Fury

‘And you, senor,’ Mateo says to Uriel, ‘are Gerry McEntee Junior from Johannesburg, South Africa. Okay?’

Uri shrugs, and Mateo hands out the three permits that bear no relation to any of us. The two bored guards at the checkpoint barely lift their eyes to look at them, and then we’re on the swaying Chachabamba footbridge, white water roaring below.

Ryan’s already in trouble as we begin our ascent up a steep, grassy hillside surrounded by a vast mountain range on all sides, snow lying on distant peaks. From valley to valley, I see dark storm clouds, the occasional flash of lightning. It’s only just after nine in the morning, but we’re moving through a strange kind of grey half-light and even I’m having trouble making out Ryan below us. He’s fallen so far back that another tour group coming up behind has almost overtaken him.

I walk back down the slope towards him. When I reach him, it’s automatic what I do: I take his arm. He’s still so angry that he tries weakly to shrug me off, but I don’t let him. His chest is heaving, the almost horizontal rain running down his face in rivulets, like tears.

‘I’m so far away,’ he grates, as he stumbles along, looking at his feet rather than the astounding, almost prehistoric grasslands around us, and certainly not at me. ‘Anything could be happening. I should be there.’ Then it slips out before he can take it back. ‘I wish I’d never met you.’

‘You don’t really mean that?’ I say, as wounded as if he’d taken a weapon to me. Despite all that has happened, I never wish that. Ryan is synonymous with life for me.

He drops my arm like it’s burning him. ‘I don’t know what I mean. Without you, I wouldn’t have Lauren back. With you, I feel helpless, when I used to be known for my strength and speed.’ His laughter sounds as harsh as his breathing. ‘I’m just some guy you keep around,’ he murmurs. ‘I don’t know why you even bother with me.’

He won’t let me defend us, just holds up a hand to silence me.

‘Don’t go snooping around in my head right now,’ he mutters, ‘because you won’t like what you see there. Go be a superhero, or whatever, with your superhero friends. Just give me some space — I need to think.’

He walks away from me then, deliberately pushing himself to pass Uriel and reach Mateo up ahead, though it looks like it’s killing him to do it. And it’s such a Ryan thing to do that I want to smile as much as I want to cry.

I rejoin Uriel, who’s walking easily. He seems taller, more alive out here, even in his human form, even though the elements are throwing everything they’ve got in our faces. Wind and water. But not fire. We’re bringing the fire.

Ryan falls back again, his face set and miserable, as we continue ascending sharply in driving rain, through the thinning air, thousands of feet up. Mateo warned us the night before that it would take at least three or four hours to reach the first set of ruins along this stretch of the trail, but the punishing pace that Uriel is setting is pushing Mateo, Ryan, even me, to go faster and harder. The other groups we left with are nowhere in sight.

In the middle of a raging downpour, Uriel starts to sing:

Lulley, lullay, lulley, lullay,
The falcon hath borne my mate away.

Suddenly, there’s no wind, no rain, just the sound of his voice. I stop dead in my tracks in astonishment — at the aching beauty in his voice, in the words, in the melody, cast in some ancient and peculiar minor key.

All of us have stopped, in a ragged, drawn-out line down the narrow, rocky trail, except Uriel, who keeps walking in long, easy strides, singing in a pure, clear, resonating tenor that seems to come back at us from all the surrounding mountains.

He bare him up, he bare him down,
He bare him into an orchard brown,
In that orchard there was a hall,
That was hanged with purple and pall.
And in that hall there was a bed,
It was hanged with gold so red.

And in that bed there lieth a knight,
His woundes bleeding day and night.

By that bedside there kneeleth a maid,
And she weepeth both night and day.

And by that bedside there standeth a stone,
Corpus Christi written thereon.

Mateo points into the sky, astounded, and a giant, winged shape seems to coalesce out of the darkness above us, out of the rain. I tense instantly, preparing to duck, or to fight if it be demon born — until I see that it’s a bird. Not the falcon Uriel sang of, but a giant black condor, its wingspan at least nine feet across. It passes so close overhead, in a single smooth sweep, that I feel a rush of air, hear the sound of its wings passing over, as Uriel finishes with his original refrain:

Lulley, lullay, lulley, lullay,

I join him, feeling almost compelled to do it, singing in an alto counterpoint that is rusty and hesitant, but as weirdly resonant as the thread of Uriel’s melody:

The falcon hath borne my mate away.

Our voices echo back at us from the stone before dying away. As the song ends, Uriel just keeps walking, as if we have not just produced the most glorious sound anyone will ever hear on this mountain.

Mateo shouts in wonder, ‘I have walked these paths for many, many years and I have never seen a condor pass so close! It’s as if he brought it down from the sky.’

Still awe-struck, he hurries to catch Uriel.

I continue uphill, occasionally glancing back at Ryan trailing behind us, head down against the rain. I wish he’d make some attempt to try and catch me; there’s so much I want to share with him. Carmen was a soprano, and I’m not! I want to tell him, though what use that information would be is anyone’s guess. Even when we’re not together, I find myself telling him things in my head, or storing up impressions, anecdotes, stories to tell him later, though we might never have a later. It’s got to be proof of love, or at least of madness.

I think this is the first bad fight we’ve ever had; and this edgy, unsettled, unhappy feeling I’m having is the feeling of being shut out.

My feet suddenly hit cut granite: an Inca stairway carved from living stone; and above the sound of the rain