Raven's Mountain Read Free Page A

to do that anyway!’
    I don’t tell Scott and Lily. It’s a secret between the raven, the bears and me.

3

12:10 FRIDAY AFTERNOON
    I always thought the tree line was like a border: one minute you’re in the woods, and the next step you’re on a bare mountain where it’s too high and cold for trees to live. For some reason I thought it would be exciting. I   think Lily did too; at least she didn’t argue when I said we should have our lunch right on the tree line. I thought we could sit on the rocks with our feet in the forest.
    It’s not like that at all. It’s not even a line: the trees have just been getting smaller, scrawnier and further apart, and now there are hardly any at all. Finally I   choose what looks like the last sad, bent little fir and we have our lunch there.
    I wonder if the tree feels like a winner or just wishes it lived a little ways down the mountain with its friends. It feels more like mountain climbing now, because all we can see is mountains, and the one we’re on is mostly rock. The only plants are tiny little bushes pushing out between the stones. And the air’s getting colder, as if we’re hiking towards the arctic.
    We’ve seen six mountain goats, and Lily saw a marmot. I think I saw the raven again but I don’t say any – thing. I   don’t need to hear any more legends about Raven tricking and stealing.
    I’m still wishing Mum could have called me after a bird that ate something nicer than roadkill, when somebody pelts me with a handful of gravel.
    Lily shrieks and runs; Scott grabs my hand and tows me towards a big overhanging rock.
    Of course it’s not gravel and nobody’s throwing it, unless it’s some cold-breathed mountain spirit. Just a hailstorm, but it’s creepy the way it was sunny one minute and the next we’ve got hailstones as big as grapes hitting us in the face.
    We dive under the rock. There’s just enough room for the three of us to squat and take turns taking off our packs and pulling on our jackets.
    The side of the rock’s covered with lichen like tiny golden cups. I say I’m going take a patch home with some mosses from further down, to make a terrarium. Terrariums are like ant farms with no ants. Gram has one in an old fish tank with a glass lid; the plants grow and breathe and make mist that waters them so they can grow and breathe more . . .
    Scott says no, because you can’t pick plants in a national park, not even little ones like lichens.
    I tell him it’s for Mum’s birthday, and he says that’s a very nice idea, but it’s still a national park.
    Lily thinks you can tell Scott hasn’t been a parent before, because he hasn’t been practising saying No for as long as Mum has. I think he’s starting to get the hang of it.
    The hailstorm only lasts a few minutes. Maybe the mountain spirit has a mum who’s told him to leave the little kids alone. We crawl out from under our rock as the sun comes out, sparkling the hailstones like diamonds.
    I grab a handful and let them roll around on my tongue, ice straight from the sky.
    Up ahead we can see patches of snow in dips and shadows. We’re getting closer to the peak.
    â€˜Well, duh!’ says Lily. ‘Since we’ve been walking all day.’
    Sometimes I don’t know why I have a sister.
    There’s just this one bare slope to get across, and we’ll be at the bottom of the knobby head.
    From here the nose is more like an eagle’s beak; the mouth is a crooked slit. I imagine the squinty eyes glaring, too deep for us to see, under the snow on the eyebrow ridge.
    â€˜It’s just erosion,’ says Scott. ‘It’s taken thousands of summers of melting snow to whittle out that nose. Another thousand years and it’ll be gone.’
    I still think it looks evil, but I don’t care. I just want to climb it.
    Suddenly there’s a horrible