But it would have been good to cry now, desperately, endlessly. She hadn’t thought through what she was getting into when they started climbing up the chimney. Fifty meters upward with another person, whom she had to pull along every few meters because he could barely crawl with one hand and one leg. Now, perhaps a third of the way up, she felt she had no strength left to go on. She had planned to reach the halfway point with short breaks, then three-quarters, and finally the rest. But her plan hadn’t worked, and now she knew they couldn’t turn back. She couldn’t fit past the professor in the narrow passage, and turning the old man around with his splinted hand and leg was essentially impossible. So, the original plan remained. Keep going.

She stopped to catch her breath and tried to focus on the positives. She often drew strength from seemingly hopeless situations by pausing and trying to assess the situation from the outside. Yes, she was tired; moving an adult man’s weight was hard, and they weren’t progressing as fast as she had imagined, but they were moving. The chimney, though narrow and muddy, often slippery, wasn’t as steep as the cave itself. It was like a slide, only they were climbing up, not down. This made things easier, as the professor could also move forward on his own, even if only for short distances. They still had water, muesli bars, and chocolate—that counted too. She concluded again that it was better to have started than to sit in the damp chamber and wait… wait for something that might only happen days later, if at all.