'All sorts frequent the crags. Ravens wing high above:'

David Craig

Native Stones

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Shortly after passing the Hole-in-the-Wall, Ella sat down on a flat boulder nestled in ground that rose steeply upwards beyond it, forming the crested volcaniclastic sandstone ridge of Striding Edge. The mist about her was sinking further, adding to the foreboding atmosphere of the place. She glanced over towards Red Tarn, the small lake nestled in Helvellyn's corrie between its two north-eastern ridges. Swirral Edge, on the far side of the water, was no longer visible, coated in thick white cloud. The tarn itself was blackwater, reflecting back the broody conditions above. 

While it was gloomy below the mountain top, Ella could see brighter conditions above her, through the thickness. Distant yellow light gave an ethereal hue, the kind of higher glow that suggested an inversion. If she climbed Striding Edge to the summit plateau of Helvellyn, she would likely bask in dazzling sunlight and a perfect blue sky at the top, marvelling at the sea of white cloud beneath her and the surrounding Lakeland peaks rising from it.

But the thick greyness lower down better suited her mood. Sat on the boulder, Ella hugged her knees close for warmth, figuring she would move on soon enough. For now she was remembering. 

She'd first seen Striding Edge when she was six years old, dressed up in thick clothes, thermals and long johns underneath ski salopettes and matching jacket. Her mum had thrust wool-lined waterproof mittens over her hands and a thick fleece hat shaped like a dinosaur onto her head. 'We'll not have you cold, Ella.' It was the three of them: Ella, her mum and her dad. Her mum and dad were young parents, both rock climbers who hadn't got the urge out of their systems sufficiently to be able to adjust their lives around a young child. The main reason her mum had wrapped her up so warm was because her parents planned to leave her waiting at the bottom of Striding Edge while they both traversed up and along the ridge, touched the summit cairn and then retraced their steps, returning to Ella as quickly as they could. 'Stay there, we won't be long …' her mum said as they left her with a beaker of hot chocolate. 

The mist was sinking down. As her mum and dad disappeared into the wispy grey above and beyond her, Ella felt desperately sad and very alone. She sat there, trying to comfort herself by not looking around at the big, scary, empty place she was in, taking small sips of hot chocolate and snuggling her favourite teddy bear, which she had tucked down into the warmth of her ski jacket. Tears rolled down her face but there was no point in crying aloud.  

Suddenly Ella was aware of a dark shape crouching close and looking at her: a large black bird, perched on a rock. Ella knew it was a raven. Her dad had pointed two of them out to her as they had gained height on the path up the mountain from Glenridding. 'They look like a crow but a little larger, stronger. And their call is lower, deeper, not a "caw" but a "croak".' From her rock seat, she looked at the raven. It looked back at her, intently staring Ella in the eye. 'They are the cleverest of birds,' her dad had added, 'the wisest.' Ella stopped crying and it seemed pleased, cocking its head to one side in a funny kind of way that made her smile through her tears.

The two of them continued in much the same fashion for an hour or so until Ella's parents returned, descending the ridge to meet her. 'We're back, Ella, did you miss us?' her dad called from a distance. With one last glance at her, the raven launched itself from its perch and flew off, across the corrie, towards Swirral Edge. 

As Ella grew, her mum and dad often told the story of their ascent of Striding Edge and her stoic vigil below the ridge, claiming that this must have been the time she fell in love with rock and the mountains. Ella, now twenty-six years old, still wasn't so sure about that. But she did know her six-year-old self had gained something from the raven that was missing in her home life. Even at that young age she felt a hassle, troublesome to her parents, the thing that got in the way of them living their lives. The raven had made her feel wanted, like she was special, that time spent with her was special too.

As Ella grew, she increasingly wanted to return to the mountains. Her parents would head off to crags to climb and Ella would do the same but to look for ravens. Whenever she found the birds, she would always sit with them for a while, tell them her news and then go off for a wander or a scramble, sometimes both. At least one of the ravens would follow Ella, keeping a watchful eye on her, as if wanting to keep her safe.

To begin with it was always a Raven Crag – 'How many are there?' Ella had wondered. After scouring maps and her parents' guidebooks and finding a large number throughout the Lakes, she was determined to visit them all, wanting to see if they lived up to their reputations.

Her mum and dad humoured this seeming eccentricity in Ella; they were happy enough as it meant they got to go climbing. The three of them worked their way around the Lake District starting with perhaps the most famous Raven Crag above the Old Dungeon Ghyll in Great Langdale and then the Raven Crag up the valley from Seathwaite in Borrowdale, where Ella joined her parents to climb Corvus. She rarely roped up with them. Whenever she did, Ella just felt like excess baggage – they seemed far happier climbing as a pair. As she grew she increasingly went to the crags alone. 

After exploring many other Raven Crags, including those at Thirlmere, Walthwaite, Threshtwaite Cove and over on the west in Ennerdale, Ella cast her mind to the higher mountain crags, beginning with Gimmer, Great End and Bowfell. She then continued to explore Central Lakeland's highest rhyolite faces. 

In the time she spent searching these rock outcrops for ravens, Ella learned the places they preferred. Yes, of course, the mountains with their cliffs and thermals, but through her time spent seeking, she came to know their favoured conditions, preferred wind directions, places they would most likely shelter in adverse weather. It got to a point where she could look to a summit or face and make a considered guess at where the ravens would be. Wandering up and over to these places, more often than not she found them, perhaps whirling around in the breezes or perching on the lee side of a rock ridge. One time in December she topped out after soloing an icy Scafell Gully to the sight of two ravens tumble-dancing, flipping and rolling through the biting air, silhouetted by low red-streaked sunlight. As the late midwinter afternoon sun cast long shadows on the crisp snow surrounding her, Ella yearned for the ravens' carefree play.

Another time towards the end of summer, the Lakeland fells a deep green, a raven flew beneath her up the valley towards Haystacks as she soloed a line on High Crag above Buttermere. When she was about half way up the climb, Ella paused for a rest on a wide ledge. She had been admiring the shape of Fleetwith Pike, how its western ridge pushed out from the massif of the Central Fells towards the flatter lands of the Cumbria coast, when she first heard the familiar call and then it caught her eye, glinting blue as it traversed the scene. Ella watched the raven's progress as it flew strong and confidently, croaking gently, until it seemed to decide to deviate. The bird must have sensed her presence, for it turned on the wing and joined her at the stance, staying for a while and listening as Ella excitedly told her new stories.

She struggled to make human friends. All through school and university Ella had been the quiet, lonely one. She didn't really know how to approach people, let alone strike up a conversation. Ella thought this was strange as in the presence of one or more ravens she would talk endlessly, without any kind of inhibition. While the birds of course never spoke back to her, she did not feel the conversations were one-sided. Always interested in what she had to say, the ravens each responded with eye movements, tilts of the head and an occasional whistle or croak. 

After university Ella struggled to find a job she enjoyed, a place to live where she felt she belonged. With her parents away on a year-long climbing trip around the world, whenever she was away from the mountains she felt a loneliness that extended into a deep depression. 

She wanted to leave and be gone from herself. No one wanted her but the ravens. As she sat huddled in the mist below Striding Edge, remembering the first time two decades before, she decided it was time to start climbing again.

Soon enough Ella was on the crest of Striding Edge's sharp ridge, carrying a strange mix of emotions – part elation, part despair. She took one final look at the panorama in front of her: past the cloud to the golden sunlight shining on the white corniced summit of Helvellyn; below the mist, Red Tarn dark and foreboding, waiting in the shadows; on the far side of the water, the pyramidal Catsycam and beyond it the satellite peak of Sheffield Pike. Both were visible as faint outlines, making them feel more imaginary than real. It was a mesmerising morning but it would not tempt her to stay. 

As she stood there, it felt an anticlimax. A breeze was blowing her into the rock, almost like it was trying to persuade her against following through on her plan. Looking down about her body, she held her hands out in front of her: palms, fingers and thumbs, roughened tips and knuckles from all the climbing. They were tangible things, soon to go. She figured that this was how the last moments felt. 

'Enough!' Ella told herself aloud, her voice lost into the expanse of mountain. Without any further thought, she threw herself from the ridge into the free, empty space above Red Tarn.

Down, down she dropped, her body spilling and rolling, the tumble-dance of a raven. While it only lasted a brief few moments, Ella felt it a lifetime. 

The shapeshifting began as she jumped from the ridge. The tendons of her feet tightened, curving the arches of her feet, skin hardening, toes sharpening into scaled claws. Her skin began to stretch and prickle, taut with the spikes of feather quills pushing from underneath. As they broke through she shifted further, her body becoming smaller as her face transfigured, a charcoal beak becoming. When her brilliant, black gleaming wings emerged she proudly unfurled them, resplendent in the light of the morning sun.

She never did hit the ground. Ella flew – how she flew! Up, up, up, into the shrouds of cloud, breaking through to the blue skies above. The bright sun warmed her new body. Even her darkest feathers glistened with blue light. 

Ella felt a compulsion to croak. As she opened her beak, the guttural noise that left her echoed through her body. She called again and then saw the upwards-glancing faces of two walkers close to Helvellyn's summit cairn, looking for and then pointing to her. 

'I am raven, hear my call,' Ella proudly uttered to them in her new tongue. As she left her place of metamorphosis, a number of other ravens that had been waiting on Striding Edge joined her. Together they flew to tumble-dance on the thermals above St Sunday Crag, their wings beating high above the cloud, the landscape below them endless.

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It was a clear morning on Great Gable, the grey wispy cloud sat in layers high above the summits. Her friends had headed off to climb a route up Napes' Needle, but Delilah just hadn't fancied it. In truth she wasn't really all that close to them. Lee and Scott were brash and full of bravado. Rock climbing was a conquering sport to them; they did not appreciate the ways it took the climber into the landscape like she did. Delilah climbed with them because she was shy and had struggled to make any other friends in the climbing club she had managed to bring herself to join a few months previously, the need to find people to climb routes with overriding her default state of loner.

In the pub down in Wasdale the night before, after numerous jokes about phalluses, they'd agreed to wake early and head up to the Needle. She had walked with them as far as where the climbers' trod to the pinnacle branched from the main path from Wasdale up Gable. Making some excuses about an injured shoulder, she parted with Lee and Scott to go her own way.

Overthinking as ever, Delilah chastised herself. She had tried so hard to come out of herself, make friends that she could climb with, but now she had just reverted to type. She might as well just go soloing. 

But instead she followed the wide scree-broken path up Gable. It was still early. Later the summit would be thronging with many walkers, proud of their travails to one of Lakeland's great summits but, for now, Delilah was there alone.

After a few minutes a sudden breeze whirled about her and Delilah looked up. Not far from her a raven was coming in to land. Perching on the summit cairn, in the dullness of the morning its dark plumage seemed to absorb all light, making it an intense black.

The raven looked her in the eye. It seemed to be smiling.

You can order a copy of Dreams of Lost Buttresses from any bookshop, Amazon, or direct from the publisher at www.littlepeak.co.uk. See more of Heather's artwork and writing at www.heatherdawe.co.uk and instagram @heatherdawe