MaryClaire King fiction short story The Slope
Detail from Lithosphere, Nancy Panganiban, 28″ x 28″, Acrylic on birch panel, 2022
The Slope
The chairlift platform was niched into the steep face of the mountain. On the right were the challenging slopes for which the French resort was famous. Michel waited on the other side, beside a skull-and-crossbones sign warning skiers not to venture left. Harry and Jonathan lifted the chairlift safety bar and skied towards their father. Kara glided ahead, her eyes rising to the jagged summit looming above them.
The backcountry slope on the left dropped like a wall beneath the mountain pinnacle. It was covered with twenty-seven inches of wet snow, sagging under its own weight. The oddly drooping surface was the product of three days of alternating precipitation and warmth.
“Looks dangerous,” Kara stated the obvious.
Her husband huffed. From the tilt of his head, Kara knew Michel was rolling his eyes beneath his goggles. Harry and Jonathan moaned in unison.
“It is not,” sixteen-year-old Harry bellowed. He threw his head back for emphasis and arched his lanky body, the ski pants he received for Christmas already at the top of his boots.
Michel encouraged him with a chuckle.
“Yeah, Mom, you always exaggerate,” Jonathan said. He flopped forward on his poles so that his body formed a mirror image of his older brother’s stance. Much of the shiny surface on the lens of his goggles had been scratched off. At thirteen, Jonathan didn’t care how his equipment looked.
“See, he’s not worried,” Michel said.
Jonathan immediately slid his skis to stand straight. Both boys grinned. Such a change from their sullen mood on the chairlift. Michel leaned over and whispered something to the boys. They laughed, glancing at Kara. It was their bonding ritual.
“We’ll be fine,” Michel said, serious now. “You don’t have to go into the middle. Stay on the edges near the trees.”
Kara’s husband operated on the belief that avalanches never occurred in trees. This belief bore no relation to reality, as she had pointed out on three separate occasions earlier that day, when they came across avalanched snow on slopes dense with evergreens. But he had the fundamentalist’s inability to confront his beliefs with facts, particularly if the facts came from Kara.
Michel had been coming to these mountains all his life. He had introduced her to them. Nothing Kara did could alter the fact that he was there first. Not learning to ski well enough to descend any slope in any condition. Not developing a fitness regimen that made her the stronger skier, nor reading books on mountain climbing, researching snow like an amateur naturalist, or swapping stories with guides in the valley. Kara could never catch up. And though her opinion was backed by the official avalanche assessment, which stood at the penultimate level, Michel remained the expert.
His smile softened. “It’ll be all right. I promise.”
This was the kind of platitude that had comforted Kara in the past. She once believed in Michel, the way he believed trees prevented avalanches.
The foreboding feeling that came over her on the chairlift journey worsened. It was the oldest lift in the resort. A nerve-wracking, rickety ride with a drop-off station in the middle of the ascent. It shook so forcefully that Kara gripped the safety bar until her hands cramped. The seat had three places. Naturally, it was she who rode up with the whining boys. Never mind that the vacation was supposed to be about Michel spending time with the kids. He rode up alone to make a phone call for work.
Now, at the end of the day, Kara didn’t have energy for the protestations she felt obliged to make in the interests of their children. Why was it incumbent upon her to point out the realities around them? Michel could see the unstable snow. He knew it was late in the afternoon for an unfamiliar, out-of-bounds slope, but he would accuse her of belittling his expertise if she suggested he didn’t understand the risks.
The boys slid their skis ever closer to the rope marking the edge of the resort, like bulls pawing the ground before a fight. Their gaze was fixed on the inviting blanket of snow; beautiful dynamite, stacked and waiting for shifting snowflakes to ignite it.
Avalanches were unique among natural disasters. Once the conditions were laid, the actual event came down to the most ordinary forces: movement, temperature, gravity. A molecule of ice melting into a faint rivulet in the snow could tip the balance and dislodge the face of a mountain. In this environment, an avalanche was always possible, although it was mathematically improbable at any given moment. That too was a fact.
Kara sighed and nodded in assent.
“Thatta girl,” Michel said.
Jonathan grinned. “Aww, Mom!”
She could see the sweet expression in his eyes beneath his goggles. It reminded her of the painful beauty of his eyelashes lying against his cheek when he was a newborn. She wanted to retch with sudden fear, but she swallowed it whole.
Michel and Harry ducked under the rope together. They dropped into the short, narrow passage that separated the resort side of the mountain from the steeper out-of-bounds slope. Jonathan waited for his mother.
Kara slid down the icy passage. It joined the steep mountain wall at mid-point, leaving about 600 yards of descent before the beginning of the tree line. They had skied it a couple years earlier, but there had not been enough snowfall to attempt it since.
The problem was further down, where the mountain spawned a stream. Because of it, they would have to go through the forest to a low altitude before they could cut back across and return to the bottom of the chairlift via a resort road. Without that road, they would hit an impassable cliff further down the mountain. The only hope of cutting through the dense forest was with enough snow.
Jonathan shot out onto the virgin expanse. He turned quickly, clinging to the narrow strip of trees that separated the off-limits side from the milder resort slope. His turns were awkward and tight. He was frightened.
Michel and Harry’s tracks stretched in front of Kara and disappeared into the reflecting sunlight. The ruts were shiny wet, telling Kara the snow would dissolve beneath her skis. All twenty-seven inches were melting.
The impulse to protect her children seized Kara. She knew the feeling well and considered it a superpower. It allowed her to do things for the boys she could never do to protect herself.
She lurched out towards the middle of the slope, thinking only of the need to find Harry. Simultaneously, she watched Jonathan from the corner of her eye. She had to turn almost immediately to keep from going too fast. She could not rescue her children if she was too far below them on the mountain. Her ski dragged in the heavy snow. It was even wetter than she’d thought.
Harry’s figure flashed somewhere on the far right. Located. Her eyes darted back towards Jonathan as she began to take inventory of the hazards and calculate escape routes. She recognized that she was skiing well, but she did not have time to enjoy it. She was too focused on positioning herself relative to the children. She slowed again for fear of passing in front.
Michel always took the lead, followed by the boys. Kara came last. She often felt like the garbage truck following a parade to clean the road. It was her job to help the boys when they took a mogul or a patch of ice the wrong way. Michel didn’t worry about such eventualities.
When Kara said something about it, he always reassured her that he could very easily charge up the mountain to help. He never did, though. When the boys made poor maneuvers and lost their skis, Kara was the one who chased down the errant equipment. She was also the one who had to haul the boys’ skis back up the mountain while her own boots sank into the snow.
Harry slipped from her field of vision. Kara pointed her skis towards the middle of the broadest expanse of the slope. She glanced up at the rippled snow surface above her. She was cutting across a death wish, but the fear only drove her faster. From the left, she saw that Jonathan understood. He turned in her direction, racing to stay ahead and downhill from her.
Her skis popped into the air on an unnoticed, vertical ridge. She struck the landing with the ease of a freeriding teenager and continued weaving. The movement flowed through her instinctively. Her mind stayed locked on the kids.
Below her, Jonathan cleared the ridge with less speed. Harry’s lean frame swung back into view. He was headed for the edge of the tree line where Michel stood grinning up at them with arms wide in a gesture of self-satisfaction.
‘He can watch the kids,’ Kara muttered to the mountain.
Instantly, her body sank back over the skis. She shifted her weight forward and leaned into the slope. It was like changing gears in a car; the uptick in speed matched by an increase in control.
The surface of the snow changed continuously like a river. Now soft, virgin, light. Now icy, rough, churned from old avalanches. Sprays of powder threw rainbows into the afternoon sun. She picked out smooth patches to cut turns. With each one, the rapidly passing landscape changed. Sometimes the path appeared so altered that it could have been on a different mountain.
Kara had to throw her whole weight into slowing. A spray of soggy snow slapped Michel and Harry’s legs as she came to a stop facing the jagged peak. Jonathan was still 200 yards uphill. Harry was busy recounting his descent with the proud enthusiasm of a champion while Michel interjected with his own exploits. As Jonathan neared the end, Michel turned to Kara with a smug expression.
“I told you everything would be all right,” he said.
‘For you!’ she retorted in her mind. He got to ski down the whole wall, concerned solely with his own pleasure. Kara wished she could take off into the forest, let him see how fun it was to hold himself back and worry about the others. She did not ski off, however. Michel would accuse her of making a scene.
Jonathan beamed with what looked like relief when he came to a stop. He leaned against his poles and gazed up at the mountain, too busy panting to respond to his brother’s congratulations. He finally pivoted towards his mother.
“Good job,” she said. “Kind of scary, no?”
Michel huffed. “It was perfectly safe.”
“Yeah, Mom,” Harry chimed. “That was fantastic.”
“I wasn’t scared,” Jonathan said. “I just got a little tired.”
Kara stopped listening. Eventually Michel led them into the forest. It was almost unrecognizable under so much snow, which made it easier to snake through the trees. The slope was littered with boulders, holes, and drifts, many undetectable from the surface.
As they descended, the temperature dropped. The forest grew thicker. It was difficult to see through her goggles in the fading light, but Kara dared not remove them for fear of losing an eye to a branch.
They began to move single-file in the tight spaces between the trees that clogged the vertiginous slope. The boys occasionally swerved into long detours when their father’s path proved too difficult. Kara waited for them, though they did not return the favor. She had to hurry to catch up after they cleared a challenge and returned to their father.
Kara was chasing them down an incline when she came around an unfamiliar ridge and glimpsed a strange dimple in the snow. Her skis suddenly immobilized. Her body hurled into the air. She could not tell in which direction she was falling. Her head and upper body were covered in snow for an instant. Then the powder began to fall away. She saw saplings and exposed tree roots as she came to a stop. Her skis were trapped above her head. She was hanging upside down.
She leaned up towards her feet. They were covered in snow; she could not see what held the skis. Jonathan peered down at her from above, a helpless expression on his face. Still crunched up, she kicked her feet. They didn’t move. She slowly allowed her body to unfold. Her legs throbbed from an unnatural twisting. She tilted her head and saw that she was along the edge of a ravine, dangling at least two yards above a frozen creek.
Kara dared not move her feet again. She hoped the skis were trapped in roots. Only they would be strong enough to hold her, but she would have to get on top of the skis to untangle herself. Jonathan didn’t have the strength to pull her up from such a position.
“Are you okay?” he called.
“Where’s your father?” Kara asked.
Jonathan swayed, trying to see through the trees.
“Never mind,” she said, realizing that Michel was too far downhill. If he hiked back up to help her, they wouldn’t be out of the forest before dark. Kara would have to pull herself up alone.
She unfurled her body, striving to relax. After the long day of skiing, she would need every bit of rest she could get to muster the necessary strength. Only the chin strap kept her helmet from falling through the tangle of snow-covered plants that sprouted from the wall of the ravine.
Her vision blurred as blood rushed to her head. Her legs ached. ‘Delay will only make you weaker,’ she said to herself.
She threw her chest up and arrived halfway more swiftly than she’d expected. The adrenaline from watching over her sons was still coursing through her veins. She pulled again, but her torso hung in the air. Her body throbbed as she strained to rise. A shower of snow began to fall away from the place where her skis were trapped. Each second exhausted her more, but she could not afford to fall back and rest.
With a determined grunt, Kara willed herself to lift her upper body. Muscles she did not know she possessed pinched in a belt across her back and abdomen. They seemed to be ripping apart. She leaned into the suffering, grateful for the hours she had given herself at the gym and praying the skis would not give way. The pain awoke memories of childbirth, and, as in that moment, something primal pushed her.
At last Kara glimpsed the edge of her ski, blocked behind an exposed tree root on the edge of the ravine. She shot her hand forward and hooked her mitten around the gnarled root. She yanked her exhausted body the rest of the way and fell against the mountain, landing almost upright in her trapped skis.
Jonathan’s mouth hung open as he looked from his mother to the ravine below. Kara’s eyes cut to the three-yard drop. She shifted her weight away from the edge. Disregarding the pulled and cramping muscles, she carefully worked her skis free from the plants that had saved her.
“Everything all right?” Michel hollered up the mountain.
Kara and Jonathan glanced at one another. Neither answered. She released the last ski and motioned for him to go ahead.
“Mom fell in a ravine,” Jonathan said when they reached the others.
“No!” Michel gasped, as if such things couldn’t happen.
“You did?” Harry asked.
“Yes.”
They all stood in silence for a moment, waiting for Kara to share the details. That was what the family did when they stopped while skiing, usually in the form of bragging by the men.
Kara recalled the sensation of blood rushing to her head. The thought made her dizzy enough to ignore the pain in her body. A buoyant warmth began to spread through her limbs. She had done such a thing! She had pulled herself up 180°. Never would Kara have thought herself capable of such a feat. Never.
She could not share this with the family. They didn’t believe she was capable of such a feat either. They would not believe it. They would say the situation hadn’t appeared dangerous to them, and perhaps it wasn’t. For each, the descent was unique. Their paths so different, they could have occurred on separate mountains.
They watched her with confused faces. Kara felt a pinch of nostalgia for the bragging ritual, but she had lost her enthusiasm for playing charades. She saw now that was what their habit of recounting their descents amounted to—a game to pretend they were sharing experiences that were actually lived alone.
Puzzled by her silence, Michel turned to Jonathan. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah,” Jonathan muttered.
Kara glanced up at the darkening sky. “It’s getting late,” she said to her husband. “Do you know where you’re going?”
“Sure,” he snapped. “We might be a little off, but I know where to cut back.”
Kara nodded for him to move. Michel turned and glided into the cold forest. Harry and Jonathan glanced back at their mother through the branches before setting off. She realized there was no need for the usual hovering. If she could pull herself out of a ravine, she could maneuver to help them from anywhere.
Further on, they reached the top of an open incline. Michel stood at the bottom and waved to Kara as if she had been looking for him, though she had not. She told the boys to go ahead and waited for them to get to their father before starting.
Kara launched down the boulder-strewn passage at top speed. She hoped they were watching. This was how she preferred to show off. Her skis only seemed to touch down on the turns. She felt like a bird making patterns in the snow with its wings. She had never taken such a passage so quickly or beautifully. She skied past Michel. If she could pull herself out of a ravine, there was no reason she could not take the lead.
“You’re not allowed in front!” Harry yelled.
She hooked left, cutting a path through the forest on intuition. Ducking and turning, Kara raced down the mountain. Her legs wobbled, but she refused to slow down until she caught sight of an odd circle of darkness in a small clearing.
She edged her skis towards it and realized it was an old water well, encircled by a wall of snow. An icicle-laden cornice had formed around the edge of the well opening, making it appear deceptively small. She immediately turned to warn the boys.
They were racing through the trees on parallel paths, while their father stood looking at his phone. They were much better skiers than Kara had realized, watching them from behind for so long. It occurred to her that they too had to get down every slope by themselves.
They were fascinated with the well and snapped twigs off nearby trees to have something to throw into it. Kara issued none of the customary injunctions. The danger spoke for itself, and the boys maintained a safe distance.
Michel arrived and announced they were very close to the road and could get back to the chairlift in time for one last run on a resort slope. One by one, the men left. Kara held back for a moment. She wanted to finish this run alone.
“Shall we ride up together?” Michel asked when Kara joined them at the chairlift.
He flashed the exaggerated grin he wore when he could sense something was wrong and wanted her to feel better. He never wanted it badly enough to have difficult conversations or make changes. Indeed, he didn’t think such things were necessary, but he did want her to feel good enough not to complain. She already knew that, however. After all, they were headed home, and he would certainly want everything resolved before bedtime.
“You should ride with the kids,” Kara said, loudly enough for them to hear.
“Great!” Harry chimed.
Michel arched his eyebrows. “You sure?”
“Positive,” she said, putting enough reprimand in her voice to ensure Michel wouldn’t protest.
“Fine,” he said, turning to the kids. “Let’s go.”
The chairlift employee hurried them along. The lift was closing. Kara sat alone in the middle of her seat. Harry and Jonathan twisted around to wave a few times. Then they settled, facing front. She could hear them talking about the beginning of the run. How exciting it had been! How silly their mother’s fears!
She kicked her skis, shaking out her sore muscles. Her body bounced as the old lift passed over a tower. She did not grab the safety bar. Kara was a different woman from the one she had thought herself to be. Stronger, more capable. Autonomous. It was a shift in perspective with implications as numerous as the snowflakes stacked on the mountain.
Kara felt a spark of elation as her weary body rejuvenated in the sway of the lift. The chair jerked as it passed another tower, and the seat rose over the crest of a long incline. Ahead of her, the men rode into the intermediate platform. She could hear them laughing, Michel threatening to take the same backcountry run again as they lifted into the air.
Kara’s chair swooped into the station. She flipped up the safety bar with an almost accidental tap of the finger and touched her skis to the snow on the landing. A solitary path stretched in front of her, luminescent with the inviting glow of the setting sun. She pressed her feet harder and shifted forward into the irresistible feeling of freedom as it pulled her out of the seat, like gravity.
MaryClaire King is a native of Charleston, South Carolina who resides permanently in Paris, France. Following a career in international marketing, she now works as a writer, teacher, editor, and translator. She holds a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing from Agnes Scott College. Her work has appeared in The Broadkill Review, and she is currently seeking representation for her first novel.
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