3ft Left 02

3Feet
Left

スリーフィートレフト

Issue 02

3Feet
Left

スリーフィートレフト

Issue 02

I photograph things
to see what they look like photographed.

 ~ Garry Winogrand

Issue 02 - May 2015 Cover by Nayalan Moodley.

Contributors TableofContents
Click on the # or content to jump to page

WillFitch

AlexMcLaren

JasonWeller

Mind & Space The ClimbTheoKogod NayalanMoodley
in Modern Japan
TechnicalDetails
TheoKogod

3Feet
Left

スリーフィートレフト

Issue 02

Contributors He was constantly reminded of how startlingly
different a place the world was when viewed from
Thanks for checking out Issue 02 of 3ft Left. Not too many changes for this a point only three feet to the left.
issue but we have added some navigation icons to help you move through the mag-
azine. If you want to jump around, look for the home and info icons in the bottom  ~ Douglas Adams (from The Salmon of Doubt)
right corner. You’ll be able to jump straight to the table of contents as well as the
technical information chart at the end. 3ft Left is publish bi-monthly and
we don’t want you to miss anything.
We’ve got the same team as Issue 01 but we’ll be looking to grow from the next To receive new issues as soon as they
issue. If you are a photographer in Japan and interested in getting involved, reach are released, sign up here.
out on facebook, twitter or shoot us an email. Everyone involved is currently in
Nagoya and Tokyo/Yokohama, so we’ll be especially pleased to hear from someone
in a different area. But either way, feel free to get in touch.

-Will Fitch (editor)

3Feet Resident Writer
Left
TheoKogod
onsocial
Theo is a writer, teacher, wanderer, and occasionally dabbles in the black arts
The views and opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the publisher. To the best of our knowledge all details in this of editing. Being dyslexic, Theo didn’t learn to read until he was ten years old. The
magazine were correct at the time of publication. The publisher does not accept responsibility for errors or omissions. next year, he began writing his first attempted novel. After getting his Bachelor of
3ft Left magazine contains photographic and artistic content that may include nudity, adult concepts, coarse language, and bears. Arts from Guilford College, he moved to Japan to teach English. When he’s not
This 3ft Left issue is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. writing or researching geeky historical facts, he enjoys reading comics, eating
You are free to share this work in its original form for private consumption. No commercial use is permitted. No editing, adaptations, exotic foods, spoiling his two cats, and rebelling against the laws of physics. A
derivatives or changes are permitted. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ lover of history, he has climbed the heights to Dracula’s Castle, crawled through
All individual content within 3ft Left is copyrighted by the respective creator(s) or copyright owner(s) and may not be reproduced in Minoan sewer ducts, and explored the outskirts of Edirne in pursuit of stories.
any form without prior express permission except as noted above under the CC-by-nc-nd license of the issue in it’s entirety. You can follow him on his blog The Modern Skald.

Title Fonts:
Cover & Contributors - Packt by Simon Stratford
Fiction - Vtks good luck for you by Douglas Vitkauskas

ResidentPhotographers

AlexMcLaren JasonWeller jcweller.com

Why I take photos? Top reasons. I was born in Middle America, but I currently find myself in Nagoya, Japan. It
1. Special occasion. was here in the spring of 2013 that I found my love of making photographs.
2. Everyone else is taking photos.
3. I need something for Facebook I began prowling Nagoya daily on the hunt for anything photogenic. As time
4. I’ve got a camera and I’m going to use it. went by, I found myself getting deeper and deeper into the city. I started outdoors
5. I got a camera in my smartphone and I want to use it. and on the street, but eventually I ended up exploring stranger and darker venues.
6. It’s helps me see the world better?
7. There is no No.7 Recently, my fascination has shifted to people. We are in a transformative
8. I like to find out about my camera and all the kinds of photos it can take. period unprecedented in human history. Our species is making incredible
9. I like to find out about myself and all the photos I could take. headway in all facets of life, moving us rapidly towards an efficient singularity.
10. All of the above. While this progress is undeniable, the concept remains bittersweet in my eyes.

I also take photos for my internet shopping site otaku.com. In order to enter this palace of modernity, it seems we are leaving our individ-
uality at the gates. Even in my short lifetime, I have witnessed a substantial
amount of the change. Across the world, what to eat, wear, watch, read, and idolize
are merging into similar, if not identical, entities. Our paths are narrowing. As a
consequence, it is becoming rare to catch a glimpse of a true individual.

It also makes it that much more fun to try.

NayalanMoodley darc.jp WillFitch

I’m an expat South African freelance multimedia content creator working out I learned to shoot on my parents’ old soviet Zenit when I was in high school.
of Tokyo. Shortly after university, I traded in both my film and digital cameras for a compact
point & shoot. I’d been taking your standard vacation snapshots for a while at that
I am passionate about underground, reactionary subcultures. The stubborn point, no longer creating shots but instead capturing memories. And there’s
nails that refuse to be hammered flat. Because the best human beings I’ve ever met nothing wrong with that, but my artistic interest was peaked anew after watching
are the ones most looked down upon by the herds of sheeple that make/partake in Jason fall down the photographers’ rabbit hole. I decided I, too, wanted (back) in.
the mass, blind consumerism that is “proper” society.
This issue features two of my digital shots and one expired film shot. It was my
first time trying expired film and I’m rather pleased with the effect it created. You
may see me shooting with it more and more.











Mind & Space in Modern Japan

Though a swift stream is 瀬をはやみ There is a sense inherent in Japanese urban plan- by Theo Kogod
Divided by a boulder 岩にせかるる ning, guiding people instinctively along main routes.
In its headlong flow 滝川の At the Cherry Blossom Festival in Yoyogi Park this past For many a flâneur, an amble down unfamiliar
spring, drunkards stumbled under the eaves of a streets is experienced with eyes fixed on a phone’s
Though divided, on it rushes われても末に pink-blossomed canopy, and though they were unable screen as much as the surrounding land.
to walk straight they still managed to follow the paved
And at last unites again 逢はむとぞ思ふ blacktop paths as they ambled to wherever it is drunk- Yet the land is shaped to make a niche for almost
ards feel compelled to go when they are half-blind with anything. Buildings and streets are designed to draw
Tanka No. 77 of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu booze at 11am on a Sunday. The beauty of the park is attention. Respectable businesses attract the eye as they
Written by Emperor Sutoku; Translated by Clay MacCauley in its trees and spacious landscape, but also in that its occupy the largest space with the shiniest advertise-
paths have been designed so that even the most inebri- ments, and thus paradoxically have created a space for
Ley lines of steel stripe the land, carrying people ated can follow them. those places that cater to the culturally taboo.
over the electric roadways of Japan’s railroad grid, while
the blacktop brands its hot scars into the Tokyo streets People converge along the cobbles that flank busy Hostess bars are accessed by stairs just above or
flanked by cobbled walkways. At the famous Shibuya streets, using their phones to navigate, and the experi- below the main ground-level restaurants, keeping them
Crossing, pinnacles of glass and neon lights tower over ence of moving through the city is dictated as much by quite literally off the street. Graffiti decorates the back
the intersection where people swell from train to the wireless summons of maps beamed onto their alleys where restaurants serve getemono.* The entrances
sidewalk to street and back, moving with the industrial phones’ screens and the software of hyperreality as by to gay bars blend into their surroundings, often only
vigor of modern purpose. But when the Yamanote the concrete squares underfoot or the glass-faced distinguished by a small rainbow flag outside the door.
Line opened its first railway terminal in 1885, Shibuya monoliths that tower like kaiju overhead. Thus is subculture built into the architecture of main-
was still a village run by a family of the same name. It stream culture.
was the rails and roads which imbued this village with People follow the prompts of storefront logos
the pulse of urban life, carried along the veins of track emblazoned onto their consciousness by marketing Anime and videogames depict Japan as a country
that shaped not just the land, but the way Japanese groups and the unseen signals feeding their phones, either whirring on electric currents into a futurist
people used and understood their surroundings. and one wonders if the blue LED lights of our era utopia or else still defined by its past of feudal bushi in
blaze even brighter than the dawn across the light-pol- struggle with ancient ghosts and spirits. The present is
I can’t find such changes surprising. Japan’s con- luted skies of the Land of the Rising Sun. a world far more strange for its mundane pastiche of
sciousness has always been shaped by its geography. In these divergent places in time.
the Heian Period, emperors and empresses composed Sometimes the only way to steer the unknown
waka poetry to celebrate the land’s beauty. To the maze of unfamiliar streets is with the map on one’s But an hour south of Tokyo is the Sugiyama Shrine
people, Fuji’s snow-capped dome and the surrounding phone. Other times, telecartography fails and direc- in Nakayama, Yokohama, a sacred site built into a
sea are no less important than the cities of Tokyo and tions beamed across the airwaves get lost before they forest now mostly cut down to make room for housing
Kyoto. The country’s oldest surviving book, the Kojiki, ever reach the people on the ground. A trip to Shin- and convenience stores, my own apartment among
tells how the gods Izanami and Izanagi made the juku’s cat café leads past a street of hostess bars and them. Outside the shrine, metal bus stops rise in bent
Japanese Isles, but it was people who shaped those isles love hotels as the meaning of cat apparently gets two-pillared arcs like New Aged torii on Route 140,
into the place we know today. misinterpreted. A couple stands on the corner together creating an almost surreal faerie tale blend as tradition
and enter the same address into their smart phones, straddles the modern roadways. And following the
only to be instructed to go in opposite directions. logic of faerie tales, I have found the truly great and
unexpected adventures occur only after leaving the
main road far behind.

“exotic food” or “strange food”





The ClimbbyTheoKogod But his mind had been going for a while. He wasn’t
The woman dropped the charges against him, but “When do you think you want to schedule to come seeing things so clearly, or perhaps it was that he saw a
Cassie still kicked him out. back in for more tests?” the doctor asked. few things clearly that weren’t altogether there. That
woman he’d groped—he’d thought it’d been Cassie,
Reid told himself it wasn’t his fault. He made “I can’t. My insurance won’t cover it,” Reid told not that Cassie believed him when he told her.
excuses. He drank. But he couldn’t forget what he’d her, and bit back of desperation he tasted in those
done, or what people were saying about him, and he words. Now Cassie was gone, and what did he have
couldn’t remember how things got this way. without her? This crappy studio apartment filled with
“This really isn’t something you want to wait on. boxes of over-loved books and dirty laundry. His old
He picked up the phone, and called her again. She You’ve already delayed coming in too long as is,” she climbing equipment. Bills. An old laptop. A credit card
picked up this time. It was only his third time calling. insisted. with a limit so high he couldn’t see it from beneath the
weight of his debt.
“What is it, Reid? What could you possibly have to “Yeah? Well, tell that to my provider. I’ve already
say now?” Cassie snapped. got more bills than I can pay,” Reid said, and turned At least that was something he could use.
toward the door. However, he didn’t leave, nor did he He’d once read how in feudal Japan, villages would
“I—“ Reid stammered. “Just, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” really stay. She convinced him to listen to what she send their elderly up into the mountains to die of
“Yeah? You’ve told me. Listen, Reid, stop calling said, and he did, or tried to, but he was already gone exposure rather than burden the community by eating
me, okay? We’re done, and you need some serious and they both knew it. food and wasting resources better given to those who’d
help.” live. The thought weighed heavy on him mind.
He opened his mouth to respond, but then the line That night, he sat up in bed staring at the worn Maybe they had the right idea.
clicked. Maybe it really was over. Her words echoed in page of an old trade paperback and reading the same He opened Google and began searching for a place
his head. inscrutable lines again and again, trying to take his he could go to die. He looked at some Japanese cities,
Help? Maybe he did need help. And so he made a mind off all the things he wasn’t going to miss. He’d then began scanning through tropical islands, Asiatic
call he’d been putting off for far too long. lost his wife and his job within a month of each other. temple complexes, and Amazonian jungle resorts.
Not that the job was much. Reid had never enjoyed None of them felt right. But then again, he could dig
“Cancer.” working in sales. The numbers on his paychecks never his own grave amidst a third world sewage heap and
The word struck him like a guillotine. Reid barely seemed to equal the number of indignities he suffered it’d be an improvement to ending his life here in
heard the doctor as she kept talking, only vaguely earning them. When he’d been made a manager, it just Wyoming’s rural foothills. But he wanted the choice to
aware of the technical words she kept repeating and meant the company expected him to spend more time be meaningful.
then dumbing down for him. She said some things doing things he hated but kept paying him far less He sighed, stood up, and immediately tripped over
about spatial awareness, vision and memory being than he deemed fair. When his headaches started up, a box. The floor tried to uppercut him, but thankfully,
affected, told him speaking would become more they didn’t want him taking off, but the headaches another box intercepted the blow. He crashed into it,
difficult if they didn’t “act fast” and “handle it worsened, and he had trouble thinking straight. After spilling climbing rope and carabiners across the floor.
immediately.” he messed up the count on two separate occasions they And suddenly, he knew where he could be happy
He couldn’t “handle it”—now, or ever. let Reid go. Apparently they didn’t like getting less dying.
money than was fair either.
Three days later, Reid was more than four thousand
miles from home and five thousand dollars deeper in
credit card debt he had neither the ability nor inten-

tion to repay. He’d only packed clothes, his climbing “Troll women. Or maybe elf women is a better way because it’s not like he’d have too many more opportu-
equipment, and a beaten paperback copy of The to say it. It’s what I call these girls with their gothed- nities. They talked a bit more, and eventually Magnus
Coming of Conan the Cimmerian. It had taken him out hair. Some of the old stories use the word, saying convinced Reid to agree to go climbing with him, even
most of the flight just to read one story, “The Frost-Gi- how men got lured up into the mountains by beautiful saying Reid could pay back the difference by working
ant’s Daughter,” in which the barbarian hero Conan and mysterious women. Of course, the men never at the hostel for a week or so. The tour was going to be
chased a beautiful giant maid across the mountain returned. I think we’ve got some stuff on them in one in four days, and Magnus recommended other touristy
peaks of Nordheim. of the brochures,” Magnus offered. things to occupy him until then.

Now he had arrived in the real land of giants—the “That’s all right,” Reid said, trying to remember if Of course, Reid had no intention of going with
Jotunheimen Mountains. Named for the same Norse he’d read about this before or not. Magnus, so he woke early the next day, gathered his
giants that had inspired the Conan story, the peaks climbing gear, and set out on his own to scale the
were the highest in Northern Europe. Reid had “First time in Norway?” Magnus asked. looming peaks.
reserved a room in a hostel at the foot of the moun- “Yeah. I’ve always wanted to climb in the Jotun-
tains, choosing one that catered to mountaineers. He heimen, but—“ The first few hundred meters’ climbing were
arrived early, and sat in the first-floor lobby waiting for “Let me guess. You found love, right? Or knocked straightforward enough. It was basically just hiking
his room to be ready. Nearby, a couple of girls giggled. someone up?” with solid rock underfoot that got harder as he left the
He stared. Curvy, young, and fit, they possessed an “No. I got a job. Well, more like a life sentence, vegetation behind. The higher he climbed, the steeper
elfin beauty with rich tattoos and hair dyed in auroras really. The marriage came later, but no... No kids,” the slope became, shedding its coat of grass and then
of green gossamer. They saw him, laughed, waved, and Reid trailed off, and Magnus sensed some doom in his donning a white cover of hoarfrost.
he looked away, ashamed as much at being caught as somber tone.
because he did not trust his eyes to speak honestly “You have much experience climbing?” he asked Ice slicked under his heavy boots and his lungs
through the tumor clotting his thoughts. instead, changing the topic. wheezed, unused to the frigid air after years without
“Yeah, but it’s been some years. I’ve done the Alps, climbing, but one stride at a time, he ascended until he
“Great slopes on those girls, am I right?” said a the Alaska Range, the Rockies, a couple others. But stopped to rest on a magnificent ledge overlooking the
man stepping up to Reid, and he scarcely managed to I’ve always wanted to climb in Norway, like I said.” valley.
hide the relief at this man’s confirmation of his senses. They talked climbing and technique and compared
differences in snow and rock faces for a bit, sharing The view was as beautiful as he’d hoped after years
“I’m Magnus,” the man said, extending a hand. stories until Magnus finally asked about Reid’s climb- of staring at travel brochures, but still, there was a
Reid gave his own name, traded grips, and ing partner. When Reid said he didn’t have one, sense of sorrow knowing this would be the last climb
exchanged pleasantries as Magnus sat beside him. Magnus informed him that anyone with half a brain of his life.
“Huldras like that, I tell you, they can make a man knew not to climb alone. Reid didn’t bother telling
lose his senses,” Magnus said. him how much of an improvement half a brain In the past, he’d always had a partner with him. He
Reid gave a noncommittal nod, but despite his would’ve been. used to climb with his friends Mike and Darrell, and
initial unease, found himself dragged into a conversa- They talked back and forth, and it came out that they’d talk and joke on the early parts of the climb and
tion with Magnus, a cook and a guide at the hostel Magnus led tours up the mountain every other week. help one another out as things got harder near the top.
who had a deep appreciation for women with artificial Magnus invited Reid to climb with him, but of course But now Mike was gone—taken by cirrhosis after one
hair coloring and an excess of tattoos—whom he kept Reid declined. Except then Magnus bought him a (or a thousand) Guinnesses too many—and Darrell
referring to “huldras” for some reason. drink, and even though it was early, he accepted, hadn’t returned his calls in years.
“What?” Reid finally asked, after Magnus used the
term for the half-dozenth time. He’d climbed with Cassie too, backpacking every
other summer for their first ten years together. But his
job had ruined that for him, giving him that big
promotion which meant more responsibility, less

vacation, and an extra seventy-five cents every hour he day. Then he began his ascent up the wall of ice. from the tumor pressing against his optic nerve, well,
worked once his unpaid overtime was accounted for. Driving his ice axes and crampons into the rime, he then he wouldn’t even be able to see his final moment
That job had been slavery, strangling the life from him fumbled to twist ice screws into the cliff face. He as he blundered into it.
one pay period at a time. advanced slowly, the wind tearing at him as he hung
exposed on the heights. But after the first sixty or He ate another MRE, downed half his canteen,
But this! This was freedom! eighty feet, the wind eased up and his muscles began to and reminisced about his last climb in the Rockies
Reid let out a smoking sigh of wonder as he looked remember how to work after years of neglect. with Cassie. They told stories to each other around a
down across the fey greens and troll greys of the valley small campfire alongside the trail, and when they
below, where the town was little more than a few twists It took him several hours to get to the top of the reached the summit, made love on the mountaintops
of bulging color in the mountains’ roots. Then he wall, and when he reached the summit he pinioned under the open sky. But that had been in the height of
turned his head up to admire the coronation of sharp himself in place and just lay there, panting. His whole summer and at lower elevations. Not like these heights
white peaks that sliced the heavens in crystalline arcs body ached. He sucked deep breaths of the thin air. where scathing white winds blasted across the moun-
above. The flutings and cornices seemed almost to Finally, Reid got up the strength to peer over the edge. tainside. He’d always wanted to climb in Norway, but
support the vault of the sky. He felt so small here, it wasn’t even winter, and still the cold clawed under
surrounded by nature, and caught in this middling There was no bottom. There was just pale haze in his coat and gloves to burrow inside the hollows of his
place, he took a moment to gaze upon the beauty of all the void, a chasm that stretched into infinity. bones. He picked icicles of frozen snot from his nose,
that waited both above and below. and stared up at the white ridges bending ever higher.
High up like this, he could really feel the bite of In times of old, Norse warriors who died in battle This really was the perfect place to die.
winter temperatures and the thinness of the air, cutting might expect to be greeted by beautiful and furious
daggers in his throat with every inhalation and freezing Valkyries who’d whisk them off to Valhalla, but the He climbed another couple hours that day before
a kiss upon his lips as he exhaled. Already, the sun was shameful dead went to Helheim’s misty halls below the stopping on a snowy ledge to set up camp for the
descending. He couldn’t climb much more that day. roots of the world. It seemed even at this height, those night. Nightmares plagued him, or perhaps they were
He made camp in the shadow of a sheer ice-slicked mists climbed up to claim him. memories, as delusion and recollection bled together
wall while the light scintillated on the rockface above. inside him.
He’d packed enough food, but hydration was always a So he climbed even higher, not giving himself as
greater priority and he boiled ice into drinking water much rest as perhaps was wise, but not willing to quit He awoke the next morning not from the wind,
with his small gas stove before retiring into his tent for either. He was determined to reach the top, and if it but the cold.
the night. killed him, then all the better.
The next morning he woke to the ululating wind, The sun still stalked the nightlands beyond the
keening an eerie dirge as it shrieked down the frozen A much gentler slope awaited him atop the ice horizon, its orange glow not yet come to drive back the
slopes. He opened his tent flap onto a blinding white wall, and he figured if he took it along the bend to the dark, and an altogether different light filled the sky
abyss of snow. He couldn’t see the valley anymore, and east he could reach the eastern peaks ahead of him by above. He stared in open-mouthed wonder as the
he certainly couldn’t see the peaks above through the early the next morning. However, less than an hour auroras bled across the vault of heaven with the arcane
jotunn’s breath that blasted down the mountain at into the trek, his headaches returned, and gravity streams of burnt copper. Reid stared up at them as he
him. This windy haze had devoured yesterday’s autumn began to pull sideways as vertigo took hold. He sat melted more snow to drink with his tiny stove, and its
hues. down, opened his sack, and began to fumble with his blue flame seemed a dim reflection of the greater lights
He breakfasted on MRE’s and snowmelt, boiling medicine. above.
enough extra drinking water to fill his canteen for the
It wasn’t the good stuff. He couldn’t afford the By the time the dawn’s gold rays drove the green
good stuff. The little blue pills numbed his pain and troll-fires from sight, Reid had already packed up camp
helped suppress his vertigo, but when things got really and begun his final ascent.
bad and he had difficulty with memory or spatial
relations or—God help him—visual hallucinations To his surprise, the snow didn’t have the crisp icy

bite of the day before. Instead it was a soft delicate snow clawing at his face as he plummeted into the However, amidst the pain and his thick gloves, he
powder, like other climbers talked about encountering void. couldn’t unscrew the top of the pill bottle. Fumbling,
in the Andes. But he’d never heard of that kind of he removed his glove—and dropped the bottle, its top
snow up here in the Jotunheimen Mountains. His Instinct kicked in. He hacked at the whiteness popping off at last. It skidded down the steep bank,
boots sunk in the loose snow ‘til it piled to his knees. surrounding him, flailing desperately with his ice axes. blue pellets raining like tears across the white snow as
He had no need for crampons in this powder, but he Powder gave way before him, spraying up cold and they spilled over the cliffside into oblivion.
didn’t know how much ice lay beneath the snow so rocks, until suddenly he caught hold of something
he’d strapped them onto his boots before leaving, and solid—with his foot. Reid stared after them. He could follow their lead.
held an ice axe in each hand. All it would take to end the pain would be to let go
The crampons stuck into ice and rock as he fell. He of his ice axe and fall into the void below. There’d be
The going was slow, but the sun blazed silver screamed in agony and dropped one of his axes as his no pain. No memory. No body for them to find.
against the crystal peaks less than a thousand feet shank ripped through the skin beneath his knee. There He thought of all that’d die with him. All the
above. It didn’t take him long to make the climb. was a thud and the crampon broke loose. He was memories he’d carried with him. When he’d bought his
falling again. Winter blades gashed him. Reid smashed first car—an old beat-up Sedan—and driven it to the
When he reached the top, he sighed with relief, against a sheet of ice, rolled, and slid against its hard Grand Canyon with Mike. Hanging out after school at
staring into the abyss below. The beauty of the slopes slope. He slammed his ice axe down, skidding along the corner pizza shop with his favorite steak-tip subs.
stole his smoking breath. Breathing the chill air made the hoarfrost as his axe blades clawed the ground, The way his mother used to read to him at night.
his head light, and he realized he couldn’t see the grinding down to catch a firm hold. Friction cut And then there were all the memories of Cassie.
bottom. A pale haze blanketed the roots of the moun- grooves into the slope, spitting up ice, slowing him. Waking up in the mornings and listening to her
tains, and Reid didn’t trust his eyes to know if it was breathe. Dancing with her at their wedding. Proposing
real. Finally, he stopped. to her at the foot of a glacier on their trip to Alaska.
And he lay there, panting through his pain. Meeting her at the 4th of July barbecue.
Still, this was victory. He’d made it. To his amazement, he’d stopped just a few feet The pain of memory metastasized, cutting down
He stayed up there maybe an hour or so, and from the edge of a sheer drop. Looking up, he saw that his spine as his ruined leg bled out in the snow.
thought about just giving in then and there. It would he had fallen more than fifty feet through the snow. He was going to die, along with his memories, his
be as good a place as any to die. White flutings and mushrooms swelled on the heights hopes, and his dreams, but if he let go now, the pain
But there was another peak just looming to the above, where he’d been walking before. If his foot would also die and this agony would vanish in the
south. He decided to see if he could make it there hadn’t struck the mountainside and slowed his fall, he’d snows below.
before dark. be dead. But down there, the mists of Helheim waited. After
Sighing, he began his descent along the mountain’s Amidst the pain, he wished he was. climbing so high, he didn’t want to fall into the pit.
southern slope. And yet now he wanted to live more than ever. The Gritting his teeth, he sank the crampon of his good
Reid knew between 40 and 70% of all mountain- paradox of it would be troubling, except he could foot into the snow. Then, he did the same with his bad
eering accidents happened on the descent. But he barely focus on anything besides the torment in his foot. His lips split in a scream and tears burned in his
wasn’t really descending. He was just going from peak broken leg. eyes, his reward for trying to keep a foothold on life.
to peak until an accident found him. Whatever he decided, he didn’t want to suffer. He reached to his side and produced an ice drill,
It didn’t take long. With his free hand, he fumbled at his bag, freeing the driving it into the steep hoarfrost ahead of him. Then
He was walking across a patch of powdered snow bottle of blue pills. They wouldn’t kill his pain, but he looped a rope through it and connected it to his
along the southern slope when suddenly the ground might numb it enough to make killing himself more
gave out beneath him. He shot straight down, ice and bearable.

harness. The second ice screw he set even higher into far down as he could dig. Ahead, the stream forked about a jut of rock, one
the slope. The third higher still. And so, bit by bit, he Reid burrowed until he couldn’t even see the rivulet bending left and burrowing into the rock while
slowly pulled himself up to the high flutings of pow- the other lazed to the right and away from the moun-
dered snow rising in a great wall before him. beginnings of his makeshift tunnel, when suddenly his tainside into some icy protuberance of the cave walls.
axe broke through the ice in front of him and out into
Reid dug himself a cave in the snow, and collapsed. open air. A warm breath blew through the gap. With it Atop the rock a pair of young women sat and sang.
came the wind’s siren song, whispering to him. He They were naked as the dawn, the curves of their
His eyes opened and the world was empty. All was wondered if he was just tunneling through a massive skin glacially pale and their hair like cobalt flame.
white. All was lightless. Cool mist hung in shrouded cornice and might fall out into empty sky the moment Their lips cut blood-red lines into their pearl features,
mystery in all directions. The entrance to the cave had he broke through. The hole was too small to tell much, and their eyes blazed with a feral light. Enchantment
evaporated in the haze. Space and time had dissolved. and all he could see through it was a pale cloud of rolled off their lips in a maddening hymn that reinvig-
frostbitten air and a faint glow of blue light. orated Reid, rousing the blood in him with renewed
Beyond and through the fog, a shrill song keened vitality.
on the stillborn wind. The wending whine of sound He swung the axe again. The ice broke before him, These were not women, but phantoms from the old
slithered inside him, and he felt it press against the and he fell forward, tumbling through the gap—not tales, giant-maids or huldras, more myth than flesh,
inside of his swollen skull. into the sky’s maw but a mere twelve feet down into a and surely to see them meant that Reid had died
cave in the ice. He landed on his chest and grunted beneath the mound of the hills and was now in the
Disoriented, Reid picked up a clump of snow, then from the pain. Reid lay there, exhausted, as the wind’s presence of those fey whose deaths had come when
let it go. It fell up, some of it getting in his face. song continued, only now he could hear words in it modern disbelief reduced their essence to shapeless
sung in an unintelligible sibilant soprano. memory.
How had he turned himself upside down in the One of the women stood, looking right at him. She
cave? Maybe that was the cause of this headache—too He forced himself to rise, looking about him. The closed her lips and beckoned him with an outstretched
much blood to the head. cavern was enormous, an icy womb at least twenty feet hand.
tall and impossibly long as it winnowed around the Reid obeyed.
He got to work, reaching inside his pack for some mountainside. Stalactites dripped from the ceiling and His feet staggered through the stream’s slush, his
rope and a spare pick, then began to splint his broken dribbled down onto the cave floor, forming a silver boots and snowpants barely sufficing to keep out the
leg. He didn’t remove his pants to do it properly. He stream that snaked along the passage. Reid bent and frost-flecked waters. Limping, he ignored his pain,
was in too much pain already to risk more cold. drank from the cold stream, sipping the tears of icicles. desperate to get to the rock.
They burned their cold sorrow into him. But as Reid ambled forward, the second sylph rose,
With that done, he began to dig with his one good and still chanting her sibylline song, crooked a finger
ice axe, tunneling up—or was it down?—in the direc- He followed the stream as it twisted its burbling at him, and stepped into the stream’s left fork. For a
tion gravity had pulled the snow. The white powder descent along the passage floor. The rime-walled long moment she held his gaze, her deep eyes boring
he’d encountered before was gone, hardened into the corridors were so huge they could hide sleeping giants, into him. Then she looked away, and his eyes followed
hoary crystals that chinked against the axe and sprayed and he wondered if he had crossed the threshold into after her as she strode through the icy rivulets. Her
in solid clumps as he climbed across them on elbows myth. He limped uneasily, biting back the pain, but as companion went with her, stalking through the stream
and stomach, burrowing a tunnel for himself. He put he progressed the ache in his leg numbed. All the to the place where it disappeared into the rock.
some of the chunks of ice in his mouth and sucked while, the eerie eldritch song grew louder.
them to stave off dehydration, the chill shards gnawing
at him from within. It was like church music, and the sounds of mourn-
ing for all he knew he’d leave behind, ringing through
He wondered if the snow would collapse under the scintillant cave of his mind until he felt himself a
him again—give him a quick death. It’s not like there part of this chthonic world.
was any real rock as far as he could tell—just snow as

Reid hastened his steps. Then his foot struck When he finally broke out into the light of day, the until they told him later.
something, and the pain shot up his broken leg, ice sluiced down about him as needles of sunlight At the hostel, Magnus got him his own private
causing him to topple forward, kicking up a wave of stabbed his eyes. The fresh air stung his lips and lungs.
ice water as he fell. He splashed face-first at the foot of Snow sloughed off the mountainside in white puffs. room and phoned for a doctor to come by, not
the rock, drenching himself in glacial melt. wanting to move him anymore.
He watched it roll into the valley below him.
The women were retreating from view now, vanish- The town below was less than a mile away, the Magnus paid him a visit before the doctor arrived,
ing deeper into the cave with their keening song. buildings reduced to black bricks in the autumn’s finding him sitting up in bed staring at an old well-
rocky hues. He was so close. loved photograph.
He wanted to join them, but the pain in his leg was Yet he could never reach the bottom. Not with his leg.
so great he couldn’t rise. And then he heard another sound. Human voices. “So, were you trying to get yourself killed?” the
Not singing. Norwegian asked.
Pain? Shouting.
The dead could feel no pain, could they? Had he He looked about before spotting the source of the Reid didn’t bother denying it, and shrugged by way
died, the synapses in his brain would’ve stopped noise. Below him on the slope, small black silhouettes of confession.
processing physical sensation. moved like ants crawling up the mountainside. They
So this was not some sort of mythical apparition, were still a ways away, maybe half a mile below him, “Ok, well then, what now?” Magnus asked.
but his own flawed brain taunting him. It had to be. but they’d spotted the snow sliding down the moun- Reid sat up in the bed, and gave the man a long
Which meant that if he still wanted to live, he tain and by the sound of it they were hailing him to look before answering.
needed to follow the right fork of the stream away see if he was okay. “I’ve got another mountain to get over,” Reid said.
from the cave’s depths and into the open air so he “Hey! Hello!” one of them shouted, speaking “I think you’re climbing days are over.”
could see how to get down the mountain. English with only a slight Norwegian accent. Again, Reid didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he
Reid stared to his left. He could just barely see the “Hello!” he shouted back, and then “Help! Help me!” stared at the crumpled piece of paper in his hand.
women’s silhouettes vanishing down a passage in the “Are you okay?” they shouted. Cassie stared back up at him. Behind her rose the huge
ice and rock, the wight-words of their siren song fading “No! I need help!” he called back. Alaskan glacier where he’d proposed.
with them into the cold and dark. The party shifted their course, turning away from Reid looked from the picture of his wife to the
His breath smoked as he sighed. the marked trail to climb toward him. As they neared, window where the rising slopes filled his site, and then
He pushed himself to his feet, and his cry of pain he recognized the man in the lead. It was Magnus, to the man in front of him who had only a few days
was not enough to drown out the song swimming apparently just setting out on his guided tour—the one before indicated the worst thing possible was to have
through his thoughts. He took his first step—with the Reid had lied and said he’d join. just half a brain.
bad foot. Agony jolted up him from ankle to crown, Magnus and the others helped carry him the rest of He didn’t answer for a long moment, but just as
and he staggered onto his good foot for support, the way down the mountain. With a broken leg, there Magnus was about to go, Reid spoke, and despite all
splashing into the stream on his right. weren’t really any other options. They also gave him he’d been through, a feeling of hope swelled in his
Reid followed the stream until it pushed out some food and water, since he was so dehydrated that chest.
through a hole in the ice wall to drip down the moun- he babbled incoherently, something he wasn’t aware of “You know,” Reid said,
tain. The hole was too small for him to crawl through, “There’s more than one kind of mountain.”
but he still had his ice axe and put it to use.