Raven's Mountain Read online

She means if I try to help I might kill them.

  That’s what’s not fair.

  The morning of Mum and Scott’s wedding I thought I might throw up before I’d even put on my frilly blue bridesmaid dress. Lily pinched me hard.

  ‘You’re not going to spoil things for Mum again!’

  ‘I’ve never spoiled things for Mum!’

  ‘You’re the reason our dad left! Mum wouldn’t need to marry Scott if you’d never been born.’

  Lily’s still talking. My brain keeps switching off so it doesn’t have to listen. I make it switch back on. I really don’t want to.

  ‘I found the torch . . . Scott’s leg doesn’t look good.’

  ‘You mean it’s broken?’

  ‘I think so.’

  So how’s he going to get out of there and take us all home?

  Every time I think things can’t get worse, they do. Worse things seem to be piling up as high as the rock pyramid at the other end of the ledge.

  I’ve been trying as hard as I can to get Lily and Scott out, but I thought Scott would sort everything out as soon as he woke up. He’d tell me how to help them move the rocks, and then he’d take us back down the mountain and drive us home to Mum.

  But Scott can’t even walk down the mountain him–self.

  And he mightn’t ever wake up.

  Now it really is just me and the mountain.

  ‘I’ve got to get help, Lily.’

  I didn’t know I was going to say that. I’m a bit surprised. So’s Lily.

  ‘You’ve never even walked home from school by yourself!’

  ‘I’ll just go back the way we came.’

  ‘But there weren’t any houses near the lake! Just that ranch where Scott stayed when he was a kid – and his friend’s grandparents are dead. That’s what happens when you come out here – you end up dead!’

  Actually I think the grandparents died because they were really old, not because they were climbing the mountain, but Lily’s only going to get madder if I say that.

  There’s a long silence, and some sniffing. I think it’s Lily, but it might be me too; I’ve cried so much I can’t tell. Then there’s a scratching noise, and Lily’s yowling like a cat with its tail caught in a door. She’s using words I’ve never heard her say.

  ‘I’m trying to push my phone through, but I can’t, the stupid thing won’t fit!’ She’s crying quite loudly now. ‘It doesn’t even work here – at least if you had it you might have got somewhere where you could call!’

  With my eye to the gap, I can see the silvery edge of my sister’s phone. It’s so close! She’s never let me use it before – and I wouldn’t feel nearly so lonely if I could keep on writing messages. It would have to work somewhere!

  I touch it with the tip of my finger, but there’s no way I can pull it through. The crack is just too small.

  Lily takes the phone away and puts her finger to mine. ‘Finger hug,’ we whisper together.

  ‘Be careful,’ she says at last. ‘Don’t talk to bears.’

  She doesn’t need to worry: I’m so full of scaredness you could put a picture of me in the dictionary. I don’t need anyone to remind me to be afraid of bears, wolves, cougars, falling off more cliffs . . .

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I think it’s my fault: the rockslide.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot, Raven! As if you could have moved rocks this big!’

  Funny how much better everything feels with my sister sounding normal.

  The cliff at this end of the ledge is too steep to go straight down. I’ll have to go back across the rocks for the third time to meet the trail.

  I don’t think I can.

  I can’t go across those rocks again, and I can’t find my own way down the mountain. I can’t look out for bears and cougars and wolves. I can’t know where to go for help if I do get to the lake.

  I just can’t do it.

  The night before we moved, my friends gave me a going-away card. Amelia drew the picture and Jess wrote the poem:

  When Raven moved to Jenkins Creek

  Her friends at home did wail and weep.

  For those hills are far away

  From the flat lands where we stay.

  But when Raven bravely mountain climbs

  She’ll think of friends from time to time.

  So in our hearts we’ll always keep

  Our dearest friend on her mountain peak.

  Amelia’s picture is a red-haired girl on top of a beautiful green mountain: the girl looks happy, and her face isn’t covered with blood, tears and snot.

  Remembering her doesn’t help me at all.

  I’ll just stay here. I’ll sit outside Lily’s cave and wait. When we don’t turn up, Mum will call 911, and Search and Rescue will search and rescue us.

  But every time I lean against the cliff, a needle of rock jabs the back of my head. I wiggle along to a smoother bit of wall but the needle’s there too.

  That’s because it’s not a pointy bit of cliff: it’s a jagged arrowhead of stone, about as long as my finger, stuck firm in my braid. If my braid wasn’t so thick it would be stuck in my head.

  There’s no way my hair would still be braided if Lily hadn’t done it for me.

  I don’t even mind that she said it was just because it’s too embarrassing to have a sister who looks like a red-haired poodle.

  ‘The earliest we’ll be home is Saturday lunchtime,’ Scott told Mum. ‘But don’t panic if it’s not till Sunday morning. The girls haven’t climbed before – if there are any problems, we’ll simply take another day.’

  Friday to Sunday is two days. I’ve got almost no water, no food, and no tent. I’m already cold and wet, shivering and teeth-chattering.

  I can’t sit on a rock just below the snow line for two days.

  I don’t know if Lily and Scott can survive behind a rock for two days either.

  Survive means stay alive.

  Not surviving means dying.

  ‘They have their backpacks,’ I remind myself. ‘They’ve got food and water, and emergency stuff.’

  But Scott needs a hospital, not an energy bar.

  I can’t just sit outside Lily’s cave and wait.

  9

  4:32 FRIDAY AFTERNOON

  Below me, the mountain is endless lumpy grey on top of endless dark green. Without my glasses it’s a bit smoother and not so scary, more the way I used to think mountains were.

  Somewhere far below is the truck and the road that leads to help. It seems too far to imagine – but we climbed from the lake to the top in a morning; I guess I can get back in an afternoon.

  I didn’t tell Lily I’ve lost my glasses!

  I nearly turn around and go back. I have to tell my sister the truth.

  She doesn’t have to know.

  She can’t do anything about it. She’ll just freak out even more, and think she has to tell me not to go.

  I’ve already worked out that I’m the only one who can get down the mountain, but it’s harder to understand that I’m the only one who can decide that I can do it. It’s like I have to give myself permission.

  I whisper it, and then I say it out loud. ‘You have to get help. You are allowed to hike down the mountain by yourself.’

  I’ve got half a bottle of water, my watch, whistle, and a can of bear spray on my belt. My compass should be in my pocket.

  No – it’s gone.

  I liked having the compass; I liked watching the way the needle quivers as it finds north, and I liked knowing how to use it, but I’d like it even more if I had it now.

  I’d like to have my backpack too, and everything inside it. And my glasses and my Cottonwood Sluggers cap.

  Don’t you dare start crying again!

  I dig hard through the rest of my pockets.

  An apricot! The last of the dried fruit in my ziplock bag. I’d rather have an apricot than a compass anyway. I chew every last bit of goodness out of it, stow the
bag back in my pocket, and have two sips of water.

  I’m ready to go.

  Scrabble-slide down the nose-boulder cliff, and drop to the ground. Every sore point from my ankles to my neck jolts.

  I’m in the middle of a field of rocks. Broken chunks of mountain are scattered across the open slope like tombstones in a ghost-town cemetery. Walking through them gives me the shivers.

  Because these rocks weren’t here this morning.

  How am I going to tell people where Lily and Scott are if things keep changing? What if there’s another rockfall, or an earthquake?

  What if I just can’t remember how to get back here?

  There’s not even any more snow to write in. Nothing but rocks. Rocks, rocks, rocks.

  If I were a cartoon figure, a light bulb would be popping out of my head.

  Inukshuks! We made them in Geography last year when we were studying the Arctic. They’re like a person-signpost made of rock.

  I forgot that we made them out of little stones: these are proper rocks. They’re heavier than they look. My scraped hands are stinging, and the torn-off fingernail is bleeding again. It’s so little, but it hurts more than the big cuts; it’s the only one that makes me cry.

  Still sniffling, I manage to stack two rocks on top of each other – but I can’t even lift the big flat one I need for the pointing arm. All I can do is find some stones and make a little Inukshuk on top of those two rocks: four stones for his legs, a long one for his signpost arm, and a square one balancing on top for the head.

  You never know, someone might be hiking up here right this minute. Maybe a whole group of families has set up camp at the lake, like when Jess’s family goes camping with her aunts and uncles and cousins. They’ll have cars, and phones, and lots of people to help go back up the mountain and rescue Scott and Lily.

  I’ve got to mark the way, so they’ll find the cave, even if I never get down.

  Jess has two grandfathers and grandmothers, eight uncles, six aunts, fifteen cousins, two sisters, one brother, a mum and a dad.

  Amelia has one real grandfather and grandmother, one exstepgrandfather and grandmother, and one stepgrandfather; four stepbrothers and one stepsister, more step aunts, uncles and cousins than she can count – and one mum, one real dad, one ex-stepdad, and one now stepdad.

  Until Mum married Scott I had two grandmothers, one aunt and uncle who live in Florida, one sister and one mum. And one real dad, but I’m only counting people I’ve met.

  I’m the only person I know who’s never even seen their real dad.

  If there aren’t any campers, I’ll drive the truck till the phone works.

  The plan must have been growing, all by itself at the back of my mind ever since Lily said there were no houses on the road to the lake. Now I’ve pictured it, it seems real. I can see me in the truck’s driver’s seat, bumping down that dirt road.

  Why not? On those long two days driving from Cottonwood Bluffs to Jenkins Creek, Lily and I took turns going with Mum or Scott. Riding in a truck is different from sitting in the back seat of a car; you notice more about what the driver’s doing.

  The truck has gears. You have to put in the clutch to change the gears. There’s a picture of the gears on the gear stick.

  The clutch is the left pedal and the brake is the middle one.

  The spare key’s hidden just above the left back tyre – Scott said there was more chance of losing the keys on the hike than of someone stealing the truck. Of course he didn’t know he was going to be lost instead of the keys.

  He left his mobile phone too, in the spare esky under the bag of garbage.

  All I have to do is get back to the lake, find the truck and drive till I get to where the phone works so I can call Mum.

  The furthest it can be is that service station with the bear paw prints. I hope it’s before that.

  But the truck’s still nearly a whole mountain away.

  I’m at the other end of the cemetery field before I realise this is where Lily started choking. Of course the tombstone rocks weren’t here this morning, because I hadn’t broken the mountain yet.

  Did Lily know, somehow? Was her running out of breath a sign that we should have turned around and run down the mountain as fast as we could?

  The strange thing is Lily never has anything much wrong with her at all. Until she turned into a witch, she’d always been a kind of golden girl – and I’m not saying that just because she’s my big sister and the opposite of me. When I was little I thought she was the fastest runner and best ball player in the world. Even now I know that’s not true, sometimes I still feel secretly proud when I watch her race down a soccer field or slug a softball. Secretly proud and even more secretly jealous.

  The problem with being nearly three years younger is that I never catch up; by the time I can do something too, Lily’s doing something else even better. The only thing I’m as good at is riding, and that’s just because I care more: Lily likes horses, but I love them.

  So if anyone had tried to guess which of us would suddenly forget how to breathe, they’d have picked the scrawny, freckle-faced, can’t-even-go-out-in-the-sun-without-getting-frizzled little sister, not the one who’s a natural at everything she tries.

  I still wish I hadn’t said Okay when she said we should go on without her. I didn’t mean to be the only one who got to the top after all.

  10

  6:00 FRIDAY EVENING

  The ridge we followed up this morning is at the end of the cemetery field. It’s like the spine of the mountain’s back, from here down to where we saw the bears. After that, I just have to find the trails and keep on walking downhill till I get to the lake.

  I build another Inukshuk to point across the cemetery field. He’s little, but I put him on a table rock sitting a little way apart: the rescuers can’t miss him.

  Except it’s already getting harder to believe that anyone’s going to camp at the lake.

  I’ve got to get to the truck before dark.

  I change my watch to mountain time: twelve past five instead of twelve past six. That gives me a bit longer till nighttime, but I don’t know if it’s enough.

  So walk faster! says that voice in my head.

  If walking faster is good, running is better. For about twenty steps all I can think about is staying on the path and not tripping on loose rocks.

  After that all I can think about is how much I hurt. Every thump of my feet onto the rocky ground is a stab of pain: even my finger hurts more.

  Maybe running isn’t such a good idea. As long as I keep on walking, that’s all that matters.

  Toes numb, heels blistering, doesn’t matter: keep on walking. Left, right; trudge trudge; keep on walking.

  There’s the raven!

  It’s the first living thing I’ve seen since I fell off the cliff.

  I know it’s the same one, even though its feathers were almost purple in the sunlight yesterday, and they’re just plain black now that the day’s getting dark. It’s flying the way it was when we first saw it, flapping its wings so slowly and lazily you know it could go faster if it wanted, but this is all it can be bothered to do right now.

  ‘Hello, Mr Raven!’ I shout. That’s one thing about being alone on a mountain: you can shout out anything you like.

  Coyote Girl will be Jess’s best play ever when she works out the ending. Coyote Girl crawled away from a picnic when she was a baby and got adopted by a coyote family.

  I’m Coyote Girl. Amelia’s Mama Coyote; Jess is the director and the real mother, but later on she’s the hunter. She wants the hunter to accidentally shoot himself so Coyote Girl lives happily ever after, wild and free with her coyote family.

  Amelia wants Mama Coyote to chase the hunter away in a ferocious but beautiful jazz ballet dance.

  I want Coyote Girl to track the hunter, but he turns out to be her father and they all go home and live in one big happy coyote and people family.

  The raven’s gone, and I’m alone aga
in. Alone on a mountain is different from other kinds of alone. Alone in your room is good sometimes, not when you’ve been sent there but just when you feel like it, because your bedroom is safe, and it’s your own place.

  Alone out here means that no one on earth can hear me scream. I could wave, jump up and down, spell out HELP! with emergency flares . . . and nobody would see me.

  Which should be good in one way, because right now I really need to pee. The funny thing is that even though I know there’s no one anywhere around, I still wish there were some trees I could hide behind.

  Because I know I’m alone from people, but I’m not so sure about bears. Or wolves or cougars. Wild animals are different from people; just because I can’t see them doesn’t mean they can’t see me.

  I really don’t want to get eaten by a bear while I’m halfway through peeing with my jeans around my ankles.

  It’s the opposite scariness from last night, because then there were lots of trees that the animals might be hiding behind, and here there are none for me to hide behind. Last night, before Lily and I went off together, Scott shone his torch into the woods and shouted, ‘Hey, bears! Lily and Raven want some privacy here!’

  That was something I never knew I wanted a dad for: to scare off grizzly bears so I could pee.

  Anyway, I can’t hold on till I get past the tree line. I should have gone in the cemetery field. It had enough big rocks for a hundred kids to find their own places to pee.

  Though I like the way the mountain is starting to look almost normal, without so many newly broken rocks thrown around.

  Why do you want it to look normal? Amelia asks in my head. It doesn’t make it any easier for Lily and Scott.

  Because somehow it doesn’t see I haven’t wrecked the whole mountain. Because half of me knows that Lily’s right, there’s no way my Top-of-the-World Dance could have knocked a huge cliff off the side of a mountain – Of course you couldn’t! Jess agrees – and half of me knows I did. Knows that Scott being hurt, Lily being scared, and both of them being trapped is all my fault.

  So just keep on going; that’s all you can do, Jess soothes.

  But pee first, or you’ll wet your pants, Amelia teases.