“And we were watching those clouds over there and thinking we should probably turn back,” Matt adds.
I look to where he’s pointing and see dark, heavy clouds gathering in the distance.
“What?” Elize says around a mouthful of biscuit. “Those clouds weren’t there just now.”
“That’s what happens around here,” Matt says as he climbs to his feet. “Storms appear out of nowhere in the afternoon, fling lightning, thunder, and buckets of rain all over the place, then disappear twenty minutes later. It’s not something we want to get caught in.”
“So that’s it?” Aunt Hannah asks. “This is as far as we’re going?”
“Yip. We could come back tomorrow, though, if you want to see the view from the top.”
“Nee dankie,” Simone mutters.
“Oh, no, that’s all right,” Aunt Hannah says. “I heard we might be having a relaxing day on the lake tomorrow.” She zips up Matt’s backpack and returns it to him.
“Down we go, then,” Malcolm says, jumping up and pushing ahead of Matt so he can be at the front of the trail.
“Wait, Matt,” I say. “Can I go just a little bit further? I want to see that foresty bit with the waterfall. Remember? It was so beautiful. Like a fairy land.”
“Sarah, the storm’s coming,” Matt says with the tone of a long-suffering parent.
“I know, but it won’t take long. Aiden can come with me, and we’ll just be a few minutes behind you.”
Matt crosses his arms. “Do you know the way?” he asks, looking concerned.
“Yes.” I wish I could tell him not to speak to me like a child in front of all these people. “I remember this ledge from last time. Your mom waited here, and you and your dad and I walked a little further on and found that waterfall. Remember?”
Matt sighs. “Okay. I guess it’s not that far from here. Anyone else want to go with Sarah and Aiden?” Matt looks around the group. No one says anything, although Elize gives him an are-you-kidding-me look. “Cool, well, we’ll see you back at the bottom them,” Matt says.
Aiden and I continue along the path, and after a few minutes, it slopes downhill and leads into an area thick with greenery. Leafy trees bend over our heads, their branches tangling together above us, and moss-covered stones line the muddy path. Water trickles not too far ahead.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” I say to Aiden. “I can imagine fairies flying by and pixies prancing around. Tiny lights and sparkles of magic and circles of flowers and mushrooms.”
Aiden chuckles. “It’s certainly your kind of place.”
I lead him between the trees until we get to a sheer face of rock with water streaming down it. The water dances and tumbles over stones before falling into a small pool that becomes a stream.
“Is this the waterfall you were talking about?” Aiden asks.
“Yes, but what I actually wanted to show you is off the path.” I duck beneath a tree branch and climb over a damp log.
“Ah. I imagine your boyfriend wouldn’t have been happy to hear that.”
I decide not to comment on that statement, mainly because it’s true, but also because I don’t want to get into a discussion about how it seemed like I had to ask Matt’s permission just to walk somewhere. After fighting through a few more tangled branches and bushes, we come out onto a flat rocky surface. “Come and see,” I say as I walk to the edge and look out across the spectacular landscape of rolling hills and mighty mountains. “We’re a little sheltered here, so you can’t see as widely as you can from the top, but the view is just as incredible.”
“I think I’m going to stay here,” Aiden says. I swivel around and see him hanging onto a tree branch as if it’s the only thing connecting him to the earth, even though he’s standing at least five metres from the edge of the rock.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Heights,” he says. “I’m not a fan.”
“Oh. I thought it was just flying.”
“No. Not just flying.”
“But …” I turn back and marvel at the never-ending palette of green spread out before me. The bright green of the hills rolling into the darker green of the lower parts of the mountains spreading up into the grey-blue-green of the mountain peaks melting in the shadowy grey of the storm clouds. “You can’t miss this view. It’s magnificent. It’s like opening a window from heaven and looking down at God’s creation.”
“That … sounds amazing,” Aiden says in a strained voice. “But you don’t understand. The closer I get to the edge, the more it feels like the ground is tilting. Like it’s getting steeper and steeper and I’m sliding towards the edge, and if I don’t hold onto something I’ll slide right off and plummet to the ground.”
I pause for a moment, watching him, then say, “What if you hold onto me?”
He stares at me. I see the fear in his eyes. The same fear that was there when the plane took off. Am I only making things worse by trying to convince him to walk closer to the edge? But these mountains, this view … It’s all so profoundly beautiful that it stirs something deep within me. Something I want to share with him.
I tilt my head to the side and say, “Come on. I dare you.”
He raises an eyebrow at that. He lets out a long breath and says, “Okay. I guess I can’t back down from a dare.”
I walk back to him and hold out my hand. A thrill races through me as he takes it. A stupid, ridiculous thrill I have no right to feel. Step by step, we get closer to the edge of the rock. Aiden keeps his eyes aimed firmly upwards at the distant clouds as he mutters, “Don’t look down, don’t look down, don’t look down.” It makes me smile because it reminds of the things I like to chant to myself: Don’t be weird, just be normal. Say something, say something, say something.
I stop, let go of his hand—with some difficulty due to how tightly he’s holding onto it—and step in front of him. “Look over my shoulder. That way you can’t look down. You can only look around.”
We stand like that for some time. The clouds move closer, tumbling over each other in slow motion until they cover the sun. A cool breeze drifts over my arms, a welcome relief from the heat we were suffering under not half an hour ago.
“Okay,” Aiden says eventually. “We should probably head back now.”
I turn around, expecting him to have taken at least a few steps back by now, but he’s right there, his face as close to mine as when he was about to kiss me in the airport. And that’s all I can think about now, that kiss and his lips, which my eyes seem to be glued to. I wonder if he’s thinking about the same thing. I wonder if he—
Crack!
The thunder gives me such a fright I almost fall backwards. Aiden grabs onto me and drags me back to the trees. “Yeah, we should definitely get going,” I say.
We push through the branches until we get back to the muddy path. From there it’s only a few minutes to the ledge where we said goodbye to Matt and everyone else. After that we hurry over rocks and logs, laughing at the fact that we were ever afraid of storms as children. Tiny spots of rain dot our skin and clothes, urging us on. I’ve never descended a mountain so quickly before, and I skid on loose pebbles and stumble over rocks far too many times. Aiden’s always right there to steady me, though.
After a while, I start to wonder if we might actually beat the rain home. But then, with a fork of lightning that strikes alarmingly close by and a ground-shuddering crash of thunder, the clouds open and rain begins to bucket down. I come to a stop with a gasp, tensing against the cold water running down my back and drenching my clothes. But then, because it doesn’t feel like there’s any other way to respond, I start laughing. I turn around and find Aiden shaking his head at me. I can see he’s trying to hold back a smile, though. “Oh, come on,” I shout above the roar of the rain. “I’ve never been caught in the rain before. It’s fun. And it won’t be for too long. We should be quite close to the lake now.”
I look around for a familiar landmark, but I don’t spot anything. I
turn slowly on the spot, feeling a twinge of apprehension in the pit of my stomach. “Um, do you remember this part of the hike from earlier?”
Aiden wipes a hand across his face and looks around. “Now that you mention it … I don’t think so.”
“And shouldn’t we have come across another blue arrow by now?”
Aiden nods slowly, and when his eyes meet mine, I know he’s thinking the same thing I am.
We’re lost.
“But we’re still on a path, aren’t we?” Aiden says, looking at the ground. “So we can’t be lost.”
I shake my head. “There are rough paths all over the place. That’s why the hiking trails have different coloured arrows painted here and there, so you know which one to take. And they’re a lot more clearly defined than this one. I mean, the grass is barely flattened here, see? I doubt this is part of any of the hiking trails.” I look around once more as anxiety grows within me. “I don’t know where we are, Aiden, and even if the storm passes quickly, it’ll be getting dark soon, and there are no lights out here, and neither of us brought a phone or—”
“Hey.” Aiden takes a step closer to me and touches my arm. “Stop panicking. We’re going to be fine. Think of this as an adventure.” He looks behind us, then ahead. “The way I see it, as long as we keep going downhill, we’re heading towards home.”
“Yeah, I guess.” I try to take Aiden’s advice and stop panicking. “Unless we end up in the middle of someone else’s fields.”
“Then we’ll just keep walking until we find a house, and we’ll ask if we can use their phone.” He grins. “I know how much you love talking to people you’ve never met before.”
I groan and push him away from me. “Fine. Let’s stay on this path, then. I suppose it has to lead somewhere.”
Slippery grass and rocks hinder our progress, and raindrops pummel down with such force they sting my skin. So when we come across a stream with a number of trees growing along its edge, I take Aiden’s arm and pull him beneath the tree with the largest, leafiest overhanging branches. “Let’s just wait till the rain calms down a bit,” I say. “I feel like it’s attacking me right now.”
“Good idea.” Aiden sits on the ground, while I perch on the edge of a root. I try to ward off the chill by wrapping my arms around myself. This isn’t Durban where the air is hot and heavy no matter what time of day or night it is. Up here in the mountains, when the sun disappears, the temperature drops.
“They’re all going to be really worried about us,” I say.
“Yes. Well, I’m sure some people will be worried about us.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Meaning?”
“I have an aunt who isn’t all that fond of me.”
“But she wouldn’t want you to go missing, would she? That’s awful.”
Aiden chuckles. “No, I’m exaggerating. We just tend to clash on a lot of issues, but she probably does love me deep down.” He considers his words for a moment. “Very deep down.”
“Is that the aunt who picked you up from the airport? The one who said she’d leave you behind if you weren’t waiting for her when she got there?”
“Yes, that’s the one.”
“She’s … your dad’s sister?”
“Yeah.” I hope he might say something about his dad this time, but he continues with, “That’s who we’re staying with—other than the time we’re spending here. She lives in …” He pauses, clearly trying to remember the name. “Westville, I think it’s called.”
“Oh, okay. That’s about twenty minutes from where I live.”
Aiden smiles and shakes his head. “Weird, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“We end up on the same plane—twice. We end up staying only twenty minutes away from each other. And then we end up at the very same family reunion. This holiday has been full of odd coincidences.”
I shrug. “Maybe. If you believe in coincidences.”
“You don’t?”
I shake my head. “No. Not really. I don’t believe that everything is just random. That everything happens by chance. I think things happen for a reason. Also,” I add as I notice Aiden frowning at me, “Einstein agrees with me, and he was kind of a genius.”
“Oh, well if Einstein agrees with you, then you must be right,” he says with a laugh. He picks up a twig and starts scratching patterns into the dirt at his feet. “So … you’re saying it means something? These ‘coincidences’ involving you and me?”
I get the feeling I’m walking myself into an awkward situation here. “Um, I guess so.”
He drops the twig and looks at me. “What does it mean?”
DEFINITELY AWKWARD. Because now he’s staring deep into my eyes as if trying to find the meaning there, and I’m staring back trying to think of some kind of joking answer, but I can’t, and my eyes won’t look away, and all I want to say is that I don’t know but it must mean SOMETHING, right?
Aiden is the first to break eye contact. He looks out between the dripping branches, and I realise as he does so that it’s stopped raining. “That didn’t last very long, did it?” he says. The storm has moved on, leaving us with nothing more than faint flickers of lightning and the distant murmur of thunder.
I clear my throat and stand up. “That’s how it happens around here.” I walk back to the path, wet dirt crunching beneath my shoes. The clouds are drifting away, revealing a purple-grey twilight sky. “We need to get moving. It’s going to be dark soon.”
Aiden jumps to his feet. “And that’s when the monsters come out, right?”
“Hey, are you making fun of my overactive imagination?”
“Not at all. Cows can be very dangerous when caught in a bad mood. I’d better walk in front, just in case.”
We follow the barely-there path as it leads away from the stream. My wet socks squelch uncomfortably inside my shoes, and my drenched clothing sticks to my skin. I rub my hands up and down my arms, but the goosebumps aren’t going anywhere. It turns out getting caught in the rain isn’t as fun as I thought it might be. At least, not when you wind up lost in the cold at the same time.
After about ten minutes, Aiden stops and says, “Hey, look what I spotted.”
I look up, and between the trees ahead of us, I see— “The lake!”
“You see?” Aiden says. “We’re not lost. We just took a detour.”
Our detour seems to have brought us down the left side of the lake instead of the right. It’s the side with the bench and the little wooden jetty. The side that doesn’t lead to the hiking trail we started on earlier.
We step off the rough path and make for the trees, then walk around the edge of the lake. By the time we reach the other side and climb up the hill towards the farmhouse, it’s almost dark. We cross the lawn we used for the party last night and climb the veranda steps. Through the glass sliding door, I can see the lounge is full of people, most of them standing, some talking on cell phones, all with anxious expressions on their faces.
“Oh! There they are!” Nan points at us, then hurries to the sliding door and opens it. “What happened?” she asks, pulling us both into a hug even though we’re still soaking wet. She says something else, but her words are lost amidst the expressions of relief and Elize saying, “I’ll go get towels,” and Matt’s mother saying, “Call Matt and the others and tell them to come back.”
When Nan lets go of us, Aiden raises his voice and says, “Hey, sorry to worry you all. We ended up on the wrong path.”
Someone groans, a few people laugh, and Matt’s mother is suddenly beside me saying, “We were so worried about the two of you. All I could think of were those horrible stories of people getting lost in the mountains.”
Elize returns with two towels. Nan takes them from her and hands us each one, then says, “Make sure you dry up properly. We don’t want you getting sick. And now that you’re both back, we should have dinner ready in about fifteen minutes.”
“Oh! The stove!” Matt’s mother dashes off in the dir
ection of the kitchen, and Nan hurries after her.
I pull the towel around my shoulders while everyone who was gathered in the lounge gets back to whatever they were doing before they started panicking about us. I hear the front door open, and moments later Matt appears in the lounge doorway, his brother and father behind him. “Sarah,” he says, his expression collapsing in relief. He crosses the room and wraps his arms around me, then lets go quickly once he realises just how wet I am.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean …” My voice trails off as I look up and find anger in his eyes.
“What the hell happened, Sarah?” he demands. “You never should have gone off like that on your own, especially with a storm coming. That was a seriously stupid thing to do.”
“Matt,” I say quietly, glancing about awkwardly, “I’m fine. Everything’s okay. And I wasn’t alone.”
“Oh, like getting lost with a foreigner in these mountains is any better than being on your own. What were you doing? Following the fairies in your head again? Why couldn’t you just stick to the path?”
“Hey, it wasn’t her fault,” Aiden says, taking a step towards us.
“Oh, so does that make it your—”
“Oookay.” Elize puts her arm around my shoulders and directs me towards the stairs. “You should probably have a shower so you aren’t shivering the whole way through dinner. And you too, Aiden,” she calls over her shoulder. “Although not together, obviously.” Elize laughs at what she obviously thinks is a hilarious joke while flames of embarrassment engulf my face. I quicken my pace, dragging her up the stairs with me.
We reach our bedroom, and several seconds later Aiden walks past without looking at us. Elize leans in the doorway and watches him. She sighs. “I can’t believe you got stranded in the rain with him. Jy is so gelukkig.”
I pause in my search for some dry clothes and look up at her. “You do remember you’re related to him, right?”
“But if I were you, I wouldn’t be,” she says, turning her longing gaze on me. “How unfair is it that a totally hot and perfect guy shows up and it turns out he’s my cousin?”