A Man Covered in Rope

Author’s Note: This is a continuation of Farren’s journey through a limbo world where everyone is trying to reach the peak of a mountain but have a rope tied to their ankle. Start here or with Part 1.

Farren’s thin linen shirt was soaked and crunched like the snow under him as he to the peak of the mountain. He’d left the tree cover weeks ago and was grateful to no longer have to navigate his rope between thick trees. Instead, he was in an almost constant battle with the wind, snow, hail, and ice. Pulling his balls of rope against the wind, he slowly put one foot in front of the other. His teeth chattered, and his fingers and toes were numb.
Despite climbing for weeks, he could only see the clouds above him. Farren didn’t know if the peak was months away or merely days. Some nights Farren wondered if there was a peak at all or if he’d be stuck in this frozen windy wasteland for eternity.

Looking back at his rope balls, a habit he’d formed to make sure the trees hadn’t caught them up, he noticed there were only a few behind him. He reeled them in, and more came into his sphere of vision. Is the visibility that bad? Farren wondered.
Fog was common in morning and evening, but he’d been awake for hours it should be midday by now. Since he’d cleared the trees sighting the sun had been rare. He double checked that all his rope was there and turned up the mountain to continue his climb.
As he began to walk, Farren realized he didn’t know which was was uphill or downhill. Exhausted from a constant battle with the elements, he marched in the direction he thought was right. The going was easier than he remembered, and in his cold delirium, he realized he was hiking downhill.
Farren took a wide stance and attempted to gauge the distance between his feet. As he tried to measure the height difference between them to see if he was moving in even remotely the right direction, a gust of wind picked up. His misplaced balance and tired feet caused Farren to buckle under the wind and fall face down into the snow-covered ground.
He rolled and flailed around, searching for a way up and out of the snow. His hands moved snow in front of his face until they broke the surface and a light broke into the dim snow covered pocket Farren created. As his torso surfaced from the snow bank, the wind hit his body, as a wave of cold wind struck him he shivered uncontrollably.
The frequency of his teeth chattering doubled as Farren pulled his ropes towards him to make sure the trip into the snow didn’t trap them in place. Once the balls surrounded him, they protected his body from the wind. He wouldn’t describe it as warmth, but it was an improvement.
He untangled the rope ball that was closest to his ankle. Farren hadn’t touched this rope in years since it was the first bit he’d collected. As he untangled the ball, he wrapped his body in the cord. First, Farren wove the rope around his legs, trying to balance between tightness and mobility. He found a pattern that protected him but was still loose enough to move. Using this method, he covered his waist, chest, and arms. Farren imagined that if someone saw him, they’d have a hard time distinguishing him from the balls of rope he dragged behind him. Farren didn’t care. The makeshift outfit protected him from the wind and had reduced his shivering to an irritating shake.
He used the last of the rope ball to wrap his head up. He left a small slit for his eyes, not that he could see much in the white storm he was facing. He also left a hole for his mouth, but he wrapped his ears tightly as he suspected they would soon freeze off.
Looking down at himself through the slit in his facemask, he laughed at himself. He’d gone crazy in the pursuit of the mountain, and if anyone ever saw him, they’d judge him certifiably insane. Luckily for Farren, the only other people on the mountain were a month’s travel away.
Wrapped in rope, he didn’t feel the wind on his skin and the wetness of the snow didn’t soak away his body heat. He faced the white storm through the slit he’d made eyes and looked for the direction he thought was up. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could see in the short viewable distance that indicated which way he should travel.

He kicked at the snow beneath his feet that were now protected by the rope. He dug into the snow, compacting the walls around him to make room for the snow he was digging up from below him. He began using his hands which were wrapped in big ropey mittens and pushed the snow out of the way. He kept at this as the snow covered the top of the hole he dug. It was dark when he finally found what he was looking for.
Unwrapping a few fingers of his right hand, he touched the thing he’d just pulled up below him. It didn’t melt in his hand. The substance was gritty and tough. He’d found the ground of the mountain, it was cold and rock hard, but he could chip little bits away, and it refused to turn to water.
Farren cleared out a small bit of the snow around him and laid down. His body immediately told him which way was uphill as the blood rushed to his brain. He rotated one hundred and eighty degrees and slept, exhausted from the day’s work.

Blackness surrounded Farren as he traveled. Occasionally, Farren would climb up to see if the storm outside had subsided, but each time he checked, he found it was only harsher and darker than before. He hoped this was another indication he was traveling in the right direction. After all, the gods made it anything but easy to get to make progress in this world.
Soon he gave up looking for a light and traveled using only the incline of the hill. The slope of the ground led him up the mountain and nothing else. He packed the sides of the tunnel with snow as he moved uphill.
He’d lost track of time and slept when he was tired and awoke to dig through snow some more. He was chilly, but it wasn’t a bone-freezing cold as it had been on the surface.
As he traveled through the tunnel, he heard a wall collapse behind him. He didn’t think much of it, knowing he wouldn’t have to return that way, until he couldn’t move forward. He tunneled back through the collapsed snow and found that one of his last rope balls has been buried by the tunnel he’d created. He compacted the walls of the tunnel more firmly as he traveled after that, and made it a priority to keep his rope balls close.
After what felt like months of travel but by the count of his rope balls was only a few weeks Farren poked his head out of the tunnel to find that the storm had subsided.
Blue sky surrounded him, and he felt the full strength of the sun’s light. He held an arm up to block the light that came from the blue heaven and reflected off of the snow. As he observed his surroundings, he saw below him a foggy mist. It stretched to the horizon in every direction, making him look like he was only a few dozen yards from the ground. Farren could only conclude that this was the massive storm he had just spent weeks crawling through and the clouds that obscured the peak.
He turned around, putting his back to the storm, and saw in front of him the tip of the mountain. It was less than a day’s travel away, and he felt like he could reach out to touch it. It was white and serene against the clear blue sky.
The air was silent, and the wind didn’t buffet against his body, pushing him in directions he didn’t want to go. Farren shouted in joy that he was finally able to see the top of the mountain. Realizing that the sound in the silence might cause the snow to lose its precarious grip on the mountain, he covered his mouth.
The world around him descended into silence again. He stared at the tip of the mountain, wondering if he was the first or the hundredth to set eyes on it.
In the silence of the peak, he heard the crunch of snow underfoot. He looked down at his own feet wondering if they had begun to move towards the summit no longer under his control, but they stayed in their place on the top step of the stairs he’d built up from the deep snow tunnel.
Farren scanned the horizon and quickly saw what was making the sound. His blood began to pump as he saw a brown speck on the horizon. It moved towards him. The person looked down at their feet then scanning to see him.
Only Farren’s torso was exposed, and he quickly ducked down under the protection of the tunnel to hide from this stranger on the peak with him. Now that he had set eyes on the summit, he didn’t want another jealous traveler to get in his way.