Digging deep, I search out toeholds and places for my hands to grip, hoisting myself up a little at a time. My arms scream for me to stop but I keep going, and with one final push I crest the highest boulder and step out onto a ridge, where I’m rocked by a sudden, frenzied wind. That’s when I see, in a blink, how much trouble I’m in.
19
In the bleak, graying light, nothing but trees and hills for miles in every direction. No highway. No town. No tracks. Just woods. In the far distance, scree slopes and jagged, snowcapped peaks. All I can do is blink at the infinite landscape with my wind-dried eyes, not knowing what else to do.
A moonless black drops like a sheet and finally the dark and cold force me to move. Stumbling across to the other side of the ridge, I feel my way down a grassless slope until I am out of the wind. I take shelter in a gully of rocks and sit shivering, knees pulled up to my chest, back pressed into the iron-cold stone.
I am nothing in this sheer vastness. A mere seed in a canyon. How am I ever going to get out of this place? And what if he is here watching and lying in wait? No, I think, he’s returned home, slipping back into his mundane everyday world, reliving memories of my life slipping away in his hands. As far as he’s concerned I am dead and buried and no longer a problem.
There are nighttime noises again. Coming close, then backing away. Hairs on my arms stiffen. Thoughts become a jumble. My foot itches. I can’t let myself fall asleep. Whatever is out there could get me. Stay awake. Remain upright. Count the stars.
The night crawls by. With my hands tucked into the pleats of my armpits, I listen to the constant hiss of the wind, my chattering teeth, the wailing wolves. I think of my old life. It wasn’t so bad, was it? There were clean sheets, mattresses, pillows, hot baths, Starbucks double shots and Supreme King burritos. How nice the Manhattan skyline would look right now, that spectacular view from my partner’s office I took for granted, the smoked fish canapés and Australian red wine, and all that mingling with corporate clients. Matthew.
Don’t go there, I tell myself. Don’t go to the Mexican restaurant we loved so much, and our hand-in-hand walks through Central Park past the guys on the bongo drums, and making love on a Sunday afternoon as the sun blessed us through the window. Don’t do it. Don’t look back.
By daybreak my head feels like it could slip from my shoulders and I know I can’t not sleep forever. But for now I return to the ridge. Sky the color of seawater hangs over the vast land. The beauty is not lost on me. Heaven, or some part of it, will surely look like this.
Tracking the frosted clouds as they drift east, I study the terrain. Four choices. North—mountains. East—flat land covered with thick trees. West—more mountains and fields of scree. South—the trees thin out, a small hill, possibly a clearing and grassland, the glint of a waterway and what looks like a gorge and maybe a bridge. This could mean farmland. From up here it’s too hard to tell, and I don’t know anything about distances, how many miles it would be to get there, just that it seems very far away.
But I can’t stay here and south could mean people.
Before I leave I use tiny pebbles to spell out my name and my mother’s phone number beneath a giant SOS, and the words—Alive. Gone south.
All day long I weave my way through the assembly of trees, pausing frequently to scratch and inspect the underside of my troubling foot. I think about how cruel it was for him to take my shoes. Then I remember that it didn’t happen that way. I ran from him and he caught me and killed me and I came back to life. I tell myself that I mustn’t forget. The ten things, especially. Mint Capri. Kermit. Beaded seat cover. Boy on a bike. O, K, 1, and 7.
As I walk I think of my life, my childhood, my worst and best mistakes. I think of my mother.
“Talk to me, Amelia, I’m worried about you.” This was her refrain from my childhood. Her other favorite was “Sweets, it’s not good to bottle things up. You need to let them out.”
My mother is a verbalizer, the type of person who feels the need to announce every single thing that pops into her mind. What’s worse, she has no filter. Announcing things I think best kept private.
Like the times I’d hear her on the phone to her friends. Amelia got her first period today. Amelia had a bad case of diarrhea after camp and messed her pants. Amelia cries herself to sleep at night.
I never felt the need to share everything I did or felt, so whenever my mother said, “What’s going on in that head of yours?” I would tell her that everything was fine. “There’s nothing to talk about, Mom. I just need to get on with my homework.”
She didn’t even know I’d broken up with Matthew.
I know what she’s going to think when I don’t come back. She’s going to think I ran off. She’ll tell everyone I needed space, that I was more fragile than anyone ever knew. I think of how broken-hearted she’s going to be. What’s worse, she will blame herself. My poor mother, the woman who desperately tried to hold her fracturing family together after my father left.
Oh, how I wish she was here now. With a needle and a Band-Aid and some antiseptic cream for this irksome foot. My mother liked nothing more than to lance a boil. She once said she must have been a nurse in a former life.
*
Late morning and I breach the tree line and step into a field of astonishing yellow. Stretching out across the clearing, thousands of wild mustard plants convulse in the strong northerly wind. Bees levitate over the blossoms, their hind legs inked with gold. I bend to pluck a mustard flower, crushing it between my forefinger and thumb to rouse the spice. My nose itches and I toss the bud away and lift my chin to the sun.
I open my eyes. I must move on. Across the other side of the field, more woods and the hill I hope means the gorge and waterway I saw from the ridge. I move forward, passing through the bony green stalks, leaving a laneway of buckled plants in my wake.
I reenter the forested land and once again am besieged by gloom. I scan for water as I go. Sometimes I think I can hear raging rivers, only to step into total silence a few seconds later. The wilderness plays tricks on you like that, like an auditory mirage. Or maybe it’s just me.
Occasionally, I encounter dribbling ditches and stop and take some into my mouth. But it never feels enough. I worry about disease, especially with the hovering mosquitoes, which most likely means waterborne larvae. And who knows what other organisms and bacteria may be lurking there?
It’s maddening, also, that these little fingers of water never lead anywhere. Downhill or uphill, they just disappear into nothing. There are swimming holes and rivers out here for sure. But they remain hidden in the valleys, or blocked by the walls of green. There’s nothing I can do except play the numbers game and hope one of these creeks eventually leads me to a river, then people, then home.
Early afternoon I round a corner of moss-covered rock and smell the fruit before I see it. Plums. Hundreds of the ruby-skinned orbs lie in the grass, bird-pecked and fermenting. I glance up at the tree. A few less-damaged ones cling to the upper branches but it’s too far up to climb. So I take my chances on the windblown spoils and crouch down to select the largest plum I can find, wiping away the bugs to take a bite. It’s good. Sweet. I eat more, snatching them up, not caring about the syrup seeping through my fingers and forking at my chin. When I’ve devoured as many as I can, I sit back on my heels and lick my sticky hands. I feel better, appeased, and wonder if I should try to eat more, but decide the important thing is to continue on because I need to make the most of what is left of the light. Loading as much fruit as I can carry in the skirt of my dress, I set off.