Free The Everest Files by Matt Dickinson

turning the gun now directly on Shreeya. She resisted the overwhelming urge to run, flung her arms wide and braced herself in terror for what must surely come; the ripping impact of the bullets, her chest exploding in a rage of broken flesh.
    In that same instant, an explosion split the air as the cartridges finally detonated in Kami’s fire. The simultaneous detonation of gunpowder was ear-splittingly loud and the trees around the fire shook as they were peppered with the shot. The hunter span around in absolute shock. To him it must have seemed a whole battalion of men were out there in the woods, shooting at him.
    At that same instant a rock spun out of nowhere, striking him a glancing, and painful, blow on the shoulder.
    And then the cavalry really did arrive; Shreeya’s father and two other men bursting into the meadow shouting the children’s names. At this the hunter ran for his sack, searching for it frantically amongst the trees where he had left it.
    â€˜Hey! Hey, you! Stop there!’ Shreeya’s father yelled.
    But the hunter had had enough. He gave up looking for his bag and slunk away into the forest, his limping frame visible for just two or three steps before he vanished.
    Shreeya ran to her father and held him tight.
    At the sight of his daughter, exhausted but safe, all the fury in her father melted away. He was just happy to see her alive.
    â€˜Are you hurt?’ he asked. ‘He shot right at you … ’
    â€˜I’m alright,’ Shreeya replied.
    â€˜And the cats?’
    â€˜We saved them,’ Shreeya said, simply. And she moved towards Kami and embraced him hard. When she pulled away he found his shoulder was wet with her tears.
    From that time onward Kami and Shreeya were rarely apart. Shreeya became so much a part of Kami’s world that he sometimes found it hard to think of her as a separate person.
    In the evenings they would sometimes go together to bathe at the village well, Kami stripped to the waist, Shreeya, like the other girls of the village, bathing in a Sari to protect her modesty.
    It was a tranquil place; a glade filled with that mysterious green light that only a forest canopy can create. Chattering Mynah birds would come to sip at the puddles; butterflies with kingfisher wings danced in stray beams of sunlight. If no-one else was around, Shreeya would ask Kami to wash her hair – his calloused fingers relishing the silky texture of the touch, the spiced Indian soap filling the air with a heady scent of sandalwood and patchouli oil.
    When they were finished on those evenings when the sun stubbornly refused to die, they would go to a certain grassy terrace to dry off. Situated on a high ridge, this vantage point presented them with a view right across the Himalaya. In the foreground were wooded valleys and gorges; further away, hugging the horizon, the jagged profiles of Shishapangma, Ama Dablam, Nuptse and Everest.
    Kami could name them all; his father had taught him to recognise them when he was a young boy and for some reason the knowledge had stuck.
    Slowly the noises of the daytime would diminish, the hawks and eagles spiralling reluctantly out of the sky as thermals died away. Distant woodpeckers fell silent. Down in the village, the little engine at the rice mill puttered out a final few smokey revolutions and fell silent. Children chattered as they made their way home.
    In this place Kami and Shreeya felt invincible. The world was, after all, literally, at their feet.
    But always, as the day ended, they would have to go their separate ways, to homes which were apart.
    With every passing year of his life, Kami had felt closer to Shreeya. She was a friend in a way that Laxmi, his ‘bride’, had never been.
    The sense of injustice began to gnaw away at him. What right did others have to determine his fate? How could he build a life with a girl he hardly knew, when the one he truly loved would be living close by?
    It would be a life