When I woke up the next morning, I didn’t feel the same excitement I had the morning before. I was worried, at first, that we might find another body. But also, all night, I’d had dreams of people falling off cliffs around us. Plus, today was the day I had to hike to the top of a mountain. Despite my friends’ reassurances that we’d take it slow, and that people did it all the time with no training, I was still nervous.
But my feelings, while not irrelevant in this situation, were not the most important thing, so I pushed myself out of bed. I waved to Achiq, who was cooking on the stove, and made my way out into the humid morning.
The bathing area was just a bit away from the village, as Luz had shown us when we arrived, and while it felt a little silly to bathe before I climbed a mountai
