful of yoga of the rock’s desiring. As she pushed up on the very tips of her toes, as she held on with the very edges of her fingers, her eyes betrayed no frenzied gloss of thought. Gone was that glimmer, instead they reflected a simplification of herself.

There was no extra weight, and for this route over the sun-kissed rock, the she-wolf carried nothing.

This is the absolution she craved.

Every fibre felt the subtle balance of the route. A long, trailing sigh whispered from her muzzle, she listened with her body to the whispers of the rock. As a wild thing, she understood its silent tongue, reciprocating in trust. She dared to place her feet on the tips of nothing, and there, in the singularity of the moment, she felt the weightlessness of being utterly devoted to the present. There was no language for it. There was no thought of it, it simply was.

She climbed for these rare moments, unadulterated by intellect or others. Right now, Amelia did not exist.

In a move over an overhang she let herself go, becoming a larger thing, like the gardener is only the reflection of the garden, her body reflected nothing but the wall itself. She saw freshness in things, holds materialised through the faith that the path she trod existed.

She forgot she had a tail, a muzzle, pointy ears; a mouth of fangs or even claws. There was peace here, in the fragile caress of the moment, with the wind at her back, her troublesome senses drained out from the miniature landscape in front of her, that careful reading of the rock, the search for ancient tracks.

Amelia, pure as a white star, was climbing the arrows of rock, aiming for the moon. With each movement up, the sun at her back rose with her too. It felt to her as if she was haloed.

***

Tom heaved his sweating body onto the ledge like a seal onto the beach.

 “Enjoy that?” Amelia smiled. Her words were merely ceremony – she had watched his every move up the black face, scrutinising every slight movement. The line she’d led tested him wholly; physically and mentally. The bravado he tried to muster was nothing; betrayed by the slight tremble of his lip, by the delicate way his jaw clenched, and from the way he arched his fingers, as if into claws.

 “The holds were so thin – how did you manage them?” Tom panted, his fat, flat tongue protruding from his open jaws.

Amelia just shrugged, flicking her ears to either side, batting away his question. “I clawed my way up.” It was little lie of course, she clipped her claws short so they wouldn’t get in the way; they weren’t strong enough for that sort of thing. Still, it struck Amelia as amusing how all the humans, even Tom, kept lapping that tale up. Instinctively, she knew it was better to merely lie, to tell them their inadequacies came from something they didn’t possess. To say the truth, that she simply had both a better mind and technique, was not wise. No one would want their creation to beat them at their own games.

Tom’s reply dragged Amelia back from her thoughts.

“No doubt,” he gasped, eagerly wrapping his parched lips around a bottle of water.

At least he doesn’t feel bad about it this way, Amelia thought.

Secure at their anchor, Amelia’s gazed shifted, from the minute sections of rock, to the wide, awning landscape arrayed below them. Scraps of white cloud trailed lazily across the sky, the cool wind lapped at her ears, but here not a sound rose up from the distant ground – against the bare walls of the Tepui, there was not a single noise, except for their speech. It felt intrusive.

“I’d damn your modesty to know,” Tom spoke, eyes trailing over the she-wolf’s slender form. Her downy white fur caught the breeze in errant tufts that rippled in response to the delicate movement of the air – and for a moment, she seemed as if she belonged of the sky; some distant kin of the clouds above.

“You’d know,” she mumbled quietly, busying herself in the distraction of exchanging gear. Her paws had a deliberate edge as they let the coloured nuts clack lightly against each other, goading the pieces of metal to hit each other, to generate some other sound than his probing voice. “It’s the claws,” she said – just a fraction too fast, but enough for him to hear.

Tom’s eyebrows rose ever so slightly. Other climbers had tried to use claws, rather than their fingers, to hold onto thin edges – it never worked. There was something to her, underneath her wolfish veneer, that she held back from all others.

“I guess, I mean how did you find it -” he reached forward, and she couldn’t move back, “in there?”

He touched her – not a finger on the head, but there, on a soft, indistinct patch of fur upon her chest – there – where her heart lay, where she feverishly hoped he would not feel its rapid beat.

She was terrified, not because of him, but how her body stirred in reply.

He ruined the moment; ruined the silence, brought up the weights she’d left on the ground. She couldn’t escape it; she now had to think about them. The word she dreaded, ‘us’, echoed through her head.

Amelia’s expression stiffened a small crack opening up against her lips. A sliver of a white fang slipped out into daylight, only for her to rapidly bite back her wolfishness and the rebellious tongue behind it. She told herself the hostility was the best, for the both of them.

“Whatever, don’t share your secret then,” Tom replied, clipping the set of cams onto his harness. He knew he was a liar to pretend he wasn’t one either – there was something tugging at him that he couldn’t cut loose.

As Amelia started to exchange her gear in preparation for Tom’s turn to lead, she felt his hand touch her – the rough skin on his fingertips lightly touched the soft white fur upon her own.

She didn’t respond – she just continued to mechanically tidy up the gear, before twisting her lupine head round to look at the world behind her.

“Can’t beat that view,” he smiled quietly.

She felt him looking at her.

“Beautiful. Wild.”

Amelia laughed at that, but inside, she loved it.

“I should have said to the driver – when he meant to ask why a wolf climbs. I should have said that,” she repeated, her words lazily drifting off the slender tip of her muzzle.

It was quite clear what she said with her eyes. On the wall, the human is just as out of place as the wolf. The wolf in this case, being the by-product of man’s vaunted intellect, as out of place as its maker.

            “Why won’t you be honest with me?” Tom whispered.

She remains silent, a forlorn look spread across her face.

“You’re kind-”

“Amelia-”

“You know-”

“Just be quiet,” she sighed inwardly, not because she didn’t want to accept it, but because she was now afraid to utter it. It was a fragile reality, a hope that she felt could only exist here, at this very moment. It would be gone by the end of it. “Your turn to lead,” she mumbled, looking away.

Tom replied in a muted tone. “See you at the top,” he said.

***

Halfway into the sky, Amelia watched as Tom pulled himself away from the rock, risking a look below. That far up, she imagined the she was merely a faint white speck of white, gazing intently up at him. As he paused his climb, the she-wolf wondered what, as he snatched a glance of her, he saw in a wolf’s eyes.

A lump formed in her throat, but she decided against saying anything. Instead he swallowed what she wished to say, and with stirring hope, resolved to tell him when she made it to the top.

Craning her neck back, her eyes followed Tom as he stepped out from the rock, he reaching up onto the thin holds. Amelia held her breath as he steadied himself, attempting to attain the level of reserve she had. Her mind was full of all the subtle movements that the rock demanded, and she hoped that he would follow their commands. She willed him to show her that he could keep up with her, that he could read the mountain, prove that he was wild.

Continuing his ascent, it seemed to Amelia that he dared to step on nothing, though his foot gave a minute slip – it held, finding grip on the rough rock, but it shook his confidence.

Amelia knew all his attention must now be focused on the wall in front of him, though as the wind surged up towards him, and she fancied that it carried something of her. She thought that if he were a wolf, maybe he would smell her. Maybe, the subtle excretion of chemicals from the skin would tell him of her concern, or encouragement – he would not be alone, shivering within himself – stripped bare of bravado; a ground-dwelling ape severely out of place. She could tell he was nervous, each movement was tentative, and he kept glancing down at his feet, and though her neck had begun to ache from staring upward for so long, she could not pull her eyes from him.

Though her eyes were trained on him, they also had that predator’s gift of being aware of her surroundings. Despite concentrating on one point, Amelia was like the tiger on the hunt, seemingly able to know everything around it, even when its gaze is fixed solely upon the prey ahead.

Her golden eyes flicked up towards the movement – there – above him. A chunk of rock sailed down towards the white speck of Tom’s helmet. There was no sound, not even the clatter of crack of rock. Just silence.

“Below! Below! Below!” she screamed, she howled, that word – over and over.

The rock just kept sailing down, down without a care in the world, the air whistling over it. It tumbled through the air, rolling about like a ball.

Tom braced, shoving his entire body against the wall, pushing as if it were a locked door that he needed to get through – but it didn’t move out of the way.

Amelia heard a sharp clack, felt a sharp tug on the rope, wrenching her up off the ledge into the air – instant pain – but she clenched her jaw, she held the rope form firm – her body instinctively clenched every muscle – and combined with the old climbing mantra, she would not let go of the dead rope.

The name was apt. If she let go of it, they’d both fall to their deaths.

She slumped against the wall.

Blinking away tears, she dared to look up.

There was Tom. Limp in his harness. Swinging about in the void like a pendulum on an old grandfather clock.

Time played its weird tricks.

Amelia didn’t remember shouting. She only became aware of her throat burning, vocal chords trembling and raw. Any sound just became a low whine, snatched away by the roar of the wind.

Tom wasn’t moving.

He was just hanging there. Arms and legs splayed out uselessly, his head flopping about as if his neck were just a ribbon of flesh.

Morbidly, it sunk in now that her wish was true – that up here, she really was alone.

The roar in her ears diminished, and she began to feel herself edge out from deep inside her flesh. The she-wolf realised she was taking thin, erratic sips of air – as if her muzzle were now some elaborate drinking straw. She was shaking. Her forearm blossomed a violent crimson, running down over her paws until it pooled on the tips of her claws; dripping, as if dipped in inkwells.

Peering closer, she saw the white shimmer of bone. Her stomach lurched, her nostrils filled with the scent of blood. The rock must have hit her, but she didn’t let go of the rope. She had gripped the length so tightly that her claws sank into her black pads, but she still refused to let go.

Her senses assaulted her, over and over in every overpowering wave.

Just think of the pain… as a pair of way too tight rock shoes.

The thought was so absurd, she laughed. Everything seemed too surreal – the speed of it was too short, and instead her brain was left lagging behind, trying to work through the intensity of a few split seconds.

“Tom?” She howled, as though it would make a difference.

The air snatched away her words. She howled again, her mournful cry warping the letters, but he did not stir, and the rock echoed her cry without feeling or remorse.

The right course of action leapt into her mind, giving her a goal that kept panic at bay, and the pain out of her mind.

Secure the belay.

Something in the back of her mind leapt to the fore – a part of her wilder nature, buried away by years of civility – that part of the primeval wolf, that distant ancestor of hers who chewed her own leg off to escape the trap.

Despite her injury, she managed to loop the rope through, locking off the belay with plenty of half-hitch knots. It was safe to let go of the dead rope now.

Rather than attempt anything, she knew she needed her arm ready before she could do anything to help Tom. The silly thought about how a wolf would gnaw its leg off in order to escape a trap rose again in her mind. She empathised with her persecuted ancestors, feeling that for some reason, like the iron trap in the woods, the wilderness she sought to escape into had placed its own snare, and now, she too was betrayed by it.

Without even a pause, she used her claws to rip through the backpack dangling from a separate set of ropes and anchor next to her.

Biting down on the little red bag, she wrenched it open, pulled out the bandages, and wrapped them round, and round, and round. Then she fished out a steel pole from the ripped bag’s frame, and fashioning it as a splint, she buried it underneath more strips of fabric.

It was hard to concentrate, to keep track of time, to see through the red haze. Sometimes the pain leapt through, and at other times, she felt the muscles in her cheeks spasm as she clenched her jaw.

She became aware that the sun had shifted behind her. Amelia began to wonder how much blood she had lost. She felt dizzy, her head swimming. Was it the shock? The height? She didn’t know. She couldn’t think.

“Focus, Christ, focus!” She growled to herself, cursing as she tried to wrestle some control back.

“One thing at a time. Next thing.” It felt reassuring, solidifying her thin grip on the situation. “Yes. Next thing. Anchor? No. That’s on Tom. Ledge. Yes. I can lower him down here with me.”

Thankfully, Tom had stopped swinging, so once all the half-hitch knots were untied, she gently let the rope through the belay, inch by inch, trying to push thoughts out about the state of his gear. Every time she moved her arm, she felt the red haze grow at the edges of her vision, but bit her teeth and kept going.

There was no doubt in her mind though, no time for weakness, or a cry at her expense. She needed both paws to operate the belay and lower him down. Even if she could feel each pulse of her heart throb through her arm, she didn’t give herself a moment’s pause.

I need you.

The rope gave a sudden lurch, causing her to howl in panic. Above her head, she saw a cam wriggle in the sunlight, one of the two Tom had placed. It was clear to her that if both failed, she’d have plenty of time to scream before they both hit the ground.

She felt the air rush around her as she snatched a frenzied gulp of air, but the wind did not whistle through her ears. It was the memory of her fall on Muir wall, resurrected by the airy feeling growing in her head.

 Amelia felt her heart flutter, the world around her becoming unsteady. It was as if the strength she had in her arms drained away, gripping rope took all her concentration. Still, she didn’t rush; she lowered him slower still, trying to create as little force as possible.

When the rope finally went slack, depositing Tom’s unconscious body on the ledge next to her, she swallowed, but then succumbed to an outburst of tears.

Her courage had finally deserted her. Pulling the radio from the backpack, she sobbed, howled, pleaded into it. Despite all the holds she’d gripped, she never clung so tightly to that radio – she felt the plastic flex and creak.

There was little to remember. Her mouth felt try and rough. There was only the rush of blood through her ears, the soft weight of Tom as she cradled him against her chest.

His skin had turned a clammy, pale colour.

“No,” she croaked. “No. You can’t.”

I love you.

“No, Tom! Come on!”

Hazy, she bound the wounds `she could, but there was futility creeping inside her desperation.

“Tom? What did you want to say to me?” She pulled his head next to her heart, hoping the beat would restore life to him. “Would you have said you loved me?”

She closed her eyes, trying to stem her tears.

“I would have said yes. Yes, I do.” A wolf at heart, she’d never understood why others would cry; she never knew it was something she had in her. As she felt the warm drops run down her cheeks, trickling across her fur, it offered no consolation.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry I was angry. Please, don’t. No. Don’t you dare!” Her words were ripped away from her, replaced by a long, mournful howl that trembled through the air.

“You can’t,” she breathed.

“You can’t,” she prayed.

She couldn’t move. If she did, she felt like that would be the end. So she held him there, pouring back what she’d withheld from him. Her tears mixed with his blood.

That moment had an eternity to it.

Only when the bright glimmer of the rotor-blades shone in the distance, did Amelia bow her head and plant one, gentle kiss on the human’s head. The she-wolf only let her love go when the strong arms pulled him from her.