St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

The story’s narrator is Tek, who lives in a town surrounded by glaciers and is a member of the Waitiki Valley Boys Choir. He lives with his mother, and stepfather, Mr. Oamaru, as well as his three sisters, Rachel, Rebecca, and Ruth. The story opens during a family dinner during which Mr. Oamaru encourages Tek to befriend Rangi Gibson, a local mute boy who is the adopted son of the cemetery owner.

Tek protests and also does not want to go to the Aokeora Glacier to sing with his choir in the yearly tradition that starts a controlled avalanche. He clearly resents Mr. Oamaru, who calls him “son.” Mr. Oamaru is good to his mother and brought her back to her beautiful self after his father left, which Tek hates.

The ritual of the Avalanche is “a ritual we continue because of blind tradition and our parents’ desire to booze” (199). All year, the choir bakes and sells moonpies to pay to fly up to the mountain to start the avalanche by singing, while the families gather at the base of the mountain to watch. The song they sing is The Pirates Conquest, which tells the piratical history of their town.

Everyone in Waitiki Valley descended from the Inland Pirates, who sailed up the river and then burned their boats to go and live with the native Moa people. According to the song, the pirates destroyed much of the Moa’s land and their sacred relics. They then buried their treasure in the mountains, not realizing that it was a glacier, which slowly moves. When they went back to find the treasure, it had all presumably melted into the sea.

Tek explains how the grandparents of the town ridicule his generation for flying to the mountain, when they had to climb. They believe the younger generation is weak, unlike their pirate ancestors.

The Avalanche itself is for show. The choir director, Franz Josef, goes up early to pick a spot and make sure that the sound of the boys’ singing will start the snow falling. Tek prays for his voice to break so that this will be the last year he has to participate.

Mr. Oamaru tells Tek that he has a great voice and even keeps a vial of melted Avalanche snow around his neck to show how much he loves to watch him sing. However, Tek explains that he is a poor singer who gets lost in the choir of voices and sometimes purposefully does not sing at all.

On the way to the airport, Mr. Oamaru and Tek argue about the factual basis of the song, The Pirates’ Conquest. Once there, Franz Josef has the boys practice the song and reprimands Tek for missing his cue. Rangi is there, though he is mute; Franz Josef believes there is song within him.

Rangi is an orphan of Moa descent. When he was younger, he lived at a group home for orphans and befriended a cinnamon bear. Rangi used to talk to her. However, on the day of his adoption by Digger Gibson, the drunk cemetery warden, they shot the bear; Rangi had to bury it with Digger. He has been mute since. He has run away from the choir four times “on an insane quest to unearth the bear” (206).

Brauser, a sociopathic bully who nevertheless has a good voice, hits Franz Josef with a snowball and starts throwing more, ending the practice. Tek tries to talk to Rangi, remembering his parents’ words.

The boys then meet the ice plane pilots and receive yellow plastic transponders, which will allow them to be located if they become lost. The pilots realize they need one more plane because there are too many boys. Tek, Rangi, and Brauser stay behind to wait for another plane.

The substitute pilot appears, but he has forgotten his protective lenses, which guard against the harsh reflective light of the glacier and snow. He makes the boys promise not to tell and flies them up anyway. Brauser taunts Rangi and Tek throughout the flight, which ends in a crash.

Everyone receives injuries from the crash and, when they clamber out of the plane, Tek realizes they are nowhere near where they are supposed to be. He thinks they may be on a different glacier entirely. He tries to ask the pilot what happened, but both become distracted when the ice plane starts to slide down the slope and over the edge of a cliff.

Brauser’s injuries are the worst. He is unconscious and blood keeps dripping out of his mouth. Tek tries to help him but sees that he is slipping away.

The pilot tells them that he’s going for help and starts moving down the slope. Tek tries to go with him, but the pilot slides into an ice cave and disappears before Tek can reach him.

Alone with Rangi and Brauser, Tek starts to panic. The transponders are working, but he doesn’t know how anyone will find them. He starts panicking and his fear makes him start to believe that they will all die on the glacier.

He snaps out of this reverie when he notices Rangi moving away. Tek follows him to the other side of a ridge. At that moment, they hear the sounds of a helicopter and watch as a rescue crew puts Brauser on a stretcher. None of the rescue crew hears Tek’s shouts for help; then Rangi says “run” and holds him back from going toward rescue (217).

When Tek tries to fight back, Rangi holds him tight and they roll down the slope, coming to a stop inside a low ice cave. Tek is angry and demands to know why Rangi stopped them from getting help. Rangi doesn’t speak but quickly takes their transponders, turns them off, and throws them into a crevasse in the cave.

Horrified, Tek crawls over to the crevasse and reaches down, trying to get the transponder back. Instead, he pulls out a handful of treasure. He realizes that the song was correct about the treasure after all. He finds coins and greenstone, which was sacred to the Moa people.

He tries to hand some to Rangi, telling him that he will be rich. However, Rangi lets the treasure fall into the snow. Rangi “just wants a fistful of bear fur” while Tek wants his father (221). Looking at him, Tek sees “the dead bear loping and slathering forever inside of Rangi, a long-toothed loyal animal, his one memory of love,” and thinks that Digger should not have adopted him, because “who wants salvation when it just orphans you further?” (221-222).

Again, Tek thinks that he is going to die alone because no one will be able to find him. He doesn’t want to die and longs to wake up and find himself with the rest of the boys, singing down the Avalanche.

Suddenly, he thinks that if he can start the Avalanche himself that the town below will notice and will come looking. He takes a deep breath and sings a long, high note. However, his voice breaks and does not move the snow. Hopelessly, he tries to get Rangi to sing with him, but Rangi has retreated into himself.

Tek knows the Avalanche will start soon and his family will applaud and take pictures, thinking that he is part of the choir. This makes him “feel as if I’m looking down at my own funeral, only nobody knows that I’m dead. It’s a frightening, lonely feeling” (224).

Still, he feels a glimmer of hope that somehow his family will realize his predicament and come looking.