Raven's Mountain Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 tobogganing 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?’
    â€˜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.