“Lucky I did,” Tor said. He could feel a surf of exhaustion rolling toward him, cresting like an ocean wave coming into shore. Not all the tea or sandwiches in the world were going to keep him awake much longer, but he had to keep talking. The best part was coming up.
“I walked for what seemed like forever through the tunnels. Then I found a lantern, and matches,” he said, and took a deep breath. “They were sitting right next to your great-great-great-grandma, Raine.”
His words fell into a silence as deep as a well, as deep as the silence in the tunnel. Even Mr. Graham had stopped rolling his toothpick, and his mother and Ms. Adams looked like statues on either side of the desk.
“Leaping Water?” Raine whispered.
“Yeah,” Tor said, and reached inside his jacket. “She gave me this, Raine. For your family. She was waiting for me.”
“Waiting for you,” Sheriff Hartman said in a blank sort of way. He wasn’t writing anything down; his pencil was held in the air like he’d forgotten he was holding it.
“Yeah, for me. The healer’s son. She wanted me to break the curse, of course,” Tor said impatiently. He held out the envelope to Raine. “This belongs to your family. We have to protect her people now. That’s our job now.”
“It’s the deed to the mountain,” Raine said in a tiny voice. She handed the envelope to her father, who looked at it as though he’d forgotten how to read. He held it out to his wife, who passed it to Grandma Douglas. Grandma Douglas held it to her chest and bowed her ancient head.
“That’s the original deed?” Mayor Malone asked. He sounded wheezy, like he’d been hit in the stomach.
“What is the significance of this?” Mr. Graham asked. He looked both puzzled and irritated. “What is this?”
“This is the deed to the Borsh Mountain land,” Mr. Douglas said, taking the envelope from Grandma Douglas and holding it carefully in both hands. “This is the proof that my family needs to keep the development from going forward on our mountain.”
“Or you can sell the mountain and keep the money for your family,” Mayor Malone said desperately. “There’s that. There’s a lot of money—”
“No,” Tor, Drake, and Raine said as one. Everyone turned to look at them.
“We have to protect our people,” Raine said proudly, her chin up. “That is what Leaping Water did. That’s why she gave the deed to Tor. That is our duty now.”
“Tor found a skeleton in a tunnel,” Mayor Malone said. “That’s what he found. Talking about protecting some mythical people, that’s crazy talk. You’ll want to think this over, Mr. Douglas. That’s a lot of money we’re talking about there.”
“Thank you, sir,” Mr. Douglas said gently, and tucked the envelope in his shirt. “I’ll certainly consider it.”
“What does this have to do with Brian Slader and blood doping?” asked Mr. Graham impatiently.
“Nothing, and everything,” Tor said. “The curse on the town is what Deputy—er, Mr.—Rollins used to keep the blood doping a secret, even after Brian died. That’s why the snowboarders chased me out of bounds. That’s why Jeff and Max tried to knock me down and instead I ended up in the White Gates. They believed Brian died because of the curse. It all happened because of the curse.”
“What curse?” asked Mr. Graham, and Tor sat back for a bit while the room erupted in noise and explanation. The warmth of Drake against one side of him and Raine on the other was so comforting that Tor actually began to doze off.
“Tor, don’t fall asleep,” Ms. Adams said, and Tor snapped awake to see that everyone was looking at him again.
“I’m awake,” he insisted, though all the angles of the room seemed to be bent in strange ways. He blinked. “What?”
“How did you get out?” Sheriff Hartman said.
“The light, in the morning,” Tor said. “The light and the breeze down the passageway. I found the crack in the wall and kicked my way through. Then I saw the gray wall and the ladder.”
He laughed, because it seemed so funny now, and rolled his head on the couch to look first at Raine, then at Drake. His head was much too heavy to lift now.
“I thought maybe I was dead, the room was so white and strange and there was the silver ladder right up to heaven, but it turned out to be the ladder on the chairlift pylon. There was a hatch at the top, and I came out to see that I was back on the mountain. The rest, you know,” he said tiredly, and closed his eyes again.
“The construction crew must have blocked up the mine tunnel when they dug the chairlift pylon,” Mayor Malone said.
“That was the way out,” Dr. Sinclair said. “He found the way out.”
“Kicked my way out, really,” Tor mumbled.
“Well done, son,” Mr. Douglas said, and Tor could have sworn he was close to tears.
“Yes, well done,” Ms. Adams said, and he was sure she was crying.
“Oh, it wasn’t really me,” Tor said at the very edge of sleep. “Not me. Drake and Raine and me. It was us.”
“Yeah,” Raine whispered. Drake made an embarrassed shrugging movement that jostled Tor and reminded him of something. He turned his head to Drake and it seemed to take forever as the room slowly rotated and Drake came into view.
“I never saw anything like that jump you made when you made Deputy Rollins crash,” Tor mumbled. “You think you could teach me that move?”
“Yes,” Drake said, “I will.” That was the last thing Tor remembered. He dreamed of otters, and Leaping Water, and bells that rang like music in the darkness.
THE CHAIRLIFTS STOOD silent now, their shadows making black squares over the brilliant emerald grass of the empty mountain. The snow was gone and so, too, were the crowds of skiers and snowboarders. The pine trees were almost black in the hot sun. Their trunks were cloaked in shadow and their branches were a perfect dark velvet green. The air was alive with butterflies and bees and motes of pollen and the excited chatter of birds and squirrels.
Tor stopped for a moment and took out his water bottle. It felt strange to be wearing shorts and a T-shirt again, to feel the air lifting the hair from his forehead and brushing against his arms and bare legs.
“Drake, stop,” Raine called. Drake was walking ahead and hadn’t seen Tor stop. Drake had given up his horrible winter sweaters, but his summer wardrobe included shorts in the most awful patterns Tor had ever seen. Today he was wearing neon orange and green plaid golf shorts. He turned, and then came back toward them, jumping like a goat down the slope.
“Water break,” Dr. Sinclair said. She wore shorts and a bucket-shaped hat that made her look hardly older than Raine. Her face was pink with exertion. “Is this where we head into the woods?”
“Not quite,” Raine said. “Just a bit further up.”
“Then let’s rest for a minute,” Dr. Sinclair said. She turned and sat down on the grass, sitting with her knees up and her elbows resting just like a snowboarder. Drake shrugged and sat down, obviously bursting with energy and wishing they would go on. Tor and Raine sat down next to Dr. Sinclair. The four of them contemplated the valley and the town of Snow Park, laid out like a tiny miniature toy town below them.
“It’s pretty from up here,” Dr. Sinclair said, sipping from her bottle. She turned her face up to the sun and gave a sigh of happiness.
Tor looked down toward home, planting his elbows on the warm springy grass. It seemed like he’d been here all his life.
Raine tilted her head back like Dr. Sinclair and closed her eyes, smiling into the sun. Water beaded her face. Her hair was braided as always but she’d taken to wearing Ute beading in the loops that tied off the ends, and she’d sewn tiny beads in a pattern along the sides of her shorts. She didn’t mind being a Ute anymore, Tor thought.
“Come on, let’s go already,” Drake said.
Tor got to his feet as Drake bounced impatiently in his plaid shorts. Raine flipped her braids over her shoulders, Dr. Sinclair pulled down her bucket hat, and they turned upslope and began to walk.
The slope
got steeper and more slippery as they walked steadily on. Finally they were at the top of the White Gates. Without snow they looked like stony scars on the mountain. Dr. Sinclair stood for a long moment looking down the avalanche chute, her eyes stricken, and then she turned to Tor with a shrug as if to say “I’m a mom, I can’t help it,” and followed Drake and Raine into the woods.
“The judge was so eager to give us the land,” Raine said as the trees closed around them. “I didn’t think it would be so easy.”
“I think the judge was looking for an excuse to give the land back to you,” Dr. Sinclair said gently. “Guilt, I suppose.”
“And he wasn’t a snowboarder,” Drake said.
“Oh, Drake,” Raine laughed, and threw a pinecone at him.
“That’s your pinecone,” Tor said. He picked up another one and chucked it at Drake. “Here’s another pinecone. Yours, all yours. We can throw them at Drake all day.”
“Oh, Tor, you don’t get it, do you?” Raine said. She let her fingers trail down the branches of a tree. It gave under her touch and then sprang back up again after she passed. The pine smell was strong in the air. “I don’t think of this land as mine, or yours, or anyone’s. This mountain doesn’t belong to anybody. It belongs to itself, and it always will.”
“What is this, a poem?” Drake asked.
“I don’t care if it sounds silly,” Raine said, flipping her braids over her shoulder and glaring at Drake. “If we have to ‘own’ this land to protect it, then I’m happy to own it. But we know whose land this really is.”
“The river people,” Tor said, and the breeze came through the pines and set the tops dancing. He laughed and swung his arms wide and spun in a circle.
Drake clapped a hand to his head. “I’m going to retch,” he said.
“Say it,” Raine said, and picked up a broken branch. She poked at Drake with it, and he jumped. “Say it, say the river people own this all.”
She chased him in a circle around Tor and his mother. Dr. Sinclair stood with her hands on her hips, shaking her head, and Drake finally threw up his hands as Raine stopped, panting, and made as if to throw the branch at him.
“The river people, the river people!” he shouted, and Tor could hear the echo through the trunks of the pines. “This all belongs to the river people! There, you satisfied?”
“Mostly,” Raine said, throwing down the branch and panting. Drake was fast. “Just one more thing to do, and that’s Dr. Sinclair’s job.”
“Ah, yes, my task in this little jaunt,” Dr. Sinclair said. “Anyone going to tell me what it is yet? Anyone going to fill me in on why I’m up here and who these mysterious river people are?”
“Soon,” Tor promised. “While we’re young, Raine?”
Raine waved her hand in a come-on gesture and they set off through the woods, angling deeper into the mountain. The hike was a lot longer on foot than it was gliding on a snowboard. They took another water break in a small clearing that was so dense with trees that Tor started to feel chilled in the shade. When they stepped into the sun again, he turned his face up to it and nearly killed himself stumbling over a log, which made Drake laugh heartily. Tor chucked a pinecone and hit Drake in the seat of his neon plaid shorts. Drake yelped and started to chase Tor, but Dr. Sinclair made them stop.
After they had continued walking for so long that Tor thought they’d gone the wrong way, he recognized the clearing in the trees ahead of them.
“Quiet,” Raine commanded, and they stopped. She stood for a moment, listening intently. Tor could hear the gurgle of water and the sigh of the breeze through the pine trees, and nothing else. Raine waved them on and they flitted like ghosts through the trees and came out on the small bluff overlooking the valley where the otters lived.
The valley was alive with water. Multiple creeks chuckled and gurgled, joining a larger river that roared white as it disappeared out of the lower end of the valley. The sunlight was warm and full and the beaver ponds in the center of the valley glowed like blue jewels. Green grasses and spiky willow bushes lined the creeks and covered a marshy area. Tall aspen groves were still unfurling their pale green leaves.
“This is beautiful,” Dr. Sinclair whispered. They sat down at the edge of the bluff and Tor looked eagerly up and down the valley, seeking the sleek brown heads of the otters.
There was nothing. Birds flew in and out of the willow trees and there was a low and sleepy hum of insects, but nothing else moved. Tor shifted a little and Raine laid a warm brown hand on his arm.
“Peace,” she said in a whisper so low he almost didn’t hear her. Then he did, and he felt something inside him come completely unknotted. Whatever happened wasn’t up to him. For the first time he really understood what Raine meant when she said she didn’t own this land. He didn’t own it either, and he didn’t own the otters. They weren’t going to appear just to entertain him, because they weren’t his.
Tor didn’t know how long they sat there. The sun soaked into him and the sleepy hum filled him up. Dr. Sinclair was calm and still, moving only to breathe and to take a drink from her water bottle now and again. Maybe she, too, felt the timelessness of this place. Tor glanced at her and she was smiling gently.
Drake tensed, and Tor saw the first of the brown heads break the water. He sighed and heard Drake and Raine sigh with him as an otter poured itself onto the land and stood looking around, eyes like black oil, whiskers twitching. A second otter tumbled out of the water and the two rubbed noses, then a third otter splashed to the shore.
Dr. Sinclair didn’t move. She sat still, her eyes on the otters. Tor could see the knowledge in her face, the comprehension. She knew what she was seeing. She drew a deep, slow breath.
“The river people,” she breathed out, and Tor, Drake, and Raine nodded as one.
There was a long silence then, as they watched the otters play on the riverbank. They were a beautiful glossy brown in the summer sunlight. Their ears and tails were black and their noses were like a dog’s, with a short snout and a black button nose. They seemed to relish rubbing noses, sliding their bodies over one another, and using their broad, powerful tails to flip water at each other like children having a water fight.
Dr. Sinclair finally sat up straight, slowly, and put her hands out, palms up.
“I promise,” she said clearly, in a normal tone of voice. At her voice the otters looked up sharply and froze. “I promise to guard you. I promise to keep your secret. I make this promise to Leaping Water and her family. I make this promise to you.”
A moment later the otters were gone, sliding into the water with incredible speed and leaving not a single splash behind. Dr. Sinclair sat for a moment longer with her hands out, and then she dropped her hands and looked over at Drake and Raine, then at Tor, with a rueful smile.
“I hope I didn’t scare them away for good,” she whispered.
“No, I don’t think you did,” Raine said with shining eyes. “I don’t think you did.”
“Was that right?” Dr. Sinclair whispered. “Was that what I should have said?”
“That was exactly right,” Drake whispered.
Tor reached out and took Raine’s hand. She reached out and took Drake’s hand, and Tor felt his mother take his. They sat with hands clasped. Tor felt roots growing deep inside of him, roots growing into the warm earth.
“There they are,” Raine breathed, as the otter heads broke the surface of the stream. The second otter made a squeaking cry, glanced up at the four of them, and turned away, dismissing them.
That was when the first of the baby otters appeared.
Dear Reader,
Thank you for visiting Torin Sinclair’s new hometown of Snow Park. Now that you know the secret of Leaping Water’s people, I’d like to share my own encounter with wild Colorado river otters.
A few summers ago, my family took a hike deep into the Rocky Mountains. We were fishing along a river when my little daughter slipped and fell into the icy water. We plucked her out
quickly but she was already shivering.
The rest of the family hiked upriver while I dried my daughter off and warmed her up. We were sitting quietly on a rock in the sunshine, wrapped in my jacket and cuddled close, when an otter popped up in the water and scrambled onto a rock across the stream. We sat, barely breathing, while the otter warmed up on its sunny rock.
When the rest of the family returned, the otter disappeared. I made everyone sit and wait for what seemed like forever. I began to think we had imagined the otter. Then everyone gasped because we realized that an entire otter family was watching us from the far bank. The otter had gone home to collect its family so they could see these odd two-legged creatures. We stared at each other for a long time, and I don’t know who was more fascinated, the otters or us.
This magical river doesn’t belong to my family. It belongs to the otters and other wild creatures, because in America we’ve decided to protect our most beautiful places and keep them free. These places, including our many national parks and forests, are treasures that we’ve agreed to keep for each other. Encounters like the one my family had with the otters can be moving reminders of why this is so important.
—Bonnie Ramthun
BONNIE RAMTHUN was born in Los Angeles, where her grandparents lived, because her hometown, Central City, Colorado, didn’t have a hospital. Central City is an old gold-mining town in the mountains. It didn’t have television or radio reception and back then there was no Internet at all. Bonnie and her brothers and sisters spent their summer days reading books. They also explored abandoned mining camps in the forest, an activity that was strictly forbidden and therefore irresistible. When Bonnie was nine, the family moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, where she discovered that the mysterious “radio” her aunt had given her as a birthday gift suddenly started playing music. Bonnie started writing stories at the same time her radio started playing music. She has published three adult mystery novels. The White Gates is her first book for young people. Bonnie lives in Erie, Colorado, with her family and is hard at work on the next Torin Sinclair mystery.
The White Gates Page 17