you need is a cave, how about Timpanogos. It's only about an hour's ride. We could do it tonight if you could find some way to get us in."
Raven shook his head. "It has to be in the lava tunnels at TuTimbaba. It's not that far. Little more than a day on that bike of yours."
Craters of the Moon National Monument was just over the state border, but it would be a full day's ride and a full day back. And she'd need to find an excuse to get away from her mother, and...
"One nexus," said Kelsa, making up her mind as she spoke. "After that, you'll have to find someone else."
CHAPTER 4
SHE WASN'T GOING ALL THE way to Alaska. Kelsa made that clear to Raven again when they parted that night - after she had found a narrow bathroom window that wasn't linked to the alarm system and bruised every inch of her body squirming through it.
"Remember, I'm only going to do that first nexus." She'd pulled over at a corner near her house to drop him off. Where was he staying? A hotel? A nest in a tree?
"Why say that so firmly?" Raven swung off the bike and removed his helmet. The half-flattened, half-spiked hair would have looked ridiculous on anyone else. "You don't even know where the second nexus is. Once you've done the first, you might want - "
"I don't make many promises," Kelsa told him. "Because if I promise, if I start something, I'll finish it. So I'm careful about commitments."
He raised his brows at the grim certainty in her voice. "It's your decision. I can't make you do anything. If nothing else, it would be against the rules."
"What are these rules of yours, anyway?" Kelsa asked. "You said they were magical? Like laws of magic?"
"No, I didn't," Raven said. "I said they were 'or something.'"
"So what are they?"
"I'd like to tell you, but it's against - "
"The rules," Kelsa interposed dryly. "Why am I not surprised."
She was beginning to suspect he was making up those rules as he went along, and his smug smile was really starting to get on her nerves. But she wouldn't be dealing with him for much longer, so it hardly mattered. Because Kelsa finally knew what she wanted to do next.
***
She set the alarm to wake her half an hour early, and in the morning she went down to talk with her mother while she fixed breakfast. They both agreed that it would be good for Kelsa to go away for a while.
"Start your vacation with a vacation!" The forced perkiness in her mother's voice put Kelsa's teeth on edge.
A board call to Aunt Sarabeth's apartment caught her aunt dressed in a sleek suit on her way to work. She looked a bit startled, but hesitated only a second before saying that of course she'd be delighted to have Kelsa stay with her for several weeks. For the whole summer if she wanted to.
Kelsa gave her full points - the dismay hardly showed at all.
They settled on Kelsa's departure date, June fourth, just four days from now. She still had two days of school spirit activities to get through, but that proved less boring than she'd expected because she could slip away from the basketball game, or the vid club's presentation of "2093 - 94 in West Springville High," and find a vacant deskcomp to do some research.
There were plenty of myths about Raven, stretching from Northern California through most of Canada and into Alaska. Had this ley he was so concerned about been his? Or in his territory?
But the Native American myths were clearly myths, not history. Kelsa might have been forced to wrap her mind around shapeshifting - although if matter couldn't be created or destroyed, then how did something the size of a teenage boy shrink into something the size of a very large bird? And how did it become not denser, but light enough to fly?
But even if Kelsa accepted some form of magic, there was no way Raven could have found the sun - which had been hidden by gods, giants, or evil chiefs - and swallowed it to return it to the sky.
That part was clearly myth. But some of the rest ... If the stories were even half true, then Raven lied a lot. But so did the rest of the spirits. What was it he'd said about Crow Mother?
She hasn't yet made up her mind...
Kelsa shivered. At least Raven had helped