Gardner

A Mountain Story
By Logan Gardner

They were in the mountains, and the mountains were in them: that is what
the boy’s people believed. They were like the rivers of sweet, thawed snow that
raced down the rocky slopes in the Colorado springtime, into the rivers and out
towards the sea, where the sun erased the memories of winter.
They were like the purple mountain flowers that grew up high in the rocks,
where the water was scarce and the air thin and the sky closer. Those flowers grew
in those places because they loved the mountain, and they held the mountain not
only with their roots, but with their hearts as well.
When a boy loved a girl in their village, he would climb up to the sheerest
heights and he would pick her one of those beautiful drops of violet dew that hugged
the mountain with such desperate passion, and he would give it to her. And if she
loved him too, then she would put the flower in her hair and leave it there until its
colors faded.
When it died, she would put the flower’s shriveled little petals in a box and
she would keep it with her forever, as a reminder that she should cling to the man
who gave it to her like the flower had clung to the mountain.
When a father died, his son would take the journey a second time, so that the
father could be buried with a flower clutched in his grasp. It was said that the spirits
of those who were buried in this way would find the mountain in the next life.
The village of the people was at the base of a very large mountain, and
though the soil was poor and the hunting only fair, they never moved from the
mountain’s paternal shadow. When they killed one of the goats that pranced gaily
through the rocky cliffs, they would cut out its heart and hide it in a crevice where
no vulture or cougar could reach it, so that the goat would always be part of the
mountain too.
The boy remembered the first time that his father had ever taken him into
the foothills for a hunt. He had been very young, and had only been able to gaze up
in wonder at the magnificent range that loomed before him, like the teeth of some
buried leviathan.
“Father, do you think every mountain has a story?” The boy had asked, his
tiny voice full of awe.
“The mountains were ancient and gray when our people found them. Of
course they have stories; probably more stories than we can count.” The father had
bent down next to his son, to see the mountains how a child sees them, and he
whispered, “If you listen closely, then you can hear them tell their stories in quiet
moments, too.”
The father had had kissed the boy on his little head, and the boy had smiled
widely. On that same day, the father had shot a lean highland doe, and he had cut
out the thing’s heart, and handed it to the boy. The boy had gone up to the
mountain, dug a shallow hole with his hand, and put the heart into it, still beating.
Reverently, he’d covered up the hole and set a rock on top, to make sure the wolves
would not find it. That was when the boy had first loved the mountain.

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The boy grew older in the shadow of the same mountain where he’d buried
the heart of the deer, and he learned to love it more each day as he grew. The wise,
mystical medicine man taught him many things: how the thick green pads of moss
that grew on the rocks towards the bottom of the mountain could be used to absorb
blood from a wound. He taught him how a mother giving birth needed to be laid on
the brown grasses that grew 300 steps up to ensure her child was born healthy. He
showed him how inhaling the smoke of burning needles from the thin pine trees
that grew thousands of feet up could show a medicine man things that few see.
The boy grew strong under his father’s hand. He soon was one of the
greatest climbers and hunters of the young men in the village. However, though he
was strong and big, he was prone to quietness and thoughtfulness, and never took
the same risks the other young men climbers took. The other boys didn’t
understand him, so they left him alone, but they were kind to him too.
It was around this time that the boy began to love a girl. He always found it
hard not to look at her eyes. Her eyes seemed to hold a light all their own. They
were a tawny brown, but flashed with a green as brilliant as the forest leaves when
sunlight filtered through them. Others might call her eyes brown, but the boy
always saw two bright emeralds inside of them.
Her hair was wild and black and looked best when it blew behind her in the
warm breezes that came across the prairie, and the noon sun shone from it and
made it glitter like volcanic glass. Sometimes, the boy could talk to her. He usually
said the wrong things, and never the things he wanted to say.
In a winter blizzard, the boy’s father froze to death on the mountain. The
blood congealed in his extremities, and his arms turned black while his red-brown
skin turned white as snow.
Though the boy was too young, he insisted that the climb for the purple
flower should be his. He braved the climb, and reached the high places where the
purple flowers grew, and he plucked one. But a rock gave way beneath his feet, and
he twisted and broke his leg on the way down. The braves went looking for him,
and found him in two days, with a tongue like sandpaper and a leg like a tree struck
by lightning
The boy’s leg healed fairly well, though he still walked with a slight limp.
Losing his father and his leg had taken much of his joy. He began to drift from the
others, and soon he’d shut everyone out, spending most of his time up in the
mountains with nothing but his thoughts for company.
He probably would’ve left the village had it not been for the medicine man.
The medicine man had always taken interest in the boy’s curiosity when he’d been a
youth, and liked the boy’s insight as a young man even more. They had become the
closest friends when the boy’s leg had broken, and, since the boy could no longer
hunt well, the medicine man brought him on as his apprentice, and the boy often
hunted for the things the medicine man needed to perform his duties. The medicine
man promised the broken boy that he would one day be medicine man. This
brought the boy little joy.
In those days, it seemed to the boy that only one thing would ever bring him
joy again. His girl had grown up some by now, and she was the most beautiful girl in

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the village. The boy always made it a point to go see her sometimes, and he said the
right things more often now. But still never the things he wanted to say.
The girl noticed the boy in the slightest of ways; she found him amusing and
kind and even a little sweet. She had already fallen in love, though, so she never
really saw him. She had fallen in love with the mountains. She spent her days
suspended thousands of feet in the air, laughing as she defied death and climbed
ever higher. She didn’t know why she loved the mountains, but she loved them with
the same passion she could have for any man, of that she was certain.
The boy decided that it was time for him to make his second climb for the
purple flower. The girl with the green eyes consumed his every thought, and he
figured that delaying getting the flower any longer would only continue to leave him
in miserable indecision. He was an older, wiser climber and he made the ascent
with little trouble (he was big, but his toes and fingers were strong). He climbed to
the place where only the most perfect flowers grew, and he spent hours upon hours
belaboring over which flower was the most beautiful, which flower would make his
love fall for him. Eventually, he found a flower that he was certain would win the
heart of any girl in the village. It had eight broad petals that were all exactly the
same size. They were the same purple as the sky was in the twilight when the sun
set over the range.
He went back down the mountain, and took the same easy route he’d taken
the first time he’d come down. He didn’t slip this time; his feet were as sure of their
purpose as his mind was. He had left early that morning, and when he reached the
village a day had passed and the night of the next day was dark. The stars laughed
and twinkled like a thousand jesters in the sky.
He reached the village fast, hobbling exuberantly. He bounded into the
village, and ran towards the place where he knew that his love would be. There was
a great tree that grew near the village, and she often liked to climb up to its highest
branches and keep watch for warriors from other tribes. He saw her at the top of
the tree, and he urged his legs ever faster. He scampered up the tree, ignoring the
protests of his injured leg, with the flower between his teeth. When he got close he
quickly he hid the flower so she wouldn’t look down and see it. He pulled himself up
into the canopy. The girl was not doing her job well; she was peering off into the
mountains when she was supposed to be watching the forests and the prairies for
the enemies that lived in those places.
“Hello,” he said to her. She didn’t reply at first, her emerald eyes swimming
in the sky. Finally, she said,
“Hello, mountain brother. Have you come to take my sky?” She asked,
looking at him curiously.
“No, the sky belongs to you, as it should.” He said with his heart pounding
rapidly.
“Then what brings you to the watcher’s tree? What do you need from me?”
She asked him, staring up at him with a curling of her lips. Things seemed to happen
slower when she was smiling at him; he found it hard to form words.
“Nothing, just the view.” He lied, cursing himself. He wouldn’t let his climb be
for naught. He had to say what he was thinking; there would never be a better time.

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“The view is pathetic down here. I like the view better at the summit, so
much more beautiful.” She said, wistfully staring off into the range. He wanted to
demand that she stop looking off into the distance. He wanted her to look at him, to
really look at him. He was sure that his heart was written plainly across his face, if
she would just bother to see.
“Well you spend more time at the summit than anyone else, so you should
know.” He said, feeling dismay creep in on him, ruining the conviction that had
taken him to the top of the mountain and brought him to the tree.
“But our summit is so small compared to some of the other mountains. I
have spoken to the eagles, and the eagles tell me that there is a mountain many
moons west of here that stretches all the way to heaven, and at its summit you can
see the entire universe. That is the mountain I want to live on. That is the mountain
I am going to live on.” The girl told him dreamily, breaking his heart as she did.
He wanted to shake her out of the idle dream, but he remembered what the
medicine man had told him once “once love has taken hold, there is not a root, a
berry, or a seed that I can cure it with.” He felt certain that she loved the mountain,
and fear of falling had already broken the boy’s will.
“Will you live on this mountain alone?” The boy wondered sadly.
“The mountain is all I need. I want nothing to distract me from it; I simply
wish to reach its peak and look down for all time.” She turned away from him and
began to climb down. The boy followed her, his mouth too full of the ashes of his
dreams to say anything else to her.
The girl departed after a month, riding one of the horses that she’d gotten by
trading with a prairie tribe. The boy planted the girl’s flower in a clay vase. It lived,
but always with a droopy sadness bending its stem. The boy stared at it and thought
of his lost love for many days and nights.
“Why not give it to another girl, in the village?” The medicine man asked him,
after eight moons had been born and died and the boy’s pain did not ease.
“What?” The boy said dumbly. It had never occurred to him to love anyone
else. His love for her had been a part of him for a long time; stopping now would be
like cutting off his leg because it had broken.
“You will soon be medicine man, the chief’s wise and respected counselor,
and I have never seen a flower half as beautiful as that one. Surely you could win
any other girl with that.” The man pointed to the flower held numbly in the boy’s
hand.
“I know. But the flower is hers, whether she wants it or not. I can’t give it
away.” The boy didn’t expect the shaman to understand, but he did.
“Does she mean more than this place to you? Does she mean more than your
mother, still mourning your father’s loss? Does she mean more to you than your
mountain?” He demanded to know.
“She is the only thing I see, now. I wish it were not so, but it is!” The boy
cried in a voice as desolate as the cracking of glacial ice.
“Then you must go after her. She travels toward the highest mountain, west
of here, where not even the goats dare climb. Nobody has ever climbed to its
pinnacle; many believe it goes on forever.” The medicine man decided, knowing
there was nothing else the boy could do. The medicine man had been in love once

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too, “I have seen the mountain the girl wishes to climb. If you wish to reach the top,
then you must have some of my magics. The first are these berries; they will give
strength to one whose courage does not waver.” He said, handing the boy a pouch of
berries.
“The second magic I will grant you is the magic of my talisman. It will grant
wings to one who will not let go.” The medicine man said, removing the necklace
from his neck. On it was a number of shells, claws, and a black feather as long as the
boy’s foot.
“The third magic I will grant you is the magic of my staff. Through it, all
things unseen shall be brought into the light.”
The staff was black and twisted and made of wood older and stronger than
most stone. It was the medicine man’s greatest treasure, and in its grooves was all
the wisdom of those who had once carried it.
The boy embraced the medicine man and returned to his tent, leaving the
next morning and traveling in the western way. He lost the girl’s trail alongside a
place where the river bent, and after that he followed his heart, which knew where
the girl was when his eyes did not. He travelled up and down mountains even
greater than his own. His leg ached with a fierce, unrelenting pain as he walked, and
soon he walked with his body bent over the medicine man’s staff for support.
Five moons had been born and had died when the boy first sighted the
mountain. It stretched high into the clouds, so high the boy could not see it, and
looked barren of all life even at a distance. He knew that the girl was likely already
climbing; she could travel far faster than he could with her two good legs.
Two more moons had lived and died, and a third was living when the boy
finally reached the mountain. He looked up at it and for the first time felt doubt at
the task that was ahead of him. The mountain was barren for a reason; its surface
was steep, sheer, and jagged. He knew, despite his desire to begin battling the
behemoth, that to make the journey without the light of day to guide him would be
suicidal. So the boy kindled a fire, wrapped himself in his father’s goatskin cloak,
and closed his eyes.
When he slept, he dreamt, when he dreamt the green-eyed girl was all
around him. Sleep was no reprieve; in slumber his heart was laid bare for himself to
see and he could lie to himself no longer.
She taunted him in his dreams, running towards him and planting a light kiss
on his cheek and then running outside his grasp, laughing while she did. She was so
much quicker than him, and next to her he felt slow and inadequate. She always
smiled impishly while she tormented him, and her smile was frighteningly beautiful.
He didn’t know why, but he kept playing her game. Kept letting her tear at his heart
with her kisses like daggers and haunting smiles.
He was grateful when the sun woke him. He grunted in pain at the stiffness
of his leg, and had to spend several minutes massaging away the pain like the
medicine man had once done for him. He missed his friend, but he missed the girl
more.
He looked up at the daunting rock face and knew that he would be unable to
climb it with his leg in the state it was. He suspected that there would be something

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he could do. He reached into the bag the medicine man had made for him, and he
removed a handful of red berries.
He put the berries in and bit down, forcing himself to hold the berries in as
the bitter flavor diffused into his mouth.
He swallowed with difficulty and felt his entire body flood with warmth. He
flexed his leg, and found that he could move it without problem.
The boy climbed at first a steady pace, always testing a foothold before he
used it and never allowing himself to reach too high or too far. He climbed for many
days. The climbing was steep, but footholds and handholds were plentiful and he
felt truly strong for the first time since his leg had broken. The sun was beating
down with the intensity of high noon and sweat poured across the boy’s broad back.
He was, not for the first time, wishing that he’d been born just a bit smaller. It
would make the climb easier. His people were not meant to be so tall.
As the boy began to wish on things he could not change, he felt the warmth
begin to fade in his legs. In about an hour, the boy’s progress had greatly slowed,
and the warmth was gone. He began to force himself to climb faster and faster,
beseeching the mountain to stay strong beneath him. The sun was beginning to
disappear, and the boy knew he could not climb by night. Even more frightening
was the ache he was beginning to feel in his muscles. It was an impossible ache. He
knew that it was unwise of him to eat the berries, since they had given his mind
strength his body did not have. The boy was nearing the place where the cliff ended.
He managed to put both his arms onto the top ledge, but he found that he was too
weak to pull himself up. His body gave itself up to exhaustion, and he dangled from
the ledge, with nothing but his arms to sustain his grip and keep him from
plummeting into the abyss from whence he’d climbed.
He hung there like a dying man for hours, and his eyes closed and his
consciousness dimmed. He no longer thought of anything, not even the girl with the
green eyes. He vaguely recognized that he couldn’t he even picture her if he tried.
This angered him: that he was about to die in a vain quest for her yet he couldn’t
even see her face any longer.
“You made it a long way to die here.” A voice said. The voice sounded like a
storm, like the roll of thunder and the crackle of lightning and the whistle of the
wind.
“You could pull me up.” The boy’s voice was a hoarse whisper in comparison,
and it made him sad that he should sound so weak in the face of such raw and
terrible power.
“I could, but I could’ve taken you to the top of this mountain from the
beginning. I have not chosen to help you yet, why should I help you now?”
The boy looked up at his potential savior. It was an eagle, he thought at first,
but he soon realized that it could not be. It was larger than he was, firstly, but that
wasn’t the only difference. Its feathers were a shiny black instead of plain brown,
and its eyes were a luminescent green that the boy thought was somehow familiar.
“You are the eagle that told her about this mountain.” The boy observed
weakly.

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“Yes, I am. I could see that she was, in her heart, one of us. You knew it too,
in some way. Why do you selfishly try to take her from the place she belongs?” The
bird asked, more curious than angry.
“She belongs with me. There is nowhere she will be warmer than in my
arms, nowhere she will be safer than in my sight, nowhere she is more loved than in
my heart.” The boy proclaimed defiantly, raggedly.
The bird considered the boy through his bright eyes that saw all, “I
remember a man much like you. He was a medicine man, but his lover died in his
arms and he could not save her. He went mad, but he knew that there was only one
way to cure death.”
“How?” The boy asked, forcing himself to hold on.
“Death can only be cured by breaking the egg of a thunderbird over the head
of the deceased. So that’s what he aimed to do. He climbed up this mountain,
clawing his way inch by inch until his hands were bloody and his body was failing.
He climbed into my nest, and he tried to steal of my eggs. I fought him, and the
battle was the greatest I ever had to face. He tore away one of my feathers. I cast
him from the mountain, but he used his magic to save himself. I let him go; he knew
he’d made a mistake and that he needed to move on.” The bird was almost
sympathetic now. Even thunderbirds can understand the follies of the human heart.
“You were wise to free him. He has become a great man, and has saved many
lives.” The thunderbird grabbed the boy by the goatskin and set him on his feet,
standing at the mountain’s first summit. Were he to reach its true peak, there would
be thrice more climbs to make. The boy understood now that it was foolishness to
believe he could climb such a mountain by his own power.
The boy pulled the thunderbird’s feather from his pocket, and let its smooth
ebony catch the last rays of the setting sun.
“The medicine man who took this from you told me it might be exchanged for
a set of wings, if I refused to let go.” The boy relayed the message, and the bird’s eye
flashed in the sun for a final time.
“The medicine man has indeed grown wise, to use his young friend to deliver
it to me. I will take you to the peak.” The bird lowered his wing and allowed the boy
to climb aboard his strong back. He let himself fall from the cliff, but soared after
beating his mighty wings only twice.
The bird bore his weight as if he were just a feather, and the boy thought that
riding the bird was like being on the back of a lightning bolt. He screamed wildly
with the pure exhilaration of the flight. His eyes streamed with tears and his blood
coursed with pure adrenaline.
Things seemed to move slower when he dismounted the great bird’s back.
He found that he was high above the clouds. The mountain did indeed stretch all the
way to heaven. The stars were closer than the ground, but it still seemed that they
were laughing down on the boy from their celestial thrones. The boy did not care
what the stars thought; he had spent twelve moons away from his love and he
couldn’t wait another moment.
He called to her, and she turned around, as beautiful as she ever had been.
Her eyes still flashed with green and her smile was still the most beautiful

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nightmare the boy had ever known. But she looked at him like a stranger, without
recognition.
“Who are you?” She asked him, the smile disappearing like morning mist.
“I am the one who climbed to the top of our mountain to pick you a purple
flower. I am the one who climbed by faith and rode the lightning to come to you
here. I am the one who is taking you home.” The boy announced with clarity that
was almost cold in its determination.
The girl was puzzled, “But this is my home. This mountain protects me from
all else. From my perch here, my mountain and I can be alone without the world to
bother us. Why have you wasted my time when I clearly don’t love you?” The girl
demanded to know.
There was a pounding in the boy’s skull and his ears rang. He was suddenly
abundantly aware of the sluggish way in which his heart moved the blood through
his veins. Everything he had built himself on was suddenly pulled out from under
his feet.
“If this is the truth, then the staff will say so. Staff, reveal what is true.” He
commanded the thing desperately.
And the staff shone with a light that was harsh and bright, and both the girl
and the boy saw things as they really were.
The girl saw that the mountain she was standing atop was starkly barren and
utterly without any love for her. How could a mountain love her? Can a mountain
love? She didn’t know the answer, but if the mountain could love then it didn’t love
her.
The girl looked at the boy then. She noticed, for the first time, that he did
love her. Maybe she had known it before, but she really, really knew it now. She
realized for the first time that he would say anything, do anything, and be anything
just to be with her. And she realized just how powerful a thing that was.
None of this changed how she felt for the mountain or for the boy. She still
loved the mountain and the boy was still insignificant in stature or power or beauty.
But he did love her, which was a thing more significant than the boy himself.
The boy realized that he had forsaken everything he had known for a girl that
was structurally the same as every other girl in the village. Maybe she was special,
but she wasn’t as his special as his mountain, the one where he’d buried a deer’s
heart as a child. He remembered that his mother had lost both her father and son to
the mountains in five years, and that he owed it to her to go back. He looked at the
girl once more, and he was sad that he couldn’t take her with him. He still couldn’t
help but think she was special, in spite of everything.
It was a shame, but she loved the mountain and he had wasted too much time
thinking that she could love something else. He took the ugly, crumpled-up remnant
of the purple flower he’d picked a year ago, and he threw it away. He felt lighter
afterwards.
“I wish you and your mountain luck.” He said as honestly as he could. He
then took a step out into the open air, and fell backwards. He closed his eyes as he
tumbled through the rushing wind, and he prayed.
The storm bird caught him and spirited him away from the cold rock
mountain, and when he opened his eyes he found himself in a field of purple flowers.

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He looked down his mountain, and he found his village right where he had left it. He
prepared to make the trek down, but he paused for a moment before he did.
Thoughtfully, he turned back and picked a final purple flower. He didn’t worry
much about what it looked like. If he gave it to the right person this time it wouldn’t
matter anyway.

END