A Short Story

I wrote this day before yesterday.

The Corpse at the Top of the Mountain

When he had gone to the saint he’d been told there was a job for him, if he was up to it. It was to be a terrible job and it was to be his last. He had smirked at this. Here he was, the greatest adventurer in all the world being told that he was going to his death? Unlikely. And yet he had taken it. It was in the challenge. Many had tried and failed and this made it all the more important that he should succeed. Before he left though, the saint had said, “It will be your last task. You will know the time has come, when you find the corpse at your journey’s end.” And so it had begun.

It had taken him many years in travel alone. He found himself wading through swamps, crossing great deserts and sailing across the sea. He had borne it all without a hint of discomfort.

Crossing the land beyond the sea was the real challenge. It was here that many a hero had fallen. Aside from the wild and ferocious animals, there were armies of native men-folk who were hostile and dangerous. These too he had managed to cross.

Then, after a month of travelling across the frozen wastes of the North, he had finally come to his destination. A single white mountain, a mountain sought not for any prize it contained, but for the simple glory of being there. All he had to do was to obtain some snow from the top or get a good view of the corpse and he was through. He could retire to drinking ale with his friends. The words of the saint had come back to his mind and he had laughed at them.

He had begun his journey upwards in spring, what seemed to be the time that the snow should melt. Safe or not, he did not know, but he knew his goal was well within his reach. Nothing could stop him now. He had come to a little village. Just a small settlement with walls of stone, halfway up the mountain side. He stopped there to look for some company before his final assault, and found the natives to be friendly. He had stopped in at the common hut for a drink and that’s where he had met her.

She seemed very simple at the start, having lived her whole life in this village; there should have been nothing special about her. But he soon found, in conversation, her heart to be filled with fire, a fire not unlike the one that had driven him so far. A mutual fire arose between them, and soon he was trapped, mission forgotten, in the village of snow. It is not often that one finds the exact turning point in one’s life, but for him, this was it.

From then on, he had stayed in the little village, had courted his lover and eventually married her. He became more and more accustomed to his surroundings, and the people who were now his. He began to love his life and enjoy it. As the years passed he would grow to be an integral part of their society, raising a family of his own. He would grow old to see his own grandchildren and love them too. It was a wonderful life. But then she died.

He had stayed on, maybe a month or so after her death, before his old promises had come back to him. He said goodbye to his children and their children, and all the people he had come to know and love. It was not easy, but he hadn’t the heart to continue this life, so he chose to complete the other. He would climb the mountain, so that his final journey could end.

And now today, he stands there at the top, staring into the gigantic pit at the mountains peak. It was once a volcano, or it could not be this way. He descends into the crater, his eyes searching for the body he was meant to see so many years ago. He cannot find it, but it doesn’t matter. He is tired and he is old. The darkness swirls around him gathering like the falling snow. He lays his weary body on the ground and frees the last breath of air from his lungs. He dies.

Quite suddenly, but without any true sense of shock, he awakens to the glory of light all around him. As he stares up into the heavens, he sees angels beckon for him to follow. His spirit turns towards the ground in one last attempt to complete his worldly tasks. And there it is. The corpse. The corpse that would signal his death, his journey’s end. It is his own.

He turns back to the heavens, thankful to the saint. He floats up through heaven’s gate, into the waiting arms of his love.