Raven's Mountain (13 page)

She's moving fast.

The scream bursts out of me, flapping birds up from trees, freezing the cubs behind their log, and even shuddering the hunter and his rifle.

The only thing it doesn't stop is Mama Bear. She shakes her head
 
– and keeps on coming.

The can of bear spray is out of the holster and in my hand. I don't even know how it got there.

‘NO! Go back! You can't kill people!'

I'm pointing the can at Mama Bear. She's ten metres away, and I can hear the terrible clicking of her chattering teeth.

There's no way out.

I've released the safety catch. My finger is on the nozzle.

‘You're blocking my shot!' the hunter screams.

I'm frozen in place; I couldn't drop to the ground even if Scott had said it was what I was supposed to do.

‘She'll kill you!'

‘STOP!' I shout, to Mama Bear, to the hunter, to the whole world.

The strange thing is that I've stopped being afraid.

I've gone right through fear and out the other side. All those millions of atoms of fear in my body have condensed into a tiny black hole of terror, about the size of an acorn, and buried themselves deep inside my stomach.

The world holds its breath. It seems like a lifetime since I flew over Snowball's neck, and yet the hunter is still frozen on the ground. His face is a Halloween mask of horror.

Mama Bear is two springs away whichever way I go.

I hold my breath, and push the spray can's trigger.

A ghost-green mist shoots out over the great white bear. She stops as suddenly as Snowball.

The mist trickles to nothing.

The bear's shaking her head, huffing anxiously.

The can's empty.

She's deciding whether or not she's going to charge me again.

There's nothing I can do.

Back away!

I'm backing, I'm backing
, but I'm a long way from the truck. There's nowhere to hide. The smell of the spray is drifting back towards me; I'm coughing and crying, I can taste dirt from the muddy creek running down my face.

‘I'm sorry, Mama Bear!'

The hunter will shoot her
 
– and then he might shoot me, because I've seen him hunting where there are NO HUNTING signs. Or Mama Bear might get me first anyway. The hunter is scrambling to his feet, coughing too and grabbing his gun.

Mama Bear turns and gallops past us towards the log where Hansel and Gretel are hiding. The cubs follow her into the woods, and all three disappear.

I know I'll never see them again.

If anyone had told me that I'd actually have to use my bear spray, I'd have thought I'd be too afraid to remember how.

And if they'd said that I'd have to use it on Mama Bear, I'd have said, ‘No way!' I'd have known I'd feel too bad to even try, because the three bears are part of the whole story of coming down the mountain.

In fact they're so much part of my life that I'd have laughed if anyone had told me that I'd save someone trying to shoot the cubs.

Thinking about it is different from being here. What I cared most about was me: I didn't want to be shot by a hunter or mauled by a bear. But no matter how much I
 
hated the hunter, I didn't want to see Mama Bear attack him.

The hunter thumps to the ground as if someone's pulled his chair away. ‘You're crazy, kid! You're absolutely nuts!'

He's probably right, but I don't have time to think about it. That acorn of fear in my stomach has just exploded. My nubbly oats and chocolate-chip biscuit breakfast explodes with it. It's splattering and disgusting, and it doesn't quite miss my jeans.

‘Raven!'

The voice sounds exactly like my mum.

22
MAYBE LUNCHTIME, SUNDAY

There's a silver 4WD parked at the edge of the clearing and Mum is charging over the grass towards me. I don't have to see her face to know it's her.

I never knew she could run so fast.

‘What are you doing with my daughter?' she screams.

I never knew she could sound so scary.

‘Put that gun down and let the kid go!' shouts a man behind her.

My dad! My real dad's come to rescue me like I always
knew he would!

He's tall and fit, with straight black hair and dark eyes, and he'd be good looking except right now he looks nearly as mad as Mum. He's exactly how I've always wanted my dad to look. Or one of the ways I've always wanted my dad to look.

He's not my dad.

Knowing floods through me like a creek bursting free of a dam: my dad, my real runaway dad, is not a crocodile hunter or any sort of hero. He's a skinny redhaired man who works in a computer store in Australia and goes to the beach with his new family, just like he said in the only Christmas card he ever sent me. Maybe I'll get to meet him one day, but if he didn't care enough to see me when I was born, he's not going to magically turn up just because I need him now.

It's my mum who's come to find me.

The hunter lets go of his gun, and puts his hands in the air to prove it.

Mum and I run to each other. We hang on in the tightest, safest sort of hug, that maybe you can only do when you've thought you might never see each other again, and Mum's crying as hard as me.

‘Lily and Scott!' I sob, and Mum says at the same time: ‘What's happened?'

I tell her as fast as I can. ‘. . . We've got to rescue them!'

Behind us the man who came with Mum is still shouting at the hunter, ‘What's going on? What were you doing with my horse?'

‘Are you people crazy?' the hunter shouts back. ‘I
 
came in by helicopter
 
– why would I need a horse? And I
 
wouldn't do anything to this kid. I don't know where the heck she came from, but she saved my life.'

‘I thought that was the rescue helicopter!' I exclaim.

‘It's going to be,' Mum says, glaring at the hunter. ‘You're going to call it in to find my daughter and husband while we wait for Search and Rescue.'

‘Mobile phones don't work here,' I tell her.

‘You can't tell me they dropped you off with no way of contacting them!' Mum shouts at the hunter. ‘I
 
don't care if it's a satellite phone or a walkie talkie or semaphore! Call that helicopter!'

The hunter's already pulled out what looks like a heavy, old-fashioned mobile phone and is speaking
 
into it. ‘We've got an emergency!'

The voice crackles out loud. ‘Are you injured?'

‘Not me. A man and a girl.'

There's a lot more crackling, and a few odd words, ‘. . . risky . . . fines . . . lose the chopper . . .' as if the pilot's talking to someone else.

‘Just get down here!' the hunter shouts.

More crackling. ‘Forget it. Call Search and Rescue, that's what they're there for.'

Before the hunter can argue again, there's a drum of horse's hooves, and Snowball gallops past the 4WD.

A woman leaps off his back and starts rubbing my shoulder as if she wants to hug me, except I'm still snuggled into Mum and too stinky for anyone who isn't my mother to hug.

‘Am I glad to see you!' she exclaims. ‘Thank heavens your mum was so determined to get up here and find you! I've phoned Search and Rescue, but it could be a few hours before they get here.'

Mum reaches over and grabs the phone out of the hunter's hands.

‘My husband and daughter's lives are at stake and you're worrying about
fines
? I'll pay whatever you want, but
please
, come down and help us.'

There's no answer.

‘I'm sorry,' the hunter says to Mum. His eyes are slitty black with rage.

‘He could lose the helicopter if he's caught using it for poaching,' Snowball's owner says.

‘That's no excuse!' the hunter snaps. ‘Is there any other way up the mountain?'

‘This is it,' Snowball's owner says.

‘So we go up on foot,' says the hunter. ‘If they need digging out, Search and Rescue can do with some help. We can't just sit here!'

My knees hear the word ‘sit' and I land on the ground. So does the last of my breakfast.

I open my eyes to a circle of worried faces.

Snowball's owner is handing me a bottle of sports drink.

Mum's propping me up so I can drink it, and wiping my face with a tissue from her pocket. Her face is so white and twisted that it looks as if she's in pain too.

‘Raven, dearest . . . I need to go with the men. Could you stay with Amy till I get back? I met Amy and Greg at the café last night
 
– Greg is Scott's friend from high school. When I told them I was getting worried, they offered to bring me up here first thing this morning.'

‘Do you want me to take her down to the hospital for a check-up?' Amy asks. ‘She's a bit of a mess.'

‘It's just mud . . . and I got jiggled up from riding.' I
 
glance up, but she doesn't seem angry about my borrowing their horse.

Mum's looking around on the ground. ‘Where are your glasses?'

‘I lost them when I fell off the mountain.'

‘What do you mean, ‘Fell off the mountain?' Mum demands.

The hunter interrupts her to hand me a fruit-and-nut bar. ‘You're probably hungry. Chasing that bear took some energy.'

‘Chasing
what
bear?' the others all say at once.

‘Honey,' says Amy, ‘let your mum go find your sister. Sounds like you've had enough adventures for one day.'

The men put the rifle in the 4WD and come back with a crowbar and a girl's jacket that Amy puts on me, poking my arms through the sleeves as if I'm two years old. Mum still looks like she's being torn in half.

I sip my drink and nibble at the bar, and I'm being torn in half too, because I need to show them the way but I
 
can't walk up that mountain again today.

‘I marked the trail . . .' I start to say, when my voice is drowned out by a familiar noise.

The poachers' helicopter is hovering above us.

A man in a hunter's jacket jumps out the instant the helicopter runners touch the grass. He looks like a dog whose bone has been stolen, and I'm glad he's not carrying his gun.

‘We can't take you all!' he snaps.

‘The little girl and I are staying,' Amy says.

‘No, I've got to go!'

Mum is stroking my face and smoothing my hair; she doesn't even mind her hands turning black with my mud. ‘My brave girl,' she murmurs. ‘You've done enough.'

‘I've got to show you where they are!'

‘Make up your minds!' the dog-faced man snarls.

‘Are you sure?' Mum asks me.

I nod, and we hold hands to run under the whirring blades.

‘The little girl better sit in the copilot's seat to show you where to go,' my hunter tells the pilot. I think he also doesn't want me to see the stag's head on the tarpaulin at the back.

Too late.

I wonder if it was the teenage deer's father.

If I throw up again Mum will make me get off and go
to the hospital.
I gulp down the sour sick.

The pilot helps me do up my seatbelt and put on the earmuffs. There's a singing-star microphone so I
 
can talk to him.

Even Amelia's never been in a helicopter.

The blades whirr into a bluey blur above me, the pilot fiddles with dials and levers, and we lift gently above the clearing. The lake shimmers turquoise below my feet, stretching farther than I'd guessed between the mountains. I can see every direction, up and down and as far as I can turn my head.

‘Where to, kid?'

‘Nearly to the top.'

The ground below me changes; the lake and the clearing disappear and we're looking down at treetops. The forest is such a thick mass I can't see through it. I
 
hope the dog-faced hunter can't see through it either. I
 
hope the bears stay in the middle of it.

I don't start shaking till we fly over the tree line.

As the helicopter lowers, I can see the scars of the new cliff I fell down, the rubble of the cemetery field, and the three great nose boulders covering Lily and Scott's cave.

It's nearly two days since I slid down from their ledge, and in a minute I'll find out if my sister and stepdad are alive or dead.

23
EARLY SUNDAY AFTERNOON

There's no sign of life.

The ledge is too narrow for the helicopter; we land at the bottom of the cliff, in the cemetery field. Mum, the hunter and Greg jump out while the blades are still whirring. The dog-faced hunter stays inside to pass them the crowbar, pick axe, ropes and blankets they'd brought from the 4WD, and hands me out like another parcel.

The door slams behind me; the engine whines louder, and the blades blur the helicopter above the rocks. It hovers over us for a minute and disappears out of sight.

‘Sorry,' says the hunter.

‘What matters is he got us up the mountain,' says Greg, pulling a rope out of the bundle.

‘Let's get moving,' says Mum. ‘Raven, you'd better stay down here.'

I don't answer. The only thing worse than climbing back up those rocks would be staying alone at the bottom.

Maybe it's the sports drink and health bar kicking in, or maybe it's because Mum's at the bottom watching
 
– or maybe it's just that I've got a rope tied around my middle with a big man holding the other end at the top of the cliff, but going up these rocks isn't half as hard as going down.

But I'm so terrified watching Mum climb that I can hardly breathe. If something happens to her that'll be my fault too; I imagine her tumbling backwards onto the rocks . . .