Trickster s Girl - By Hilari Bell Page 0,35

of the sprits that helped humanity. Though not necessarily the individual human he was dealing with.

Of course, she also had only his word for his identity in the first place.

When Kelsa went to bed that night, lake incantations seeped into her dreams.

***

Kelsa was camped in the lakeshore forest, so the sun didn't hit her tent to wake her at dawn. It was past eight when she emerged, but that worked in her favor. The fishermen had all gone out, and the campground was quiet.

The stretchie she slept in was long enough for decency without her jeans on, and she topped it with not only her therma knit, but a jacket as well. She'd splashed in enough mountain lakes to know what the temperature of the water would be.

She ran through possible incantations in her head while she dressed. None of the lines that had come to her while she was riding beside the river worked now, which made her angry with Raven all over again.

Kelsa hadn't brought water shoes, since they weren't part of her camping or biking gear, so she'd either have to go barefoot or get her shoes wet. It would depend on what the lake bottom looked like.

By the time she'd walked down to the shore, the chill morning air was nipping her bare legs. If her torso hadn't been warm she'd have been shivering.

The water was clear as glass; the rippling waves distorted her view of the bottom without concealing it: jagged rocks with a coating of silt. Slippery silt, no doubt. Better to cope with wet shoes for a day than to break a toe if she slipped, or cut her foot on some sharp-edged, hidden bit of trash.

Kelsa looked around. No late-rising fishermen. No dark-haired boys watching from a distance. No giant black bird perched in the nearby trees.

She'd seen a number of real ravens, or maybe crows, on the road over the last few days, but none of them was half Raven's size.

Unless he could make himself even smaller?

The hell with him. She had a test to run.

After a moment's hesitation - the mind was willing, but her feet still shrank from it - Kelsa took her first step into the icy water. Because she was braced for it, she didn't yelp, but she had to grit her teeth against the sound as freezing meltwater poured into her shoes.

What part of "glacial lake" didn't you understand? She'd been seven or eight when her father had spoken those words, attempting to go for a swim after a long hot ride. How he'd laughed...

Kelsa stopped, the icy water momentarily forgotten. This was the first memory of her father, untainted by his illness, that had come to her in ... she could barely remember back that far. Was she beginning to heal, the way everyone said she would?

But for now, she had another act of healing to perform.

As always, the first step had been the hardest. With only a few gasps for the temperature, Kelsa waded out till the rippling water almost reached the bottom of her stretchie. She looked back at the shore, thirty or forty feet away. If she wasn't "surrounded" by the lake now, she'd have to be scuba diving to make it work.

She tried to put the cold out of her mind as she reached out to the lake with her senses, but the cold was part of it, the heart of its icy crystal depths. Sunlight danced on the surface and the small waves rocked her body. It seemed precarious on the slippery stones.

It was freezing and perfect and beautiful; she felt so alive she could hardly bear the joy of it. Kelsa untied the medicine bag. The words came to her, simpler than she'd expected. Powerful only in their truth.

"Water, mother of life, cold and clear. Run clear and strong, healing all you touch."

She cast a pinch of sand into the waves, and a sudden gust of wind sent waves slapping against the shore.

"Forgive us, please, and heal. Heal and be strong!"

This time she was braced for it. This time she felt the power run through the lake, through her own body, in a great shimmering wave.

She was laughing in delight when the sudden swell knocked her off her feet, and shrieking from the cold when she splashed back to the surface. She'd barely managed to keep her grip on the medicine bag.

She waded back to the shore, dripping and swearing. She was soaked. The medicine bag was soaked.

She'd done