I feel a sharp pain shoot through my leg as I step on a piece of rock jutting through the grassy floor. My knees buckle as I struggle to find my balance, wobbling back and forth as I shift my weight to keep myself upright. 

As I do my awkward dance however, the round tin container in my hand begins to slip out of my grasp. A curse escapes my lips as I fumble to bring the container to my chest. A sudden movement that shifts all of my weight forward – backpack included – and nullifies my efforts to stay upright as my feet give out beneath me. I close my eyes and brace myself as I feel my body hit the ground, the feeling of soft grass slapping against my cheek.

So close, I think to myself. I had come so close to making the whole journey without once falling. I decide to lay there and allow myself a deep breath, feeling my body relax as the contorted muscles ease from the whole performance. 

I let out a groan when I finally get up, but it’s cut short when I remember the tin container I had pulled towards my chest. Leaping off my chest, I assume a hunched over position on all four limbs; placing the tin container in front of me as I begin inspecting it for damages. As I turn the container in my hands, I notice slight dents on the two opposite sides from where I had landed on it. I let out a scowl but breathe a sigh of relief as I conclude those to be the only noticeable damages to the item.

I lift the container towards me with both hands, cradling it against my chest as I use my knees to stand. A breeze sweeps through the area as I turn my head to take in my surroundings. 

I stood at the peak of a mountain, and beyond me, just a couple feet away, was a cliff that overlooked a small but beautiful town below.

This mountain was not just any mountain though. It was the same one I’d hiked every weekend with my grandfather since I was five years old. And that town wasn’t just any town either. That was home. The same place my grandfather raised me after my parents died.

Needless to say, the journey up the mountain wasn’t one that was new to me. Though today’s hike was a little bit different than what I was used to. It was the first time I was braving the mountain alone, without my grandfather. Which, had obviously not been my idea of course.

How ridiculous of an old man. I think to myself. Making a sixteen year old boy scale a freaking mountain all by himself.

If not the wind, or the bears, or the wolves, there were so many things that could’ve gone wrong on this trip. But my grandfather had insisted it be a challenge, and I was going to be damned before I backed down from it. 

I look down at the tin container I held against my chest, the challenge my grandfather had given me was rather simple. First I had to deliver the container to the top of the mountain on my own.

“Easy enough.” I whisper with a grin. 

But the grin quickly fades as I remember what was to come next. 

Another curse escapes my lips as I turn my head away from the cliff in frustration.

“Damn you, old man.” I whisper to myself. “You just had it to make it unfair for me didn’t you?”  

My grandfather had always been feisty with his challenges. They were almost as twisted as the man had been wise. 

“If we do not rise above the challenges that frighten us most, we will forever cower in the shadows of our withering destiny.” he would always say when I protested his twisted challenges.

“How will you allow yourself to soar, if you will not allow yourself to fall? 

How will you allow yourself to shine, if you will not allow your heart to ignite? 

How will you allow yourself to savor all that glory represents, if you will not allow yourself the taste of adversity?”

This was the ultimatum my grandfather always answered my protests with, and I would always scowl in defeat as I struggled to answer his fancy riddles. And he would erupt in laughter while I moped in despair.

Suddenly, I begin to feel a strange sensation bubbling inside of me as I notice my vision start to get blurry. I pull my jacket tightly around me as I shake my head. Must’ve been the cold, I think to myself, dismissing the memories and focusing myself on finishing today’s challenge.

I turn back towards the cliff, starting a walk towards the edge before whirling back around and howling in frustration once more.

This was impossible. It was insane! It was the craziest thing the old man could have possibly come up with.

I feel the same sensation return in my chest but as my vision begins to blur I notice a hooded figure making their way up the path I had come. A grin spreads across my face as I shift the tin container to my left hand and raise my right hand in a wave.

“Uncle Reed!” I call out to the hooded figure as they lift their head and notice my waving. The figure pulls their hood down, waving back to me.

Uncle Reed had been out of town for the past week but I recognized him by his hiking stick and coat almost immediately. Uncle Reed wore a rugged expression that looked as if he had just survived a bear attack and his eyes held that usual mellow glow. But as his gaze meets mine, I could see a gentle smile breaks across his face beneath that messy gray beard of his.

“Olaf?” the man calls out, “Where’s Usyk?”

I open my mouth to answer him but instead raise my rounded tin container in the air for him to see instead. 

“My word,” he replies gravely, “This must be the cruelest challenge to date.” There was a hint of pity in the shoemaker’s voice, though it seemed almost like he was trying hard to hide it.

“You know how the old man plays.” I reply with a shrug, trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice. “His game, his rules.”

The shoemaker makes it up the final sections of the path with a grunt, coming to a stop beside me and placing a hand on my shoulder. 

“I am sorry to see you here for this, my boy.” the shoemaker replies with a shudder, “Truly.” 

The shoemaker is one of the oldest friends of my grandfather. I remember sitting at campfires with them, and a few others from town, as a kid when they got together to drink and sing about days long since past. I knew Uncle Reed the best out of all of them because we would occasionally see him at the mountain’s top too. Though he always came for one reason and one reason only.

“Are you here today with one?” I ask Uncle Reed, gesturing at my tin container. 

The shoemaker considers the question for a few seconds before exclaiming “Yes, I am!”.

I watched as he reached into his coat pocket and took out a cylindrical tin container, just like the one I carried. 

“What a destined coincidence this must be, my boy.” 

“Who is that one one from?” 

Uncle Reed doesn’t reply immediately as he stares down at the container in his hands. 

“Phillip.” he finally answers. “An old man from the next town. No family left to make the delivery for him it seems.” Uncle Reed adds with the briefest of smiles. 

There was something mystical about this mountain top, it prompted most people in the village – and even surrounding villages – to have their own containers brought to the top. Though few could make the journey themselves, and even fewer yet would do it for someone else. Almost every time I met Uncle Reed atop this mountain though, he carried with him someone’s tin container. Some would belong to residents of our town, some would belong to those from neighbouring towns, and some would even belong to people from other parts of the world entirely.

Uncle Reed was a well known and talented shoemaker, so he often received customers from around the world. He was the second most famous attraction of the town, next to the mountaintop itself. As his customers asked about the mountain and its story, Uncle Reed would offer to help bring their containers to the mountaintop for them. For no extra price at all.

Oh the money he could’ve made, right Grandpa? I thought to myself. It was a long standing joke that Grandpa would always make whenever we saw Uncle Reed bringing up containers. I had asked the shoemaker about it years ago, why he would do these things for people he had little to no connection with.

“I suppose I am just an old soul,” Uncle Reed had replied, “Unable to stand idly by knowing that there are those out there who will depart this world with the simplest of requests, only to fade into nothingness knowing none will ever grant them their wish.”

The words now ring in my mind as I recall them from my memories. There had been so little meaning in these words at that time. But now it was as if they echoed with nothing more than vivid truth. I look down at my own tin container, the one that my grandfather had asked me to bring up here for him, and my body is filled with that strange tugging feeling once more as I think about not seeing this challenge through.

Guilt. 

I take a deep breath as I turn to Uncle Reed. 

“Can you show me?” I whisper quietly.

Uncle Reed nods kindly.

The shoemaker shrugs off his backpack, placing his hiking stick on the floor beside it as he makes his way towards the cliff’s edge. His footsteps are gentle, as if he was walking on sacred ground, the grassy floor parting to imprint his every step. As he reaches the end of the cliff, the shoemaker holds Phillip’s tin container over the edge, unscrewing it and uttering a string of sentences. 

I had heard those same sentences so many times from watching Uncle Reed over the years that it had become almost impossible to forget each word. Once Uncle Reed finishes, he gives the container a slight tilt as a stream of gray dust begins flowing out of the container. In the same moment, a gentle breeze began sweeping through the mountain top as it carried the dust away into the wind.

As Uncle Reed finishes and steps away from the cliff, he places a hand on my shoulder once more and gives me a gentle squeeze of support. 

But by this point I could barely see out of the tears that now welled in my eyes.

I grip my rounded tin container once more, hugging it tightly against my chest as I force strength into my legs. As I forced them to carry me to the edge of the cliff, backpack and all. 

This challenge is too cruel, grandpa. Was all I could think of. You won’t stay even when you’re gone?

But I already knew the answer to that question. 

I had already asked it, just last week.

And he had answered, just last week. 

“Just because I am not with you in person, need not mean that I am not with you at all, Olaf. 

I ask that you cast me into the wind, so that I may taste once more the air above that mountain’s top. 

You don’t need to carry my essence with you to honor my memory.

You need only grasp firmly the memories of the time we spent together.

For that is where you will always find me.” 

I take a deep breath as I stand at the edge of the cliff. I lift a hand and unscrew the lid of the tin container, gripping it as tightly as my shaking hands could manage. I steel myself as I firmly prepare to repeat the words Uncle Reed had just said. Though before I knew it I was already shouting them at the top of my lungs:  

“With this you are welcomed home! To the orange fields that know no bounds! 

 With this you are welcomed home! To the pearl white kingdom above it all! 

 With this you are welcomed home! To the glorious sanctuary you will now reside!

I cast you into the wind, as your spirit descends into peace! 

I cast you into the wind, as your soul transcends mortality!

I cast you into the wind, so that your essence may find new life, soaring through eternity!”

As the final words leave my mouth, I tilt the container as a stream of gray dust pours out over the cliff’s edge. Once again, the mountain responds with a gentle breeze that carries the gray dust far across the mountains and into the lands beyond. 

“Goodbye, old man.” I whisper to myself as I watch the last of my grandfather’s ashes disappear into the wind.

The tears on my face had all but dried up now and all that remained was a proud grin that beamed across my face.

A fitting end, for a magnificent man. 

The final challenge was now complete.