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MOUNTAIN-HUNTING FOR BEGINNERS
In Ancient China, it was widely believed that, in times of great turmoil, mountains tear themselves up from the ground and travel all over the country.
Lies, I say. Well, either that, or the Chinese were blessed with the most well-mannered mountains I've ever heard of. Trust me, I have more than a little experience with the bastards, having lived on the most temperamental, volatile mountain one could ever imagine—which, to top it all off, was afraid of thunder.
. . . Later, names were named, fingers were pointed, and allegiances formed around the matter of who forgot to fasten it to the ground. Who was the last to leave for a nearby fair and did not double-check the lock on its pen. Or maybe it was some vile intruder. Perhaps it was one of those fairy folks that had taken to looting our gardens. Afterthoughts are as childish a game as picking scabs, but there's not much else to do on a train as we are chasing the mountain across the country.
We are quick to settle into a routine of the conjunctive mood, trapped in a web of calls not done, questions not asked, flowers not watered, words fluttering in little flocks above typewriters. It's too easy to believe there is some other version of ourselves getting on with life while we are stuck where we are, our eyes trained on the horizon.
"I might have left an iron on," an elderly lady frets, rearranging her purse on her skinny knees.
"Hope that the Well of Living Water doesn't dry up while we are off," a grumpy man says, clutching a skull to his chest.
"Don't get too comfortable," others say. "This is a temporary shelter."
The train smells of second-hand dreams, stale cigarette smoke, and incense; smells clinging to sweaty skin, smells carried in inner pockets like smuggled coke. What goes on beyond the window, this vague possibility of a mountain, is the only thing real, the innards of our train but a cardboard cut-out.
Sometimes we see our mountain through the window, but through the window only—its shape hazy beyond the thick glass, looming mistily at the horizon. At times like these, the deities of railroad stations, with their heavy army boots peeking out from beneath the ceremonial robes, motion at night for the train to move on in whatever direction the mountain is running off. But most of the time, peeking out of the window at night, we see nothing but ourselves; no more so than at any other time, though.
Sometimes we do leave the train—never for long—for occasions like weddings or burials, and our eyes never for a second stray off the skyline, as we are ready for the whistle to blow.
Tea on the train tastes of chlorine and faintly smells of watercolors. We take to gathering around imps in jars, semi-transparent storytelling imps that whisper stories about the mountain and its shady orchards in sweet, dizzying voices.
People die with their eyes on the windows, and we carry the newborns up to the frames so the horizon gets imprinted on their irises; not a trace of the mountain though, no trees broken in its wake.
Some shuffle guiltily closer to the exit and leave, never to be seen again. Some board the train to occupy the vacated seats—idle anthropologists, pent-up literary critics, noisy students with catchy bad poetry written in black ink on their wrists.
The trick to hunting mountains is, you give them all that you have left.
We wait, as we are not of the Impatient Folk. Could have been forty years, could have been more; it's been quite a while since we've last seen it. The youngsters learn the mountain through stories and pictures, its hazy sepia outlines etched into their skin. The speculations come and go, of the mountain dancing its way into the sea, of the mountain taking off and vanishing into the open skies.
And some of us have gone so far as to say that there was no mountain at all.
Yaroslava Strikha works as an editor and translator (from English, Russian, and Polish) for several Ukrainian publishing houses. Her credits include, though are not limited to, editing the Ukrainian translations of books 3-6 of the Harry Potter saga. She is a regular contributor to various magazines on issues ranging from book reviews to legends about dogs. Her first fantasy novel (Dunno, or The Last Game of the Lord) won 3rd place at the Smoloskyp Publishers young authors' contest in 2004 and was published in 2006.
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