Authors: Natasha Hardy
I hit the water at an awkward angle, my head snapping backwards as the air was knocked out of my lungs, the icy water closing over my head.
I was in trouble.
I managed to clamp my mouth shut as I fought the panic and dark spots that danced in front of my eyes. I tried to move my arms and legs, to pull myself back towards the receding light of the surface, but they were so heavy and it was such an effort.
To add to my horror, silken strands of viscous water moved over my arms, feeling like fingers that were pulling me further and further down.
Sinking.
I screamed as the pain rushed up the sides of my head again. It was a useless sound, muffled and very weak, and it didn’t even come close to countering the relentless searing pain that had me curling in on myself. And then with a sharp jolt I’d hoped never to feel again, it was gone, and I knew I was dying.
Dreamy thoughts flitted through my mind.
Mom; Dad; Luke; Josh; home; air.
Air!
Warm air was forced into my lungs.
Strong hands holding my face.
Water rushing past me.
Lips clamped firmly over mine forcing air into my starved lungs.
I must have passed out because the next thing I was conscious of was rough rock pressing into my aching back and hands smoothing the hair from my face, and an urgent voice in my ear begging.
“Wake up; please wake up!”
I concentrated on opening my eyes, pushing my eyelids up with effort.
A halo of light surrounded him.
I focused on his mouth which was still moving in muttered petition as his hands continued to smooth my hair, his eyes raking my face.
I dragged another breath into my lungs and closed my eyes so that I could concentrate. My thoughts moved sluggishly as I mentally ticked off sensations.
Toes still moving – check
Sensation in my legs – check
Back… sore but not excruciating.
Fingers – check
Face – check
Breathing…
Breathing was difficult, as though my lungs were still compressed by the weight of the water.
A stab of alarm pierced my dreamy thoughts breathing shouldn’t be this difficult. Something was squashing my lungs.
I lifted my arm with effort as I tried to find whatever it was that was holding me down. My hand found his bare chest which I pushed slightly.
He moved off me quickly, muttering apologies. I curled onto my side as the aches from my fall began to register. I was still focused on him, feeling strangely detached from my body as my logical mind told me that I must be dead or at the very least dreaming.
I watched him settle next to me on the rock, trying to force my confused brain to give me comforting answers.
This – boy?… Man? I couldn’t decide how old he was – had saved my life.
I clung to that thought.
Where had he come from? I’d never seen him before and was sure I’d have noticed other hikers.
His forehead was creased in obvious anxiety as he continued to touch my face.
He looked up suddenly the light of the sun behind him momentarily blinding me.
He took my face in his hands and lightly brushed a kiss on my cheek before whispering, “Be careful, Alexandra.”
And then he was gone.
The explosion of a gun going off, angry animal noises, and Luke and Josh yelling obscenities at the baboons, preceded the echoed pounding of their feet and eventually Luke’s anxious voice.
“Alex.” His voice ricocheted off the rock surrounding me.
I took stock of my surroundings for the first time. I was on the edge of an enormous sunken rock pool. Smooth rounded rock walls scooped skywards and then curled in on themselves. On the opposite end of the pool from where I lay the rocks formed a solid ceiling, the water inky beneath the canopy.
“Alex!” Luke and Josh shouted, their voices strained.
I could see them crouching on what must appear to them to be solid ground, but from my perspective was only a half-metre worth of rock above the cave roof, as they searched the water below them.
“Over here, Luke.” My voice sounded weak even to me, and I wondered if they could hear me.
“Alex!” Josh yelled again.
I summoned the last of my strength and yelled as loudly as I could. “Here!”
“Are you OK?” Luke shouted, his voice worried.
I thought about my answer for a few seconds. Was I OK? I knew I’d almost drowned, and I knew that someone had saved me, but I couldn’t see him anywhere, which made me question whether he had, in fact, saved me or whether I’d imagined him altogether.
My gaze swept the pool, the rocks and then up to where the boys were edging forward on their bellies to the edge of the rock ledge trying to see me. It was obvious from the freshly exposed earth and floating clumps of grass beneath it that I’d fallen into the pool on that side. I swivelled my now aching head to my right, a dark hulk behind me startling me until I realised it was my backpack.
I stared at the backpack stupidly as my brain clicked laboriously through everything I’d seen so far. His existence solidified in my mind. There was no way I would be on this side of the pool having fallen from that height, landing as I had, with my backpack on and then having to have swum all the way across the pool, in sodden heavy clothes and with the pack’s weight strapped to me.
My analysis, although frustratingly sluggish to me, had only taken a few seconds to work through.
“Yes, I’m OK,” I answered Luke.
“We can’t see you, Alex, can you see us?” Josh yelled.
I sat up watching spots dance in front of my eyes and edged forward to the edge of the boulder. I waved my hand out over the water and yelled, “I’m on the opposite end to you on a rock.”
The simple action exhausted me, so I moved back from the water and lay down again, breathing deeply and closing my eyes against the nausea and dizziness that threatened to overwhelm me.
“OK, we’re going to try to figure out how to get you out of there,” Luke yelled back.
It was only with Luke’s statement that I realised my dilemma. From this angle, the pool seemed completely encased in rock, the angle of the walls impossible to climb without proper equipment.
So where had my saviour gone? There were no ropes hanging from the sides of the hollow and Luke and Josh would’ve seen him if he’d scrambled out of the pool. I stared at the inky ominous water that lapped gently beneath the rocky overhang.
It wasn’t possible, I told myself sternly as I connected the very obvious dots that led to a completely irrational answer. The only other way for him to have left would have been to go into the cave somehow.
I stared at the obsidian water. No light suggested that it was an exit from the relentless rock that held the water, and me, within its grasp.
My dazed mind wandered towards a ridiculous conclusion. Unless he’d swum, there didn’t seem to be an obvious route out of the pool.
I could hear Luke and Josh walking carefully around the perimeter of the pool, little shards of rock plopping into the water marking their progress.
Eventually, Luke’s face appeared on the opposite side of the pool to where I was sitting.
“How you doing, Al?” he asked again. I propped myself up on my elbow and shrugged, tears welling in my eyes as relief flooded through me.
Luke’s forehead creased into a frown, belying his calm voice.
“So we reckon the best bet is to lower a rope down to you and then pull you out,” he said in a soothing tone, before moving back from the edge of the pool only to be replaced by Josh, who grinned impishly at me.
“Good to see you, Al. Enjoying the sun tanning?”
I smiled a wobbly smile back, too tired and scared to answer him.
Josh directed Luke until he was directly above me, and a few moments later a rope tumbled over the ledge. It hung about two metres from the rock I was sitting on directly over the deep-blue water.
“Alex, we need you to get into the water and then tie your pack to the rope.” Josh’s voice echoed as I watched him scamper around the edge of the pool to where Luke must have been.
The thought of going back into the water that had almost claimed me sent panic racing through my veins. My breathing, coming in short shallow gasps, echoed off the rock walls and seemed to get louder and louder.
“Alex, what’s wrong?” Luke’s voice floated down to me. He sounded worried.
“N-n-nothing.” My teeth chattered together, betraying me.
Just take a deep breath
, I told myself,
you can do this.
“You can do this, Alex.” Luke echoed my thoughts. “Just stay calm.”
I slipped into the frigid water, hauling the already sodden pack off the rock. It was like being attached to a rock as it almost immediately pulled me under, it was so heavy. I kicked as hard as I could but within a few seconds realised I didn’t have the strength to keep us both at the surface.
My head had just dipped below the water, panic closing my throat, when the pack seemed to grow suddenly lighter and my thrashing legs managed to push me back. I peered down through the rippling water, trying to work out how it was possible that I was at the surface, and moving, almost without trying, toward the dangling rope. A shadow that I was too afraid to explore extended from beneath my pack.
In a daze I swam to the rope and somehow looped the end of it into the handle.
The effort left me drained and it took all of my energy to simply float on my back as the boys hauled the pack up.
As soon as my ears dipped below the surface of the water, the whispered talking I’d heard at the previous pool swirled around me. The voices were slightly louder this time and seemed angry. I quickly flipped vertical again, treading water as I waited for the rope to reappear.
When it did, I struggled to push my cold stupid limbs to do as I commanded, shoving them into the makeshift harness the boys had created. After what felt like an age, I was ready. “OK,” I yelled.
I could hear Luke and Josh straining as they pulled my dead, water-sodden weight up and out of the pool. I grabbed at the rock ledge as it came into reach and hauled myself over the edge, scraping the skin off my elbows and bruising my hips and knees as I scrambled out.
I rolled away from the edge and lay panting on my back, the hot afternoon sun a welcome relief from the shadowed icy water.
Luke helped me up, pulling me into a bear hug that took my breath away. After a few moments, he gently pushed me away from him and held me at arm’s length, dipping his head to look directly into my eyes.
“Don’t ever do that to me again, Alex!”
I nodded and gave him a wobbly smile, my mind still trying to unscramble the mysterious events that resulted in me still being alive.
Josh draped his arm around my shoulders as we walked to the cave we’d be staying in that night, keeping up a falsely cheerful conversation that soothed my shattered nerves, and a tight hold on me that bore most of my body weight.
The boys treated me like I was made of china for the rest of the day, insisting that I get into some borrowed dry clothes as soon as we reached the overhang which was to be our shelter for the evening. Josh quickly built a fire while Luke went hunting for our dinner.
I watched in awe as the sun, which had almost set, bathed the view from the cave in blood-red light edged in shadows.
Directly beneath me and above me, the rock face ran in an unrelenting gash across the middle of this comparatively small mountain, curving away from me into a valley dark with trees. I could hear the chuckle of a stream somewhere below where I was standing and could make out the grassy plain we’d walked through earlier in the day, now a pool of violet shadow.
I turned to see what lay ahead of us, what the rest of this camping trip might hold.
Its beauty left me breathless.
We had walked deep into the Injisuthi and the mountains that were a pretty backdrop from the Van Heerdens’ farm, now soared majestically skyward, their jagged outline looming in confident grandeur above me. I felt so small and insignificant pitted against their timeless magnificence.
Josh’s sleeve brushed my arm, startling me, as he joined me in admiring the view.
“It’s beautiful isn’t it?” His voice was hushed as the night’s chorus washed over us.
I nodded. We stood in companionable silence watching the last of the light bleed into the shadows, before moving back to the crackling fire.
Our conversation spanned a vast array of subjects, from Josh’s theories about the female leader in the cave, to school. Josh politely avoided talking about my family and particularly about Brent, which I was grateful for, and instead hovered on light and happy topics.
Josh was going into his final year of school the following semester and was then planning to go on to study further in medicine.
“What about you, Al?” he asked casually. “What do you want to be?”
I hated this question, mainly because I didn’t know the answer to it.
My parents had decided that I would study further after school and were trying to persuade me that my grades in maths and science should naturally lead me to engineering or medicine or something along those lines. Just because I was good at those subjects didn’t necessarily mean I liked them, in fact, I couldn’t think of anything more terrifying than being trapped in a world constantly bombarded by routine. A world, that from my perspective, most adults I knew seemed to suffocate in.
I shrugged “no idea”.
“Oh come on,” he goaded, “you must have some clue?”
“OK,” I grinned. “I want to be a warrior princess.”
Josh laughed at me. As children we’d often played a game where Alexa the warrior princess, along with her trusty sidekick Josh, rescued the world from Luke the dragon.
“You look like you’re turning into just that,” he replied, grinning at me, seemingly pleased at the blush that crawled up my neck. “Although maybe the warrior element needs a bit of work, most warriors can hold their own against baboons,” he amended, lightening the sudden intensity of the mood.
I laughed, nodding.
“What’s so funny?” Luke asked, walking into the cave.