Trickster s Girl - By Hilari Bell Page 0,13

fighting it off - as they should, and your scientists are right about that - i's because the leys have been so badly weakened they can't support the forest."

"The laze? What - "

"L-e-y. That's the English word for them. Or at least, the word that comes closest. Leys are ... think of underground rivers of natural and magical energy running through the surface of the world. Most humans don't even know they exist. Though there have always been a handful of exceptions, hence a name for them in English. In other languages too. Unfortunately, the fact that most humans aren't aware of them hasn't stopped you from mucking them up."

Humans. You. Kelsa wished her com pod wasn't at the bottom of the river.

"What are you?"

She was half prepared to run if he took offense at the question, but he only smiled.

"In this part of the world, I'm Raven."

"Raven." If you were crazy enough to accept magic, the logic was inescapable. "The Native American trickster spirit, Raven? But he's been here for hundreds ... thousands..."

He looked like a teenager, but he'd never talked like one. Nor quite like someone for whom English was a first language.

"Not thousands," he said. That smug smile was beginning to annoy her. "And we've strayed off the subject. The weakening of the leys, which is what's keeping the trees from fighting off this bacterium, was caused by human interference with nature and magic, and it's going to take human magic to fix it. That's why you have to steal the medicine bag from the museum."

Kelsa's head was spinning. "Medicine bag? Like pills and stuff ?"

"No, a medicine bag that a Navajo shaman named Atahalne made back in 1897."

"A shaman?"

"I told you some humans understood the leys. The leys were becoming fouled, even back then. Now, of course, the problem is critical. But Atahalne," Raven rattled off the choppy syllables fluently, "saw the problem at the very beginning, and he knew how to fix it. One of the last humans who possessed that knowledge, I might add, and a man of considerable courage, whether they admit it or ... Anyway, he put together a medicine bag strong enough to heal the leys. Do you know what that is?"

Given the context, she did have a vague idea. "It's a small bag full of pollen and ... and things, isn't it? Navajo people used them" - she'd seen the phrase on a card in a tourist trap - "to keep the person who wore it in harmony."

"Exactly," said Raven approvingly. "This one is mostly filled with sand from a place where several of the leys that run through this continent meet. But there were other things mixed in, things that tied him into its power. Atahalne set out to deliver the dust to nexus points all along the ley that runs from Colorado to Alaska."

"Nexus points?" Kelsa asked dazedly. Half her mind was still trying to take in the fact that the kid sitting in front of her was hundreds of years old. And by his own admission, not human.

"A nexus is ... think of it as a valve along the ley line. Power can flow through and be strengthened, or it can be weakened and choked off. Atahalne set off in 1892 to revitalize the nexus points. But before he reached the first point he caught smallpox, near Salt Lake City, and died. His possessions - "

"He set out for Alaska, from New Mexico, in 1892? Walking?"

"He was in his fifties," Raven said. "It would have taken him years. And illness wasn't the only danger he faced along the way."

Kelsa wasn't a history geek, but she could see that a lone Native American trying to cross a large stretch of territory that was still being conquered by white people had faced a lot of danger.

"And you won't even rob one little museum." For once, Raven sounded like a teenager.

"His medicine bag ended up in the museum?" Kelsa asked.

"It did. So it's up to you ... ah..."

"Kelsa Phillips," she supplied. He was asking her to commit a felony, and he didn't even know her name?

"It's up to you, Kelsa Phillips, to take up Atahalne's medicine pouch, journey to Alaska, and complete his quest. Will you do it?"

"No way."

He had argued as she hiked back down the trail. He'd claimed that the fate of the whole planet was in her hands, because they had to start at the edges of the disruption, where the leys weren't so badly damaged, and