Raven's Mountain Read online

  A raven’s feather, black and shiny. I’ve been lying on it all this time.

  It’s a sign: my very own good luck charm. The bears have said goodbye, and now my raven is showing me the way. Maybe it was the raven who pulled me onto the log.

  I weave the black feather through the snarl of wet hair that used to be a braid, and start down the hill.

  If I wasn’t so tired, my head so woolly and my jeans and socks so saturated; if I wasn’t hungry, lost, scared and hurting, this wouldn’t be a horrible walk. But I am, so it is.

  And it’s steep. Bumpy-on-my-bottom, burning-on-my-hands steep; jamming-my-toes-against-the-fronts-of-my-boots, aching-fronts-of-my-legs steep when I stand up again. If the mountain had to fall down I don’t see why it couldn’t have got a bit flatter at the same time.

  But if I follow the river, every steep step is taking me closer to the lake.

  ‘Because I’m not going to get lost!’ I shout.

  At the bottom of the hill, the river crashes onto another heap of boulders, but this time the rocks are in the middle and the river splits to flow around them.

  Now it’s two creeks separated by a tongue of land.

  I’m not crossing it again. I’ll stick with the creek on my side.

  I just wish it wasn’t starting to ramble away out of sight of the main creek – but it’s still flowing, it’s still got to end up at the lake. I’m definitely getting closer: already the ground isn’t so rocky and the forest is getting thicker, the way it was when we started out.

  I spy with my little eye something beginning with T, I imagine to Jess and Amelia.

  Tree, they say together.

  I spy with my little eye something beginning with M.

  They’re stumped.

  More trees! I tell them.

  I’m going crazy.

  The alder trees are crowding and whip-you-in-the-face springy; tangling and laughing because I’m trying to get around a steep bit of cliff, and now I can’t tell which way to turn to get back to the creek. I don’t know if it’s in front of me or behind – or maybe I’m going around in circles: I don’t know.

  ‘Stop it! You can’t lose a creek!’

  The forest is shocked into silence. Then birds start chirping; a branch rustles . . . and under the quiet everyday life of the woods, I can hear the murmur of running water. The creek’s reminding me that I can’t hear it when I’m screaming, but that if I calm down and listen, it will call me to it.

  ‘I’m not leaving you again,’ I tell it when I’ve finally pushed my way through the maze.

  The creek doesn’t care. It’s even forgotten how impatient it was to get to the lake; it’s getting slower and lazier.

  And wider. I’m wading in water up to my ankles: the creek is spreading out and turning into a marsh. I must be getting closer.

  The grass at the campsite was springy and green. The water at the edges of the lake was so clear and shallow you could see every pebble, but as it got deeper the colour did too; in the middle it was as turquoise as the Navajo ring Scott gave Mum. Diamonds danced where the sun hit the ripples. When I waded into it the water was cool, and the pebbles rolled under my toes.

  Mud squelches under my feet, sucking at my boots. Mosquitoes scream because there’s not enough room on my face for all of them at once.

  I can’t pretend any longer. I’m standing in a marsh. There’s a small pond in the middle, but the rest of it is about the marshiest marsh I’ve ever seen.

  It’s nothing like the lake we camped on.

  My legs fold. I hit the ground.

  I don’t understand.

  I’ve made it all the way down this mountain, all by myself, with nothing to eat or drink and no one to look after me; I’ve fallen off a cliff, wrestled with bears and nearly drowned in rapids. I don’t even know if I’m me anymore.

  None of it makes sense if it’s not the right lake.

  If I squint I can see across the pond, and the marsh. I can see the tall reedy grass with its roots in the mud and its spears above the water, and the floating clouds of white scum around my feet.

  Even with my filter, I won’t be filling my bottle here.

  After the taller grass the deep forest starts again, on and on in every direction, with the endless mountains circling around it all, and me a speck in the middle.

  The sun’s beginning to set, but knowing which way is west doesn’t matter any more, because I don’t know if the lake is east or west, north or south.

  I’m lost.

  Lost, lost, lost. I’m so lost and alone there needs to be a new word for it: Lostalone. Lonelost.

  I’m lonelost.

  No one’s going to save me now. The rescue helicopter’s given up and gone somewhere else to rescue someone that they can see.

  I’m going to die out here and be eaten by wolves, then the bones they leave will get crunched up by coyotes. There won’t be one atom left of the girl who used to be me. Jess will never be able to finish her play. Lily and Scott will starve to death inside the mountain. Mum will never know where her family has gone.

  In the end we turned Coyote Girl into a game. All through July, the three of us walked around the block after dinner, as late as we were allowed, howling like coyotes. We imagined people running to lock their doors so the wild animals couldn’t get in. We felt wicked, and brave.

  But one Sunday Jess’s family took us for a picnic at the river park. We wandered away from the flat greenness to explore the ravine: it was wild, steep and bushy. We crouchran through it, hiding and howling.

  Somewhere down the river, a cougar screamed.

  We didn’t play the howling game much after that.

  Tears run into the hollows around my nose and drip down my chin like the creek rushing around boulders and down the Niagara.

  There’s no point in going on, but I’m still folded up on the ground and the mud is seeping into my pants. It’s wet and revolting; my ankles are slime grey, and so are my hands. Mosquitoes swirl in a screaming grey cloud; the only good thing about this place is that they can’t bite where I’m covered with mud.

  I slop up handfuls of the world’s most disgusting Insect-Off; slime trickles through my fingers, oozes down my arms. It stinks bad enough it might even keep away wolves. I rub another handful onto my hair.

  But there’s a limit to how long you can sit in mud, no matter how much it stinks. I’ve got to find somewhere drier to be lost in.

  Ahead of me is the corner of a fence.

  A fence has to go somewhere.

  ‘Hang on, Lily! I’m going to get you out after all!’

  18

  SUNSET, SATURDAY EVENING

  If I ever made a calendar, I’d skip the mountains and sunsets and fill it up with pictures of this fence: this real, made-by-people, barbed-wire fence.

  I put my hand flat on the top of the post, and the rough wood tells me I’m strong enough to make it to the next one. All I have to do is keep on going, post by post, without worrying about north or south or uphill or down; the fence will take me to where people will be.

  My muddy boots squelch along beside it singing, ‘Follow the fence, the beautiful fence; follow the fence to help!’

  Sometimes I ride in the body inside those boots: trudge, trudge, squelch, squelch, but most of the time my fuzzy mind is so light that it bobs above me like a balloon.

  ‘Poor thing,’ my mind says, because the girl below me looks exhausted. Her muddy head’s bowed, her jeans are torn, and I can tell that those dragging feet are bleeding inside their slimy boots.

  I feel so sorry for her I start to cry.

  Then I realise the girl’s me, which makes me laugh – in a gurgly, drippy hiccupping kind of way.

  The forest ends and fields begin. Way in the distance there are horses or cows; I can’t see which. When I was little I thought Lily must love horses even more than I did because even if they were really far away she could tell if they were horses or cows. Then I got my glasses and I could too.
r />   Jess is trying to tell me something important but I can’t quite hear her. It’s like seeing something on TV on when you’re doing something else – you know it’s there but you don’t quite see it.

  Another fence runs into mine from the right.

  I keep going straight. If I crawl through it to the other one I might never get up again.

  There are horses in the next field, close enough I can tell. I like horses; I remember that like something I used to know. But all I care about is getting to the next post.

  It’s dark. There are no stars and no moon, just black night.

  Noises start: rustling leaves and creaking branches; a stick snapping. A howl in the distance; a yip, and a screech. Panting.

  Cougars and wolves; coyotes and bears: they’re all around me, all through the woods. They’re hunting, and I’m their prey.

  The hairs on my arms are standing up straight; my teeth are chattering, and my heart is thumping so hard it hurts. Every animal on the mountain must be able to hear it. I can feel them coming through the shadows, circling around me; closing in on me with sharp fangs and claws.

  With my left hand I grab a stick, a branch as thick as my wrist and as tall as me. Now I’ve got the fence on my right side and a stick on my left.

  The fence turns a corner, and so do I. Three posts along, it hits a wall.

  That’s what Jess was trying to tell me! If there are horses or cows, there’s got to be a barn somewhere.

  In the middle of the wall there’s a door with a sliding wooden bolt. I slide the bolt and push the door open. It’s pitch dark inside and smells like hay. I don’t even bother saying hello; I can tell there’s no one here.

  I bolt the door behind me and scuff across the floor till my foot touches hay.

  The hay smells of summer dreams; when it prickles my face I only wake enough to turn and snuggle in again like a mouse in a tissue paper nest. I don’t know how many times I do that; I don’t know which dreams are dreams and which ones really happened. I just know I’m safe and want to go on sleeping.

  But even in my dreams I know it’s morning, and when I open my eyes and see the dust dancing sunbeams through the hayloft window, I remember where I am.

  I’m very tired. I’m exhausted, worn out, dog-tired, all in, wrung like a dishcloth. I’m thirsty and starving, my mosquito bites itch, my bee stings burn, my cuts hurt, my muscles are sprained and my bones ache.

  But across from my hay-bale bed I can see an open door to a tack room. And inside that tack room is a big tub labelled OATS.

  I stagger across the barn floor as fast as my spaghetti legs will carry me. It takes a second to knock the tight lid off the tub, but then I’m leaning over it and digging in, cramming fistfuls of oats into my mouth.

  They’re not smooth like the rolled oats Mum cooks for porridge; they’re the whole hard little seed kernel hammered flat, so they’re nubbly and hard to chew. Trying to swallow them without chewing is worse, scratching all the way down my throat. I cough like a sick dog. The oats spray disgustingly across my front but I choke another handful down anyway.

  Now I really need water. There’s got to be a tap around here somewhere. Maybe outside.

  I shove the bolt across to open the barn door. The bright sun is blinding, but I don’t care because the tap is right there beside me, and I’ve already turned it on and am crouching over it, guzzling in that clear cold water. Water’s running out of my mouth and down my chin but more of it is going in, washing those nubbly oats down my throat, filling up my thirsty body. I don’t stand up till my belly feels fat and gurgly.

  I’d almost feel sick except that my eyes have got used to the brightness now and what I can see is too exciting for sick. Because I’ve just realised the other half of what Jess was trying to tell me last night.

  She’s right: you can’t have a barn without a house. It’s funny that I didn’t see the lights last night, because there it is, set back amongst the trees on the other side of the corral. This is what my beautiful fence was leading me to: a house, with people, and help.

  I try to run. The water in my stomach sloshes and gurgles, churns and rumbles. Then it explodes. The unchewed oats spew out. I didn’t think they’d even been in there long enough to turn into vomit, but it’s real, stinky, yellow, cramp-in-the-guts throw-up. And it keeps on going till stars and black holes dance in front of my eyes.

  My legs have turned back into soggy noodles. My head’s as floaty as a birthday balloon. I’m going to fall down.

  So walk against the fence, says the dad voice. The corral fence is wood, not barbed-wire. I veer towards it.

  Blackness.

  Blackness and peace.

  Blackness, peace . . . and warm breath against my face.

  I’m staring up at the bottom rail of the fence and into the deep brown eyes and white face of the horse nuzzling my neck. His rubbery lips move along me to find a pocket.

  ‘You think I’ve got an apple for you?’ I ask him, except I don’t feel strong enough to say it out loud. ‘I wish I did! I wish I had a whole bag of apples and carrots and sugar lumps, and you could share them with me.’

  Apples are juicy and crunchy. I like apples. Apples are sweet and juicy, not like nubbly make-you-throw-up oats. If there’d been apples in the barn I’d be knocking on the house-door now instead of lying under this fence. But there weren’t, so I go on lying there and thinking to the horse.

  ‘What else do you like?’ I ask. The horse doesn’t answer – but some smarter, knows-it’s-got-to-survive part of my brain does. Get up and get to the house!

  Except it’s so peaceful lying here, staring up at the sky and the white horse, that I really can’t be bothered.

  That’s okay, soothes Jess, you deserve a rest.

  Don’t be stupid! shouts Amelia. You can’t quit now!

  That’s the voice that makes me roll out from under the fence and pull myself up again. It’s the voice that makes me keep on walking towards the house on my wobbly legs.

  They get slower and wobblier as I get closer. Not just because I’m wondering whether these people will be the sort of strangers who want to help a lost girl rescue her sister, or strangers you shouldn’t talk to. It’s more because I need their help so badly I can’t bear it not to be true, and the closer I get the more afraid I am that it’s not true.

  The house is definitely real – if I were imagining a house right now it would be Hansel and Gretel’s gingerbread house with candy on the roof and icing dripping down the walls, and I would nibble, nibble like a mouse. This is a rambling, run down old farmhouse with a weather-beaten porch and a tyre swing in a big maple tree.

  It’s just the people who mightn’t be real. I can’t see anyone moving around inside.

  Maybe they’re asleep.

  I’ll have to wake them up, and that might make them so angry they won’t want to help.

  I lean on the door, catch my breath, and knock. Quietly.

  Nobody answers.

  I pound louder and louder, until I’ve walked right around the house hammering on every door and shouting below every shut-tight window, and no one has come out to see why. And they’re not going to: there’s no car in the driveway. There’s no one home.

  The doors are locked.

  So are the windows.

  I pee behind a tree, even though no one would see me if I’d peed right on the front lawn. Even my raven and the bears have given up watching me.

  Then I climb into the hollow of the tyre swing, and cry and rock till I nearly throw up. My head is so fuzzy and my legs so limp that I don’t know if they’re going to remember how to walk.

  But that’s what they have to do. That’s their job: to walk until I get help. It’s not something I have to think about or decide, it’s just the way life is. Just keep on walking. Back to the barn and down the driveway; at the end of the driveway there’ll be a road, and the road will somehow lead to help. Just keep on walking.

  Now even the barn looks so far away I ca
n hardly see it, infinitely farther than it was when I came out of it this morning. That’s what infinite means: however far I walk, there’ll always be another kilometre before I get to help.

  There’s got to be another way.

  I stand on tiptoe to look through the kitchen window. It’s clean and tidy. There’s nothing on the table or the benches. It hardly looks as if anyone lives there.

  They’ve got a tyre swing: they’ve got kids. People with kids would understand if someone else’s kid went into their house and used their phone to save her sister and stepfather’s lives.

  My heart’s hammering and my mouth is even drier than when I woke. I’ve never done anything this bad on purpose.

  I pick up a rock and whack the kitchen window as hard as I can.

  The glass explodes.

  19

  SOMETIME SUNDAY MORNING

  The hole is a jagged star, with knife points of glass. I smash those tall peaks off with another rock.

  Tiny splinters of glass jump into my fingers. I’m sucking off blood, spitting out glass. My lips are bleeding too, but I don’t know how else to get all that glass and blood out of my hands. I think I’ve swallowed a piece.

  And there are still slicing-sharp ridges of glass all along the bottom of the window.

  It would be really stupid to bleed to death before I got to the phone – and that’s what’s going to happen if I drag myself over that glass.

  Half an hour ago I probably would have started crying again. But it seems like whacking that rock through the window pushed the restart button on my frozen brain.

  I drag a cedar picnic chair over to the window. I turn it so its back is against the wall. Then I go back to the front door and grab the doormat. It’s heavier than it looks – one of those brown bristly mats with WELCOME in black letters. I hope the welcome still works through a window instead of the door.

  I heave it across the windowsill. It sticks out a lot; it’s not very bendy.

  Then I climb onto the chair. I lean onto the wobbly doormat but I can’t pull myself up and I’m still not quite high enough to wiggle through.