Trickster s Girl - By Hilari Bell Page 0,26

road. She'd been on many roads like it, and food and charge ports were few and far between.

"This used to be near the Shoshone-Bannock Reservation, didn't it?" Raven half shouted over the wind of their passage.

Since there wasn't anyone behind her, Kelsa slowed the bike to answer him. "I don't know. The reservations were disbanded about twenty years ago."

"They were?"

He sounded startled. It had probably been a big deal, back when he was learning words like tarnation.

"The government said it was time for Native Americans to become first-class citizens," she told him. "The Native Americans called it the final land grab, and are still furious about it, even though the government did pay them for the land. My father said it was because the casinos were making so much money, the government wanted to tax them."

Raven asked no more questions, so after a moment she kicked the bike back up to speed.

Away from the bustle of the highway, the silence of the empty places began to seep into her soul, soothing the raw anguish that had been with her, she realized, ever since the doctor had pronounced her father's illness incurable. It wrapped her in a fragile bubble of peace that wasn't disturbed even when the huge motor homes lurched past, though the wash from their jets made the bike swerve, and Raven's arms tightened around her waist.

They were nearing the monument, the long dark snakes of lava ridges disrupting the flatness of the plains, when an old-fashioned painted sign with a boxy building a few blocks behind it caught her attention.

"ERB-1?" Kelsa let the bike slow to a crawl so she wouldn't whisk past the sign before she could read the smaller print. "What's ERB ... Oh."

ERB-1 had been the first nuclear power plant built in North America. The arms around her waist fell away, but Kelsa could feel the angry stiffness in Raven's body.

"You people really are lousy stewards." His voice was calm and very cold. "Only a handful of miles from a major nexus too."

"They're all shut down now," Kelsa said defensively. "Even in Europe, finally."

It was a hard thing to defend. Her father had described nuclear waste as "an ecological catastrophe in the making that would make global warming look like a child's prank."

"The ice sheets are beginning to refreeze," she added. "They say that in as little as a century the Florida islands might be land again. But you're right. We were lousy ... Wait. Is this why the first nexus to be healed has to be here? Because of that?" She gestured to the utilitarian building and the chunky machines crouched beside it.

"In part. A large part. It will be late for the nexus ritual by the time we get in. You'll have to camp there tonight."

The angry tension had left his body, and Kelsa decided to take the hint and set her bike in motion.

Soon the winding lava ridges drew closer to the road, and a volcanic cone loomed off to the left. The sun was getting low when she entered the monument, and she decided to pick out a campsite first, but at the campground entrance Kelsa stopped the bike to stare.

"This is surreal."

Everything was black. The flowing stone had crumpled and cracked like drying mud, breaking into ragged heaps and plates and piles. The campsites had been carved out of the bends in the stone's flow, each site a separate alcove with walls of stone that were often higher than Kelsa's head.

Blotches of lichen discolored the dark basalt, but it was also being colonized by the hardy desert scrub and a few gallant pines.

"Does it bother you?" Raven asked. "It makes a lot of people nervous."

"I'm not sure," Kelsa admitted, gazing over the blasted landscape. "But ... I know it's Saturday, but the parking lot by the ranger station was almost full. Isn't this an awfully public place for a nexus?"

"A lot of them are," Raven told her. "The power of a nexus sometimes manifests itself in natural phenomena. The old shamans considered many of them sacred sites and made sure their beauty was protected."

Kelsa laughed. "That's pretty much what the Park Service does."

About half of the campsites were occupied. Kelsa chose a site, and after unpacking her gear she rode the bike back to the ranger station to pay for the night and to plug her bike into one of the slow charge ports available in the lot behind the building.

The trails tempted her. This ecosystem was unlike anything she'd