I dreamed of impossible books about impossible things. Five mountains, each more impossible than the last, fractured and splintered piles of Jenga, folded into a white sky.
I dreamed of climbing Nikisue, the third mountain, yet unconquered, though in truth, I came to doubt that either the first mountain, Sistier, or the second mountain, Hartiani had yet been climbed either. And most impossible of all, the crashing oceans that must be crossed before the expeditions could even begin. Two great channels of whitewater, merging into a whirlpool, ice sheets severed by the warming climate, unapproachable except by hugging close to the shores of the wider of the two passages, the North Cascade, in kayaks that could be at any moment dashed against the rocks by a errant wave, in a place where all waves were errant, where winds could lift the kayak into the air and turn it upside down, never to be seen again.
No one knew how many men and women had been lost in this impossible quest. I knew from the moment I saw the first mountain, softly sloping before rising into heights that the eyes followed upward and upward until you felt as though you'd tip backward and slide back down to the bottom of the earth; I knew it to be impossible and yet I dreamed.
There were those who thought the fourth mountains, Contrari, would never be climbed.
The fifth mountain, the Unnamed and Unnameable, for no one had yet come up with a sound, a combination of letters, that could capture its magnificence. Oh, it had a title on maps, but none of us who lived near it called it by name, and it was an unacknowledged, unspoken agreement that only the man or woman who stood at the summit could give it a real name.
The first two mountains had been conquered, but with a troubling absence of all evidence, all cameras, all witnesses but the single survivors, returning half-dead, claiming to have done the deed, doubted by all and yet lionized and celebrated too, for all of us wanted to believe that it could be done, especially those of us who congregated on the small island of Sandora in the middle of the South Cascade, an island shielded by an accident of calm waters, at least, calmer in comparison to everything that surrounded this lone sentinel in the chaos. It was a dangerous journey even to get there, but once there, most never left. Most pretended to plan their expeditions, waiting for weather and conditions that would never come, whiling their time away with mythical tales and frustrated and scared ambitions, their money slowly dwindling until they became spectators to the new arrivals, still flush with funds.
We couldn't just fly there because of the mountains currents, the tornadoes of air that were permanent companions to the five peaks, obscuring them most of the time, except for rare and life-changing moments, when the sky cleared and all five jagged, pointed summits could be seen, one on top of the other, like broken corpses left tangled and shattered by the gods.
We all knew it would never be done, but we all dreamed of being the one who did it. The climber of five Everest's in a row, beckoning fame and glory and death.
On the walls of every dwelling, in every explorer's planners, there was the same photograph, taking from high above, an accident of fate, an off-course airship, a single passenger who understood the rarity of a clear day, who by happenstance had a quality of camera that could capture all five mountains, and take measure of the labyrinth of canyons and pinnacles. Thousands of routes had been diagrammed over this single picture, by thousands of would-be explorers, near and far, but every test had failed, for the terrain was too massive and complicated to be tamed by lines in a map.
I never expected to be there. I wasn't a mountain climber, or explorer, I was a merchant trying to land a few accounts selling high-end cameras in a backwater, who was a passenger in a plane, who saw a beautiful sight as I looked out the window, the clouds miraculously parting, the camera in my lap that I'd been fiddling with, trying to figure out, and lifting and taking that snapshot, a photo that made my fortune, that paid for my unexpected and unlikely new course, an ambition I'd have never thought I'd have, the be the one who conquered the most beautiful, in my opinion, of the mountains, Nikisue.
By the time we reached Sandora, the boat I was on had flipped over three times, a 21st Century Coast Guard vessel from old Earth, designed for waves one-tenth the size of the ones we'd just encountered, transported at enormous cost to this world because none of the current technology could handle the primitive conditions.
"Easy passage," the captain commented as I disembarked. I almost vomited on him in response. Though I'd been strapped in, I felt as though every bone in my body had been compacted into dust. I could barely stand, much less walk.
But I'd paid a fortune to get here, and was now an adventurer by rite of passage, and I was damned if I'd give the old salt any satisfaction.
"My gear?"
"Already off-loaded." Can't vouch for the condition, his shrug added.
The docked was attached to a narrow beach with a narrow opening through the cliffs that circled the island. The little town of Sandora was in a caldera, protected, at least by this world's standards, from the elements. A crew member of the transport beckoned for me to follow as he drove an overburdened sled toward the gap. I managed to trip my way over the beach and into the sudden silence of the crevice; until that moment, I hadn't realized how overwhelming the sounds of the surf had been.
