Elixer of Life

            Altitude sickness had begun creeping through Jeff since the ascent from Paloma Blanca.  He’d had a pulseless, steady headache and starry vision since 8,000 feet.  The night before, he’d taken the elixir.  You will feel better afterward, the shaman had said.  And tomorrow you will climb Santa Clara and look for a sign in the sky.    

            They looked out across the scalloped ridges of the mountain chain that ran north to south.  Ryan grinned and squinted into the firmament. 

The elixir was not working the way Jeff had hoped it would.  The horrific visions from the night before seemed only to be pulling him closer to the knot that lay hidden in his groin, as if his entire being were contracting into the cancer, like a supernova collapsing into a dwarf star.

            “Do you see anything?” Ryan asked.  Ryan seemed younger then, like he had when Jeff had met him three years earlier.  Ryan had been looking for a partner who knew the difference between love and the fear of dying alone.  Jeff had said, I know.  Now, every step in elevation provided Ryan a kind of physiological regression while Jeff sank deeper into the awareness that, in six months time, there would be no need for his sign.   

            Jeff’s face fell into his palms.  A finger of sunlight broke through the clouds and ran across the ground and up his outstretched legs.  Then the sky in the east turned plum and frenzied, and the patch of blue that had been the portal for the remaining sunlight squeezed shut.  Rain came, and when it did, Ryan held Jeff’s head in his lap, and although he did not know why, Jeff turned his face to the sky and let the rainwater pool in his mouth, thinking, Now, I am actually drinking. 


By Norah Charles