Raven's Mountain (5 page)

Luckily the smarter part of my brain is studying the rocks while the other part's whining. I need to slide down to the first bump . . . which doesn't seem quite so easy now I'm doing it. I hug the rock as I wiggle across: right foot slide, right hand grab; left foot slide. Slip down between the two rocks where they've split, catch my breath and study the second one. If I jump and reach high as I can . . .

‘OW!'

I suck my finger till it stops bleeding: the left pointer fingernail is ripped down to the quick.
It must be called
quick because it makes you jump so fast.

What's scary is that if I hadn't been wedged between the two rocks, I'd have fallen off, because as soon as it got hurt my hand forgot all about holding on.

So when you're climbing, it's just tough luck if you hurt
yourself. The only thing that matters is not falling off.

I don't know if I can remember that.

Anyway, now I've slowed down I can see there's another way up to the second rock, that doesn't need me to rip off any more fingernails. I wiggle on my stomach, across and up . . . and I'm at the other end of Lily's cave.

It wasn't just the nose that fell off the mountain.

This end of the ledge, right to the bend, is covered with a pyramid of rocks higher than my head.

But each one is a rock, not a boulder. I could move them.

If I take them down, one by one . . .

. . . it'll take days.

But what else can I do?

The pile is too wobbly to climb. I lean into it and push off the highest rock I can reach.

‘OW!'

I shove the rock off my toe and over the ledge. My finger's bleeding again too. Maybe I should start lower down.

Sitting with my back against the mountain, I kick off all the loose rocks around the edges. ‘Ten down, a thousand to go!'

It feels good. I'm getting somewhere.

The easy ones are gone, my legs are getting quivery from shoving, and the pile doesn't look any smaller than when I started.

There's still one big rock at the bottom that I might be able to move. I brace my back and shove with both feet . . .

I've done it! The big rock disappears over the side.

Another big one crashes towards me. I fling myself back, my knees tucked against my chest, my head thumping against the cliff wall.

The rock brushes past my toes, smashes onto the ledge, and bounces over the cliff.

The whole pile shivers behind it; rocks roll and settle. But only two go over the cliff
 
– the rest must have rolled into Lily and Scott's cave.

8
4:05 FRIDAY AFTERNOON

Crawling back across the boulders to Lily's side of the cave makes my hands bleed more, but it's easier than telling her I can't dig them out.

I thought it was a rule: if you try absolutely as hard as you can when things are really tough, they have to work out.

That's what's fair.

It's not fair that Scott's knocked out when he's the one who's supposed to be taking care of us.

It's not fair that Lily and I are both sitting with our faces against this horrible door rock but we can't even see each other through the gap. And I don't know why I keep calling it a door when there's no way we can open it.

It's not fair that there's another stack of rocks inside the cave just as big as the one outside, and when the rocks I tried to push off the ledge smashed into the inside pile, they bounced towards Scott and Lily.

‘One nearly hit Scott
 
– he kind of twitched, but he didn't wake up.' Lily stops for a second. I can hear her breathing, as if she's trying not to cry. ‘Raven, you can't try to move any more of those rocks. If the whole pile crashes in here we'll be buried alive!'

Her words hit my ears as if they're coming from a long way away, or she's speaking a foreign language; I can hear the sounds but I can't quite understand. Buried alive is supposed to mean like when I went to Sylvan Lake with Jess's family and we took turns lying on the beach, pouring sand over each other till we were buried up to our necks and it felt warm and safe.

Lily means buried alive like dead.

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.