Death Mountain by Sherry Shahan

Author:Sherry Shahan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV001010, JUV029000, JUV014000
ISBN: 9781561456796
Publisher: Holiday House
Published: 2012-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

You have to endure what you can’t change.

—MARIE DE FRANCE

Fear swirled in the dank cave, wrapping itself around the girls. Erin forced herself to answer. “Yeah. He’s…dead.” Her voice seemed everywhere at once, an ear-piercing throb. Dead! Dead! Dead! She felt like she was going crazy.

Mae began to sob quietly. She knelt beside Sequoia, wrapped her arms around his neck, and drew him closer. Mae buried her face in the collie’s fur. Her muffled scream reverberated in the cold empty space.

Sequoia squirmed free, his tail swiping the air. He trotted over to the ranger’s backpack and nudged it with his nose. A flashlight and ball cap lay on top.

Erin set her pack on the ground and moved toward the ranger.

“No! You can’t touch him,” Mae muttered.

As if in answer, a howl of wind from the hole in the ceiling snuffed the torch. Erin shuddered and forced herself to pick up first the flashlight, then the ranger’s pack. Her muscles protested under the weight. Her shoulders didn’t seem broad enough, strong enough.

“We can’t take his stuff,” Mae said in a small voice. “It…it isn’t right.”

“We don’t have any choice. He might have food.”

Food…Food, echoed the walls. Mae sighed. “Shouldn’t we say a few words?” she asked quietly.

Erin thought about the dozens of songs she’d written. Snatches of ballads. Folk songs. Nothing seemed quite right. Then she remembered a poem she’d memorized at her new school. She started to recite the lines slowly. “I sing to use the waiting, my bonnet but to tie…” She stumbled over the middle lines, but the last two came to her clearly. “And tell each other how we sang to keep the dark away.”

Mae hefted Erin’s pack. “Perfect.”

“Emily Dickinson,” Erin said. “It’s called ‘Waiting’.”

The beam from the ranger’s flashlight bounced with Erin’s steps, sweeping the floor of the cave in wide arcs. Once she stumbled and the unwieldy pack threw her against the wall.

“You okay?” asked Mae.

“I’m all right,” Erin answered. But she wasn’t all right. She was hungry, tired, cold.

“Where’s the entrance to the tunnel?” Mae asked.

“Over there,” said Erin, pointing the way with the flashlight. She walked into a spider web and brushed it from her face. She felt like crying. They didn’t even know the ranger’s name. She realized he probably had a wallet in his pocket and other personal belongings. But there was no way she could have looked for them. No way she could have touched him.

When they reached the chamber at the end of the tunnel Erin could smell the bats again.

Mae coughed.

The sound echoed, a jackhammer.

“There isn’t enough air in here,” she said.

Erin knew Mae was right. She felt like she was strangling. “We’re almost out.” She tried to sound more positive than she felt.

“Thank god for that flashlight,” Mae said with a shiver.

Erin touched the cold rock, flashing the light into a side tunnel. Water trickled down a wall, pooling on the ground.

“I didn’t hear any water before.” Mae sounded terrified.

Erin listened to the dripping sound. “The entrance is just ahead,” she said.

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