Trickster's Girl: The Raven Duet Book #1

CHAPTER 12


THERE WERE PLENTY OF TRUCKS in the travel center on the outskirts of Watson Lake. Looking over the parking lot behind the long building, Kelsa estimated that seventy or eighty drivers had pulled in to take advantage of the inexpensive hotel rooms—or if they slept in their rig, the chance for a shower and breakfast in the restaurant.

The store attached to the center was twice the size of most charge stations; its clothing selection was limited and cheap. Kelsa left Raven to spend his newly created money and went into the ladies’ room. After some thought, she decided to wash off the dark foundation. Now she looked like neither her PID photo nor the mixie who’d visited a prisoner before his escape.
She came out, chose a booth, and told the waitress her friend would join her shortly.
Despite the similarity between this place and the Woodland Café, she wasn’t nervous. Sleepy truckers were wandering down the corridor from the hotel, and in from the parking lot out back. Kelsa thought there were already too many human minds for their enemies to control, and more were coming in all the time. Otter Woman might not even be awake yet.
Kelsa was studying a menu when Raven came up to the booth, wearing jeans stiff with newness and a black stretchie with a skull surrounded by rippling flames.
“Charming.” Kelsa watched the colors shift and wondered how brightly they glowed in the dark. “Inconspicuous too. Can you turn it off, or is the display constant?”
“They didn’t have a big selection.” Raven picked up a menu, but his gaze was fixed on the charge bank outside. “I got some other shirts too. Do you think that woman will come in?”
Kelsa looked out the window. The woman he was watching stood beside her charging car, with a wiggly three-year-old girl in one arm and a boy about Joby’s age tugging on her other hand. Both kids wore footed sleepers.
“With kids that young? You bet she’s coming in.”
“Hmm.”
The woman unplugged her car and deposited the kids inside it, not bothering to fasten the protective belts, since they were driving only a few yards to park in front of the door.
“When she comes in,” said Raven, “can you distract her? For just a few moments?”
“Probably not. And why should I? What are you up to now?”
“Her car has an Alaska label.”
Their booth was close enough to the doors for a blast of fresh air to disturb the smell of warm pancakes and oil when the small family came in. In addition to the toddler, the woman carried enough packs to topple a sherpa.
The boy was blond and looked nothing like Joby, but Kelsa wasn’t surprised when his gaze shot to the D-game table.
He looked up at his mother and said something, resisting her tug toward the tables. One look at the woman’s harried expression told Kelsa all she needed to know about the answer.
The boy’s lower lip quivered, then stuck out. He planted his feet on the floor, making his mother drag him. The next act was equally predictable. And whatever Raven was up to, what harm could it do to help them out?
Kelsa rose and approached the woman, who looked like she was about to swear—or give her son something real to cry about.
“Hey, if it’s OK with you, I could give him a game.” She gestured to the table. “I’ve got a brother his age, so I know all of them. And”—she glanced at the woman who manned the cash register—“Cynthia here could keep an eye on us while you take care of the little one. What’s your game, champ? Levcar 500? Fighter jets?”
The toddler was squirming in a fashion that looked serious to someone who remembered Joby’s potty training.
Cynthia took one look at the boy’s rebellious face and decided that keeping an eye on him and Kelsa was better than having a screaming toddler in the middle of her restaurant.
The mother’s tight expression eased into a smile. As Kelsa fed coins into the game table’s slot, Raven politely relieved the woman of most of her bags and took them to a nearby booth, promising to watch them.
The kid’s favorite turned out to be Maze Run, a game that Kelsa liked too. She was so busy trying to maneuver her red rat through the three-D pipes that she barely noticed when the woman brought the toddler back from the restroom, and settled into a booth.
When the game ended, Kelsa led the happy winner back to his mother. The woman thanked her so fervently she felt guilty—and she didn’t even know what Raven had done, yet.
“What did you do?” she demanded in a murmur, sitting down on the opposite side of the booth.
“I ordered for you. Trucker’s Special, which has a bit of everything, but if you don’t like—”
“You know what I mean.” Why did rescuing a person make you forget how annoying he could be?
“I do, and I’ll tell you later. For now, why don’t you tell me what you’ve been doing these last few days?”
It wasn’t as crazy as it sounded. The restaurant was filling up for breakfast, and the clatter of crockery and conversation was so loud the waitress had turned off the sound on the sports screens over the bar.
Kelsa lowered her voice and caught him up on her adventures. And had the pleasure of seeing startled respect dawn in his eyes.
“You actually fooled Otter Woman? And drugged her?”
“She should be waking up by now,” Kelsa said, “though the stronger dose might keep her out a while longer. Would they really have left you here, powerless, in jail?”
“Maybe.” His expression was sober, but he didn’t seem angry. “What’s happening with the leys … it’s as important, as deadly, to us and our world as this tree plague is to yours. Everyone knows that the longer we wait, the harder it will be for us to fix the leys. But they’re convinced that letting you humans wipe yourselves out, so you can’t do worse harm in the future, is the right thing to do. A matter of principle, no less.”
Kelsa understood the grimace that flashed over his face. Her father said more people died from principles than from crime, though he’d admitted he didn’t have any statistics to prove it.
“Who are your allies? I don’t want to be fooled—”
The flash of red across the sports screen caught her eye, but it was the picture that followed the headline “Breaking News” that silenced her. A picture of Raven, in full three-D mug-shot style, turning to show both his profiles, as well as the front of his face. The black eye he no longer had was dark and more swollen than when Kelsa had seen him in the cell. The police must have treated it.
The face that followed Raven’s on the screen was her own, the flat photo from her PID card. The braided brown hair didn’t look like the curly black wedges she now wore, but the features were still hers. At least she was listed only as a “Person of Interest.”
Unlike her companion who was “Wanted on Felony Charges.”
The police probably didn’t want to admit that they didn’t know how someone had broken out of their jail. But Kelsa would bet they’d really like to ask him.
“Relax,” Raven said. “You hardly look like that at all.”
“Yes, but you…” Kelsa’s jaw dropped. His face was now more square than round, the cheekbones lower and flatter, the lips thinner. It wasn’t enough of a change to make the waitress, who chose that moment to set plates down in front of them, notice. But no one would connect that face with the bruised boy in the mug shot.
“OK, you’re fine, but I don’t look that different!” She glanced around nervously, but no one seemed to be looking at the screens. “When they pull up my record in the States they’ll learn I’m here illegally. I’m going to be arrested, and I can’t shapeshift out of jail!”
“Keep your voice down.” He looked far too calm to suit Kelsa. “It may look suspicious, but they can’t prove you had anything to do with my escape. Just say that we met on the road, and I told you whatever you told them I told you. In jail, I asked you to call a number, which you can’t remember, and you did. Then you decided to move on, since the person you talked to said he’d take care of it. You don’t know who I am, or who he was, or how I got out, or where I went. The worst they can charge you with is being here without permission, and that’s hardly a major crime.”
“Improper entry, they call it.” The horrifying prospect of ending up in prison began to look less likely, and Kelsa’s pounding heart slowed. “I think in Canada they only deport you, though in the U.S. it’s more serious.”
“Well, we’re in Canada,” Raven pointed out. “So that doesn’t matter.”
“But they’ll still get a complete description of my bike. And then they’re going to … Oh God. They’re probably calling my mother right now.”
***

After breakfast they took Kelsa’s bike and rode it into the woods behind the service center. She rearranged the branches that concealed it three times.

“It will be perfectly safe tucked into these bushes,” Raven told her tartly. “It’s not going to starve without you.”
He was packing some necessary supplies into one of the bike’s saddlebags, which Kelsa had unstrapped. They didn’t have enough food left to need the other.
“I don’t want it stolen. Or damaged.” If she’d still had her tent, Kelsa could have wrapped the bike to protect it against dust and weather. “I’ll come back for it. It’s just—”
Her com pod chirped. She’d been expecting it, but she still flinched.
“Don’t answer,” Raven said. “Didn’t you tell me they can trace your location if those things are live?”
“Not if it’s only for a few seconds. And I have to. She’ll be worried about me.”
Worried? Her mother would be frantic. Kelsa pulled out the pod, and her mother’s white face appeared on the screen. “Kelsa! Where the hell are you? I just got a call from the Canadian police, and I called your aunt, and—”
Kelsa’s mother never swore. “Mom,” she broke in desperately. “Mom, I can’t talk long, but I’m fine and I’m…” She couldn’t say safe, not with Otter Woman and company on her heels. “I know what I’m doing,” she finished. “I’ll tell you all about it, I promise, as soon as I can, but for now you have to trust me. I know what I’m doing. I’m sorry and I love you. Bye.”
“Kel—” She disconnected in the middle of her mother’s shriek.
“I’m sorry.” For once, Raven sounded as if he meant it. He reached out and wiped a tear from her cheek.
“So am I.” Kelsa blew her nose, then turned and put the com pod into the bike’s remaining pack. She knew it was much harder to trace a pod when it was turned off, but she wasn’t certain it was impossible. And she couldn’t endure hearing it chirp again and again as her mother desperately tried to reach her.
She drew a shaky breath and turned away from the two biggest links she still had to either of her parents.
“You said something about a truck?”
There were a lot of trucks in the lot, but most of them were closed and locked. Only a handful had open beds, their loads of pipe or machinery covered with plastic tarps or nothing at all. Not all of them had destination stickers.
Raven stopped beside one particularly lumpy load.
“This one is headed for Fairbanks. Perfect.”
Kelsa peered through an open triangle at one end of the thick blue tarp. The twisted lumps of metal were so carefully crated that for a moment she wasn’t sure what the contorted humps might be; then she recognized the upside-down shape of a clawed, scaly foot.
“It’s a statue,” she said. “A big statue, in sections, on its way to being reassembled.
“In Fairbanks.” Raven cast a swift glance around the lot, tossed their pack onto the truck bed, then heaved himself up after it. “Which means it’s going our way. With any luck, we could take this all the way to the border.”
He’d crawled under the tarp by the time he finished speaking, leaving Kelsa to scramble up by herself, even though the truck’s flat bed was shoulder height for her.
Muttering about alien manners, she pulled herself aboard and followed him into the blue world beneath the plastic tarp. The wooden bracing around the statue’s pieces created a tangled maze. Kelsa climbed carefully over an upraised bronze arm holding a neatly cut piece of rope. She didn’t dare brush up against the plastic, lest someone see the moving bulge and come to investigate. “I don’t know if there are two statues, or if this is a cowboy riding a dinosaur.”
“Up here,” Raven called softly.
Between two sections of the statue—definitely a cowboy riding a dinosaur—was an open space about a yard wide. And except for a narrow gap where one of the tarp’s seams had ripped, it was completely concealed.
“It’s perfect,” Raven murmured.
“It should work,” Kelsa admitted. “Until we either reach the border or have to pee. Then what?”
“As for the latter, the driver has to stop sometime to do that himself,” Raven said. “And for the former, back in the United States I saw a number of people walking across the border, with people meeting them on the other side. There were even some buses.”
“A lot of buses drop off and pick up at the borders to avoid paying the crossing tax. Because it’s based on the value of the vehicle. And sometimes people who drive really expensive cars walk across and have a driver come out to meet them. But you need a ticket to get on a bus, and no matter how you cross, you have to have a valid … That’s what you were doing! You stole that poor woman’s PID!”
“All she has to do is produce a DNA sample when my fake vanishes, and she’ll be given a new one,” Raven pointed out. “And she probably won’t be asked for it till she tries to go back across the border. She lives in Anchorage,” he added, handing the card to Kelsa. “But more important, she has permission to travel in and out of Canada at will, just like your legally homeless people. That will show up on the reader strip, right?”
Kelsa stared at the small checked box on the PID card. “It will show up on the strip. It’s not exactly like being legally homeless. I bet her parents live in Canada, and she got that permission so she could take the kids to visit them anytime. But it also says she’s twenty-nine, and the reader strip will show that too. Not to mention the fact that I don’t look anything like the picture on this card.”
“Give me a minute.” Raven took the card back. “I’ve never done this before, but it should work.”
His eyes were on Kelsa’s face, but she could tell his attention was elsewhere. His attitude was so focused that she didn’t dare interrupt.
He stared at her for a long time, caressing the card with his thumb. Kelsa was becoming bored enough to interrupt him when he finally glanced down and then grinned.
“I really am good.”
Kelsa stared at the smooth plastic surface. The name on the card was still Elizabeth Stayner, but the photo bore Kelsa’s face. And the age now read nineteen, instead of twenty-nine. The “1” was a trifle blurred, but not enough for a busy border agent to notice. And the reader strip would send her across the border into Alaska with no questions asked.
“But how will you—”
The truck rose gently, startling her. Kelsa had been so astonished by Raven’s feat she hadn’t heard the driver arrive.
“How will you get across?” she asked. “Do you still have whatshisname, Robert’s ID?”
“No.” The plastic tarp rattled as the truck’s speed increased, and Raven had to raise his voice to compensate. “I managed to drop it into the trash bin at the garage before the police arrived. I’ll fly over.”
Kelsa nodded. They’d turned onto the highway now, and the noise from the wind-lashed plastic was so loud she couldn’t hear anything softer than a shout.
Raven lay down in the flat space between the crated bronze shapes and held out his arms. After a moment’s hesitation Kelsa accepted the invitation. His shoulder made a softer pillow than the edge of the crate, and the warmth of his body helped fight the cold breeze that flowed beneath the tarp. With the plastic rattling like a hailstorm and sunlight flashing as the wind tugged at the torn seam, there was no way she would fall asleep. She might as well be comfortable.
***

Kelsa woke stiff, groggy, and very confused till she remembered where she was. She sat up and looked out through the vibrating gap in the plastic. They were driving along the shore of a deep blue lake.

“What time is it? Where are we?”
“What?” Raven shouted.
He too had sat up, looking almost as stiff and cross as she felt.
Kelsa put her mouth near his ear and repeated her questions.
“It’s about noon.” With his mouth next to her ear he didn’t have to shout. “And we’re heading north on Highway One. Haven’t reached Whitehorse yet, but if that’s Teslin Lake we will in a few more hours. We’ve been driving beside it for almost an hour, so I think it has to be.”
Kelsa’s brows rose. She crawled out to the tarp and looked through the gap, ignoring the wind that whipped her hair. The lake was only a mile or so across, but it stretched out before and behind them as far as she could see.
Driving beside it for an hour?
“How long is this lake?” she shouted.
“Ninety miles.”
“What? I thought you said—”
Raven was nodding. “Ninety miles. The first humans here called it Long Water.”
No kidding. Kelsa crouched in front of the rattling gap and stared in fascination as the lake went on and on. Eventually she moved back to sit more comfortably against one of the braces, but another half-hour passed before the lake finally narrowed to a rushing river.
Otter Woman was probably awake by now. But surely it would take their enemies a while to find them and then to catch up with them. And which of the shapeshifters were enemies, and which were allies?
They passed through Whitehorse, slowing down enough that they might have conversed, but there were people on the streets, and Kelsa didn’t dare risk it.
She sat on her jacket to ease the growing ache where her butt rested on the hard truck bed, until she got cold and had to put the jacket back on. Then she took out all the squashable energy bars and sat on her pack.
The driver must have been peeing in a bottle or something, because they were several hours out of Whitehorse, and Kelsa’s bladder was about to burst, when Raven suddenly gripped her arm.
“What?” she half shouted in his ear. “I’m going to have to piss on the floor if we don’t—”
“Be quiet.” His grip tightened. “There’s something up ahead. I don’t know what they’re doing this far south, but I think I can coax them … Hang on!”
The truck’s drop brakes squealed on asphalt as the truck skidded to a stop. It was a good thing Raven had warned her. Kelsa was almost thrown into the next crate, despite his grip on her arm.
Another set of brakes screamed as the car behind them stopped, then another.
“What on earth? Never mind! I’m getting out. Now.”
Kelsa crawled to the back of the truck, and despite her urgent need, peered out to make sure the driver who’d parked on their bumper wasn’t watching. But the middle-aged woman had climbed out of her car, leaving the door open behind her, and now hurried past the truck, setting her com pod to “record” as she ran.
Kelsa climbed down from the truck and turned to look. For a moment she didn’t recognize the circle of hairy brown lumps that blocked the road; then she saw the big curved horns and a round half-buried eye, and gasped with astonished delight.
Raven swung down to stand beside her, staring, and another car added itself to the growing line behind them.
“What are they doing here?” he asked. “I’ve never seen them this far south.”
“Could they be shapeshifters?” Kelsa asked in some alarm. “Trying to stop us?”
“No. I got a good sense of them when I called them onto the road. But they’re a long way from their usual territory.”
“That’s because of the climate change,” Kelsa told him. “Muskoxen were endangered by the warming, but they’ve been doing pretty well for the last fifty years, spreading beyond their original habitat now that they’re protected. But they’re shy in the wild. I never thought I’d see one, because they only live in the very far … north.”
She was in the Yukon. In a part of the world where Ice Age survivors roamed wild, and the sun hardly set all summer long. Kelsa had been so busy running for her life and breaking people out of jail, she hadn’t had time to realize how far she’d traveled, how much she’d accomplished.
But even the shock of that realization was overshadowed by her mounting physical need. Kelsa hiked into the trees till she couldn’t see the road—which fortunately didn’t take long—and attended to nature’s demand.
The muskoxen were still there when she returned, and the traffic jam on both sides of the road was growing. A man and a couple of teenagers raced past her, pulling out their cameras.
Kelsa was reaching for her own com pod when she remembered she’d left it with the bike.
“Here, take this.” Raven crawled onto the truck’s tailgate and held out their pack. A truck ahead of them sounded its horn, and several more followed suit. It was hard to see much reaction under all that hair, but Kelsa thought the circle of oxen drew tighter.
They were shorter than she’d imagined, the adults only a bit over four feet. The calves in the center, from what little she could see of them, looked like giant, furry exercise balls.
“They’re so cute!”
The pack bounced off her shoulder and fell to the road, and Raven climbed down.
Kelsa picked up the pack, frowning. “Are we getting off ? I thought we were taking this truck all the way.”
“We still might,” said Raven, “if our fuzzy friends can hold the traffic long enough. But I’ve been listening to the ley for the last few hours, and it needs healing.”
Startled, Kelsa took her gaze off the oxen to look at him. “Is there a nexus here?”
“No.” Raven’s face was sober. “It would be better if there was. Maybe it’s damage from the beetle kill, but the ley has gone very deep here, spread wide, and running slow. Sluggish. Hard to reach. It needs to be healed in many places at once, raised higher to flow more strongly. I think this is where you need to call on animal life.”
“Animals?” Kelsa didn’t know why she was surprised. Living organisms were a part of nature too. She gazed dubiously at the tight circle of oxen. They were tremendously cute, but their attitude was pugnacious. The tourists who gathered around them, frantically recording, were keeping their distance.
“I suppose I might get close enough to throw some dust over them, but with so many people—”
“Not them,” Raven interrupted. “And you can’t just sprinkle them with dust, anyway. You need to blow it into the nose of the creature you summon. That’s why we’re going up there,” he added, pointing to the hillside that loomed above the road.
The sign said Glacier Rock Trail, and beyond the trees Kelsa saw a huge ridge of glacial debris.
“How am I supposed to get near enough to any wild creature to blow dust in its face? Especially on that rock field? I won’t be able to move fast enough to catch even a butterfly, and I won’t be able to move quietly, either.”
And if her victim didn’t like having sand blown into its nose, she wouldn’t be able to run.
“You aren’t going to chase it down.” Raven’s tone was a bit too patient. “You call it with the incantation, and when something comes you blow the dust into its face.”
“Something comes? I can’t call for a small animal, like a mouse or a bird?”
This was bear country.
“You’re not afraid of animals, are you?”
“I’m sensibly cautious of wild animals,” Kelsa told him. “Especially ones that are bigger than me. Like a moose. Or a bear. Even a deer will fight if it’s frightened enough, and they can do a lot of damage.”
“Whatever comes to your calling should know you for a friend.” Raven took the pack with one hand and grasped her arm with the other, steering her toward the trailhead. “But candidly, that’s one of the reasons I want you on the rock field when you call. I’m hoping you’ll get a wild sheep—there are several species around here. That way, when the calling ends, it will probably just bound off.”
Kelsa considered the implications. “So while I’m calling, it will know me for a friend and approach. But once I blow the dust in its face the spell ends, and then it’s a wild animal who suddenly finds itself very close to a human who just—”
“You’ll do fine.” Raven nudged her in the direction of the trail. “I’ll stop here and delay anyone who wants to hike up after you. The animal might know you for a friend, but anyone else would frighten it off.”
That didn’t sound so bad to Kelsa, but if the ley needed healing…
“Couldn’t I do trees here instead?”
Raven shook his head. “Trees will work better if you’re on top of a nexus. The healing will spread farther.”
“But—”
“There are plenty of trees in Alaska. Animals here.”
He was the expert on leys, after all. Kelsa shrugged and started up the trail.
Despite her misgivings, it felt wonderful to be off the truck, hiking in the sunshine. The pine and aspen wood was full of unfamiliar bird songs. Maybe she would get a bird with her summoning. A small one would be good.
The trail emerged from the glade and onto the rock field. The Canadian park service had laid the jumbled stones flat, but Kelsa still had to pick her way over the uneven surface. She mostly ignored the informative signs—just looking around she could see that centuries after the glacier had dumped it, almost nothing had colonized this barren moraine.
The trail zigzagged up, and up some more. Kelsa was panting when she reached the end of the trail and turned to look back.
The great glacier-carved valley stretched before her, bordered by big round-topped mountains to the north and ragged peaks with fingers of ice still flowing through them to the east. A glowing, royal blue lake filled the long basin, light rippling on its surface.
A chorus of honking rose from the trucks, their drivers more blasé about wildlife than the tourists who still clustered around the herd. From this height the muskoxen looked like dark tumbleweeds, and showed no sign of moving.
What were the right words for connecting the ley to animals? So many species, such an abundant diversity of life. How to reach them all?
Kelsa sat down on a bench the park service had provided, untied the medicine bag, and removed a generous pinch of dust. She closed her eyes, reaching out with her less tangible senses to this vast, open place in the world. She couldn’t sense animals, but she’d always felt the life that hummed within the thin skin of atmosphere enclosing her planet. Life was what she was calling now.
“Swift or slow, strong or subtle. Furred and feathered, scaled, shelled, or skinned. You who wander the surface of the world, forgive us, please, and carry this healing in all the places you go. Heal and be strong!”
All her heart was in the words, and though her mind might question, she felt no surprise when she opened her eyes and found a pair of gleaming dark eyes staring back. Eyes framed by soft fur, quivering whiskers, and round, black-rimmed ears.
Pika were notoriously shy, but this one gazed up at her with no fear at all.
Kelsa almost picked it up, but sensible caution about wildlife intervened. Instead she bent down, opened her fingers, and blew the dust gently into the rodent’s face.
The whiskers whirred into overdrive.
Then Kelsa’s heart gave a great throb, as if it suddenly beat in tandem with thousands upon thousands of hearts. Some were big and slow, but many beat small and fast, faster than her heart could endure, and she gasped and pressed both hands against her chest to contain it.
On the road below, the oxen threw up their heads and bellowed. The pika whisked into a crack in the rocks and vanished.
Several minutes passed before her heart rate slowed to normal, and Kelsa rose and made her way back down the trail. Perhaps it was only in her imagination that with every footfall, every touch of her hand on rock, a pulse of healing energy sank into the earth. But wasn’t she too part of the life of this world?
Raven was sitting on the curb in the trail’s parking lot when Kelsa emerged from the trees, a disgusted expression on his face.
“I didn’t think it through,” he said.
Still enveloped in a glorious daze of healing, Kelsa didn’t care. “Think what through?”
“The effect of what you were doing on our current situation.” The disgust in his expression spread to his voice. “When you healed the animal life along this ley, the muskoxen suddenly felt strong and good, instead of threatened and fearful. Which might not have been enough, in itself,” he added. “Their instinct to circle and hold in the face of danger runs pretty deep. Unfortunately, the truckers felt good too, so they stopped pounding their horns. And since that was what was frightening those furry idiots, they broke their circle and wandered away. So…”
Kelsa followed the sweep of his hand and looked at the road. One car whizzed by. After that, nothing. The traffic jam had dissolved. Their truck was gone.