The rock cracked beneath her hands, threatening to give way at any moment. Odessa tried not to panic, which was difficult when there were about 100 metres below her and hard ground. Not to mention the lack of rope to stop her fall. But a safety net wouldn’t have been anywhere near as exciting for the audience. They could have faked it, of course, but Odessa was all about integrity. It was half the image she sold. As one of the world’s only human adventurers, she was living proof that anyone could accomplish anything they set their mind towards. Using ropes would have been cheating.
Only metres above her, Donny, tied in at the waist, leaned out over the open air and expertly tracked her movements with his camera. His neatly clipped brown hair and beard somehow made him look like he’d just stepped out of a barber shop, unlike the rest of them, who were coated from head to toe in sand and sweat. Despite rarely ever stepping in front of the camera himself, Donny was the only one who ever looked prepped for it.
Somewhere behind him, another slightly gravelly voice shouted, “You got this Odessa!”
The voice belonged to Chaser, ever encouraging, sometimes to the point of being annoying, especially for Donny, who liked silence for his filming.
Odessa’s heart rate monitor beeped, letting her know she was pushing her limits. The doc had said to take it easy for these few weeks, and she would, just as soon as she got to the top.
In a weird way, the frantic beeping actually calmed her. Odessa could find doubt in her own head, but the second anyone or anything else spoke up against her, it was almost as if every voice in her head had suddenly decided to group together and cry out in unison, ‘fuck that, only we get to say shit like that her.’ Odessa had never had siblings. She had been the favourite and only child of two excessively loving, very human parents, but she imagined that this was what it might be like to have siblings.
As the beeping continued, she forgot about the deadly fall below her and found her focus. One foot then the other. A tiny edge for one toe, small but solid. She branched out wide with the other foot for a larger ledge. Her left hand tucked in a little too close. It was fine for now, but if she remained here, she would tire quickly. She reached for what looked like a good hold with her right hand, only to have it come away from the wall completely. The beeping faded into the background, overtaken but the sound of her breath, deep and even. Everything else on the wall was like glue. She was okay.
Her arm strained. It had been a long climb and she knew better than to relax too much. She had been a climber long enough to know that sometimes 30-metre walls could be scaled in seconds, while other times mere metres could take hours. There was no such thing as ‘almost there’ when it came to climbing. Either you made it or you didn’t.
She was so close, only a metre or two off, but fuck up now and she’d be done for.
She focused her breathing, keeping it calm. With keen eyes, she studied the wall for another hold that she might use. She ran her fingers over it carefully, the way one might caress a lover, feeling every groove. The eyes lied; the fingers knew the truth.
There! Finally, she found one. An tiny edge. Sharp but sturdy. Her hands were well chalked up by this point, her skin as dry as a desert, her nails bitten short and kept out of the way. There might be blood on her fingers by the end of the day, but tomorrow they were travelling again, so she’d have time to recover. Right now, out here, up this high, today was all that mattered.
With a 90-degree grip at each knuckle, Odessa moved her weight onto that hand. Just above her was a lip. A little more height and she could swing her left hand up and over. But she had no idea what the hold was like. For all she knew it could be a sloper, or maybe a glorious secret jug but she dare not risk a dynamic swing least it prove to be the former. So, slowly and steadily, she shifted her weight up. She put everything she had into it, knowing there would be no second chances. If she couldn’t do it the first time, she was unlikely to be able to do it the second.
She slipped her hand over the edge and felt smooth rock, an unfortunate sloper but a grippy one. There had not been enough climbers out here for it to become polished. This was rarely explored terrain, just how they liked it. And so, with the right angle and a delicate shift, she put just enough weight down on it to allow her to lift her left foot up.
But now her body jutted out, and gravity threatened to pull her out into a swing. Her eyes, soon emerging over the lip, spotted the next perfect hold. A jug so big it woulda’ made Dolly Parton jealous. With a breath of relief, Odessa slammed her hand into it.
But she dared not forget her feet. With most of her strength gone from the day’s climb, and the previous ones, she couldn’t rely on her arms alone. One foot up a little higher gave her enough of a boost to just get her pelvis over the edge, and with a strong kick out and seal-like maneuver, she wriggled her way up the last of the rock, finally collapsing next to the rest of the crew, most of whom had just completed the same climb.
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She raised one weary arm to slap a high-five on Chaser’s outstretched hand.
Then she lay down, exhausted but laughing, as Donny zoomed in on her expression with his camera. The people at home were gonna love this.
“We should have bought the parachutes,” remarked Bob from her right a few moments later. “Just look at that sunset. It’s just daring to be ridden.”
Bob, also known as Albert Bartholomew Fredrick George the Second, or just Bob to his friends, was the only one of the five still sitting upright and staring out at the red expanse of desert that lay before them. The dune buggy was down there somewhere, packed with all the rest of their gear and food. They were still hours from their main base, though. The sun wasn’t quite at the horizon yet but it was getting close.
“What!? You wanted to carry them up that wall?” inquired Chaser as he sat upright.
Odessa laughed as she did the same, propping herself on her elbows to look at Bob’s back.
Bob’s lithe outline glowed with the light in front of him, and the thick sticky-out tufts of his blonde hair made his head look like it was on fire.
“We should get some summoning infusements,” suggested Rhys contemplatively, the fifth member of their crew. Next to Donny, he was the tidiest most normal-looking of the lot, with a medium, strong build and his dark hair shaved almost right to the scalp. He often joked threateningly that one day he was going to shave Chaser’s blonde mullet while he slept. It wasn’t because he had anything specific against mullets; it was the length that bothered him. A few years back, he’d lost a partner to a scalping incident when her hair had gotten caught in her belay device. Now he was a stickler for making sure anything loose was squared away. He was also a tech head and a little obsessed at trying out anything new that might streamline their adventuring.
Odessa had sometimes contemplated the idea of growing her hair long, but that probably meant she’d have to stop dying it. The bright colours, like the blue she had in at the moment, required her to bleach it first, and the bleach made the strands weak, so they always broke before they got too long. It probably didn’t help that she wasn’t exactly gentle with the hair brush. There probably wasn’t a single strand on her head that was the same length as another. She hadn’t had her hair cut in quite a few years now, not since she’d left home to go and study mechanical engineering. She’d graduated and immediately taken to full-time adventuring instead. At least statics and dynamics was useful for rope work. There were several occasions when she’d taken over rigging up and even running the camera equipment for Donny. Truthfully, she wasn’t a bad photographer and videographer herself, but as she was often one of the only girls on the group trips, despite her flat chest and boyish figure, the audience liked her best in front of the camera.
“Or just invite a summoner along,” countered Chaser.
“Cheating!” objected Odessa.
“Says the human,” shot back Chaser with a grin.
She shook her head. “It ain’t real unless it’s just you and the rock.”
“Maybe you should climb naked then?”
“Fine, next time I will.”
“No sunscreen either.”
“What! Sunscreen doesn’t count.”
“Course it does. Sunscreen is aid. You said natural, that means natural. If you can’t climb fast enough to beat the sun, then what sort of climber are you?” teased Chaser.
“I’m just saying, with enough tools, even my grandma could climb that wall,” Odessa argued.
“And I’m just saying, where do you draw the line? You can’t summon sunscreen but you can carry ultralight gear. What’s the difference? Ropes are out, but climbing shoes are in?”
“The difference is when it makes it not a challenge. I know when it’s a challenge and so does the audience.”
“I kinda think a speed climb before getting sunburnt could be kind of cool, though,” contemplated Donny in that slow and thoughtful tone he often used. “We could call it, ‘Race Against the Sun.’” He held his hands up in a square shape as if he could already envision how it would look on the screen.
“Mmm, I dunno. Sounds burny to me,” interjected Bob, as with the bringing together of his hands, he magically created a large fireball that lit up his silhouette even more vibrantly. He turned to face them with a wild grin on his face, before snuffing the flame out.
“Funny,” remarked Rhys. “But I think if we don’t get moving soon, it will be a race against the sun. It’ll be dark in less than an hour, and it’s probably going to take us longer to get down. Plus we still have to find the car.”
Bob stretched in a relaxed manner. “I wouldn’t worry. Between your ultra-powerful high-tech torches and my fire power we shouldn’t have any problems. I say we stay here and watch the sunset.”
“Ehh, I don’t really wanna be looking for good anchors in the dark, man,” replied Chaser.
Odessa looked out at the glowing red desert before them. She kind of agreed with Chaser and Rhys, but at the same time, it was a mighty fine view. And despite Chaser and Rhys’ objections, neither one moved. Chaser wasn’t one for waiting. He’d have been up and off if he’d wanted to be, but tiredness and satisfaction with the day’s accomplishments made them all lazy. A couple more minutes wouldn’t kill anyone.
They waited just long enough until the temperature started to drop. This time, Rhys stood up.
“Right, time to move.”
They made their way down the ridge as far as walking would allow, and then they looped a sacrificial sling around a the edge of a solid bolder and rapped off down the side. Being somewhat less steep, the descent was harder here than where they’d gone up, but it meant less walking at the bottom. By the time they came off the rocks, they should be pretty close to the car.
The last section still involved a fair amount of scrambling, but that was more fun than a walk, at least for the first several boulders. By the twentieth rock, however, Odessa was wishing they’d taken the other route.
It was well and truly dark now, but they were all equipped with bright lights. They’d spread out across the boulders, each one finding their own best route, as if in some silent competition.
“Arrrgh!”
There came a sudden scream, and one light went tumbling down between the gaps in the rocks.
The other four lights scrambled across the rocks in a rush to his aid.
“Bob? Albie? Are you alright?” called Chaser once he realised who it was who had fallen.
From between the rocks, a small voice called back, “I think my leg is broken.”