The Snow Angel Read online

  The snow jar was one of her most treasured possessions. It sat on her bedside table alongside a posy of pressed wildflowers, an eggcup filled with volcanic ash and driftwood in the shape of a pouncing leopard.

  Like the climbing wall he’d built at the back of their home, they were supposed to make up for her father’s long absences. But it was a trade-off for him as much as her. That’s why he’d made Makena a promise. Next time he had a break, he’d take her on her first ever mountain adventure.

  ‘Just you and me, Baba?’

  ‘Just us.’

  Now at last they were on their way. Makena felt strangely shy. She was glad that her father did most of the talking. As he drove, he pointed out landmarks. Here’s where he’d gathered honey and chopped firewood to support his single mother and half-brother and pay for his primary school education. Here’s where he’d been struck by a flaming branch while fighting wildfires as a teenage volunteer.

  ‘That was the first time the mountain thanked me.’

  ‘How could it do that, Baba?’

  ‘Because, Makena, that is nature’s way. She’s like your mama. She might tell you off or punish you for doing wrong or being careless, but she also gives you the tools to make everything better.’

  He rolled up his shirtsleeve and showed her a lightning bolt scar above his elbow. It was a fraction of a shade lighter than the cocoa dark surrounding it. ‘See that? Practically invisible. Fixed it myself with mountain honey and aloe vera. Best burn treatment in the world.’

  They wound upwards through the mountain’s rings of vegetation. First came luxuriant forests of cedar, camphor and wild olive, their branches snarled with vines. Some bits had been decimated by loggers and those made Makena’s chest hurt, as if each missing tree had taken a piece of her. The mountain tribes farmed here too, their crops creeping higher and wider with each passing year.

  To each, Mount Kenya was sacred. The Embu called it Kirenia, Mountain of Whiteness, and thought of it as the Home of God. Many built their houses with front doors facing it.

  Tall, mahogany-limbed Maasai, wrapped in red Shúkà, grazed their cattle on the northern slopes. Gazing up from the triangle of shadow Mount Kenya cast on the surrounding plains, it appeared to them as Ol Donyo Keri, Mountain of Stripes.

  But none were as connected to the mountain as the Kikuyu and the Embu, her father’s tribe. For both, it was a spiritual home. In Embu and GĨkũyũ tradition, Ngai, the Supreme Being and giver of life force, lived on the mountain after coming down from the sky. The Kikuyu called Mount Kenya KĨrĨ Nyaga, God’s Resting Place. Its snow-capped peaks were Ngai’s crown.

  Looked at in that way, Makena thought, the jar on her bedside table did not simply contain melted snow. It held a sliver of God’s crown.

  Onwards and upwards they went. Makena had yearned for this day for so long she could hardly believe it was here. Face pressed to the cold window, she watched thickets of cloud-dusting mountain bamboo go by. In places it was ten metres tall, its yellow culms so densely packed they choked off nearly all light and sound. If a bird or ill wind set the bamboo whispering it could, her father told her, chill the blood of a grown man.

  When the road ended, they parked. Makena clambered out stiffly. For the first time since she’d left Nairobi, she was able to properly fill her lungs. The pure, cool air gave her a head rush. Adrenaline revived her. She’d worried that the reality of the mountain might not match her vivid imaginings, but its ancient energy surged through her soles like an electric charge.

  They’d stopped for supplies at a supermarket in Nanyuki and her backpack felt as if it was filled with rocks. Makena was glad. It tethered her to the earth. In her current state of bliss, she was in danger of floating up to the Lewis Glacier.

  Her father put a steadying hand on her shoulder. ‘Makena, it’s possible that we will encounter elephant and buffalo as we walk through the forest. Do you remember what I taught you? What is the first rule about meeting an elephant in the wild?’

  ‘The elephant always has right of way.’

  ‘Correct. The same applies to buffalo, zebras, snakes and leopards. Unfortunately, the buffalo is a very hot-tempered animal. Even if you give him right of way, he will sometimes get road rage and attack. What do you do if this happens?’

  ‘I must throw down my backpack and lie on the ground,’ said Makena, trying to convince herself that if a crazed, two-tonne buffalo were thundering towards her, she’d lie down in its path.

  ‘And why is that?’

  ‘Because the Maasai say that if you’re flat like bread, a buffalo can’t gore you or toss you because of the shape of their horns… Are you sure this is true, Baba? Has anyone ever tried it and survived? Wouldn’t the buffalo just crush you with its hard head instead? Maybe it would be better if I climbed a tree. I’m extremely good at climbing trees.’

  ‘You are the best tree climber in Kenya, no doubt about it. If there is a tree in sight, I’d recommend that you get on up. But a good mountaineer always has a Plan B. Say a buffalo catches you in the open, where there is not so much as a blade of grass. What would you do then?’

  ‘Oh. Ohhhh. Okay, I’ll lie flat.’

  He grinned. ‘Good girl. Now are you ready for the mountain, Makena?’

  ‘Ready, Baba.’

  SIGNS

  Makena awoke terrified, with no idea where she was. She came crawling up from the dank, dark swamp of a nightmare and surfaced blind, damp with sweat. Her cheeks were wet too, as if she’d been crying.

  For a minute that felt like a year, she could see and hear nothing. Gradually, mercifully, sounds and shapes made themselves known: the music of the nearby river, the curve of the tent-flap open to the stars, and her father in his sleeping bag beside her.

  She shook his arm urgently. There was no response. She shook him again. Nothing. Holding her own breath, she waited for him to inhale. He didn’t. She breathed twice more and still he was motionless.

  He was dead! Her baba was dead and she was alone in the wilderness, easy picking for hungry wild animals.

  Makena grabbed his hand. ‘Baba, don’t leave me,’ she half-sobbed.

  His eyes opened a fraction. ‘Don’t be afraid, Makena girl,’ he mumbled. ‘The hyenas won’t hurt you while I’m here. They’re not as fierce as they look.’

  Then he was gone again, snoring faintly.

  It was enough. Makena lay back down, reassured. Her pulse rate slowed. She told herself off for being so silly. So childish. Hadn’t her mama said that nightmares were simply brain soup? Fears, ideas and memories all mushed up together.

  The horror of the dream was not easily dismissed. The details had slithered away, slippery as a mamba, but the black, suffocating venom of it throbbed in Makena’s veins.

  She fixed her gaze on the comforting triangle of night sky. Before turning in, her father had tied back the tent-flap so Makena could lie in her sleeping bag and see stars sprinkled like sherbet above the black crags.

  Strange that she should suffer bad dreams after one of the best days of her life. She blamed the hyenas. Their laughter had unsettled her. There’d been nothing funny about it. One minute she’d been enjoying a peaceful dinner by the campfire; the next it was as if the dead were being raised.

  The first primal, ghostly whoop had sent her scuttling to her father’s side. He’d hugged her tight and told her the hyenas wouldn’t hurt her while he was with her. ‘They’re not as fierce as they look.’

  It worked until an unseen cackle of hyenas joined the chorus. Their deranged howls and coughs ricocheted round the gorge. Spooked, the fat, fluffy tree hyraxes responded with equally chilling screams. Makena saw red eyes and hunch-shouldered silhouettes lurking in every shifting shadow.

  ‘Should we hide in the tent, Baba? What if they gang up on us, like wolves?’

  Her father laughed but not unkindly. He was making her a bush hot water bottle – a brick-sized rock heated by the fire and wrapped in hessian.

  ‘No, Makena, they will
not be coming for our fresh curried trout and rice. They’re too busy squabbling over their own dinner – probably something rotten. They prefer carcasses when they smell more … interesting.’

  Makena was not convinced. She’d heard too many stories about hyenas using their immense jaws to snap off people’s arms as if they were twigs.

  ‘These Mount Kenya hyenas are clever,’ her father continued. ‘They know the Swahili proverb: “A cowardly hyena lives for many years”. It’s one that works for people too.’

  ‘But it’s bad to be a coward, Baba. If you’re a coward it means you’re weak and pitiful and can’t be trusted.’

  His eyes twinkled. ‘I can see you’ve given the matter some serious thought. As you get older, you will discover that life’s not so simple. There are times when it’s wise to be cautious and avoid too many risks, especially if you have a family and want to be around for years to take care of them.’

  ‘Like you?’

  ‘Yes, like me.’

  ‘But you’re brave, Baba. You wouldn’t be a climber if you were not. If being cowardly is sometimes a smart thing, does that mean being brave is sometimes a stupid thing?’

  He laughed. ‘It’s too late at night for trick questions. All I know is this. If you are brave for a noble cause, because you want to help others or fight for justice or save a life – perhaps even your own life – then being brave is the best thing of all. Now this chattering is making me thirsty. Are you going to help me make some chai or do I have to do it on my own?’

  Makena tossed and turned in her sleeping bag. There wasn’t a whole lot of sleeping going on. Her mind teemed with images. If she heard a noise outside, she tried to persuade herself that it was a rock hyrax looking for scraps, not a hyena on the look-out for a crunchy and delicious child. She reminded herself that, so far, the mountain had proved itself a friend.

  On their walk through the mossy glades of the cloud forest that afternoon, she and her father had not been threatened by marauding buffalo or elephants. Far from it. The largest creatures they’d clapped eyes on were a troop of colobus monkeys and a dainty, black-fronted duiker.

  At this altitude, the trees were mostly short, their branches twisted and plastered with lichen. The only evidence that elephants ever passed between them was a lone footprint. Makena had bent to examine the faint, lacy sketch of it. Her own boot prints were twice as deep.

  ‘But where are the others? I mean, it can’t be a one-legged elephant.’

  ‘They’re there if you know how to look for them, but you might need a microscope,’ her father told her. ‘Africa’s giants are light on their feet. There are Mount Kenya mole shrews who leave deeper tracks.’

  He showed her the place where he’d broken his ankle just hours into his first ever job as a mountain porter.

  ‘If I’d been doing something daring it wouldn’t have been so painful, but I just tripped over a tussock of elephant grass and landed badly. The other porters nearly died laughing. I nearly died of embarrassment.’

  Mobile phones had not yet been invented and two-way radios were never much use on the mountain. The expedition clients, wealthy businessmen, had been keen to proceed, and no guide or porter could be spared to help Baba. He’d been forced to hop, crawl and drag himself down the mountain to a point where he could wait for help. The only thing that had kept his spirits up was the tea he brewed from the yellow flowers of St John’s Wort.

  Makena had heard this story many times but seeing where it happened made it more real.

  ‘How come you didn’t just give up and choose an easier job? Lion taming or something. That’s what I would do if I broke my ankle on my first time up the mountain. I’d think it was a sign.’

  ‘A sign? A sign of what? That I was too clumsy or stupid to be a mountain guide and must give up on my dreams? No, Makena, climbing is like the journey of life. You start slowly. You try one way and if it doesn’t work out or you meet some obstacles, you keep searching until you find another trail. There is always a second chance. If you keep on walking and keep on trying, you’ll get there in the end.’

  A CLOSE ENCOUNTER

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay, Makena?’ her father asked for the third time. ‘You have been waiting for this day for so many years, I predicted I’d have to restrain you from flying up the mountain like a helium balloon. Instead you are quiet. Were you able to sleep? Did you wake me last night because you were afraid of the hyenas or did I dream that?’

  ‘You dreamed it, Baba,’ lied Makena. ‘If I was restless it was because I was a little cold.’

  ‘A little? Then you are stronger than I am. The night frosts are vicious. A famous professor by the name of Hedberg once said that on equatorial mountains such as Mount Kenya it can be “summer every day and winter every night”. Hopefully, your bush hot water bottle kept you warm.’

  ‘It helped so much. Sorry if I’m not talking, Baba. I’m trying to take everything in so I never forget it.’

  That part was true. The steep, muddy descent to the River Kathita was already lodged in her memory. In the arc of her father’s headlamp, the ripples and eddies had been as black-gold as an oil slick. The current had sucked at her legs. Stepping from rock to slimy rock in five a.m. darkness had been heart-stopping too, but in a good way. It was the kind of adventure she’d always longed for.

  At first light they’d passed the Rutundu Log Cabins where Prince William had proposed to Kate Middleton. Makena tried telling herself that nothing evil could happen in a place where future princesses accepted marriage proposals, but the sense of foreboding that had gripped her since her nightmare clung to her like a snakeskin.

  She was tempted to feign an injury and end their expedition right there. What if the dream had been a premonition? But her father had chosen that moment to turn to her with a smile.

  ‘I’m so glad you are here with me, daughter. I’ve waited eleven years to share my mountain with you. I thought this day would never come.’

  Feeling guilty, Makena looped her arm through his and walked with more enthusiasm up the rocky trail.

  As the sun rose, it revealed a moorland landscape of staggering beauty. Apple-green Erica, taller than Makena and speckled with tiny pink flowers, carpeted the slopes. A Verreaux’s eagle, the most regal hunter in all of Kenya, wheeled overhead.

  Watching the black eagle calmed Makena. She tried to keep it in sight. Her father crunched along the path beside her. ‘My Scottish clients tell me that the moors and tarns on Mount Kenya remind them of the Highlands and lakes in their own country. They don’t call them lakes, though. Their word is “loch”.’

  All Makena knew about Scotland was that the men wore tartan skirts and everyone ate haggis, which her mother had explained was a combination of cow’s stomach lining stuffed with sheep’s heart, liver and lungs and oatmeal, a much-loved national dish. Makena, a vegetarian, had been in no hurry to visit the country.

  Now she revised her opinion. If the Scottish Highlands were anything like this, they must be close to heaven.

  At Lake Rutundu, a rowing boat was waiting for them. Makena clutched at its sides as her father pushed off from the shore. The wooden seat felt chilly beneath her trousers. Jurassic trout glided through the clear shallows beneath the boat’s peeling hull.

  Breakfast was peanut butter and jam sandwiches, a bruised banana and a flask of chai out on the water. The lake was so still the boat barely shivered beneath them. They bobbed in the reflection of the mountain, an extinct stratovolcano that was over three million years old.

  Her father was in his element. ‘My ambition is to have a view like this when me and your mama retire. I’m not in love with cities. I have no wish to become a millionaire. I want to grow old looking out at mountains and water.’

  Makena dropped her crusts overboard. A quicksilver shoal shot up to snatch the crumbs.

  ‘Which is the best mountain, Baba – Kilimanjaro or Mount Kenya?’ She knew the answer but never tired of hearing it.

  H
e scoffed. ‘Kili is a giant hill, easy for mzungu tourists. Mount Kenya is a real mountain.’

  ‘But Kilimanjaro is the highest in Africa. It’s close to six thousand metres. Mount Kenya is only five thousand one hundred and ninety-nine metres.’

  ‘Yes, but before it erupted Mount Kenya’s original crater was a thousand metres higher, making it the highest in Africa.’

  Using her sleeping bag as a pillow, Makena lay back and mentally mapped the route they’d be taking to Lake Alice. It was a tough but straightforward hike via Rutundu Hill. What could go wrong? What was it that her intuition was trying to warn her of?

  ‘Do you ever get scared when you’re on the mountain, Baba? Have you ever been afraid of dying?’

  ‘Once. I was climbing the Diamond Couloir, an icy gully that splits the Southwest face. You start with eight metres of overhanging rock, dry-tooling. Dry-tooling is—’

  ‘—When you climb a rock face with an ice axe and using crampons or rock shoes,’ finished Makena.

  He laughed. ‘I always forget – you are already a mountaineer in theory. All you need is some practice. So anyway, I got through the hard part – the overhanging section – easy enough. But halfway up the couloir, a chunk of ice calved. That’s what they call it when seracs fracture: calving. I felt the draught of its passing. If I hadn’t shaved, the serac would have done it for me. Hakuna Matata. No worries. I am here to tell the tale.’

  ‘You could have died, Baba!’

  ‘But I didn’t. Instinct told me that all was not well on the mountain that day. I was on the look-out for disaster and I was ready for it. Each climber has his or her rules of mountaineering and those must become second nature. Ignoring them, forgetting them, can cost you your life.’

  ‘What are your rules, Baba?’

  ‘You know them better than I do, Makena.’

  Still he ticked them off on his fingers. ‘Always triple-check the weather and your clothing and equipment before setting out to climb even the easiest or most familiar route. Do all you can to minimise risk. Keep the pace of the slowest person in your group. Listen to your body and your mind. For me, that’s number one. Trust your intuition.’