Page 2 of Lost in the Wild

“Right.” Spreading the map out against a tree trunk, I squint at the path I marked out in smudgy pencil. Landmarks. I need landmarks. “Right, okay.”

After five minutes, I turn the map ninety degrees to the left.

After ten minutes, I lower the map and let my forehead thunk against the tree.

I’m going to die up here.

I’ll be another statistic; another headline for someone else’s story. A pile of bones and a pair of barely-worn hiking boots, the insides stained brown with dried blood, left up here on the mountain in a sad little mound and picked clean by cougars and squirrels.

Will anyone mourn? Sure, I have casual friends aplenty in the city, and my landlord will notice the missed rent payments, but will anyone really care that I’m gone? What’s it all been for?

A deep sigh drifts through the pine trees.

It takes me way too long to realize that sigh was not my own.

Whirling around, I lose my balance and stagger to the left. A man stands ten feet away, watching me. He’s dressed in a pair of ancient jeans and nothing else, barefoot and bare-chested, and his crossed arms bulge with muscle. A frayed, once-white bandage is knotted around his bicep.

He’s dirty and bearded.

His hair is long and matted.

Piercing gray eyes gleam as he frowns.

Wild man.

I beam at the stranger, my brush with death forgotten. “There you are. I knew I’d find you.”

The wild man’s scowl deepens. He jerks his head back the way I came, and though he doesn’t speak, his meaning is clear enough. I should go home already, and stop blundering around on his mountain like a clueless tourist.

“Uh huh, totally, I will absolutely get out of your hair. But first, could you answer a few questions for me? Since I came all this way to interview you and all.”

Fumbling my notebook out of my backpack as I talk, I set everything else down and turn to a clean page, pencil poised, then smile brightly at the Wild Man of Starlight Ridge.

He stares back at me, nonplussed.

Wait, does he speak English?

Does he speak, period? What if he was raised by wolves?

No worries. I’m the reigning champion at Daniels family charades.

“So, are you aware of your reputation as the Wild Man of Starlight Ridge? Did you know that last year you made a list of top fifty folktales and urban legends?”

The man stares.

Oookay. No problem. Charade time.

“Did you—” I point at him, “know—” tap my head with my pencil, “you’re an official cryptid?” Notebook clutched in one hand, I mime an exaggerated creep through the forest.

The man shakes his head—but not like he’s answering my question. More like he’s trying to wake himself up from a weird dream.

And you know what? That’s a little unfair. I’m not the one who looks like Tarzan dressed in old jeans, but somehow this guy is edging away like I’m loopy, looking all the world like he’s about to melt back into the trees.

“Wait, wait, wait! Don’t go yet, Wild Man. Seriously, I have so many questions. And—I’m lost!” I add as he half-disappears behind a trunk. “If you leave now, I’ll definitely die of exposure or get eaten by a wild animal. Think of the mess.”

The man sighs heavily, then comes back out from behind the tree. His gray eyes are narrowed on me, annoyed.

So he does understand me. That makes things easier.

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