Page 54 of Wandering Wild

No, I won’t let myself consider it. Hawke and Bentley are relying on us, and we won’t fail them. Wecan’tfail them.

“Should we check the map again?” I ask Charlie, despite it being less than ten minutes since she last pulled it from her pocket.

“What’s the point, when neither of us can read it?” she returns.

I almost correct her, since technically, wecanread the map—or at least, we can follow the dotted line, even if we can’t decipher the landmarks—but there’s enough of a bite to her voice that I sigh and let it go.

When the rain grows heavier, I start to become genuinely nervous. It’s still nothing like yesterday’s downpour, but the drizzles are now weighty droplets, and the sky is darkening, warning us that we’re running out of daylight. I check my watch and realize with some alarm that sunset is just over an hour away, and if we don’t look for shelter before then, we’ll be stuck searching after nightfall.

But then?—

“Do you hear that?”

Charlie and I ask the question at the same time, and we hurry forward through the trees toward the sound of flowing water. I should be relieved, since it has to be the creek Hawke mentioned, but the noise keeps getting louder and louder until we step out of the forest to find the source, and any excitement I feel swiftly turns to dismay.

“Small?” Charlie splutters, staring at the raging torrent before us. “Small?”

My voice is strangled when I reply, “Hawke did say the rain might have swollen it.”

Charlie is too horrified to respond, her face as pale as the gurgling rapids.

“Hey, we don’t have to cross it, remember?” I say, trying to ease her dread. “It doesn’t matter that it’s larger than expected—this changes nothing for us.”

Her gaze finally leaves the water only to focus incredulously on me. “If this is what it looks like here, what do you think the ‘narrow waterfall’ is going to look like? Do you really think it’s going to be the trickle Hawke implied?”

I blanch, acknowledging her point. But the waterfall isn’t visible yet, and with any luck, the river—definitelynota creek—will shrink before then.

“Let’s just wait and see,” I tell her. “It might not be so bad.”

Turns out, I’m right.

It’s not bad.

It’s whatever comesafterbad.

Because when we follow the river around a bend, the roaring grows ever louder until we finally stagger to a halt at the view of the immense waterfall plunging out of sight.

This time, it’s Charlie who sounds strangled. “You were saying?”

I’m lost for a reply, unable to do anything but gape at the colossal amount of water streaming over the cliff. At any other time, it would be beautiful, one of nature’s hidden wonders, but knowing we have to find a way down it makes me feel like there are ants crawling around in my stomach.

I try to muster some reassurance for us both, and I settle on saying, loud enough to be heard over the roaring falls, “Hawke seemed confident there’d be enough rock for us to rappel down without getting wet, so let’s move closer and see what we have to work with.”

On the plus side, the rain has paused, almost like the heavens have decided to give us a break for a change. Either that, or they’re laughing because they know we’re about to get soaked in a different, much more thorough way. My apprehension is at an all-time high as Charlie and I carefully approach the cliff, but I exhale in relief when I see that Hawke spoke true about the spacious rock face. The torrent is strong enough that we won’t be able to avoid the spray—I can see the sandstone we’ll be descending is darkened by water—but we won’t have to battle the deluge itself.

“Ugh, that’s high,” Charlie moans, placing a hand over her eyes. “I was never afraid of heights before this trip.”

I don’t think she’s afraid of heights now—it’s more that everything about our situation has us both brimming with unease. Even I feel a wave of dizziness as I look toward the base of the waterfall, where the river continues raging on a white-water current around a bend and out of sight.

“There’s about an hour left of usable light, so I figure we have two options,” I say, still having to speak loudly to be heard. “We can follow Hawke’s instructions and rappel down this now, then find shelter for the night once we reach the bottom. Or we can backtrack and search for a place to sleep up here, and tackle this”—I jut a finger out over the edge—“tomorrow.”

“I don’t like either of those options,” Charlie states. “But if it rains more in the night, there will only be more water in the morning, and we’ll also have to make up the time we lost. So let’s just get it over with.”

That’s my thinking as well, so I nod and unwind the rope from around my shoulders. “Help me find somewhere to tie this.”

We seek out a thick tree trunk as close to the edge of the cliff as possible, neither of us forgetting Hawke’s warning about the rope’s limited length.

“You first, or me?” I ask Charlie once we’ve both double-checked the knot is secure.

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