Trickster s Girl - By Hilari Bell Page 0,30

have been at least a two."

Kelsa stared at the chattering crowd. Then she turned and waited for Raven. He was only a moment behind her.

"There was an earthquake? While we were in the cave? Why didn't I feel it?"

"You more than felt it." He took her arm and led her over to a picnic table. "Sit down. You're still pale."

"Did I ... Did we ... You're kidding!"

"I doubt it did much damage," Raven said. "Healing magic almost never does."

"But that's crazy!"

"You know, one of the main symptoms of crazy is denying or ignoring what your senses perceive. You can hardly deny you perceived that."

She couldn't deny it. Any more than she could deny she'd seen him shapeshift. Which meant...

"I could heal the tree plague? For real?"

"Not heal it," Raven admitted. "That will take a lot of people doing the same thing you're doing all over the planet."

"Is that what the other shapeshifters are doing?" Kelsa asked curiously. She had a lot of questions about shapeshifters, and he'd evaded most of them.

"No," Raven told her. "This is our first attempt. In fact, this is the first proof we've had that humans can heal the leys at all! But if you can strengthen and open this ley, all along its length, when the plague reaches the forests of the Northwest it will stop. And then, maybe, we can start pushing it back. If you succeed, your scientists will probably claim the bacterium couldn't survive outside the tropics. But if this ley isn't healed, strengthened, if the power doesn't flow along it like it does now in the nexus point you just blew open, then that plague will move out of the tropics."

"So." He held out the medicine pouch, dangling from the cord around his fingers. "For the final time, Kelsa Phillips, will you take up Atahalne's quest and finish the healing he started?"

She didn't have enough money to travel to Alaska. She didn't have time to get there and back before her mother missed her. She was only fifteen...

"Yes." Kelsa took the medicine bag and hung it around her neck once more. It felt right there. "But first, you're going to answer some questions."
CHAPTER 5
IT WASN'T TILL AFTER LUNCH that Kelsa set out for the Sawtooth Mountains. She was getting tired of peanut butter.

She thought Raven had genuinely tried to explain the exact nature of the leys. The problem was, the leys weren't an exact sort of thing.

"How much do you know about acupuncture?" he'd asked.

She'd blinked in surprise. "Not a lot. There are currents of energy in the human body. They've photographed them, you know. Just eight years ago, on a full-spectrum electromagnetic scanner."

He looked startled. "They can see chi now?"

"If they use the right scanner they can," Kelsa confirmed. "They still don't know why stimulating particular points ... Oh."

"Exactly," Raven said. "What you're doing with the leys is planetary acupuncture."

That almost made sense, sort of. But when she'd asked him where the next nexus was, the analogy fell apart. Acupuncture points were always in the same place, and the nexuses...

"It's sort of like plumbing." Raven gestured with half a peanut-butter cracker. "A clog can occur anywhere in the pipe, and the flow through the pipe is weakened. Clogs might be more likely to occur where the pipe bends or there's a valve or something, but they can happen anywhere. And sometimes running a lot of water through the pipe is enough to ease the constriction, but sometimes, like here, you have to be right on top of the clog and break it apart."

Kelsa had grasped that, mostly, though she didn't like hearing that he couldn't tell her where all the nexuses would be, or even how many there were. His best guess was a vague "certainly fewer than a dozen." Between Craters and the end of the ley. In Alaska.

"I can call Mother and ask if I can stay with Aunt Sarabeth a few more weeks," Kelsa told him. "I think she'll agree. And if I call home on a regular basis, Mom probably won't call my aunt."

In fact, her mother would be as glad to have Kelsa out of the house as Kelsa was to be gone. A small part of her heart ached at that thought, so she pushed it aside.

"But how can I plan our route if I don't know where the nexus points are? And what are we going to do for money?"

This was her third day on the road, and by her rough tally she'd