Through the windshield, Xi’an’s Bell Tower rose ahead of us, illuminated against the night.
Horns and engines competed in the streets below as drivers fought through traffic.
Months of planning had gone into this trip. Weeks of adventure lay ahead.
Yet it wasn’t the Bell Tower I found myself looking at.
In the taxi’s rearview mirror, I saw my wife. Just one eye—big, round, and alive—the other hidden behind the sweep of her blond hair.
She caught me staring.
She smiled.
“What are you looking at?”
I didn’t look away.
Then I reached for her hand, and we continued into the city.
That was three days ago.
~
We ate peanuts from a small bag Dani had been carrying. The salt stuck to my lips.
She wiped her nose after and said she felt worse.
Then we started again.
The dragon began as stairs, and it kept being stairs.
They were narrow and uneven, polished smooth by shoes and rain—dark stone against bright sky.
The rail was cold metal.
I could see air on both sides if I let myself look.
I stayed half a step behind her so I could hand her water without having to ask.
When she waved me off, I put the bottle back and watched the way her shoulders rose and fell.
People passed us on the left when the ridge widened.
Most didn’t look up.
Ahead of us, the ridge kept turning.
Then my backpack shifted hard against my spine.
The left shoulder strap had loosened. I reached back, found the webbing, and felt it tearing away from the seam.
I stepped off to the side and told Dani to go ahead to the next landing.
She didn’t.
I tied the strap to itself with a knot that looked confident until I put weight on it.
It slipped.
I tightened it again.
A minute later the other strap started to tear as well, then a buckle, then a seam.
I didn’t have a needle, and I didn’t have thread.
I had sweat, stiff fingers, and a length of thick webbing that had already ripped free from the pack.
Dani tried to help, but the cold had drained the precision from her hands as well. She pinched and pulled and then let go, breathing through her mouth.
A group of tourists arrived from the cable car route—clean jackets and full water bottles.
One of them crouched beside me without asking and started working the knot with quick fingers.
Another held the strap ends taut.
Together we turned the bag into something that held.
It was lopsided.
Ugly.
Tight in the wrong places.
But it held. Barely.
I thanked them, and we started climbing again, Dani in front, me holding the strap.
Ahead of us, the dragon kept turning.