Raven's Mountain Read online

  The hunter lets go of his gun, and puts his hands in the air to prove it.

  Mum and I run to each other. We hang on in the tightest, safest sort of hug, that maybe you can only do when you’ve thought you might never see each other again, and Mum’s crying as hard as me.

  ‘Lily and Scott!’ I sob, and Mum says at the same time: ‘What’s happened?’

  I tell her as fast as I can. ‘. . . We’ve got to rescue them!’

  Behind us the man who came with Mum is still shouting at the hunter, ‘What’s going on? What were you doing with my horse?’

  ‘Are you people crazy?’ the hunter shouts back. ‘I came in by helicopter – why would I need a horse? And I wouldn’t do anything to this kid. I don’t know where the heck she came from, but she saved my life.’

  ‘I thought that was the rescue helicopter!’ I exclaim.

  ‘It’s going to be,’ Mum says, glaring at the hunter. ‘You’re going to call it in to find my daughter and husband while we wait for Search and Rescue.’

  ‘Mobile phones don’t work here,’ I tell her.

  ‘You can’t tell me they dropped you off with no way of contacting them!’ Mum shouts at the hunter. ‘I don’t care if it’s a satellite phone or a walkie talkie or semaphore! Call that helicopter!’

  The hunter’s already pulled out what looks like a heavy, old-fashioned mobile phone and is speaking into it. ‘We’ve got an emergency!’

  The voice crackles out loud. ‘Are you injured?’

  ‘Not me. A man and a girl.’

  There’s a lot more crackling, and a few odd words, ‘. . . risky . . . fines . . . lose the chopper . . .’ as if the pilot’s talking to someone else.

  ‘Just get down here!’ the hunter shouts.

  More crackling. ‘Forget it. Call Search and Rescue, that’s what they’re there for.’

  Before the hunter can argue again, there’s a drum of horse’s hooves, and Snowball gallops past the 4WD.

  A woman leaps off his back and starts rubbing my shoulder as if she wants to hug me, except I’m still snuggled into Mum and too stinky for anyone who isn’t my mother to hug.

  ‘Am I glad to see you!’ she exclaims. ‘Thank heavens your mum was so determined to get up here and find you! I’ve phoned Search and Rescue, but it could be a few hours before they get here.’

  Mum reaches over and grabs the phone out of the hunter’s hands.

  ‘My husband and daughter’s lives are at stake and you’re worrying about fines? I’ll pay whatever you want, but please, come down and help us.’

  There’s no answer.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the hunter says to Mum. His eyes are slitty black with rage.

  ‘He could lose the helicopter if he’s caught using it for poaching,’ Snowball’s owner says.

  ‘That’s no excuse!’ the hunter snaps. ‘Is there any other way up the mountain?’

  ‘This is it,’ Snowball’s owner says.

  ‘So we go up on foot,’ says the hunter. ‘If they need digging out, Search and Rescue can do with some help. We can’t just sit here!’

  My knees hear the word ‘sit’ and I land on the ground. So does the last of my breakfast.

  I open my eyes to a circle of worried faces.

  Snowball’s owner is handing me a bottle of sports drink.

  Mum’s propping me up so I can drink it, and wiping my face with a tissue from her pocket. Her face is so white and twisted that it looks as if she’s in pain too.

  ‘Raven, dearest . . . I need to go with the men. Could you stay with Amy till I get back? I met Amy and Greg at the café last night – Greg is Scott’s friend from high school. When I told them I was getting worried, they offered to bring me up here first thing this morning.’

  ‘Do you want me to take her down to the hospital for a check-up?’ Amy asks. ‘She’s a bit of a mess.’

  ‘It’s just mud . . . and I got jiggled up from riding.’ I glance up, but she doesn’t seem angry about my borrowing their horse.

  Mum’s looking around on the ground. ‘Where are your glasses?’

  ‘I lost them when I fell off the mountain.’

  ‘What do you mean, ‘Fell off the mountain?’ Mum demands.

  The hunter interrupts her to hand me a fruit-and-nut bar. ‘You’re probably hungry. Chasing that bear took some energy.’

  ‘Chasing what bear?’ the others all say at once.

  ‘Honey,’ says Amy, ‘let your mum go find your sister. Sounds like you’ve had enough adventures for one day.’

  The men put the rifle in the 4WD and come back with a crowbar and a girl’s jacket that Amy puts on me, poking my arms through the sleeves as if I’m two years old. Mum still looks like she’s being torn in half.

  I sip my drink and nibble at the bar, and I’m being torn in half too, because I need to show them the way but I can’t walk up that mountain again today.

  ‘I marked the trail . . .’ I start to say, when my voice is drowned out by a familiar noise.

  The poachers’ helicopter is hovering above us.

  A man in a hunter’s jacket jumps out the instant the helicopter runners touch the grass. He looks like a dog whose bone has been stolen, and I’m glad he’s not carrying his gun.

  ‘We can’t take you all!’ he snaps.

  ‘The little girl and I are staying,’ Amy says.

  ‘No, I’ve got to go!’

  Mum is stroking my face and smoothing my hair; she doesn’t even mind her hands turning black with my mud. ‘My brave girl,’ she murmurs. ‘You’ve done enough.’

  ‘I’ve got to show you where they are!’

  ‘Make up your minds!’ the dog-faced man snarls.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Mum asks me.

  I nod, and we hold hands to run under the whirring blades.

  ‘The little girl better sit in the copilot’s seat to show you where to go,’ my hunter tells the pilot. I think he also doesn’t want me to see the stag’s head on the tarpaulin at the back.

  Too late.

  I wonder if it was the teenage deer’s father.

  If I throw up again Mum will make me get off and go to the hospital. I gulp down the sour sick.

  The pilot helps me do up my seatbelt and put on the earmuffs. There’s a singing-star microphone so I can talk to him.

  Even Amelia’s never been in a helicopter.

  The blades whirr into a bluey blur above me, the pilot fiddles with dials and levers, and we lift gently above the clearing. The lake shimmers turquoise below my feet, stretching farther than I’d guessed between the mountains. I can see every direction, up and down and as far as I can turn my head.

  ‘Where to, kid?’

  ‘Nearly to the top.’

  The ground below me changes; the lake and the clearing disappear and we’re looking down at treetops. The forest is such a thick mass I can’t see through it. I hope the dog-faced hunter can’t see through it either. I hope the bears stay in the middle of it.

  I don’t start shaking till we fly over the tree line.

  As the helicopter lowers, I can see the scars of the new cliff I fell down, the rubble of the cemetery field, and the three great nose boulders covering Lily and Scott’s cave.

  It’s nearly two days since I slid down from their ledge, and in a minute I’ll find out if my sister and stepdad are alive or dead.

  23

  EARLY SUNDAY AFTERNOON

  There’s no sign of life.

  The ledge is too narrow for the helicopter; we land at the bottom of the cliff, in the cemetery field. Mum, the hunter and Greg jump out while the blades are still whirring. The dog-faced hunter stays inside to pass them the crowbar, pick axe, ropes and blankets they’d brought from the 4WD, and hands me out like another parcel.

  The door slams behind me; the engine whines louder, and the blades blur the helicopter above the rocks. It hovers over us for a minute and disappears out of sight.

  ‘Sorry,’ says the hunter.

  ‘What matters is he
got us up the mountain,’ says Greg, pulling a rope out of the bundle.

  ‘Let’s get moving,’ says Mum. ‘Raven, you’d better stay down here.’

  I don’t answer. The only thing worse than climbing back up those rocks would be staying alone at the bottom.

  Maybe it’s the sports drink and health bar kicking in, or maybe it’s because Mum’s at the bottom watching – or maybe it’s just that I’ve got a rope tied around my middle with a big man holding the other end at the top of the cliff, but going up these rocks isn’t half as hard as going down.

  But I’m so terrified watching Mum climb that I can hardly breathe. If something happens to her that’ll be my fault too; I imagine her tumbling backwards onto the rocks . . .

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to let your mum fall,’ says Greg. ‘I sure don’t want a bear-chasing girl angry at me!’

  I try to smile, but the only thing I care about is Mum scrambling onto the ledge, breathing deeply, and hugging me for no reason.

  The bundle of tools and blankets, and finally the hunter, follow us up. We edge around the bend to the pile of rubble that I’d started trying to clear. It’s just as high as when I left.

  ‘Lily!’ Mum screams.

  Hearing Mum scream is a thousand times worse than screaming myself, and seeing the men look at each other the way they just did is a million times worse than feeling hopeless myself.

  ‘We’ve got to go around to the other end,’ I tell them. ‘She’ll hear us from there.’

  The men start getting the rope ready and Greg explains that one of them should climb across first, so that Mum and I are safe in the middle again. By the time he finishes, Mum and I are half way across the first boulder.

  ‘If you slide down here,’ I tell her, ‘you can step across to the next one.’

  She doesn’t need to be told. She’s scrambling across that rock like a Mt Everest sherpa, straight across and up to the ridge. Still on her hands and knees, she reaches down and pulls me up beside her.

  There’s a window in the rock, and a white face peering out.

  ‘Raven!’ screams Lily. ‘Mum!’

  And from further back in the cave comes Scott’s deep voice: ‘Jenny!’

  The icy lump in my heart melts and floods over me, washing me away just about to nothing. I’m not a super–hero; I’m not Jess or Amelia; I’m just Raven, a skinny red-haired girl on top of a mountain. But I’m not alone anymore.

  Mum and I huddle together in a blanket watching Greg and the hunter balance on the cliff above the door rock. The men had insisted that only two of them could use a crowbar at a time, and there wasn’t enough room for Mum.

  They jam the crowbar into the crack between the rock and the cliff.

  ‘Ready?’ the hunter shouts.

  ‘We’re clear!’ Scott shouts back, from inside the cave.

  ‘One, two, THREE!’ Greg counts, and the two men push together on the crowbar.

  Their faces glow red; sweat pours down their cheeks. Nothing else happens.

  ‘Break!’ pants the hunter, pulling the crowbar out. They stand up, still panting; take off their jackets and gulp from water bottles.

  Greg moves a half step to the right. ‘Try from here.’

  The hunter nods and slides the crowbar in again.

  They grit their teeth, their eyes pop; the muscles in their arms bulge and strain. Mum is rubbing my back so hard it hurts.

  The rock shifts forward . . . and back again as if it’s changed its mind.

  ‘They can’t hold that much longer!’ says Mum.

  She grabs the pick from the bundle and scrambles up beside the men. Somehow there is room for all of them.

  Mum slips the pick into the new crack. It just fits.

  The men pull the crowbar out and bend double, gasping and panting with their hands on their knees. Mum’s arms are trembling, but she holds the pick steady.

  ‘Ready?’ says Greg, and the hunter nods. They slide the crowbar in beside the pick and heave again. Mum pushes down on her pick; the men grunt as they strain against the crowbar . . .

  . . . the door rock creaks, and smashes down, over the edge of cliff.

  The cave is open.

  Mum slides down to the mouth of the cave as Lily staggers out, wobbly and crying. They cling to each other just the way Mum and I did at the bottom of the mountain; then I take over the hug and Mum crawls into the cave to Scott.

  That’s when the Search and Rescue helicopter arrives.

  They bring Scott out on a stretcher. His face is white and his right leg is twisted in a way legs are never supposed to be.

  My heart twists too, as if a splinter of ice is still in there after all.

  Mum’s holding Scott’s hand, but he reaches for me with the other. ‘Raven, thank God! I was afraid we’d never see you again!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry?’ he repeats, hugging my face against his shoulder: blood, mud, snot and all. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t manage to look after you! I’m so proud of you, Raven.’

  The paramedic finishes putting a blow-up splint around Scott’s leg. ‘The helicopter can’t fit everyone in with the stretcher,’ he says. ‘So we’ll take you to the hospital first, then come back for the others.’

  ‘I’m more worried about Raven,’ says Scott. ‘And Lily needs to be checked too.’

  ‘We’ll take the little girl in the first trip,’ the paramedic agrees. ‘She doesn’t look too good.’

  ‘I’m okay: it’s just mud!’

  The paramedic laughs. ‘You’re your father’s daughter all right!’

  Scott winks at me. ‘That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,’ he says, and that last splinter of ice melts right out of my heart.

  So Mum goes with Scott, and Lily and I stay with the men. The thing is that I wasn’t trying to be brave – I just couldn’t have gone in that helicopter without my sister. It was purely impossible.

  We wait at the start of the cemetery field, wrapped in blankets and nibbling energy bars. Lily is looking around with thirsty eyes, drinking in everything she can see.

  ‘Look at those rocks! It looks like there’s a deformed Inukshuk on top of them.’

  I can’t see it, but I can guess.

  ‘It was in case I couldn’t show rescuers the way.’

  Lily blushes. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It is kind of deformed.’

  ‘No! It’s cool. I just didn’t think you’d made it – it’s hard to believe my little sister did all this on her own.’ I stay huddled in my blanket as Lily picks her way through the field to my poor little Inukshuk, and carries his head back to me. I can’t believe she wants to keep it.

  The two men are wandering around the other end of the field. ‘Okay there, girls?’ the hunter calls. ‘Greg and I aren’t far away if you need us!’

  Funny how the hunter turned out to be all right: nearly as funny as Snowball’s owner turning out to be Scott’s old buddy Greg. I hadn’t really paid attention to that when Mum told me.

  ‘We’re brothers, Scott and me!’ Greg explained, wiping his eyes as the helicopter took off. ‘Except for the bit about having the same mother and father.’

  Greg said that the big rockfall that made the wall down by the lake changed the resort people’s mind about buying the land next to the National Park, so Greg’s family still owns it. He and Amy live in Jenkins Creek but come up most weekends. They have two daughters in between Lily’s and my ages, which is why there was a girl’s jacket in the 4WD.

  ‘Not that we have to be friends with them,’ Lily says. ‘But . . .

  ‘. . . we’ll kind of know someone.’

  She laughs. ‘You’ve got hay in your hair – and a feather.’

  I’d forgotten about the feather. It seems kind of silly now I’m with people again.

  But Lily’s not really laughing, or not much. ‘It’s like that raven really was looking out for you.’ She pulls her comb out of her backpack, and, very gently, undoes my bra
id. As she starts combing out the hay and tangles, I’m thinking Jess would say she felt like Rapunzel turning back into a princess after she was lost in the forest, but I feel like me being looked after by my sister, which is a whole lot better.

  ‘I thought maybe I wouldn’t ever see you again,’ Lily says.

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘I thought you might get lost and die, or we’d die before you got help, or both.’

  ‘Me too. But I had to keep on going, because if you died it would be my fault.’

  ‘You really chased a bear?’

  I shiver: facing the charging Mama Bear is something I’ll never forget, and I reckon that when I’m a hundred and twenty, it’ll still make me shiver. ‘It’s not like I meant to.’

  ‘And you stole a horse?’

  ‘Borrowed.’

  ‘That’s so cool. Maybe we should ask Mum again about a horse, since it helped save all our lives and all.’

  ‘Or she might never let us out of the house again.’

  ‘If our new house didn’t have so many windows I mightn’t go in at all. I’m never going somewhere with no windows again.’

  So that’s what’s going to make Lily shiver when she’s a hundred and twenty-three: being closed in.

  ‘You know the first thing I thought when I hammered out that chunk of rock and saw the full moon? It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen – and I thought if you were still on the mountain you’d be looking at it too.’

  I want to lie and say I’d gazed up and thought about her too, but it doesn’t seem like the time for fibs, even white ones. ‘That was really the first thing you thought?’

  ‘Well, after “Fresh air – I can breathe!” And “Damn! It’s not big enough to get through!” It was the first thing I thought when I just calmed down and looked out.’

  ‘I couldn’t think about you too much,’ I explain. ‘When I thought about you and Scott in the cave, and that it might be my fault . . . it made me cry so I couldn’t think.’

  ‘I told Scott what you said, that you thought you’d started the rockfall.’

  I try to swallow. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said maybe, if the nose had a crack that was ready to go, because it only needs a little rock to knock off a bigger one, then the bigger rock knocks off bigger ones . . .’