Raven's Mountain by Orr Wendy

Author:Orr, Wendy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV000000, JUV001000
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2011-01-26T16:00:00+00:00

14

12:05 SATURDAY AFTERNOON

The honey lady would throw this honeycomb straight in the garbage. It’s not clean and white; it’s all muddled up with bits of stuff that I don’t even want to know what it is. I spit out the dirt and twigs, but eat everything else. Nom, nom, bee larvae and wax!

Honey trickles down my wrists and I pull my jacket off to lick my arms clean: honey, dirt, dried blood and all. Most of all I just go on licking honey till my baggie’s so clean not even a search beagle would know I’d ever had anything in it.

It’s magical Spirit Bear honey, and my stomach’s feeling better already. No more disgusting diarrhoea stops. With this honey in my body I know I’ll get back to the truck soon.

I’m weaving my way through the trees, through patches of shady cool and warm sun. Somehow I lost the trail when I was running from the bees. Maybe it was just a bears’ bee hunting trail, not a regular down-from-the-mountain-to-the-lake trail.

You think a forest is quiet, but it’s not really, not after you’ve been out in it for a while – especially a while like thirty-six hours, and twenty-two of them on your own. You learn to hear noises that you didn’t notice at first, and you figure out that some of the scary noises aren’t scary at all, and you go on listening for ones that truly might be. People say that if you’re blind you learn to hear better to make up for it. Maybe losing my glasses isn’t all bad. There are rustling leaves and crackling branches, birds chirping and cawing . . . and an engine kind of noise.

It’s definitely not a waterfall.

It’s coming from overhead, and getting louder: a hammering thwunk thwunk thwunk.

It’s a miracle! Mum got my wish-message and sent a rescue helicopter!

For a second all I can do is stand and stare, hardly breathing, waiting to see the thing that will save us all. Then the tiredness drops off me like a too-loose jacket, and I’m jumping, waving my arms and shouting.

But I still can’t see it: the forest is too thick and the trees are too tall – and that means it can’t see me either. I’ve got to get out into the open.

Running, waving, screaming, stumbling over rocks and roots, skidding on the steep slope . . . nothing matters except making them find me.

The noise is so loud it’s hard to tell exactly where it’s coming from; I’m looking up as I run; I’ve got to see it soon.

I don’t see the hole right in front of me.

‘HUHH-HUHH-HUHH!’

I land on my stomach, with the world’s most vicious Chinese burn jolting through my right leg from my ankle to my hip. For a minute I think I’m going to throw up. Luckily there’s not enough inside me to try.

Don’t you dare be broken! I tell my ankle.

It must know I mean it, because it hardly whines at all once I get up.

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