AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Terrified, disjointed thoughts flashed through her brain as she was carried swiftly down the steep slope. Daniel telling her how dangerously unstable the shale could be. Daniel pointing out to her the steepness of the mountainside and the depth of the narrow ravine into which the mountain fell.
Dust choked her nostrils and filled her eyes. The tiny pattering of the moving shale had become a low, menacing roar. She screamed as all the breath was driven abruptly out of her body as she collided with something solid.
‘Christa, Christa…’
Dazed with shock and pain, she realised that her fall had been broken by a large boulder perched precariously on the edge of a narrow shelf of semi-solid slate jutting out of the mountainside.
She was lying on her side and, while every part of her body ached and throbbed, unbelievably, nothing seemed to be broken.
As she struggled to sit up she heard Daniel calling out urgently from above her.
‘No, Christa, don’t move…Just keep as still as you can.’ Keep as still as she could! Why? What was going to happen? The ledge she was on was very narrow. Below it she could see the steep fall of the mountainside before it disappeared into the ravine.
She started to tremble violently, her imagination far too readily conjuring up images of what would happen to her if her frail sanctuary should collapse. Was it her imagination—when she moved, did the slate actually move as well?
‘I’m going to have to go and get help,’ she heard Daniel saying. ‘While I’m gone, you must try to keep as still as you can…’
‘No…’ Christa’s denial was a scream of pure terror. ‘No, Daniel. Don’t leave me here…please stay with me…’
She was trembling and sobbing, filled with panic and fear at the thought of Daniel walking away from her, at the thought of being left alone here on this narrow, fragile piece of slate which could so easily give way beneath her…Daniel was doing this to punish her; he was going to walk away and leave her…leave her on her own to die…to die alone…He wasn’t going to get help at all. He was…
‘Christa, I have to go. I have to get help, but I promise you, if you just listen to me and do as I say, you will be safe. Listen to me, Christa…Trust me…’
Trust him…A sob of pure hysteria bubbled in her throat. If she had trusted him in the first place she wouldn’t be here now. Trust him? How could she? How could she allow herself to be that vulnerable? How could she open herself to that kind of risk…that kind of pain?
He could walk away from her right now and leave her here. No one would ever know. He could simply say that there’d been an accident…He could…
‘Christa, promise me that you’ll do as I say…that you won’t try to move…’
How had he guessed that that was what she was already planning? She’d already decided that the moment he had gone she was going to try—she had no idea how—to somehow or other get herself back on firm ground…
‘Promise me…’
Promise him. Trust him!
She bit her lip to suppress a frantic sob…
‘I can’t,’ she told him fiercely. ‘I can’t…’
‘Then I can’t leave you,’ she heard Daniel saying above her. ‘And since I can’t rescue you without help, that only leaves us with one alternative…’
Christa’s heart missed a beat. He was going to leave her. He was going to walk away and leave her here on her own.
‘I can’t save you, Christa…but at least I can die with you…’
Die with her…Christa tilted her head and saw Daniel crouching down on the mountainside above her, starting to make his way down to her…
‘Daniel, no…’
The sound was torn from her throat, an anguished protest that revealed her true feelings.
He was prepared to die with her.
‘I’ll do what you say,’ she told him, tearfully. ‘I’ll stay here. I won’t move…I promise.’
* * *
‘Christa?’
Dizzily Christa lifted her head and opened her eyes. It seemed a lifetime since Daniel had left her to go for help. At first she had felt strong and brave, buoyed up by the emotional impact of knowing that he had been prepared to sacrifice himself to be with her, but gradually that euphoria had seeped away and in its place had come panic and fear, the temptation to move, to try something, anything to escape so strong that she had come dangerously close to giving in to it.
But she had promised Daniel, given him her word. Tears clogged her throat. What if, after all, he had been lying to her throughout?
‘Christa…’ She tensed as she heard Daniel calling her name a second time.
Drifting in and out of a state of semi-shock, at first when she heard Daniel calling her name she thought she must be imagining it, and doggedly refused to give in to the temptation to look upwards. A small flurry of displaced shale rattled past her, causing her to tense her body in panic.
‘Christa…’
This time she knew she was not imagining it, even if the sound of Daniel’s voice was coming, not from above, but from behind her.
Cautiously she turned her head and looked sideways, her heart flooding with joy and tremulous disbelief as she saw Daniel slowly and painstakingly making his way down the steep mountainside towards her, supported by a rope secured around his body, his downward progress agonisingly slow.
Christa could see now why he had told her not to move. Each careful toe-hold he managed to gain in the shale disturbed its own small avalanche of loose flint, tiny trickles of moving mountainside running together into rivulets which were already gathering force, combining together, increasing in speed.
Crouching tensely on her narrow ledge watching him, Christa wasn’t aware of the tears flowing down her face, making clean tracks in the dust coating her skin, until Daniel arrived alongside her and told her huskily,
‘It’s all right now, Christa…Don’t cry, my love. Everything’s going to be all right. The Air Sea Rescue people are sending a helicopter to pick us up… it should be here soon…’
Carefully, he eased his way on to the ledge beside her.
A helicopter…Automatically Christa glanced upwards along the route he had just descended and, although she didn’t say anything, Daniel obviously realised what she was thinking.
‘It’s too much of a risk,’ he told her gently.
Too much of a risk…but he had taken that risk to be with her. Her heart turned over achingly, fresh tears squeezing from her eyes to run helplessly down her face.
‘It’s all right…it’s all right,’ Daniel repeated, moving closer to her, reaching out his arm to draw her closer to him.
He felt warm and safe, the scent of his skin preciously familiar. There wasn’t room on the ledge for Christa to do what she wanted to do, which was to throw herself into his arms and beg him to hold her tightly. The ledge was barely wide enough for her body as it was, and Daniel was crouched half on and half off it, supporting himself partially on the metal spikes he had driven into the shale.
‘Trust me’, he had said, and, alone on the mountainside waiting for his return against all odds, somehow in the deepest part of herself she had known that she could, that he simply wasn’t the kind of man who would walk away and leave anyone suffering or in danger.
And if she could trust him with her life, surely she could trust him with her heart…with her love?
‘You shouldn’t have come down here,’ she whispered shakily to him. ‘You shouldn’t have taken such a risk…’
‘I wanted to be with you,’ he told her simply, his hand reaching out for hers, his fingers interlocking warmly with her cold ones as he gave them a comforting squeeze. “This is hardly what I’d got planned for us for today,’ he told her wryly.
‘No?’ Christa responded, trying to match his attempt at lightheartedness. ‘And there I was thinking it was all part of your master plan to convince me of the efficiency of your courses: mutual trust, mutual dependency…’
Fresh tears filled her e
yes.
‘And you shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t have taken such a risk. It’s all my fault…’
‘No, it’s mine,’ Daniel corrected her gravely. ‘I knew this morning that something was wrong, but I thought…’
‘That I was sulking because of last night…’
