Free The Seeker by Karan Bajaj Page B

for something dry to wipe off the snow with. Finding nothing, he threw the backpack aside. He removed his shoes, took off one of the three layers of socks from his feet and wiped his face dry. He stared at the socks. Maybe, just maybe, the extra friction would help.
    Max put his shoes back on and pulled a woolen sock over each shoe, tearing them at the ends so they snuck over the entire sole. Standing up and leaning to one side, he walked slowly across the forty feet of glacier, catching the packed snow for support after every few steps. His heart thudded out of his chest. Again, he willed himself from looking down.
    He reached the other end of the glacier safely and stepped on land again. Science was far more reliable than God. He removed another layer of socks from his feet so he was wearing only one pair and jammed them on top of the shoes for the journey ahead.
    Max checked his watch: 9 p.m. Pitch dark. His headlamp was flickering. Where was he? He should have reached Gangotri by now. Or at least the abandoned ranger office he had seen two miles into the journey. All he saw was snow and rock, snow and rock, snow and rock—and the icy river below. And soon he would slip and fall headfirst into it. He was hobbling like a ninety-nine-year-old man because of his knee pain and could no longer walk straight. No guide was going to come out of a tent with Ben Gay and a hot flask of tea for him, unlike on Kilimanjaro when his knee had started hurting on his way down from the summit. He tied his towel around his knee. Gingerly, he put one foot down and took a tentative step, then another, slowly making his way down, the pain shooting from his knee to his head like a bolt.
    Not a sign of anything. He was completely lost, a mere speck in the infinite ocean of ice. He didn’t have a chance of running into the narrow trailhead in Gangotri. Should he just make camp here until the morning? What camp? He had nothing but a backpack. Without motion, he’d freeze to death. He moved faster. A sudden wave of nausea surged through him. Warm bile rushed into his mouth. He emptied his stomach and lay down spent in the cold snow. The ice seeped through his overcoat, sweaters and shirts. He didn’t care. He wanted to die.
    Enough.
    He pushed himself up and took a large sip of water. He took out the aluminum foil with his food from his backpack and smelled the food. The potatoes inside the bread had gone bad. But it was freezing here. If he died now, even his body wouldn’t rot. How could the boiled potatoes rot then? Maybe the potatoes weren’t bad. Altitude can make you smell stuff, see stuff, think stuff, that doesn’t exist, right? Say it, say it, he was going mad. No. He threw the bread away into the blackness surrounding him. He was now officially without food. His headlamp was almost out of battery, lighting the path ahead with just a faint, narrow beam.
    Max inched down through the blinding pain in his knee. Shouldn’t he see a flicker of light somewhere? Gangotri, Harsil, Dharali, some town in the distance? What had he been thinking? How had he entered the most formidable mountain range in the world so unprepared? He couldn’t even walk properly on flat land with his old knee injury. Why had he been so arrogant, so foolish? The snow fell faster. He covered his face to stop icicles from forming. Somewhere behind him he heard a soft, thudding sound.
    The Brazilian was here to save him.
    Ecstatic, he turned around.
    A pair of gleaming eyes. A furry face. A deer, no, a mountain leopard. Something.
    Max ran forward, away from the eyes, falling, picking himself up again, odd flashes of Sophia, an old priest and a brown woman passing through his head. He stopped when he couldn’t run any longer and looked around. The eyes had disappeared.
    Max sat down with his compass, shivering, heart bursting out of his chest, surprised he hadn’t steered off course during his mad, frenzied dash down. He wished he had. Maybe he’d see something other