Page 20 of Wandering Wild
“Charlie, wake up.”
Zander’s soft voice lulls me from sleep, making me sit up and rub my eyes as I slur around a yawn, “’S time t’go alre’dy?”
But when I blink into awareness, it’s still dark beyond the cave entrance, though there’s a white glow of moonlight bathing the forest floor, indicating the rain has finally cleared.
“Not yet,” Zander says, his voice still soft. “There’s something you have to see.”
I groan and shove weakly at him. “Sleep now. See later.”
Zander chuckles, then takes my hand and drags me to my feet. He gives a grunt of pain, reminding me that only hours ago he was quite literally dead , and that sends a bolt of recollected fear through me enough to quicken my waking.
“You should be resting,” I say sternly.
“I will in a minute. I just went to get us more firewood.”
I glance at the freshly stoked flames. “You should have woken me. I would have?—”
“I’m bruised, not broken,” he interrupts, squeezing my hand and making me realize our fingers are still entwined. “And I needed to stretch anyway. Who knew falling off so many things in so few days would make every part of me ache?”
His words are lighthearted, but they still make me grimace, because we have done a lot of falling on this trip—and we both have the marks to show for it.
I follow reluctantly as he pulls me out of the cave and into the crisp night air. Our thicker clothes are still drying, and I step unconsciously closer to him when goose bumps break out on my flesh.
“It’s not far,” he promises, leading me into the moonlit forest. The earth squelches beneath our boots, making me wonder how long it’s been since the rain stopped—and how long I was asleep on Zander before his midnight wake-up call. Of all the outrageous thoughts to cross my mind, I really hope I wasn’t drooling on him when he rose to get firewood.
“Just up here,” Zander says, indicating a small incline, at the top of which sits a layered rock formation rising above us.
“Very nice,” I say once we reach it, having no clue why he dragged me out of our warm cave for the sake of some stacked boulders dappled in moonlight. “Can we go back to bed now?”
I cringe at my wording, but Zander laughs quietly and says, “We’re not there yet.”
He points a finger upward, and I balk, realizing he intends for us to climb the rocks in front of us.
“Don’t you think we’ve defied death enough times today?” I ask. “Let’s not tempt fate.”
Zander rolls his eyes and tugs me forward. “Come on, Charlie, where’s your sense of adventure?”
Flatly, I say, “It’s back at the hotel, where I left it on Tuesday.”
“Liar.” He shoots me a grin that makes my toes curl. “Ignoring the aforementioned death-defying hiccups?—”
“You call those hiccups ?”
“—there have been moments of this trip that you’ve loved,” he finishes. “Admit it.”
I will do no such thing, and only keep tugging against his grip as I say, “We’re going to fall and kill ourselves. For real this time.”
Zander stops trying to get me to climb, and turns to face me. He’s so close that our boots are touching. “Do you remember what I told you when we were about to jump out of the helicopter?”
“I think you mean when you pushed us out,” I correct. “There was no jumping. That was a decidedly involuntary move on my part.”
His lips twitch, but he says nothing as he waits for my answer, so I lower my gaze as I shyly recall, “You said you wouldn’t let anything happen to me.”
He squeezes my hand again. “I meant it then, and I mean it now. I won’t let you fall, Charlie. I promise.” He pauses, before taking a breath and asking, so quietly that I barely hear him, “Do you trust me?”
I have to close my eyes at the emotion in his voice, remembering what happened the last time he said I could trust him, and how I bit his head off, telling him not only that I didn’t, but that I never would. I’d had my reasons, but still... he didn’t deserve how I treated him.
“I’m sorry for what I said earlier,” I whisper, meeting his eyes again.
There’s nothing but understanding and forgiveness in his expression. “I know you are.” His solemn features turn more playful as he adds, “You can make it up to me now.”
I glance apprehensively at the boulders. “If we break our necks?—”
“—then it’ll be a bonding experience,” Zander finishes for me, not taking this seriously at all . “Come on, Charlie. Before we miss it.”
That sparks my curiosity enough that I hesitantly follow him up the rocks, taking care on their mossy surfaces as we climb higher than our heads, then higher still. Soon we’re above the canopy of the trees, and only then do we reach the top, where we come to rest upon a large, flat boulder.
Standing there and staring out over the crown of the forest glittering in the moonlight, with the mountains surrounding us on all sides, I can admit that it’s a beautiful sight. But when I turn to Zander, he’s not looking at the view.
He’s looking up.
I follow his gaze, and a gasp leaves me at the starry expanse stretching above our heads. I’ve never seen the night sky so clear, the Milky Way so close that I could almost reach out and touch it.
I’m stunned speechless by the magnificence before me. Zander, too, is silent, as if we both fear that uttering a sound will break the magic of what we’re seeing. Instead, we sit down on the edge of the boulder, our legs dangling out over nothing but air, our heads still tilted upward as we marvel at nature’s most spectacular offering.
I don’t know how long we sit like that—long enough for me to begin shivering from the cold, long enough for Zander to pull me closer to his body, long enough for me to not even question it when his arms wrap around me and I curl into his warmth again. I can’t remember the last time I felt this safe, and because of that, I take a risk—and open my heart.
“My mum and I used to stargaze,” I say quietly. Zander’s head turns toward me, but I can’t look at him and still share what I want to, so I keep my eyes upward. “There’s a lookout near where I live, and she used to take me there on clear nights. We’d bring blankets and snacks and cuddle together as we tried to find different constellations.” A sad laugh leaves me. “We weren’t very good at it. Though there were a few we could always find.” I raise my hand to point them out as I list, “The Seven Sisters”—I move my fingers to the right—“Emu in the Sky”—I move again—“Orion’s Belt”—I then stop at four bright stars, with a fifth, smaller one between them—“and the Southern Cross. That one was always the easiest to find. Mum used to say—” My voice is suddenly hoarse, but I make myself go on, “She used to say that as long as I could see the Southern Cross, then I’d always know she was with me, somewhere under the same sky. She said I’d never be alone, as long as I remembered that.” I swallow, and it feels like there are knives in my throat. “But then she left me, and—and?—”
I can’t bring myself to finish. I don’t even realize I’m crying until Zander wipes a tear from my cheek. Then another.
It takes me a full minute to pull myself together, and when I do, I inhale shakily and share, my voice barely a whisper, “The first few weeks after she died were like a black hole. I don’t remember anything. Ember didn’t leave my side, forcing me to eat and drink and sleep. I’d never known grief like that—I didn’t know how to process it, physically, mentally, or emotionally. How could I go on when Mum was gone? How could I live knowing I’d never see her again?”
I still have trouble thinking back to those early days when my pain was raw and unrelenting. Even now, I don’t want to linger there, so I continue, “But then I found something that helped pull me out of the darkness. Not completely—just enough that I could breathe again. It was a distraction, but at the time, a distraction was exactly what I needed.”
When I don’t go on, Zander asks, his voice full of all the pain he feels for me, “What was it?”
There’s no way for me not to be embarrassed as I admit, “You.” I feel him startle beside me.
I quickly explain, “Not you -you, though I guess it was, uh, kind of you. I just mean—” I cut myself off before I can ramble too far, and start over. “I told you how Ember was with me constantly, and you already know she’s obsessed with you, so unsurprisingly, she was streaming all of the Lost Heirs movies on repeat in the hope that it would take my mind off—off everything. And somehow, it worked. Instead of me visualizing Mum’s death over and over, I began to daydream about being in the Enchanted Vale with Prince Tyron, and how we would slay dragons together and overthrow the corrupt kings and queens of the Five Realms. It was a pure fantasy playing out in my mind, nothing but escapism from the pain of my real life, but front and center to it all was, well, you .”
My face heats with my confession, and I keep my gaze firmly on the stars as I continue, “You were my safety net, Zander. I know it sounds mad, and even a bit stalkerish, but you kept me sane during that time. Not just as Prince Tyron, but as you .” I’m not about to expand on my stalkerish admission by sharing how I watched every interview I could find as a way to feel connected to him. He can fill in those mortifying details himself. “And I know it’s not fair of me, but that’s the reason why what you did impacted me so strongly. Because I’d finally found something solid to anchor me in the wake of my mum’s death, and then, only three months later, your DUI was all over the headlines, and I thought—I thought—” I rasp out the words, “Suddenly, my hero turned out to be no better than the man who killed her.”
Zander’s arms tighten around me, almost painfully. “God, Charlie, I’m so sorry. I?—”
“No, please don’t,” I say, finally turning to him and placing a finger over his lips. “I understand now, I do. I just—I wanted you to understand. That’s why I was so angry at you. Not because of what you did—or at least, what I thought you did—but because in my mind, you betrayed me. My escape was no longer an escape. And that meant I had to actually face my grief head-on. It made me feel like I’d lost my mum all over again, and this time, I didn’t have a prince in a fantasy world to distract me on my darkest days.”
It’s humiliating, admitting all of this to him. But it’s also liberating. Not even Ember knows how deeply I retreated into my own mind during those early weeks of grief, or about the solace I found there. And she certainly doesn’t know what I’m about to share next.
“My whole world fell apart when my mum died, Zander,” I say quietly. “I eventually learned how to function again, took myself to work, kept myself alive, remembered how to laugh despite the gaping hole inside of me. And I know all of that will get easier as time passes—as you know yourself. But what I didn’t realize until coming on this trip is how I’ve let my life just stop . All the dreams I used to have, all the plans I had for my future...” I shake my head. “It’s like they died along with her. And I didn’t notice. Or maybe—maybe I didn’t want to notice. Ember told me. Even Sandy told me. I know they’ve been worried, but I just—it’s taken everything for me to survive day to day, let alone beyond that.”
Life isn’t about survival—life is beautiful, and it’s meant to be lived .
More tears well in my eyes as Ember’s words return to me, words I gave little thought to when she said them, but now they’re burning in my chest.
“I forgot, you know,” I whisper in a choked voice. “About this—how big the world is.” I gesture to the forest, the mountains, the stars. “Being here these last few days, jumping out of helicopters and crawling through canyons and falling down waterfalls... you were right when you said there are parts I’ve enjoyed.” I scrunch my nose and quickly amend, “Not the waterfall part. That I could have done without.” A shudder leaves me, before I continue, “I used to dream about doing those kinds of things. When I was a kid, I always imagined going on adventures to discover the secret places of the world. My bedroom walls were covered in photos of far-off destinations, my bucket list pages long. Ember was the same—we spent hours making up stories of our escapades, the people we’d meet, the things we’d see, the dragons we’d slay.”
There’s a hint of amusement in Zander’s tone when he says, “More dragon slaying? I’m sensing a running theme here.”
My lips curl up at the edges. “So I might have had an overactive imagination before daydreaming about being with you in the Enchanted Vale. But I had to start somewhere, and in my defense, Ember and I did mostly stick with the real world, planning all the places we would one day visit: the pyramids of Egypt, the lost city of Petra, the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu and Mesa Verde and Khara-Khoto... the list went on and on.”
Melancholy hits me, and my voice turns quiet again. “Then Ember got sick, and we stopped dreaming about any of those places and focused only on getting her better. By the time that happened, we were older, and she’d found her love of acting and had new dreams for her future—and I was just so grateful that she was still alive to have a future that I didn’t take the time to figure out what my own new dreams were. And then—and then Mum died, and after that...” I trail off, needing a moment to pull myself together all over again.
In a whisper, I repeat my earlier words, “My life stopped, Zander. I didn’t even realize how much I’ve been missing until everything from the last few days reminded me that there’s so much more to living than just being alive.” A strained laugh leaves me. “Isn’t that crazy? This ridiculous nightmare of a trip, where we’ve nearly died too many times to count—and you have died—is what made me remember how important it is to live. How did that happen?”
It’s a rhetorical question, so I’m unsurprised when Zander doesn’t have an answer.
Sobering again, I say, my voice sad but thoughtful, “I know my mum would have wanted more for me. She’d want me to live my life, and to embrace every moment of it. She’d want me to go on all those adventures I once imagined. She’d want me to see the world and find my place in it, to learn and to love and most of all—” I swallow. “She’d want me to dream again. More than anything, she’d want that for me.”
Quietly, oh so quietly, Zander asks, “What do you want?”
My answer is just as soft, as if I’m afraid to say the words and what they will mean. But I find my courage and say, “I want that, too. I want to dream again. I want to live again.”
His arms around me give a squeeze, his voice rough as he says, “I’m glad.”
It’s only two words, but there’s enough emotion in them that I know he’s feeling them deeply. Almost as deeply as I am.
Silence falls upon us again, but it’s more peaceful than any we’ve yet shared. More than that, I feel hopeful for the first time in a long time. A few days ago I could barely think further ahead than next week, but now, ideas and thoughts are sparking in my mind, memories of long-forgotten dreams being reawakened. My plan had always been to move away with Ember to study once we finished high school, but I realize that’s not something I want anymore. Not yet, at least. What I want is everything I just told Zander—I want to see the world, I want to find my place in it, I want to live .
I have no idea how I’m going to do any of that, but right now, wanting it is enough. I’m excited about something for the first time in months— years , even—and it’s such a welcome change from my heartache that I nearly start crying all over again.
Instead, I lean further into Zander, staring up at the stars and letting everything we shared tonight settle deep within me.
It’s only when we’re both so cold that not even our combined body heat can keep us warm that we finally admit defeat and return to the cave. I don’t think twice before wrapping myself around him again, and for the second time tonight, I fall asleep on him. But this time I do it with a lighter heart...
And a smile on my lips.