Raven's Mountain (14 page)

‘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 braid. 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 . . .'

The biggest rock of all settles firmly in my stomach.
‘Don't be silly,' Scott's supposed to say, just like Lily had
two days ago, but nicer. ‘Of course it's not your fault!'

‘He said that wasn't what mattered. It was an accident and it's what you did next that mattered.'

I remember the voice in my head saying,
If you did
that, you can do anything!

‘Scott and I started talking about the worst things we've ever done. Mine was telling you our real dad left because of you.'

I can't breathe. It's not fair to talk about that today.

‘It's a lie: he left because of me; because I wouldn't stop crying. You know what gets me? The one single thing I can remember about our father is him shouting at me to stop crying, and how afraid I was when he shoved me into my room and slammed the door.'

The garbage of guilt tumbles away . . . until I look at Lily and start to feel sad and angry and wise all at once. Even though I've always believed it was my fault our dad had left, just because I was born, I know for absolutely sure that it couldn't be a three-year-old's fault.

‘You think a little kid could make a grown-up do something he didn't want to? You can't get Mum to do what you want now!'

Lily gives a funny sort of laugh, and we sit a while longer, shoulders rubbing, looking down at the mountain we've climbed. Far below us, we can hear the rescue helicopter on its way back to take us to Mum and Scott.

Then Lily starts braiding my hair again, dancing the strands from side to middle to the other side, each one taking turns, but with the raven's feather always firm and unmoving at the centre.

24
LATE SUNDAY AFTERNOON

Flying down the mountain with my sister, the peak still looks fierce and bare; the chain of mountains around it are still endless and empty. I've got the binoculars from Scott's pack, so I can see it all now too.

We hover over the raggedy tree line, the berry field and the secret cave waterfall; I show Lily the little waterfalls cascading to the Niagara, pretty and sparkling in the sun as if they'd never tried to drown me. Off to the right we can see the creek that I followed to the marsh, and the gentler hills of Greg's ranch.

I don't exactly know what I feel about the mountain, except that I want Lily not to hate it.

‘Look at that!' the pilot says through the headsets as we hover above the riverbank. ‘I've never seen a white bear out here before!'

Mama Bear stands guard to watch the helicopter go by. The pilot doesn't see the cubs, nestled together in the long grass, and I keep their secret. They're wild and free, and safe.

Lily smiles, and squeezes my hand.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wendy Orr was born in Edmonton, Canada, and spent her childhood in various places across Canada, France, and the USA, but wherever she lived, there were lots of stories, adventures and animals. Wendy fell in love with the mountains when was eight and went to summer camp in the Rockies. When she was twelve, she climbed Pike's Peak in Colorado with her father and sister, and will never forget the thrill of reaching the top!  

Raven's Mountain
is set in the high mountain country of British Columbia in Canada. This area is the home of many wild animals, including grizzlies and black bears. And very occasionally, a rare white Spirit Bear from the central coast of British Columbia has also been spotted further inland . . .

Wendy is the author of several award-winning books, including
Nim's Island
,
Nim at Sea
,
Spook's Shack
,
Mokie and Bik
, and for teenagers,
Peeling the Onion
.

A few years after Wendy wrote
Nim's Island
, a film producer in Hollywood took the book out of the library to read to her son, and the next day emailed Wendy to ask if she could make it into a movie. Wendy said yes! They became good friends and Wendy had the fun of helping work on the screenplay, and learning that making a movie was even more complicated than writing a book.

Wendy Orr lives on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula with her dog and other family.