by Elise Broach
“Hey!” Tyler exclaimed, grabbing Lizzie’s arm excitedly. “A waterfall! The cabin was supposed to be near a waterfall, right?”
Lizzie thought back to the story of John Muir and his lost cabin. He’d worked at—what was it?—a sawmill, and the mill was near a waterfall. The little, funny-looking cabin had been built on top of the mill.
“But Tyler,” she said, surveying the dense vegetation that crowded the bank of the creek, “there’s nothing here.” There were trees and bushes all around them, and large, wet slabs of rock, but no sign of any kind of house or shelter.
“Maybe it’s on the other side of the creek?” Tyler suggested. They both turned to face the opposite bank. The meadow they had encountered earlier was long gone; Lizzie could see only more trees and brush. And there was no way they could cross Tenaya Creek—the water roared past, splashing over the rocks, rushing from a churning pool at the base of the falls.
“I don’t see anything,” she told Tyler.
“Let’s get closer to the falls,” Tyler suggested. “Maybe it’s hidden in those trees over there, and we just can’t see it from here.”
He clambered over the slick rocks at the edge of the creek and pushed his way through the bushes. As Lizzie started to follow him, she glimpsed a silvery blur. She froze, her eyes tracking a shadowy, ghostlike shape in the dense underbrush ahead of them.
It took only a second for her to realize that it was Lobo, and that he wasn’t alone. Beautiful, pale Tamarack and gray-brown Athena were with him.
The pack! They were trotting swiftly toward the falls, and Lizzie started to call to Tyler—to tell him that Athena was here, the wolves were all together now, they were just ahead—but as she stepped forward onto a rock, her sneaker slid on the wet surface. She tripped, trying to regain her balance, but she could feel herself sliding. She banged hard against the boulder and then fell sideways, tumbling into the creek.
Chapter 28
SWEPT AWAY
THE WATER WAS so cold Lizzie couldn’t breathe. It caught her and pulled her, furious and fast, into the roiling torrent. She grabbed desperately at the bushes but felt herself ripped from the riverbank and carried away, bumping over the rocks.
“No!” Tyler yelled. “Lizzie!”
His voice sounded far away. Lizzie struggled to call out to him, but icy water filled her mouth and splashed into her eyes, blinding her. She tried to stay on her back, tried to put her feet out in front of her, but the current was so swift she was powerless.
She barely had time to notice a large rock straight ahead before her feet smacked into it, and she was caught for a second, suspended at a curve in the creek. In that instant, she thought of the curse. Was this it? Was this the moment she was doomed to die?
Then she was swept into the stream again.
Rocks scraped her legs and water roared over her. She was under it, then on top of it, then whirling in its vortex.
“Lizzie! Lizzie, hold on!” Tyler’s voice was faint.
Bang! Her feet hit another rock, and this time she clawed it, wrapping her arms and legs around it and hugging it with all the strength she had.
Blinking through the icy spray, she could see Tyler running along the shore. “Lizzie! I’m coming! Don’t let go!”
He crashed through the bushes along the shore, slipping and stumbling over the wet stones.
“Hold on!” he yelled to her. She saw him dig his foot into the ground by a large bush and grab the branches. Then he leaned toward her, his fingers flailing in the air. “Can you reach me?”
Lizzie held fast to the rock, coughing and spluttering, squinting through the spray at the watery gap between them. The cold stream pummeled her back and strained to pull her free. Her arms and legs ached from the effort of holding on.
“It’s too far,” Tyler decided, when she couldn’t manage to answer. “I’ll get a branch.” She watched him scramble back up the bank and push through the bushes, whipping around, searching the shoreline frantically.
“Don’t leave me!” she cried.
But he disappeared.
“Tyler!” she yelled. I can’t, she realized. I can’t hold on. She thought of her father, back at the zoo. He didn’t even know where she was. Then she thought of her mother, and her mind slipped deep into the past, to any faint sliver of memory that remained.
Suddenly, it seemed like she wasn’t holding on to the rock anymore. The rock was holding on to her.
At that moment, Tyler reappeared, with a large tree branch in his hand. “Okay, I got you. I got you, Lizzie.”
He wedged one foot in the rocks and grabbed a fistful of the bush with one hand. The other he stretched toward her, waving the long, crooked limb of the tree.
“Grab it,” he told her.
She shook her head. “The water’s too strong. You won’t be able to pull me.”
“I will,” he yelled.
They faced each other over the churning water. “Take the branch,” Tyler yelled. “I got you.”
And because there was nothing left to do, no hope but this one, Lizzie reached out with one hand. She touched the knobby, crooked end of the branch and gripped it as tightly as she could. Then she flung herself into the water.
Chapter 29
SHELTER
AS SOON AS she released her hold on the rock, the water took her, its icy arms whisking her downstream. She held tight to the branch and tried to gain a footing, but she couldn’t fight the current enough to reach the shore.
“Hold on!” Tyler yelled. Through the dense spray, she could see him heaving the branch, pulling with all his might.
But the creek was taking her anyway.
As she thrashed in the freezing current, her foot struck something. It was something hard and still in the torrent, something that wasn’t moving. Lizzie pressed both feet against it and grabbed the tree branch with her other hand. Tyler gave a great yank, hauling her through the water toward the edge of the creek.
For one suspended second, the cold creek water was all around her, pouring over her shoulders and head, filling her mouth.
Then she could feel the muddy bank beneath her, and Tyler was pulling her onto the land.
She was safe.
Drenched and shivering, Lizzie rolled on her side. She was coughing and spitting, and she couldn’t stop shaking.
Tyler crouched beside her. “Are you okay?” He knelt down, pushing her hair back from her face and frantically searching her eyes. His own were huge and worried.
She gulped and nodded, her heart knocking against her chest.
“I’ll get our stuff,” Tyler said. “The blanket, to warm you up. I’ll come right back.”
“No…” Lizzie started to protest, but he was already running through the woods, upstream, toward the waterfall.
Trying to catch her breath and shivering violently, she lay with her face against the ground. She stared at the thick tangle of undergrowth, the bottoms of the bushes and trees growing along the creek. She could see the gnarly trunks, the roots pushing up through the ground. And then she saw something else.
Something long and rectangular. It looked like a wooden board, sunk into the earth, stretching out of the muddy bank and into the creek.
Lizzie rose up on one elbow and stared. “Tyler,” she called.
He returned with the backpack, unzipping it and tugging both blankets out. “Stay there, I’ll cover you up.” He began wrapping the rough blankets around her, and the sudden warmth and dryness made her shake even more.
“Look,” she persisted. “Over there. My foot hit something in the creek; that’s the only way I was able to get to shore. I think it was a board.”
Tyler walked over to where Lizzie was pointing. The board was covered with vines and branches, and he crouched down, clawing them loose.
“There’s something here,” he said, his voice charged with excitement.
Beneath his hands, hidden by the bushes, Lizzie could see not just one board, but a wall of them. They were
dark and splintery, half buried in the bank of the creek, some of them extending into the water.
“What is it?” she cried, sitting up and wiping wet strands of hair away from her face.
“I can’t tell. Some kind of shack.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, look,” Tyler said. “We can go inside.”
Lizzie struggled to her feet, with the blankets draped over her. She was still shaking so much she could hardly stand.
Tyler ripped one of the boards loose, struggling to hold it up so he could duck under it. “Toss me the backpack.”
She dragged it over to him and he used it to prop the board up so he could shimmy under it. He tumbled inside and a minute later, his face appeared at the opening.
“Here, I’ll help you.”
Lizzie hesitated. “What’s in there?”
“Come see.”
Tyler pried the board up so she could crawl beneath it.
She squeezed through the gap.
It was dark inside, the only light coming from the hole they’d made climbing in. At first Lizzie couldn’t see anything. It smelled musty and stale, like wet earth.
“What is this place?” Tyler asked, touching a splintered plank.
“Probably something a hiker built,” Lizzie said.
“Like what?” Tyler asked. “A shed? It looks so old.”
Lizzie’s eyes were adjusting to the lack of light. It was a small space, maybe six or seven feet across, with warped wooden walls and a sagging roof. The last of the afternoon sun streaked through gaps between the boards.
“You don’t think…” Tyler said, squinting at the rough plank walls.
Lizzie almost laughed. “It’s not a cabin! It’s barely even a shack.”
“But John Muir built his cabin a hundred and fifty years ago, right? So maybe this is what a cabin from the 1870s looks like.” He touched the boards again.
Lizzie shook her head at him in the dark. “I don’t think so. His was up on stilts, remember? This is almost underground.”
“But it could have fallen apart since then,” Tyler persisted. “And it was supposed to be on Tenaya Creek. By a waterfall. We’re on Tenaya Creek … by a waterfall.”
He spoke more quickly, excitement pulsing through his voice. “And it was impossible to see, hidden under the bushes like this. It’s so close to the creek, it’s almost underwater. I mean, some of the boards are underwater. No wonder nobody found it!”
Lizzie shook her head. “Stop. It’s not a cabin. It’s a hiker’s lean-to. My dad has shown me these before. People build them for shelter when they’re camping. Look, it doesn’t have a floor or anything, just dirt. It’s probably not even that old.”
Tyler glared at her. “You just don’t want to believe we could find it.”
Lizzie recoiled. “What? Why would you say that?”
“You don’t think we’re smart enough … I’m smart enough.” Even in the dark, she could see the challenging spark in his eyes.
“What are you talking about?” Lizzie protested. “Of course I think you’re smart enough! You’ve been living on your own with no grown-ups. You figured out what happened to the wolves, didn’t you? You found the way to Tenaya Creek.” She grabbed his shoulders and squeezed them, hard. “I know you’re smart enough to find John Muir’s lost cabin! Even if nobody else could for a hundred and fifty years.” She paused and glanced around in the darkness at the softly sloping walls of the shack. “I just don’t think this is it.”
Tyler sat back on his heels, dejected. “But why not? Why couldn’t it be?”
There was something in his voice that Lizzie hadn’t heard before, a kind of pleading. And suddenly, it seemed such a small thing, really, to allow him this—the splinter of hope that this really was John Muir’s lost cabin.
What was history, anyway, but faith in the past … in the story people told about the past?
“Well,” she said slowly. “I guess it could be. I mean, there’s no way to know for sure.”
“Right,” Tyler agreed.
“And his cabin should be somewhere around here, if it’s on Tenaya Creek.”
“Yeah,” Tyler said enthusiastically. “That’s what I’m saying. I wish we had a flashlight. Then we could really look around.”
Lizzie nodded. “Maybe there’ll be more light in the morning.”
She felt cold and tired suddenly, as if all of her energy had washed out of her in the creek. She shivered under the blanket, wrapping it more tightly over her shoulders.
“You should put on dry clothes,” Tyler said.
“I don’t have any.”
“Take my extra T-shirt and shorts. I’ll spread yours over some branches so they can dry overnight.”
She hesitated and he said quickly, “And I’ll find a rock to prop this board open so we have some light.” He scrambled through the gap under the board and was gone, leaving her alone.
Lizzie took down the backpack and the board immediately flopped to the ground, blocking the late-afternoon sun. She peeled off her wet clothes down to her underwear and then felt around in the depths of the backpack until she grazed something cotton, a T-shirt, she hoped. After more searching, her fingers pinched a pair of nylon shorts. She rubbed her skin with the blanket and squeezed her hair in it, then pulled on Tyler’s dry clothes. The shirt and shorts smelled like Grandma May’s fragrant detergent from the apartment. She wanted to bury her face in them.
“Okay,” she called through the slats of the shed. “I’m dressed.”
“Hand me your clothes,” Tyler said, reaching one long arm through the gap under the board.
Lizzie balled up the wet clothing and thrust it up to him. When he returned, he had a log in his arms, and he wedged it into the dirt to prop up the board, so he could crawl under it again.
Lizzie wrapped one blanket around her shoulders and spread the other across the dirt floor of the shed so they could sit on it. “Did you see the wolves?” she asked.
“What?” Tyler tensed. “Where?”
“No, not now. I mean earlier. They were heading toward the waterfall. All three of them, Athena, too! Lobo and Tamarack found her. I think she was in this canyon the whole time.”
“They led us here,” Tyler said softly. “To the cabin.”
“Maybe they did.” Lizzie smiled at him.
“But that means they’re here.”
“Well, they’re outside. And we’re inside.”
In the little shelter, Lizzie felt safer than she had since they’d come to Yosemite. She opened the backpack wider and sifted through its contents. “Hungry?”
“Sure.”
They spread the food across the blanket between them and surveyed their limited buffet. “What do you feel like? French fries? Hot dog?” Lizzie asked.
“Let’s split the hot dog,” Tyler suggested.
Lizzie ripped it in half and took a big bite of her piece. The hot dog was cold and chewy and the bun was stale, but it still tasted good to her. What a long day it had been.
She watched Tyler cram french fries into his mouth. “I don’t know how much longer we can stay out here,” she said carefully, steeling herself for his reaction. “We’re running out of food. And we don’t have much water left, either.”
Tyler snorted. “We’re next to a creek. We’ve got all the water we need.”
Lizzie shook her head. “If we drink it right out of the stream, we could get sick.”
“How come?”
“It has parasites and bacteria in it. There are pills you can put in creek water to make it drinkable—my dad brings them when we go camping—but we don’t have those.”
“That would have been a good thing to bring,” Tyler said.
“Yeah. And a flashlight. And a map of Yosemite. And—” She stopped. “But we didn’t know this was where we’d end up.”
“John Muir probably didn’t have those things.”
“No,” Lizzie agreed. “But I’m sure he had supplies.”
> Tyler seemed to be taking his own inventory of what food they had left, but he didn’t tell Lizzie his conclusion. Instead, he pulled out her green notebook and handed it to her.
“Read me something else he said. Since we might be spending the night in his lost cabin,” Tyler added.
She smiled at him and opened the notebook, thumbing through the first pages where she had copied John Muir’s sayings for inspiration. The beginning of the summer seemed so long ago.
She read aloud, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
Tyler stretched out on the blanket and laced his fingers behind his head, looking at her through half-closed eyes. “What’s that from?” he asked.
“John Muir kept a journal, too,” Lizzie said. “That quote is from My First Summer in the Sierra.”
“Hmmm,” said Tyler. “What do you think it means?”
Lizzie thought for a minute. “That everything is connected, even though you may not realize it? Like, if you cut down a tree, you might find that it was the home of a special kind of bird, or that in its shade, a certain flower grew.”
“Do you believe that?” Tyler asked sleepily.
Lizzie smoothed out the blanket so she could lie down next to him. It wasn’t nearly bedtime, but the light was fading now, and she felt exhausted. “I think I do.”
“Even about people?”
She smiled. “Sure. I believe it about us.” Then she added, “And it’s true of just you. I mean, when you ran away, it’s not like everything was the same after you left. There was a hole … because you can’t change one thing without changing everything.”
He didn’t answer, and his breathing was slow and heavy. Lizzie wasn’t sure he’d even heard her. She took the other blanket from her shoulders and curled closer to him, covering both of them.
For a while, she lay there, listening to the soft, steady sound of his breathing. She didn’t feel as scared as she had the first night … not as afraid of the woods, or the wolves. The cabin helped. As run-down as it was, it had clearly been around for a long time, which made her think it was strong enough to protect them. And even if it wasn’t John Muir’s lost cabin, it felt like it had been left there on purpose, just for them.