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nearby. A handful of potatoes were baking in the ashes, their deliciously earthy scent mingling with the wounded, resiny smell of freshly cut wood.
    Back and forth swung the two-man saw, the sixteen-year-old Sherpa lad hardened to the labour by years of practice. There was a hypnotic quality to the work, he had come to realise, and he found he could lose himself in elaborate daydreams to dull the pain.
    Most of his fantasies were about the big mountains.
    Everest above all.
    Then a voice called out nearby; a young boy from the village had run up with a message for Kami; ‘There’s a man come to see you from Namche Bazaar.’ He said breathlessly. ‘Says his name is Jamling.’
    The tree gave up its fight with a rendering crack of splintering wood. Kami and his father had to jump for their lives as it fell.
    The work was over for the day; the two of them washed in a nearby stream and followed the young boy down to the village where they found the smiling figure of Jamling waiting for them by the village shrine.
    â€˜Namaste.’ He greeted them warmly.
    â€˜Namaste.’
    Kami bowed deeply as a mark of respect.
    The elderly Sherpa was well known in the village, his ever smiling face always a welcome presence in Kami’s home. Kami and his father had met him some years before, on one of their trading trips to sell timber in Namche Bazaar and since that time he had become a firm family friend.
    Jamling had been to the summit of Everest on five occasions and his scrapbook of photographs was an endless source of fascination to Kami. He had become something of a mentor to the young Sherpa boy, and had employed him the previous year as a trainee porter on a few short expeditions to local trekking peaks.
    Kami had proved himself to be strong and reliable out on the trail and Jamling had given him some climbing training. He even paid for Kami to continue his English studies and bought him the textbooks his family could not otherwise afford.
    â€˜Come and share rice with us.’ Kami’s father insisted.
    Jamling accepted the invitation and followed the two to the house where Kami’s mother and sister had already prepared lentils and curried potatoes in his honour.
    Being the most senior person present, the visitor performed a small ritual of thanks before they ate, sprinkling a few grains of rice and water on the mud floor of the kitchen and thanking the gods for their generosity.
    As he performed this task Kami noticed that three of Jamling’s fingers on his right hand were now little more than stumps. He wasn’t surprised at this new injury; frostbite was quite common amongst the men of Namche Bazaar, especially those who went high with the climbing expeditions.
    The men ate in silence, Kami wondering with barely suppressed excitement what the purpose of the visit could be. For some years he had dreamed of working with one of the big expeditions. Jamling had often dropped hints that he would consider Kami for his high altitude climbs, but until now he had evidently considered the boy too young.
    But now? Maybe the time had come.
    When the rice was finished, tea was brought in. The men sipped it appreciatively and finally Jamling judged it a decent moment to speak his business.
    â€˜I’m looking for an assistant,’ he said at last, ‘an expedition to Everest next spring. We’ll be helping an American politician to get to the summit. Three months.’
    Everest!
    The very word seemed to be loaded with a spectacular type of magic. Kami had to bite his tongue to stop himself crying out with joy. An invitation to work on an expedition was one thing but this was the ultimate!
    â€˜Ah,’ Kami’s father nodded calmly but his mother looked away and Kami could see the shadow across her face. She was alert to the dangers inherent in such a proposal; everyone in the Khumbu knew a family who had lost a loved one to the big mountains.
    â€˜What would the duties be?’