Lost

We were lost.

The icy air was a swarm of wasps, stinging my throat and lungs every time I took a breath, burning me despite their freezing cold touch. Thinking about it, this really had been a stupid idea. I never normally got angry at Casper—I hadn’t been annoyed with him for months, but this time he was pushing it.

But it wasn’t his fault. He didn’t choose for us to be stuck out here.

My boot slipped on an icy patch and I skidded down the hill a few inches, causing me to stagger several paces backwards, only managing to balance myself because of a conveniently placed tree branch that I managed to grasp onto.

‘I hate the snow,’ I muttered resentfully. Casper, frustratingly, chuckled, but said nothing.

Sadly, growing up in suburban England had not sufficiently prepared me for a situation like this. Chances were, Casper was the same, though I dearly hoped that his half-Norwegian blood made him a natural when faced with snow and wilderness. And yet, he had never even been to his home country. Just because his dad was from Scandinavia, it didn’t automatically mean he was going to know any more about snow than me.

So basically, we were stuffed.

I couldn’t deny, however, that Casper looked so at home out here in the snow. It somehow made him look even more beautiful than normal. The white flakes dusted his dyed black hair like a thin layer of icing sugar, and his pale cheeks glowed lightly pink in the cold weather.

Only too soon, his smile faded into a frown. The blue eyes that had shone iridescently just a moment ago at my apparently humorous comment grew dim and filled with anxiety. He was worried. I could see through him.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, my voice lowering to a whisper, even though there was no need to keep quiet; we were the only people around. In fact, in this lonely silence, we could have been the only two people left on the planet. Since we’d been out here, lost in the snow, the entire world could have disappeared, and we would have no idea.

‘Nothing,’ Casper mumbled, shaking his head so that dusty snowflakes tumbled from his hair, sprinkling the ground. He leant on a tree, averting his eyes from mine. They grew dark, and his expression grew solemn.

‘Really?’ I persisted with a considerable amount of apprehension, carefully touching his hand. I knew never to challenge Casper when he was in a mood like this. But the way his eyes frosted over and refused to meet my gaze suggested that something was very, very wrong and, as much as I knew he wanted me to, I couldn’t just let it go.

‘We’re lost, Amy,’ he said flatly.

Considering the way he was suddenly acting, this was almost a bit of an anticlimax.

‘I know,’ I replied, my tone equally flat. I almost felt like adding a ‘so?’ onto the end.

Without warning, his piercing, ice-coloured eyes finally met mine, and it felt as if they were stabbing straight into my brain.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He looked away again, sinking further back against the trunk of the tall pine tree he was leaning against. We were in the middle of a dense forest, but it didn’t feel like a forest at all. From previous experience, I envisaged a forest to be rich and green and teeming with life. No. This was not a normal forest; this was a graveyard. The trees were still and silent enough to look like tall, elegant statues, the snow being the marble they were carved out of. And we were lost in the middle of this seemingly endless cemetery; a labyrinth of whiteness.

The very thought of a graveyard sent chills dancing up my spine, so I desperately tried to push it from my mind and return to the present. People were right: imagination really could be dangerous sometimes.

And yet, the graveyard surrounding us suddenly reminded me of the trouble we could really be in. We were lost, out in the snow, and it was already late afternoon. Another hour or two and it would be getting dark. And we’d both seen the weather forecast this morning: blizzards.

The situation was worse than I thought.

‘Sorry for what?’ I asked, moving half a step closer. I was afraid, my imagination straying into unwanted territories, but I tried to pull it back to the present. I refused to think about the danger we could suddenly be in. And yet...not thinking about the problem didn’t make the problem go away.

I didn’t have to worry though, because Casper’s sudden transformation made me forget everything I was thinking about being lost in the snow. It was as if a spark had ignited inside him, fire waltzing in his eyes. It was not a good fire though; it was a fire of anger and sadness and resentment.

‘I’m sorry for bringing you out here,’ he said coldly, his voice rising so that I involuntarily thought back to the graveyard—a sound like that could wake the dead.

But he was not finished.

‘I’m sorry for constantly putting you in danger,’ he continued, his voice rising further, ‘I’m sorry for always fucking everything up!’

‘Casper, stop!’ I tried to protest, but the words came out sounding fearful and pleading.

‘It’s true though,’ he argued, daring me to challenge him. ‘This is just another one of those times. I’ve messed up again, and we’re lost in the middle of a fucking mountain! If it gets dark and we’re not back, if there’s a bloody snowstorm...’ he trailed off. Those thoughts were too terrible for him to comprehend.

‘It’s not your fault,’ I insisted, touching his arm delicately. ‘You didn’t make me come out here; I agreed to it.’

‘Well what else are you gonna say?’ he demanded bitterly. ‘The way I asked the question, it probably sounded like a fun day out to you. But I said I knew where we were going. I said that I knew how to get back to the lodge. And now I don’t! I must’ve taken a wrong turning somewhere.’

I could feel anger boiling inside of me, rising up through the icy cold that had already consumed every part of my body. It was another of Casper’s rants. I knew he had low self-esteem and I understood that he couldn’t help it; it was part of who he was. But once again, he was taking things too far.

‘I still don’t think it’s your fault,’ I said, forcing myself to keep an even tone. Things were bad enough already; the last thing we needed was to have a giant argument.

‘Will you still be saying that if you get hypothermia?’ he challenged, his eyes growing murderous as they fixed on me. When I didn’t answer, he turned away, murmuring ‘no, I thought not.’

‘Casper!’ I shrieked in unprecedented frustration. ‘Get over yourself! It’s not your fault, you didn’t do anything wrong, and we’re gonna get back to the lodge if I fucking get killed in the process!’

Without warning, I marched off dramatically down the hill ahead of him, hoping that I had made my point clearly enough. I knew he was afraid. I rarely shouted, I never swore, and I certainly didn’t make a habit of storming off from people. I regretted it of course—I hated upsetting him—but I’d learnt over the six months or so that we’d known each other that this was sometimes the only way out of a situation like this. Once Casper got into self-hate mode, I had to make a potentially very dangerous move in order to save him...save both of us. Otherwise, we might never make it out of here. And if we did, we most certainly wouldn’t be on speaking terms.

Sometimes you had to hurt the person you loved to show how much you truly loved them.

My progress was hindered by the fact that the snow was at least six inches deep—my boots sunk into the ground with every step, and I slipped a couple of times if I tried to take things too fast—but I hoped I’d made an impression all the same.

I wanted to look back and see if he was following me, or at least still looking at me, but I forced myself not to. As the minutes wore on and my pace quickened, I kept trying, but the logical part of my brain told me not to give in. If I went back, Casper would have his way, and if Casper had his way, he’d stand there moaning about how we were lost and how it was all his fault until nightfall, and then we’d really be in trouble.

I pushed my way in between two trees and stumbled through a pile of particularly thick snow and, without warning, I emerged into a clearing. In front of me was a lake, inky black and opaque as it reflected the bleak sky above, and looking incredibly uninviting. I’d been so preoccupied with thoughts of Casper that I hadn’t even noticed the way the trees abruptly ended up ahead.

Frozen, I studied the lake with my eyes. I was so close to the edge that, if I had slipped whilst coming through the trees, I would have probably fallen right in. I shuddered at the thought. The last thing I needed right now was to be plunged into sub-zero waters; I was cold enough already.

I heard footsteps.

Turning, I saw that Casper was following me, just as I had hoped. He pushed through the trees, clear anger and bitterness in his expression.

He stopped dead, as frozen and silent as the landscape surrounding us.

‘Is this...?’ His words trailed off.

I turned to face him but he was staring vacantly at the lake that stretched out in front of us.

‘Is this what?’ I asked.

‘I know this place,’ he said, his voice monotonous.

Hope surged through me insuppressibly. ‘You know this place?’

Slowly, a faint smile danced across Casper’s face, lighting up his eyes and returning his expression back to the beautiful, carefree one I had witnessed earlier.

‘I know how to get back to the lodge from here,’ he said, the smile spreading. ‘And it’s not even that far.’ He then turned to me, finally averting his eyes from the mirror-like lake in front of us, and fixed me with a puzzled expression.

‘How did you know how to get here?’ he asked, almost having to suppress a laugh.

‘I...didn’t,’ I admitted. ‘I just walked off in any direction and hoped that you’d follow.’

‘That’s...’ he clearly didn’t know the right words to describe my sudden good luck. ‘Pretty cool.’

‘So we’re gonna be back for the Christmas Eve party?’ I asked. Ridiculously, the entire time we’d been lost, missing the apparently ‘epic’ Christmas party that was going to be happening at the lodge this evening had been my biggest worry. It was completely disproportionate to what I actually should have been worrying about; stuck out in the cold, we literally could have died, but now, it didn’t matter. Sure, Casper was right to have been frightened, and only now could I truly comprehend the danger we might have been in had we become stranded, particularly if the forecasted blizzard had set in, but he knew where we were now, so there was no more reason to be afraid.

‘I hope so,’ he said. I turned, about to walk away from the lake—not that I really knew where we were meant to be going—but Casper stopped me with a gloved hand on my shoulder.

‘Amy, I’m sorry,’ he said sincerely. I sighed. Surely he wasn’t going to pick up from where he left off in the forest now? We were safe, therefore he could forget about the dangers of being lost in the snow.

But when I looked round at him, he was smiling.

‘Sorry for shouting at you,’ he explained, averting his eyes, becoming awkward at my fearful expression. ‘Sorry for saying that stuff.’

‘It’s okay,’ I told him. ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Everything was alright, after all. We weren’t lost anymore. We had made it back.