Raven's Mountain Read Free

from the outside I couldn’t see in at all. Now I’m dry and secret inside the cave, looking out at ghost trees and rainbows on the other side of the silver water.
    â€˜Magic?’ asks Scott.
    â€˜Magic,’ I say.
    Lily won’t come up. Lily hates caves.
    More trees, more forest, more wondering if we’ll ever get to the top of the mountain . . . Finally we’re out in the sun again, in a field of orange and red berries.
    At the bottom of the field is a bear.
    It’s just standing there, big and bearlike, munching up branches of berries, exactly like you see in pictures. Except it’s white.
    There’s no such thing as a white bear in these mountains.
    A black cub leaps at the berries bobbling from its mother’s mouth. A white cub jumps on top of the black one and wrestles him to the ground. But Mama Bear’s not worrying about naughty cubs: she stands up on her hind legs, tall as Scott, and sees us.
    She woofs and shoos the cubs up the nearest tree   – and Scott shoos Lily and me up the trail.
    â€˜Don’t run,’ he murmurs. ‘Just keep walking.’
    I look back. He’s walking sideways so he’s not turning his back on the bear. His can of bear spray is out of its holster and in his hand. He wants us to be afraid, so we’ll pay attention to his lectures.
    But around the next bend, he decides we’ll be safe spying from behind a shield of rocks. He and Lily peek over the top. I find a perfect peephole at the bottom. My hands and knees are cold on the hard ground, but the rock is warm against my face.
    Mama Bear’s still watching and sniffing; the cubs are still up the tree, the black one at the top. A mother and two cubs: just like our family. Lily’s the pretty white one that looks like her mother, and I’m the ordinary black one.
    Except bear families don’t have stepdads   – even their own fathers sometimes eat the cubs. At least our real dad didn’t try to eat me before he disappeared.
    I used to make up lots of different stories about my father. When dancers from the Crow Nation came to the school, I   decided that Mum had named me Raven because my real dad was Crow. Other times I thought he was a Viking, or a superhero or a cowboy.
    Now I’m older I know that’s not true.
    My real dad lives in Australia.
    He’s suntanned and blond like Lily. He wears khaki shorts and shirts, says ‘Crikey!’ and can wrestle crocodiles and snakes, just like the Crocodile Hunter.
    â€˜Are they polar bears?’ I whisper.
    Lily rolls her eyes. ‘Right. And we’re sitting on an ice floe.’
    Scott ignores her. ‘The dad was probably a plain old black bear   – but the mum and white cub look like Kermodes, the Spirit Bears from the coast up north. There are lots of legends about them, like they’ll dive to the bottom of lakes to get fish for people who are starving.’
    Mama Bear tears off another branch of berries.
    â€˜Look, Raven: she’s picking us some!’
    Scott’s afraid I’ll believe Lily, and gives us a lecture about really they’re black bears except for being white. ‘It doesn’t matter how pretty she is   – that bear could attack if we surprised her, or she thought we were threatening her cubs, or even if she was very hungry. That’s why we stick together.’
    Scott and Lily pick up their packs, but I go on watching. Through the raggedy frame of my spy hole, the bears look like a scene from a fairy tale: Hansel and Gretel hiding from the witch. Hansel is the black cub and Gretel white.
    Gretel nudges her brother’s bottom. He slides down to her branch and shoves back. They wrestle round the branches and down the tree, swinging, clinging, sliding . . . Hansel crashes to the ground.
    A raven caws, laughing.
    The black cub rolls to his feet, looking around to see if anyone’s watching. You can almost hear him: ‘I meant