Trickster s Girl - By Hilari Bell Page 0,29

them looked plenty far to her.

"This is deep enough."

Raven stirred restlessly, but made no further protest.

Kelsa pulled the medicine bag out from under her shirt. Warm from the heat of her body, it felt as if it belonged to her - which was probably why Raven had insisted she wear it.

She sat the flashlight carefully on the floor and began untying the cord that closed the bag. "All right. What do I say?"

She only hoped she could say it in English instead of Navajo, though if it had to be Navajo he could probably coach her through it.

"You'll have to figure that out," said Raven. "It's your magic."

"What? You said all I had to do was drop a pinch of dust and say the incantation to activate it."

"That's exactly what you have to do." Raven's tone was utterly reasonable, though his teeth were beginning to chatter.

"But I don't know any incantations! This is crazy! You - "

"Don't get upset," Raven snapped, "or you won't be able to focus, and this is important! You were reaching out to the tree spirit when we first met. That's how I knew you could do this. Just reach out to the earth in the same way and tell it, persuade it, to heal!"

He sounded all too serious. Kelsa gazed around in exasperation. Even with her night vision and the flashlight, she couldn't make out more than a small portion of the floor and a bit of the wall beside her. But she could sense the space around her and the rock enclosing it, old and solid. The bones of the earth itself.

She didn't need to see. This wasn't a place of seeing.

Taking care not to spill the pouch, Kelsa sank down to sit on the cave floor. The stone was rough and cold under her butt - not at all comfortable. But that was part of this place too.

She let the cave seep into her senses: silent blackness and the scent of damp stone. It had a different aliveness from that of the trees, from anything in the world above. He'd been right. They hadn't been deep enough before.

She took some time to assemble all the words, but they felt right. Real.

"Bones of the earth, flowing liquid to the surface, crumbling to form the flesh of the world. You are so strong, nothing but time defeats you. Be strong now. Strong enough to forgive." ERB-1 loomed in her mind, in her heart. She'd been calling it dust, but what the pouch really held was sand, gritty between her fingers. Her father's ashes were mixed in with them. "Be strong enough to heal. Be strong!"

She scattered a pinch of sand over the cave floor as she spoke. The moment of stillness that followed was just long enough for her to feel monumentally silly - then all thought was wiped away by a shattering blow that set every bone in her body vibrating like a mallet-struck gong. The vibration went on and on, receding into darkness, pulling her with it.

Kelsa was lying on the tunnel floor when thought returned, lumps of stone pressing into ribs, hip, temple, and one sore knee. Her head ached fiercely.

"Ow! What the hell was that? Did you hit me?"

"No." Raven sat cross-legged beside her, looking far too comfortable on the hard stone. "You had a good connection to the ley, and some of the power lashed back through you. You were right. We were deep enough."

The smug smile was back.

"Frack you." She picked up the light, pulled herself to her feet, and started unsteadily out of the cave. Her headache lessened with each step, which it wouldn't if he'd hit her hard enough to knock her out. She was done with him, anyway.

Kelsa felt almost normal by the time she climbed back to the surface of the lava field, more shaken and angry than hurt. It took her several moments to notice that no one was on the trail anymore. The tourists were milling around the parking lot, waving their arms as they talked.

"What's going on?"

"I told you that nexus power frequently has physical manifestations." Raven was retying the cord around the medicine bag's neck.

She glared at him, then started back to the parking lot.

"Did you feel it! Biggest I ever - "

"Thought it would knock me right off my feet," an elderly woman was saying. "Would have, if I hadn't had my walking stick."

"I wonder if it did any damage."

"I wonder how big it was, on the Richter scale. Must