Raven's Mountain

by Orr, Wendy

  ‘LILY! Scott, Lily! WHERE ARE YOU?’

  Now I’m just straight out screaming, and I’m getting more scared with every scream because they’re still not answering – and wherever I am, they should have heard me. Scott should be running, shouting that everything’s okay. Even my sister wouldn’t ignore scared-just-about-to-death screams.

  My voice is cracking. I can’t shout anymore.

  It’s not fair! I’m the youngest!

  It’s all my fault: I wasn’t supposed to go out of sight. Now I’ve lost them.

  I can’t see or hear or think. The fear is blacking out the sky and swallowing me up like a beam of light into a black hole. I’m nothing but a shivering, screaming speck on a lonely mountain.

  So stop screaming, says a voice in my head. Not my voice, not my mum’s. Maybe it’s my dad’s, talking to me all the way from Australia. I always knew he’d think about me if I really needed him.

  I take a deep breath and burst out of the blackness. My mind is sharp and clear – and has finally remembered what Scott said to do if we got lost. ‘Stay where you are and blow your emergency whistle.’

  The whistle’s still around my neck, barely dented. I’m so relieved my knees fold up and drop me into the snow. I don’t know why Lily and Scott couldn’t hear me shouting, but they’ll hear the whistle for sure. They’ll use theirs to answer.

  They don’t.

  It’s an hour since I saw them. The one thing I know for sure is that even if they haven’t heard the emergency whistle, they’ll be trying to find me.

  Unless they’ve fallen off a cliff too.

  Don’t be stupid: what are the chances of three people falling off cliffs at the same time?

  They can’t hear me because they’re at the top! They probably got there just as I fell off it. Even if they hadn’t, they’d go there to look for me.

  I blow my whistle and shout once more, listening so hard my ears tingle, but there’s still no answer.

  Every bit of my body is bumped and bruised, and it all hurts more than my tailbone after Bitsy threw me.

  ‘You’ve got to get back on,’ the cousins said. ‘You can’t let a horse think you’re afraid.’

  I was afraid, and my bottom hurt more than I thought a bottom could hurt, but I rode Bitsy all the way home, and the next day when the doctor said I’d broken my tailbone, I made Jess swear she’d never tell her cousins.

  I hope I haven’t broken it again.

  I shake a rock out of my left jeans leg and find a deep scratch up to my knee; I can’t see properly, my hands are bleeding, and I don’t know if all the blood is from them or other cuts I’ve touched. I’m cold, wet, and shaking; when I pull up my jacket hood it dumps a load of snow down my back.

  But I can walk.

  It’s time for me to find them.

  Another deep breath.

  I have to get back to the peak.

  The fastest way has got to be up the cliff face I’ve just fallen down. It’s covered with bumps and cracks – way more handholds than the rock-climbing wall Scott took us to last year.

  I could do it.

  Maybe.

  I have to. The ledge could be a dead end. I could follow it and get stuck on the wrong side of the mountain.

  But that’s not the real reason I need to climb the cliff. The real reason is that I’m making a deal with God: if I do something I’m this scared of, I get to find them. I have to climb it.

  Except now my feet won’t move. They’re glued to the ledge, because my feet are smarter than me and they know that climbing the cliff is no more like climbing in a gym than being thrown off it was like sledding down a hill.

  Where I absolutely agree with my feet is that I don’t want to fall down that cliff twice. In fact, I don’t want to fall down any cliff, ever again.

  Anyway, I’m not so sure God makes deals like that. He might think the same way as Mum – and she’d kill me if I climbed a cliff on my own.

  Which is quite funny since I’ve fallen down it once already.

  For half a second I feel like smiling.

  I’m never going to smile again.

  I need every bit of oxygen and energy just to keep on going, and to stop myself from noticing how much I’m hurting. Hurting every step, every breath, every time I flatten myself against the side of the mountain to look all around, up and down . . .

  I’ve seen this view before: I’m on the trail! My brains were just too rattled to recognise it at first. Or my eyes are starting to get used to not having glasses.

  ‘Lily! Scott!’

  Nothing. Not even an echo.

  I can see footprints. The snow’s deeper here and not so messed up. Definitely footprints – clearer and clearer the farther I go.

  I step into them. My feet fit exactly, one step and the next. They’re my own prints from the way up – and they’re the only ones.

  A cold chill is settling around my heart, tighter and colder with every lonesome step.

  But I have to go on, just in case. It’s like when you lose your Girl Scout sash and you look everywhere in your room and then you have to take one more peek in the drawer where it’s supposed to be, even though you know perfectly well you wouldn’t have dumped everything out of every other drawer if it had been there in the first place.

  So I have to see for sure, just in case I’m wrong.

  I’m not wrong.

  There’s nothing and no one here except me.

  No Lily and Scott.

  No new footprints.

  No Top-of-the-World Dance Rock.

  No daypack sitting beside the rock waiting for me to put it back on.

  And no huge rocky nose on the mountain below me. That side of the cliff is gone.

  6

  3:39 FRIDAY AFTERNOON

  I can’t believe this is where I did my happy dance and worried about my sister laughing.

  I never thought of worrying about the mountain. After all, mountains are made of rock. They’re very old, very strong, and very, very solid. Everyone knows that eleven-year-old girls can’t break mountains.

  Except I think I did.

  Because what if the rock tipped because I fell, and if it slid because it tipped, and if it broke the mountain’s nose because it slid?

  The chill around my heart is turning into a solid block of ice. This is a cold, lonely, dangerous place and I’m getting out of here as fast as I can: slipping, skidding, falling, landing on my cut-to-shreds hands, sucking off the blood and snow.

  The snow soothes my screamed-raw throat.

  Mum says snow’s full of germs no matter how clean and white it looks, but there aren’t any animals up here to pee on it. I grab another handful and the bloody handprints give me an idea:

  L & S

  Going down trail

  R xxoo

  I write it in the clean white snow on the other side of where the Top-of-the-World Rock used to be. It makes me feel better, as if I know what I’m doing. I’ve written them a message: now they’ll have to find me.

  My sister will tease me about being clumsy enough to fall off a mountain; Scott will give me one of his quick, embarrassed stepfather hugs and tell me off for going out of sight when he’d said not to. I don’t care: I just want to find them.

  You’d think going down a mountain would be easy. It’s not: it seems even steeper than climbing up. I’ve barely taken two steps, and I’m already skidding on loose gravel.

  I swing my arms, get my balance . . . but my heart is still thumping like it wants to jump right out of my chest.

  When Jess, Amelia and I went on the Death Drop at the Cottonwood Fair, we screamed all the way down, because it felt like were going to die. Now I know we only thought it felt like we were going to die. Inside we knew nothing bad was going to happen, because my mum was waiting on the ground, and as soon as we got off we could stop being scared and go on to the next ride.

  I need Mum now!

  I’ll try sliding on my bottom. It’ll be like tobogganin
g with Jess and Amelia.

  Pretending hard enough stops you being afraid. We’re all squished on together, Jess in front because she’s smallest, Amelia in back because she’s tallest, me in the middle because that’s the way we are. I’m not as smart as Jess or as good at sport as Amelia: I’m the middle bit that joins two long sides of a triangle, practising handstands with Amelia and writing plays with Jess.

  Amelia’s complaining about the bumps – she’s a bit of a princess even though she’s so sporty – and Jess is laughing because she’s usually the one who gets scared first. ‘How come you’re going so slow?’

  ‘You have to be here,’ I tell her.

  Just like tobogganing with Jess and Amelia – except for being alone and no toboggan.

  Anyway, it’s getting too bumpy for my poor bruised bottom, and my hands are burning from skidding in the snow. I’ll start walking again once I’ve wiggled around this next big rock.

  My stomach heaves at the sight of yellow sick in the snow: I’m back on the ledge that I landed on.

  No wonder I didn’t recognise it! It used to be the eyebrows. Now it’s just a ledge of rock sticking out in the middle of nowhere.

  As long as it doesn’t break off too.

  I scrabble along as quickly as I can, my back against the cliff. The further I go the more rocks there are to scramble over. I can’t believe I ever thought scrambling over rocks was fun. That was before I knew that a mountain could throw you farther than a horse.

  There’s a jagged cliff where the nose used to be. The trail around it is steep; it must be where I door-climbed up. I can’t figure out how to door-climb down. I’ll have to go on my bottom again.

  Maybe I have broken my tailbone after all.

  There’s a big rock at the bottom; I crawl over that, and around to the ledge that used to be the bottom lip.

  I was wrong about the mountain’s whole face being gone.

  It’s only the lumpy part of the nose – and it didn’t disappear. It just broke into three pieces and slid further down the cliff. The smallest chunk landed square on the ledge, blocking off the trail in front of me as neatly as a door; the other two huge boulders are resting on the cliff below.

  Exactly where Lily and Scott were the last time I saw them.

  7

  3:58 FRIDAY AFTERNOON

  ‘Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily . . .’

  My face is pressed against the rock where the trail used to be. I’m the only one left alive and there’s nothing I can do but scream.

  ‘Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily, Lily . . .’

  My throat gives up. Gasp-hiccup-burp. It sounds disgusting, but it doesn’t matter, no one can hear.

  I can’t move; I’m emptied out and hollow inside, glued to my sister’s grave.

  ‘Raven! Raven, can you hear me?’

  The voice is whispery and muffled. I spin around, but there’s no one there.

  Lily’s dead and now her ghost is haunting me!

  ‘Raven, would you stop screaming and listen!’

  That sounds more like my sister. Not like a ghost.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In here – behind the rocks.’

  ‘You’re not dead?’

  ‘Of course I’m not dead! I wouldn’t be talking to you if I was dead!’

  Behind the rocks, not under the rocks! Alive, not dead; behind, not under! It runs through my head like a poem; I’m so happy that it takes me a minute to realise that behind the rocks is still not great.

  When I ran through it on the way up, the trail was like a cave with the front side open. Now it’s a tunnel because the two biggest chunks of the nose have only slid far enough to completely cover the front. Except tunnels have exits.

  Lily’s voice is coming from a crack between the door rock and the cliff. I put my face to the gap, but it’s too small, I can’t see her.

  ‘Why don’t you go out the other end?’

  The world’s stupidest question; luckily she’s talking at the same time.

  ‘It’s so dark I can’t see – and I can’t get through to the other end. Can you see how we can get out?’

  The nose rocks are huge. This one is as big as a door; the other two aren’t even rocks, they’re slabs of mountain. There’s no way I could move them; even Scott . . .

  ‘Where’s Scott?’

  ‘He shoved me under the hollow when the first stone hit – it sounded like a gunshot! But the next rock got him before he was all the way in. He’s breathing, but I can’t wake him up.’

  Her voice is trembly and that’s the scariest thing of all. My big sister and stepfather are trapped; he’s unconscious and she’s scared. I’m the only one on the outside.

  If I scrunch my eyes up tight, I can pretty well see the puzzle pieces of where these three nose rocks fitted together. I’m hoping that means there wasn’t much left over to fall anywhere else.

  ‘Lily, I’m going to go check the other side.’

  I’ll have to go straight across those huge pieces of nose, below where the trail used to be. The two boulders are so big and lumpy that if I slip, I’ll only slide down to the next bump. Easy for someone who’s already fallen off a cliff.

  It would be even easier if I had a rope. I could lasso one end around that pointy bit at the top of the door rock where it juts up over the roof of their cave, and the other end around me.

  But the rope’s in Scott’s backpack.

  I probably couldn’t lasso it anyway. I might as well get started and stop wishing for things I can’t have.

  I wish I could see better, I wish I had gloves, and I wish my hands weren’t already bleeding! I wish I could have a hot chocolate with marshmallows, and I wish Mum was here and I wish Lily and Scott weren’t behind the rock!

  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 a
t 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.