Sacred Mountain: The Rugged Journey Within

I walk through the hillside, a hiking bag heavy with first aid, my shoes dust-covered, and my body shivering with cold. I try to run. I try to climb—Sacred Mountain. I’m weak. I sink sometimes into the thoughts of quicksand. I cannot save myself. But I must go through snow, through wind, through night.

“Hey, how are you feeling?” my classmate asked, laughing. “I put an ant in there.”

“You can’t,” I said. “It’ll crawl over my back. I’m afraid.”

“I’m kidding. No, Aunt,” he smirked.

“Are you telling the truth?” I asked again, then again. He laughed and ran outside with the others. It was a sunny day, but I felt frozen. My heart built a small, sealed room.

I drag my feet along the mountain’s flank. I hear a voice—strange, close, animal. Lies fall from its mask: a vulture, black-feathered, descends. It attacks madly. I fight it with a flashlight, swinging wildly, afraid.

Back then, math tests, red circles, and a teacher’s high heels striking the floor. My classmates’ laughter dissonant, like Stravinsky’s notes—atonal, out of order, birds of prey pecking me into pieces.

But then, he came.

Who are you?

He held a long knife. Armor as black as dusk. A brown helm beneath a gray sky. I asked again.

“You can call me X-Warrior—Mr. R,” he said, calmly.

“Thank you for saving me.”

“You are going through a trial. The vultures are only the beginning. If you always fear life’s difficulties, you are not yet a warrior.”

“I can be!” My voice trembled like an earthworm wriggling from its hole. Can he hear my weakness in his eyes?

Where is the top?

He doesn’t answer. Just a warning—they are coming. Crooked. Rotten. Curly. Belly. Teeth. Fur. Their claws are like Wolverine’s, longer than the Mahabharata, but with no poetry. Flames stab through my coat. The earth splits. I can barely breathe.

Yet the mountain—beautiful. Idealist’s heaven. Misanthrope’s heaven. Am I alive?

I see it like a bird—eagle, seagull, or swan—like Debussy’s “Girl with the Flaxen Hair.” I must win. I don’t ask for help.

They come, hair white, heads large, teeth leaking green gas, tails like snakes. One wraps around me. I pray for a tribal axe. But my weapon is just a flashlight. Still, I fight like it’s an axe, fighting off the nightmare.

In high school, black glasses, black words.

“What are you reading? Can you solve this?”

I set down Don Quixote. The math time was shorter than an elephant’s trunk. They laughed. I felt nothing but doubt. Alone. Only my imagination draws blades, cutting into myself. I had to prove something. Anything.

I swing my flashlight. Blood flows. Drops on snow. The sacred mountain shimmers in my mind like Beethoven’s Symphony of Destiny.

“Good work,” Mr. R says. He hands me a glaive. It glows green. The monsters shriek. I see desks, classrooms, and teachers’ faces. The green light hits the whiteboard like defiance—like a protest, like Puerto Rico shouting.

“Where is the mountain?” I ask.

“Desire. Greed. Fear,” he replies.

“What do you mean?”

“No mountain. Or you’re already on it. But not yet.”

“When?” I ask.

He smiles, then shifts into a black vulture. His voice was low, rough. He shakes his head like a bag of bones. Thin neck, wings rising. He soars into the gray sky. Farther. Farther.

Then the snow thickens. And I can no longer see him.