The Frozen Desert by Moein Mansoori Fard (early reader chapter books txt) 📖

stick more in the sands. I am at a distance of less than two meters from the valley. I don’t know what I should do.

Again, the fear does its job: sound the alert. Finally I reach my knapsack which moved away from me. Suddenly, I see the front part of a car which emerged from the sands. The car is positioned almost vertically. My knapsack is going toward it. If I could reach it, I would catch my knapsack and also I would survive.

I pull myself slightly out of the sands and reach out my hand to catch the bumper of the car. My knapsack stops by the roof of the car. I look at my knapsack envyingly, I regret that I am not in my knapsack place.

My hand is at a distance of only a few centimeters from the bumper. So I stretch my body as far as I can to reach it. At the same time, my knapsack moves and stops behind the open door of the car.

I creep on the sands like a snake until my hand reaches the knapsack, but I can’t take it. My hand just touches it shortly. I take my last chance and I jump to catch either my knapsack or the bumper, although I can’t take off the ground at all and I just drag, and at the end I feel something in my hand. I don’t fall anymore.

When I come to myself, I feel that my throat irritates. I don’t need thinking, I know the reason. I still shout. I am dumbstruck, I can’t believe what I see. My feet are at a distance of only a few centimeters from the edge. I have pressed my fingers insomuch my pinkie nail thrust in my palm and it is bleeding.

I try to fix my position, then, when I take myself away from the edge of the precipice, I realize that the rope is tied to my knapsack. I reach the car slowly and cautiously. Suddenly I find out I am going toward the valley again. I pull the rope toward myself so that I go away from the valley, but it is ineffectual. As I pull the rope, it comes with me as if it is released from the knapsack. Yet, I pull it toward myself as fast as possible. As I guess, the ground suddenly collapses under my feet and I fall while I shout and scream.

At the last moments, I grab the edge of precipice instinctively. But it seems some hands caught me from under and pull me into the valley. The sands, on the other hand, trample my hand like the executioner. As I predict, the edge is so frail and unstable. I have lost my power. The edge collapses and again the screams of fear!

In absolute disbelief, I feel something soft in my hand and I see myself suspended in the air. A cascade of sands falls down into the bottom of the valley. The wind shakes me like a hanged man. I raise my head to consider my situation. The blanket is in my hands which is bored by a rod in the middle and saved me from falling. My heart beats fast. Everything happened in less than few seconds. It is unbelievable that I am so close to the death.

It is like the time after we wake up from a deep sleep and everything is meaningless, like a film playing at a fast motion. Now I realize that from what disaster I have been saved. I see more another rods which have come out of the edge wall.

Seemingly, they belong to the houses which are buried under the sand. It seems I am not so far away from the edge of the precipice because sands are falling on me. I try to ascend the blanket but I hear the sound of ripping the blanket. A cool wave passes through my body. It makes my hair stand on end. I stay still. The only organs of my body which move are my eyes, looking for the way out. I should reach the rods of the wall to find foot hold and to get rid of being suspended.

Suddenly I hear a voice like the avalanche. I look upward unawares and I see a huge mass of the sands which are falling on me. My fingers open instinctively and I release the rod without thinking about its aftermath. I can’t realize anything as if in a dream, I just feel a stabbing pain in my back for a while. Then I feel a sledgehammer beating on my breast and takes my breath away. Like in water, as we try to grasp everything to pull ourselves out of water and not to sink and not to drown, I struggle and I absorb the air with all of my power, but it is like something prevents. My head reels and the world becomes dark before my eyes.

 

***

 

I see everywhere blurry. I remember everything as clear as day and still feel a pressure on my breast. I close my eyes at the thought that I can stop the pain doing this. I try more to get the oxygen I need. I feel a hard thing under my breast. I regain my senses little by little. I just feel a hard and rough thing and it is like my feet are floating in the air.

When I move my feet, I realize that I am in unusual condition. I open my eyes and after a few wink I see two very high walls around myself. I shake my head to clear the rest of the giddiness which kept me dumbstruck. When the wind also slaps me in the face I come round completely and look around disbelievingly.

I fell prone upon the iron beam of a house which emerged from the wall, suspended between the earth and the sky. The sand fall over my head is still running, sometimes slow and sometimes fast. My posture is exactly the same as a wounded person who is carrying on a horse. The sun is shining as usual and the wind does his job likewise. I move my hands which became rigid like iron and take the edge of the iron beam with them. The survival instinct order me to save myself.

I close my eyes without noticing around and my situation, I gather the rest power of my body in my arms and pull myself slightly up. Suddenly I feel that a lightning hits me at back. All of my power gets away from my fingers and my fingers open. A great weakness engulfs me so that I cannot even open my eyes.

I don’t know why I stop doing. I am sure that I haven’t done anything to save myself but I am still on the iron beam. I open my eyes hardly and search for something which saved me.

I see disbelievingly that my hand grabbed the edge of the beam. I become both hopeful and hopeless. Hopeful because I haven’t fallen yet, and hopeless because no one has come to help me. I leave the chimerical thoughts and decide to save myself! I reach another hand the edge. I prepare myself for another lightning and pull myself up while closing my eyes and gnashing my teeth.

As I predicted, a barrel of gunpowder explodes in my breast and yet I pull myself up with trembling hands and then sit on the iron beam. A severe wheezing sound comes out of my breast and I pant ceaselessly. I feel that I have fallen into a sea. My body, wet with sweat, trembles continuously.

Hopelessly and unbelievably I find myself in the middle of the misery and death. A deep valley which I am just in the middle of it. The valley, like a big mouth, swallows greedily the sands from the both sides. The gap between its two walls is rather wide, maybe more than two hundred meters. The iron beams and some other parts are emerged from both sides of the valley, as if they reached out their hands and ask for help.

I am just on one of these thousands iron beams. I feel that all of these events are in a dream and I will wake up soon; but all of them are real. The red light which has covered half of the sky, evidences the night is coming. I must save myself before the darkness, because then probability of being rescued is too low.

As I sit, I creep on the iron beam like a child until I reach the end of the beam near the wall. I don’t know from where I have gotten this much energy but I stand on my feet when I approach the wall of the valley. I feel no pain neither on my back nor my breast. Just my breast irritates when it moves. I find the nearest beam and grab its edge with the help of the wall of the valley. I struggle so much that I finally reach on the beam. This time my lungs don’t meet lack of oxygen and I don’t pant. I check the situation and catch my breath.

I am at a distance of about two meters from up there. My hands are tired and I hardly hold myself. To reach up there, I should jump to there or I find another way which may be dangerous and may make my way longer. To find another way to up there I should travel the length instead of the height, but this needs energy and time. There is nothing above my head by which I pull myself up. There is only the rod I hung from it by my blanket.

All of a sudden, I see a rope which hung on to the rod. I thanks god and rise to take it. I take some steps toward the middle of the beam to be under the rope. There is nothing to lean on. The wind throws me off balance. I have to open my arms like a ropewalker to keep my balance.

There is a gap between me and the rope and I should jump up to grab it. Although I have no fear of height, this situation terrifies me a little. The valley is too deep so that its bottom is dark. I am sure that even the brave men will be shocked seeing this scene.

I gulp my saliva, then I jump up about a span but it is ineffectual and I can’t reach the rope. When I separate from the beam, the wind flows in my clothes and push me aside. So, when I come down to the beam I hardly keep my balance and it obliges me to sit on and grab the beam. My breast and my back irritate and ache.

Again, I stand slowly on the beam and stare at the rope. The wind shakes the rope, yet it is reachable. Again, I gather all of my power in my feet, gnash my teeth and jump up. My hand grasp at the air continuously but it get nothing. I am sure this time I will fall into the valley, but suddenly my hand grasps something and I hold it tightly.

This time, I keep my balance without sitting but prefer to sit on the beam. I gnashed my teeth insomuch my jaws ache and my face muscles are contracted.

I sit there calm for a while until my heart beats slower. I dare not to look at my hand. Maybe there is not in my hand the thing I was looking for. I touch it. It is coarse. I gulp my saliva and look at my hand. I wind the rope on my hand and look upward to find a place to hook the rope. But there is nothing except that rod.

Suddenly I remember the car on the edge of the valley. But I can’t remember its location. Yet, the rod over my head implies that it