Free The Nexus Ring by Maureen Bush Page A

hands.”
    “How see with your hands?”
    “Well, I sort of feel what I’m drawing.”
    “ Chrrr. Then see with hands. Be still inside. Let fingers guide you.”
    I groaned. She was as crazy as Mom. But then my feet slid out from under me and I collapsed as my legs dropped into a crevasse. Maddy and Eneirda leapt forward and pulled me out, then Maddy hung on to the boat to stop it from sliding ­away.
    Once I was standing again, Eneirda stood in front of me, arms folded. “ Sssst! If cannot, will be dead.”
    Dead? Oh, come on! But the look on her face was deadly serious. I gulped. She meant it! Maddy was frowning at me too. I made a face back, then remembered her dragging me out of the path of the avalanche. She saved my life then, and I promised to get her ­home.
    Okay , I thought, I can be quiet . I took a deep breath, then another. Then I concentrated on my fingers. I imagined drawing the glacier, the crevasses, the deep blue shadows, sun gleaming off the ice. I felt a surge of energy, like when I ate muskberries. And suddenly I knew where to step, as if I was connected to the glacier ­somehow.
    Eneirda looked pleased for just a moment, then she turned and walked on. I kept breathing and drawing in my head, and we kept climbing up the glacier. Then we reached the top, and I thought, Hey, I did it! I haven’t been falling!
    And then my feet slid out from under me and I crashed down, dropping the boat. It slid away from me, and I scrambled to grab it before it slipped down a crevasse. I tried to settle myself again. As long as I focused on my fingers, and not on the troll or the giant or my pride, my feet seemed to know where to ­go.
    The setting sun lit the sky in peach and orange and pink. Even the blue shadows were warmed by it. The sun sets around 9:30 in late July in this part of the human world; I wondered if it was the same ­here.
    As we climbed down the east side of the glacier, we could hear a trickle of water. Eneirda started searching for a stream. Past the edge of the glacier, I could see ­ground-­up rock everywhere, as if someone had dumped thousands of truckloads of ­fine-­ground gravel, ­fist-­size rocks, and large boulders. They were in all colours – lots of greys, but browns and oranges too, greens and ­blue-­greys. I could see the same colours in the rocks in the surrounding mountains. ­Blue-­grey on one mountain, rusty orange on another, greys and tans. I took another mental snapshot, determined to paint ­this.
    Eneirda spotted a trickle of water cutting through the ice, winding its way down the mountainside. When I set the boat in the water, it shrank to fit the tiny stream, then each of us shrank as we stepped into the boat. I was the last in and I worried I’d sink the boat. But as I shifted my weight, I began to shrink. My skin tightened and squeezed, and everything around me grew as I settled into the ­boat.
    Breathing was easier once we were smaller. We cheered as we slid off the edge of the ice into a creek. The creek was small but wild, crashing over rapids, flinging us with it. But somehow Eneirda slowed us with her paddle, and as we flew down the side of the mountain, the creek became wider and calmer. It must have been a hot day; the air was warm and the sky clear as the sun set. But the setting sun didn’t reach down the ­east-­facing slope, and soon we were travelling in the shadow of the ­mountain.
    “How long can we keep going?” I asked. “Can you see in the dark?”
    Eneirda kept paddling. “ Chrrr . River will guide us.”
    Trees closed in above us, and we travelled through gloom and then total darkness. The stream grew larger, and as it grew, the boat grew. I could feel my arms and legs stretching, but no matter how hard I stared, I couldn’t see them ­change.
    Eneirda said she would drop us off at the base of Castle Mountain, but how were we to climb it in the dark, before the troll and Aleena came after us? This was our second night away from Mom and