Free The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) by Frank P. Ryan

nature more the way she had felt about it all her life. Where most people saw, or heard, or even smelled, the seasons—Padraig lived them. She recalledPadraig’s words:
I think you won’t have to look very far before the power finds you!
    As the morning wore on and the heat increased, they took to a rhythm of climbing in silence. Alan wondered if Mom had climbed these same mountains at his age. It was another way in which he felt the sickening intensity of her loss. Step by step, he found himself mulling over the deaths of his parents. Had it really been an accident? Or was there, as Padraig believed, some . . . some what? Some kind of conspiracy?
    Oh, my God—what if Grandad was right and the idea had been to kill him and not Mom and Dad!
    But why would anybody want to kill him?
    It made absolutely no sense. But try as he did to dismiss it as superstitious nonsense, the whisper would start up again in his mind. He just couldn’t shake the idea that weird things were happening—they really were happening—things that seemed to stretch coincidence.
    Well, okay! So weird things did happen. It didn’t mean you had to believe in unseen forces, or murderous conspiracies.
    But then the little voice began to whisper again. It said: alright, but you know Grandad has a point because you really were supposed to have been in that chopper with Mom and Dad when they crashed. And you know that Kate was actually right there too. She was with her parents when they were murdered. She had onlyescaped being murdered by a hair. She lived because an African nun cared so much about her that she shoved Kate out of sight and died herself. And Mark and Mo—what was the real truth there?
    Oh, man!
    Alan shook his head, trying to clear the confusion from his mind. Then he looked around and realized they had arrived at the Gap. He sat down on the heather and opened the backpack so he could take another look at the map. The Gap was a pass between the Comeragh Plateau to one side and the Knockanaffrin Ridge on the other. The Plateau would take them higher, but the climb was going to get more difficult.
    He waited for Mark and Kate to catch up with him before asking them, “Guys, what do you think? Do we head left? Make for the Ridge?”
    They agreed to do that. Meanwhile the slope got steeper and the going tougher. In places they were forced to climb on all fours. But the scenery was worth it. The view was breathtaking.
    The blue of the sky seemed to have washed over the ground so the sheen of high summer glowed in the rocks, the crystals glinting purple and gold, indigo and lilac. Alan waited a little longer so Mo could catch up.
    “Look over there!” He pointed to a peak in the distance, dotted with what looked like tiny puffs of steam. “Mountain sheep?”
    Kate corrected him. “Goats—not sheep!”
    “Yeah?”
    “Oh, but isn’t it glorious!” she exclaimed. “I wish we’d brought binoculars. The goats look really cute. I’ve seen pictures of them in classes at school. They have these long curved horns. And just look at the flowers!”
    Alan grinned. “You spot any endangered species?”
    “Ah, knock it off! You just don’t have a clue. I bet you couldn’t name a single one of them?”
    He shrugged.
    “I knew it!”
    “So—enlighten me.”
    She nodded at a spot a few feet from where they were standing. “You’ve been putting your oversized feet within inches of squashing these. They’re bee orchids.”
    “Why’re they called that—bee orchids?”
    “The lowermost petal is shaped like a bee.”
    “Which part of the bee?”
    She was too smart to fall for that one. “Even their scent is designed to mimic the female bee pheromone. So the bees are confused into thinking it’s the female!”
    “This I got to sniff for myself!”
    She saw where it was leading and slapped his shoulder. “You boys only ever have one thing on your minds!”
    The way he was grinning at her made her smile back in turn.
    “I really like