Free Ravenspell Book 2: The Wizard of Ooze by David Farland Page B

Bushmaster led the way. Suddenly he shouted, “Whoa!” and went sliding through the mud down a steep hill. At the bottom, he hit the water with a small splash but quickly ran on top of the water, back onto dry land.
    “How did you do that?” Ben asked the vole.
    “Do what?” Bushmaster asked.
    “Run on the water?”
    Bushmaster raised one furry paw. “All you need is a little hair between your toes.”
    Amber looked at his feet in astonishment but said nothing. It was good to have a vole with her, she decided—one that could walk on water.
    The mice stood at the edge of a vast pond, its surface brown and brackish. Overhead, oak and alder trees raised their bare limbs to a gray sky.
    Bushmaster looked at the water forlornly. “We’ll have to go around. There are bass in that pond for sure. We’d never make it across if we tried to swim.”
    Amber shivered at the memory of her last encounter with a bass, a huge fish with a mouth that could easily swallow her whole, and a body nearly sixteen inches in length.
    Across the pond, Amber spotted a colorful bird feeding on the shore, a male wood duck with beautiful, iridescent green feathers on his head, gleaming purple on his chest and flanks, and magnificent lines of black and white on his wings and throat.
    The duck was waddling through the underbrush, searching for acorns beneath the fallen leaves.
    “We won’t walk,” Amber said. “We’d never make it over the mountains on foot anyway.”
    With that, she cast a spell, and the duck made a whistling noise as he flew toward her. He landed with a splash just a few feet from shore, and paddled over.
    As he sat in a daze, the mice mounted up, and Ben looked about fearfully. “These duck feathers are too slick and oily,” he said, while clinging to the bird’s back. “We’d better tie ourselves on.”
    And so Ben took his fishing line from around his neck, made a little lasso, and put it over the duck’s neck. Then he tied the fishing line around his waist and around the waists of the other mice. When they were all secure, they took off for the Cascade Mountains.
    For long hours they flew, huddling together for warmth.
    At nightfall they set down in a field where a few pines thrust their heads up through the snow, and Amber released the weary duck. He flew up doggedly, heading for the McKenzie River.
    The mice foraged for food, digging beneath the snow, but it seemed useless. The air flowed down from the mountains in an icy sheet, and while it had been warm and springlike in the valley, winter still held the mountains in its grip.
    Digging beneath the snow, they finally found a squirrel’s midden—a place where it buried its food. But getting to it through the snow and dirt was hard work, and all that the mice found for their efforts were a few pine nuts. Amber had never eaten anything spicier than mouse pellets, and found that the nuts, still coated with pine resin, didn’t sit well in her stomach.
    Feeling achy, the mice crawled under a pine bough to sleep. The small rodents huddled together for warmth among some dry leaves and peered out into the darkness, where starlight dusted the snow. It was beautiful and peaceful, but in the distance, floating down the mountains, Amber could hear the eerie song of coyotes. She had never felt quite so cold and miserable.
    “My front paws are freezing,” Ben whispered, stamping.
    Thorn said, “That’s because they’re so small. They lose heat more easily.”
    “Don’t worry,” Bushmaster said. “In a few weeks, you’ll get used to the cold.”
    “A few weeks?” Ben asked.
    “Four, to be exact,” Thorn assured him. “It takes that long for a mouse’s metabolism to adjust to a drop in the ambient temperature.”
    “No wonder mice try to break into people’s houses in the winter!” Ben said. “Why don’t we build a fire to help keep warm?”
    “What’s a fire?” Amber asked.
    “If you heat up wood and grass enough,” Ben said, “it will glow and