The journey through the thick, damp brush seemed interminable and my arms and fingers had gone numb long ago. The sun dipped below the tree line turning the evening sky an iridescent swirl of coral and blush. The shadows of the forest crept up from the ground, their black fingers extinguishing the remaining sunlight seeping in through the leaves. Soon the sun would vanish entirely and the forest around us would be lost to the oppressive dark.
I continued to follow Donovan’s voice as he encouraged me to keep walking, pausing only for a minute when my legs started to throb, and then feeling his warmth on my hand, forced myself forward. I tried not to think of Will or how panicked Sulley must be by now. The guilt was almost unbearable. How could I be so stupid, to get us all into this mess? Why didn’t I just listen? I prayed that Will would be found, and soon.
When it seemed my legs could move no further and exhaustion began to overpower me, a bed of moist leaves and soft earth sounded inviting. I considered dropping where I stood and closing my eyes until the sun came up, but I heard Donovan call out suddenly.
“There!”
I looked ahead through squinted eyelids in order to see in the waning daylight. There was a clearing ahead. The trees thinned and the foliage dispersed to either side of browning meadow. Weaving through the middle was a thin trial leading off into more densely wooded terrain.
“A trail?” I asked, knowing I didn’t have the strength left to hike even a marked path.
“It’s a game trail. That means . . .” Donovan’s voice trailed off ahead.
“That means what?” I asked following behind, not understanding the excitement in his voice.
The black of night was closing in. There was no chance of me following the small trail into another stretch of wooded hell.
“There! Up there. Come on!” Donovan called ahead.
I looked up into the trees and at first saw nothing, but as I followed Donovan’s excited calls, a structure took form among the shadows. Hobbling closer, I froze when I came to the clearing and looked up at the hunting platform. It poked out from among the branches of a large pine tree just off the game trail. From the platform, one would have a clear vantage point of the trail and the woods surrounding it. Donovan’s excitement made sense, but I felt apprehensive.
“We’re going to spend the night way up there, aren’t we?” I shuddered.
Donovan was beside me again. “Only as long as we have to. Come on, it’s almost dark.”
When we arrived at the base of the pine I saw that there were planks nailed along the side of the tree for use as a make-shift ladder up to the platform. From this perspective, even in the dark, the platform seemed a mile high.
“Must I keep reminding people that I have an issue with heights?” I pouted.
“I know you do, but this height may just save your life. Take it one wrung at a time.”
I looked once more at the height and then to the surrounding forest, now almost completely immersed in black, and began to climb. My legs wobbled and the gash in my thigh stung each time I lifted my leg to the next wrung. I had to rely on my arm strength to pull myself up to each one. This time I didn’t look down as I ascended bit by bit from the shadows below into the last shards of evening light.
Near the top my knee buckled from under me and my feet slipped free of the wrung below, forcing me to cling to the top wrung with all the strength left in my arms. My wet feet flailed as they kicked and searched for their foothold. Panic took hold of me as my arms began to lose strength and I started to slip. I reached for Donovan and started to scream his name, but before I could I felt his grip on my arms.
“I’ve got you. I told you I wasn’t going to let you fall,” he grunted and I felt him pull.
I glanced up to him and in the feeble, dying twilight I could see Donovan’s muscled silhouette stooped down to help me. Gasping, I realized I could feel his grip on me, warm and solid. At last my foot found it’s foothold on the wrung and I strained to keep my eyes on him as I pushed myself to the top of the platform. His muscular arms pulled me as I flung my legs safely over.
I struggled to sit up, desperate to hold the image of him in my eyes. He sat beside me on the platform, his form no more distinguishable than a shadow and fading with the sky’s light. I reached out my hand to touch him.
“You can see me,” he whispered.
“Yes,” I answered and my eyes welled with tears.
Through moist eyelids I watched as Donovan reached for me and the last of the sun’s light faded into black. I blinked back the tears and let them roll onto my cheeks. When I opened my eyes his silhouette was gone, lost to the darkness that consumed the forest around us.
Heartbroken, I cried out and bowed my head. I let disappointment and exhaustion seize me and I wept.
“I can’t . . .”
“Sshh, it’s alright. I told you before, when your heart is ready, you will see me.”
I lifted my head and looked at the spot where I knew he looked back at me.
“Right now, my heart has never wanted anything more in my whole life,” I whispered.
I felt Donovan’s hand on my cheek. I closed my eyes and imagined him there in front of me.
“I thought I could do this,” I whispered. “I thought I could bring my mom’s murderer to justice, but I’m tired Donovan. I’m tired of running from shadows. I’m tired of crying. I’m tired of being afraid.”
I heard Donovan’s sympathetic sigh in the darkness.
“I wish that I could tell you that it will all be over soon, but that’s something I just don’t know,” he said, and I could feel the strumming, slow and gentle against me. “But I do know that you will make it through this, that you are strong enough. You are going to persevere.”
I let out a ragged breath. “How do you know that?”
His hand brushed the side of my face again.
“Because you have to. And because I am here to eliminate any other option.”
“You said before that you don’t have to be here, that you want to be,” I said wiping my eyes on my shoulder. “Why?”
I heard him take a deep breath. I felt him pull away.
“Because you are why I exist . . . why I even want to. You are everything to me.”
I could hear the anguish in his voice, but I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to tell him that I felt the same way. How could I even begin to explain to him what he meant to me? He had saved my life more than once, twice, a dozen times. But more importantly I knew that wherever Donovan was, I would consider that my home. He reminded me that I was never alone and I never wanted to be without him. But before I could form the words I heard him clear his throat.
“You need some rest. You’ll be safe up here tonight. You should really try and get some sleep,” he said.
When I wiped my face with my hands I was startled by how cold they were. In fact, now that I had stopped moving the chill was becoming overwhelming. I longed for my jacket or even the muddied sweater that I had left behind.
Shivering and exhausted, I laid down as close to the base of the tree as I could in order to escape the razor-like night wind. Curling myself into a ball, I tucked my bare arms into my legs to harvest as much body heat as I could from my core. While the dense plywood beneath me was hard and unforgiving, I was thankful that my body could rest at last. I searched the dark for the sound of Donovan and heard the strumming beside me. The fact that the strumming was becoming more faint and slow was worrisome, but my mind was too weary to question it. I was satisfied that he was there.
A hefty breeze stung my cheeks and arms and chilled my legs through my damp jeans. I waited for it to pass and then curled in tighter and braced myself for the next cruel gust. What came instead was soothing warmth. It wrapped around my chilled arms and held onto me, shielding me from the wind. The warmth covered the back of my damp, weary legs, and pressed against my head. My body eased and the shivering stopped. I knew that Donovan was lying beside me, holding me close to him.
“You’
ll make yourself weak, touching me like this. Your energy, what if you need it?”
“Right now you need it more.”
I closed my eyes and let his warmth surround me and the strumming calm me. I knew it would drain him, interacting with me this physically, but I was too thankful, too wrapped up in the safety of him to care. I rested against the strength of his arms and let the black, dreary night melt away.
“Talk to me,” I whispered.
“What do you want me to talk about?”
“Anything. I just want to hear your voice,” I answered. “Talk about those years in Chicago . . . those years I can’t remember you. After the accident.”
The night was silent for a moment, and then Donovan’s voice, like smooth satin, filled my ears.
“Do you remember that night you snuck out of your Aunt and Uncle’s house? You were barely fifteen and you took their car out for a joy ride. You drove around town for an hour and then just parked on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Do you remember that?”
I snickered. “You saw that?”
“You got out and climbed onto the roof and lay there for hours staring up at the sky until the sun started to rise.”
“I remember. That was so long ago,” I said, my mind growing heavy with sleep.
“For me it was as close as yesterday. Your whole life, to me, has been a handful of days and at the same time forever,” he whispered. “You talked while you lay there. It was as if you were talking right to me. Do you remember?”
“What was I talking about?”
I let Donovan’s familiar voice ease me into forgetting where we were and what we were hiding from. I journeyed with him into the past and closer to welcomed slumber.
“You talked about your parents, about missing this place,” Donovan said. “You talked about school, about how different you felt from everyone else. You were angry.”
“Teenage ranting,” I shrugged. “Sorry you had to hear it.”
“I’m not,” he assured me. “I think you knew I was listening. I think you needed me to listen. Just like I needed you to tell me what you were feeling. Your never spoke about what was going on inside until that night atop the car. Somewhere inside you, you knew I was there.”
I could barely hear him speaking, my mind teetered on the brink of consciousness. The warmth of his body surrounding me filled me from the inside out. I tried to stay with him, tried to focus.
“I think I’ve always known . . .” I answered more asleep than awake.
For a minute not a sound but the gentle strumming filled the space around us and I drifted further away into the welcomed numbness of sleep, taking Donovan’s gentle voice with me.
“You asked me a question that night, I’m not even sure you knew what you were asking,” he continued, a whisper against my ear. “You said that if God never gave anyone more than they could handle, why did he have to make you so strong to begin with? ‘Why me?’ you asked. What made you so special?”
I sighed, barely aware that I was still speaking. “You . . . never answered me . . .”
I felt Donovan’s warmth on my check and my breathing slowed and my mind was carried away with the sound of the muted, tender strumming. I heard his voice as it flowed with me, but the words lost their meaning as I was finally lost to blissful sleep.
“I did answer you,” he had whispered. “I said . . . everything.”