The tail of the plane rattled and staggered. The people inside shrieked briefly. Jean-Pierre grabbed at the hull, trying to hold the huge wreckage in place with his own strength.

“Get out!” shouted Jean-Pierre.

“How are we going to get Debby out?” Yulia answered loudly.

Dr Capri and the military ran up to the tail; they rested against the steel plating and began putting rocks under the underside of the plane to stop it from moving. The tail of the plane froze in place.

“Hold it!” shouted Jean-Pierre to the military outside, making his way to the lavatory.

He took hold of the ajar door and began swinging it from side to side. The top edge had already been broken off, and under a few pulls the door gave way and fell off.

“Help me put her here,” Jean-Pierre commanded, pushing Yulia aside and turning to David.

David hesitated for a second, but then, remembering how easily the plane gave way to a gust of wind, reached over to Debby’s head. Her feet lay outside the toilet. Jean-Pierre carefully slid the door under Debby, David took hold of her shoulders. They slowly began to lift Debby up, and she pressed her lips together with a premonition that she was about to feel a sharp pain. Jean-Pierre and David slowly placed the American woman on the door.

“Quickly!” Yulia shouted outside.

Without collusion, David and Jean-Pierre abruptly lifted the door and took a step to the ground. The plane groaned again. Dr Capri stood beside it, with his hands resting on the hull, while the military threw rocks under the belly of the hulk. The doctor saw everyone out of the plane and stepped aside. The giant wreck tilted on its side, and the rocks began to roll from under it. The wind howled again sharply and the plane jumped a few centimeters. Then it rolled for a few meters and flipped on its belly. David and Jean-Pierre breathed nervously as they stared at the scene.

“This is going to end very badly,” Yulia said quietly in Russian.

Dr Capri looked at the military, who were also, out of breath, staring at the flipped tail. Captain Shah turned to the doctor.

“We won’t get the helicopter up in this weather, we have to find shelter nearby.”

Dr Capri relayed this to everyone else. Jean-Pierre nodded. He looked at Debby, she was losing her composure: her eyes were rolling and her breathing had become quite heavy.

“Let’s go,” Jean-Pierre nodded again.

“We will go forward and try to find shelter, move to that rock over there,” said Captain Shah and pointed to the elevation.

The military ran up the slope. Dr Capri took David’s backpack, which lay on the ground:

“Follow them. Yulia, hold Debby’s leg; I’ll walk ahead, so we don’t lose the soldiers.”

Yulia inhaled loudly and exhaled. She had felt like her limit had been reached the moment she had boarded the helicopter in Kathmandu. By now, she had forgotten herself and was simply obeying her instincts and Dr Capri.

The wind hit the rocks in sharp gusts and lifted small stones. They shuffled the ground and complemented the rumble of the wind with a crackling sound. Debby cried softly and Yulia ran up to her. She took her hand and squeezed it tightly. Dr Capri walked forward and shouted, addressing Jean-Pierre first.

“Follow me!”

“Go!” Jean-Pierre commanded and followed the doctor.

“I can’t see them!” the doctor shouted. “Hurry up!”

Tulu-Manchi walked ahead and shouted back without looking. He gazed anxiously into the dim space in front of him. He was almost running, doubting every step. Torn between rushing forward and losing the porters behind him, or hesitating and condemning them to the fate of a mountain storm.

Jean-Pierre lost sight of the doctor and tried to quicken his pace. He could hear Debby crying from the shaking, but he tried to walk faster.

“Faster, come on!” he shouted.

Yulia ran beside the handmade stretcher and held Debby’s hand. She could feel Debby’s hand clenching with each step from the pain running through her body. The wind rumbled so loud and fierce that Yulia didn’t dare look up. The cold seeped under her clothes and burned her body. Little icicles sliced her face and hands.

The fascinating landscape was drowned in fog and blackness. The sun had disappeared, though it was only a few hours after noon. The landmark of the rock was swallowed up by black clouds. Jean-Pierre picked his direction at random, trying to find the doctor.

Yulia felt Debby’s hand weaken and her fingers loosen.

“Stop!” Yulia screamed.

David began to reduce his step, slowing down the procession. Jean-Pierre turned over his shoulder and looked at Debby. Breathing heavily, he shouted desperately into the fog:

“Doc! Doctor!”

Yulia looked ahead and screamed in fright, too:

“Dr Capri, where are you?”

The light was still breaking through the dust and fog, but the hum drowned out their voices. Yulia pointed ahead at eleven o’clock, noticing some sort of movement.

“Hurry up!” Jean-Pierre commanded.

Everyone moved briskly forward.

“Doctor!” Yulia ran out in front of Jean-Pierre. “We are here! Wait for us!”

The light abruptly changed and blackness began to come over them. Jean-Pierre looked up, trying to understand the size of this unknown danger. They took a few more steps, and through the impenetrable swell Jean-Pierre began to make out the shape of a mountain. Yulia was running in front of him ten or fifteen meters away, shouting something in Russian. Suddenly, she stopped abruptly and fell silent. David looked out from behind Jean-Pierre’s shoulder, checking to see what was there. The porters took a few more steps and saw the doctor standing in front and some man beside him. Their figures were not clearly visible, but the doctor’s posture was recognizable.

Dust and fog still hung in the air, but the wind died down. It became quiet and a little lighter. Everyone approached Dr Capri and the stranger who was standing beside him, talking quietly about something. The hum left behind and there was silence.

“Good day, I want to say,” the stranger said in English.

Everyone began to respond to him with repetitive nods without words. Dr Capri rehabilitated the stranger and said:

“This is Bhrigu. He is a hermit. He says there is a cave to take shelter in.”

Jean-Pierre felt that his hands were stiff, and he could hardly feel them. He looked at the strange-looking man, at the doctor, at the bewildered Yulia.

“Where are the soldiers?”

“I lost them out of sight,” the exhausted doctor shook his head.

David said quietly:

“Debby is hushed, what’s happened to her?”

Dr Capri walked over to the stretcher and leaned over it.

“She lost consciousness; her breathing is even.”

The hermit looked behind Jean-Pierre’s back and glanced at the girl.

“For me follow,” said Bhrigu and walked leisurely toward the mountain.

“We must go,” said Dr Capri. “She needs water and warmth. She is very weak. We can’t find the helicopter now.”

Jean-Pierre was hesitant to go, he turned to the doctor:

“If we turn back now, we won’t be able to find the military today.”

“I ran as fast as I could,” the doctor excused himself, “but they just disappeared in that dust. I screamed.”

The doctor shifted his gaze from the hesitant Jean-Pierre to the hermit in front, who was standing half-turned ten meters away, waiting for them to move.

“It’s a calm for a few minutes,” the doctor looked around.

“You think they’ve gone far?” David asked.

Yulia answered:

“In this storm we won’t even see them within fifty meters.”

To prove Yulia’s words, the light went down even more.

“Okay,” agreed Jean-Pierre.

Everyone began to walk forward, getting over the slight incline. The wind howled again somewhere in the distance. After a few hundred meters, they came to a large rock. The top of the cliff was covered with fog. But somewhere at the top was a dark cave. The travelers looked around the steep stone wall. A hermit was climbing the steps carved in the stone. He turned and beckoned again, pointing to the beginning of the stairs.