Lifting the Sky (30 page)

Climbing up a steep rocky slope was so easy, compared with the way I'd come into it. When we reached the top we stood panting and catching our breath. The charred hill grass stretched like a black sooty carpet across the hillsides. To the east, along the mountains and down in the gullies and canyons, the fire still raged. In the distance an airplane passed in and out of the clouds of white smoke. A helicopter dangling a big bucket on a long rope whirred toward the fire. We waved and jumped up and down, but it didn't see us. It disappeared into the billowing smoke.

“Think they saw us?” I asked hopefully, though it was obvious they hadn't.

Shawn shrugged. “It will be as it's meant to be,” he said.

Geez, he was sounding like an old medicine man already. “Goofball,” I said.

At the rate we were going it'd be dark long before we got to the ranch. Every two steps or so Shawn stopped and looked around as if he were walking about in a dream. “I'm in a whole new world,” he exclaimed. “I've never really seen color before. It's like I've lived in the dark and have just walked out into sunlight.”

He bent to stare at a gopher that poked its startled head out of a hole. “Creature of light,” I heard him whisper. “We're
all
creatures of light.”

He dropped far behind. I'd have been running full speed down the slopes to the ranch and my Stew Pot and my worried-sick mom if Shawn hadn't been so weak and so dazed by—well, by the light. It was already late afternoon, and we still had a long way to hike.

Now, looking back, I can see there were signs. Nothing you'd normally think twice about. Like for instance the rocky outcrop ahead of us. We wouldn't have even seen it if the trees all around it hadn't been burned to a crisp. Even then I wouldn't have paid any attention to that particular bunch of big rocks if the top of it hadn't suddenly been spotlighted by the rosy rays of the sinking sun. I wouldn't have gotten the brilliant idea to climb to the top and signal for help.

Already I could hear the
chop-chop-chop
of another helicopter as it whirled up from the lowlands to the fire.

A thick band of burned trees and shrubs surrounded the outcrop. Shelflike ridges made it look like it wouldn't
be too hard a climb. I charged through the trees and tore up the outcrop in a mad race with the sun, and then I stripped off my shirt and waved, whooped, and hollered my head off.

The helicopter ignored me. The ray of bright light faded as the sun went behind a big cloud of smoke. “What a bummer,” I said. My shoulders drooped. My legs felt limp as noodles.

Down below, Shawn slowly threaded his way through the burned grove. I stared at his face streaked with soot, at his matted hair, at his jeans and shirt caked with dried mud.
He sure looks scary,
I thought. And then I glanced down at myself.
“Boo!”
I said.

“I'm headed down!” I called when I saw that Shawn was starting to climb up the outcrop to join me. Just then an airplane buzzed out of the clouds of white smoke. I waved my shirt and thought that the plane tipped its wing.

“Don't come any farther,” I called down to Shawn, and I jumped to the ledge just below. He'd already climbed halfway up, but he stopped and waited and when I got to the ledge above him he reached up to give me a hand. As I took it he gasped.

“Oh, I'm so sorry! Did that hurt?” I asked, scowling at my hand as if it had bitten my friend.

“Behind you.
Look!
”

I turned stiff as a stick. A rattlesnake? That's all we needed….

There, on the flat face of the rock behind me, a petroglyph. Three etched lines arched high above three lumpy
rows of what could only be the symbol for mountains. A lone stick tree stood on top of the highest mountain. It stretched out two limbs to the rainbow.

Or it could've been a person. It could've been Shawn himself, raising his arms up in praise of the rainbow and lifting the sky with his song.

The pickup struggled up the blackened hillsides, traveling now where no road existed, making its way around boulders and sagebrush. I'd climbed back up to the top of the rocks when we first heard it, and had stood there wildly waving my shirt. When I was certain they'd seen me and were headed our way, I shot down to meet them.

And that's how my ankle got sprained.

I didn't cry. I really didn't. Even when I fell in a lump on the ground. Because there they were, hopping out of the truck, running toward us, Mr. Mac yelling back to Dingo in the cab, “They're okay, it's Blue and Shawn, and they're safe!” And then he was carefully feeling my leg while over his shoulder Slim John beamed and kept wiping his eyes. Meanwhile Jakey was guiding Shawn to the truck, careful as if he were glass because I guess Shawn's eyes were so wide and starry they figured he must be in shock.

Which, in a way, he was.

And then Mr. Mac was lifting me in his strong arms and brushing my hair with his lips and saying, “Miss Blue, you sure know how to scare the heck out of a fellow.” And Slim John kept looking at my hands and then at my leg, expecting, I suppose, that I'd reach down and magically fix it.

And before I knew it we were bumping down toward the ranch, somewhere along the way finding a road that wound through the hills toward Shawn's grandma's ranch, which must've been closer than ours. And Shawn was tugging an oily, crumpled paper sack out of his pack and plopping it on my lap saying, “It's yours. I saw you put it down before we left the cave. But it belongs to you. And thank you….”

And Slim John was patting my knee and wiping his eyes with his shirtsleeve as I held up the pale greenish crystal.

Mam met up with us just before we got back to the ranch, gunning Ol' Yeller, roaring over boulders and brush as if she were driving a tank. Seems that she'd finally figured out where I'd been headed. She'd read through my journals and found the parts about the ley lines and where they met up, and a bit about Shawn and his rainbow.

Honestly, I'm hardly even mad about it. Even the really personal, secret parts that she read, stuff about how much I'd fallen for Shawn, and then all the things I'd written about my dad, and the way I felt about packing up Ol' Yeller every two months. It was all there. She must've read every bit of it.

It stopped her in her tracks. She says she's ready to make some big changes. Some of which, by the way, would've been made anyway because of what happened after our clash with my dad and after I ran out the door.

My dad had decided I needed counseling. Mam had
told him she probably needed some too, for not having put a proper end to their marriage. My dad had slammed out the door saying she could have her divorce papers any old day she wanted.

I expect anytime now I'll get a letter saying he's ever so sorry for breaking my chairs and, along with them, my heart, and that he loves me, and to heck with that old guitar. And if I don't get a letter, well, I know I'll survive.

But I love happy endings, and just the fact that my hero dog, Pot, survived makes a perfect one. He's here in his beanbag, beside me, a little worse for wear and tear, but able now to limp down the stairs. We took him to the vet's clinic the day after I got back. Most dogs wouldn't have survived a wolf attack, the vet told us. It was a good thing I'd been there to scare it off, and what I'd done afterward had been just right. Stew Pot was one lucky dog, she said. But we already knew that.

Of course Mam had practically dropped to the floor when she ran up to my attic and saw him all wrapped like a mummy in his beanbag—especially after the shock of those bloody bandages I'd left strewn across the bathroom floor.

It had been about then that she'd heard the pickup drive into the yard.

But it hadn't been my dad coming back. It had been Mr. Mac. By then she'd plumb forgotten that she'd called him to come up for the grand opening of my room. Which of course was by then in a total state of disaster. But I gather he'd been really touched. Maybe even more so than he
would've been if it hadn't been for the ruined—well, whatever you want to call them. “Furniture” is a word that maybe really is a bit too grand.

Mostly, Mam told me, Mr. Mac just ran his fingers through his hair and said that I was the darnedest kid he'd ever known. Which I'm taking as a great compliment.

He'd come zooming up to the ranch, though, because he'd gotten the word about Shawn when he'd stopped at the trading post. He'd called Slim John and Jakey and Dingo to come help with the search. They'd decided that Mam should stay home just in case. At that point the fire hadn't yet started up and she'd been more worried about Stew Pot than me.

But it wasn't long afterward that she spotted the smoke. That's when she about tore out her hair. And that's when she read through my journals.

Honestly, I forgive her. Given the way things have turned out.

I gather that Mr. Mac has been thinking about taking the cows off this place, at least for the winters. And I gather that he'd like Mam to come help out at his other ranch, the one that's closer to town and to schools.

I'd miss this place so much, even though Mam has said that if we do this, well, we'll be back here next summer. I think that will happen, especially after all the rosy-pink lights that had floated around the two of them when Mr. Mac brought me home. For once I spied to my heart's content. Just watching their lights made me happy.

My bums would come with us, but I'd miss Lone
One and Light of the Dawn. I'd watched Lone One run back down the hills toward her fawn, so I was pretty sure they'd been safe. Antelopes don't like forests and places where they can't see every little thing that's going on. I knew they'd head for the wide-open spaces and safety. Right now, this morning, they're below my window next to the log cabin, happily stripping petals off the sunflowers that have sprung up all over the place, both inside and outside our garden.

Mr. Mac is coming over this evening. So is Shawn, and he's bringing his grandma. I've gotten my room back in shape, in spite of having to hobble around on one leg. This time we're having a real ceremony. Shawn's grandma will be doing the blessing.

Shawn asked me to be his helper at the Sun Dance that's coming up next week. His uncle is the medicine man for it. They'll hold the ceremony up in the hills in between Crowheart and Ft. Washakie. It's a big deal, I gather, though I haven't been to one yet. The men stay in a circular lodge made of branches and pray as they blow through eagle-bone whistles. And they don't eat or drink for four days. You can't even chew gum if you go there to watch, Shawn says. Just watching you chew it might make the dancers thirsty. Shawn says his cousins will show me what to do, but not to worry because I'd be supporting him just by being there for him. He explained that the Sun Dancers do this as prayers for their family and friends and for all of us, and they also pray for a vision.

But Shawn's doing the Sun Dance to say thanks. Lots
of big thanks, he says. He can't get over the way his great-grandma's story came true.

So things are getting back to normal. Through normal, as Mam always says, is a state not on our map. Still, it feels like a regular, ordinary day here at Far Canyon Ranch.

The only thing at all unusual is a double rainbow in the morning sky.

The Wind River Reservation does exist. What takes place on it is a work of fiction, separate from the real-life community of the Shoshones and Arapahos. To the people of this land of high mountains, big winds, and blue sky go my love and respect.

I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to Vernon Lajeunesse and to Carrie and Darwin Griebel for their encouragement in reading through my manuscript. To all my friends here, my life has been enriched by having crossed your paths.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my literary agent, Charlotte Sheedy, who believed in and encouraged me and sent care packages of delicious goodies through the mail. She is truly an earth-mother agent. My thanks to Melanie Cecka for guiding me through the maze of writing my first book. For cheering me on and for the hot-from-the-oven oatmeal cookies brought to my desk, I thank my love, Rod Johnson.

First U.S. Edition 2008
Book design by Nicole Gastonguay

Copyright © 2009 by Mackie d'Arge

Published by Bloomsbury U.S.A. Children's Books
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010
Electronic edition published in October 2012
www.bloomsburyteens.com

All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
d'Arge, Mackie.
Lifting the sky / Mackie d'Arge. — 1st U.S. ed.
p.      cm.
Summary: Twelve-year-old Blue, always on the move with her ranch-hand mother,
yearns for a real home where her father can find them, and on a remote ranch
on a Wyoming reservation she finds that and more, including a mystical ability
to heal injuries.
[1. Ranch life—Wyoming—Fiction. 2. Aura—Fiction. 3. Healers—Fiction.
4. Single-parent families—Fiction. 5. Animal rescue—Fiction. 6. Indians of
North America—Wyoming—Fiction. 7. Indian reservations—Fiction.
8. Moving, Household—Fiction. 9. Wyoming—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.D2434Lif 2009        [Fic]—dc22        2008030311

ISBN: 978-1-59990-989-9 (e-book)