Trickster's Girl (The Raven Duet)

  Trickster's Girl

  Hilari Bell

  * * *

  Houghton Mifflin

  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  Boston New York 2010

  * * *

  Copyright © 2010 by Hilari Bell

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from

  this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company,

  215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  Houghton Mifflin is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  Publishing Company.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  The text of this book is set in Garamond.

  Book design by Susanna Vagt

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bell, Hilari.

  Trickster's girl / by Hilari Bell.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In the year 2098, grieving her father and angry with her mother,

  fifteen-year-old Kelsa joins the magical Raven on an epic journey from Utah to

  Alaska to heal the earth by restoring the flow of magic that humans have disrupted.

  ISBN 978-0-547-19620-6

  [1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Shapeshifting—Fiction. 3. Magic—

  Fiction. 4. Environmental degradation—Fiction. 5. Grief—Fiction. 6. Family

  problems—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B38894Tri 2011

  [Fic]—dc22 2010006785

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  4500267537

  * * *

  To my mother,

  who drove with me

  from Denver to Alaska and back,

  and watched this book

  being born.

  * * *

  PROLOGUE

  RAVEN HAD SPENT TOO LONG on the hunt. He cocked his head, beady eyes fixed on the sweating girl. In this form, his vision was sharp, but he'd perched near enough that even with weak human sight he could have observed the curious weave of the girl's black suit. The stark color wasn't becoming, but something about this girl spoke to senses that went beyond a bird's vision. She hadn't the luminous dimensionality of his own people, yet she was rooted in her reality. It wasn't much, but no human he'd encountered in this incarnation of the world had shown even that much promise. He'd already spent too long on the hunt. His time was running out. He had to try.

  CHAPTER 1

  "FRIENDS, WE ARE GATHERED HERE to commemorate not the death of Jonathan Peter Phillips, but his life."

  They even got the name wrong.

  Though given how much else was wrong, Kelsa supposed she shouldn't complain about that. It was the name on her father's birth certificate. And his life did deserve celebration. She pushed her bangs off her sweaty forehead, wishing that the tempcontrol in her formal jacket worked better. At least she'd been able to braid her long, frizzy hair off the back of her neck. Her mother's stylish cut, the same kind of haircut she'd so often tried to talk Kelsa into, clung damply to her neck under the hot late-May sun.

  Kelsa's mother had insisted on having the formal service at graveside—even though no one was actually buried anymore and as per the cemetery contract, the urn would sit on its granite pedestal for only sixty years. Her father wasn't there, so it probably didn't matter that his life was being recounted by a minister who might not even have met him.

  It should have been a gathering of his friends, telling stories about the times her father had helped them or made them laugh. About his passion for the living earth he'd studied and taught. About the time he'd taken his nine-year-old daughter on a hike up a desert canyon to a hidden waterfall, where butterflies danced between the shining curtains.

  The memory glowed, jewel bright. So many memories. Fifteen years of them. It wasn't enough.

  Oh, Pop.

  Kelsa had vowed to get through this without crying, but the tears welled up anyway. Her mother had been crying quietly since the service began, Joby sitting in her lap, even though his five-year-old body must have been both heavy and hot.

  "...the many years he taught biochemistry at the University of Northern Utah," the minister droned.

  Kelsa blinked hard and sniffed. This wasn't her father's real funeral, and she'd cried an ocean over the last few months. She was tired of grief, tired of the whole damned mess. The simple facts the minister recited, graduated from, worked as a park ranger, met his wife in, didn't begin to encompass the reality of her father's life. Any more than the graceful black granite urn held his real ashes.

  Kelsa lowered her gaze, hiding a fierce smile that no one would have understood.

  ***

  Eventually the service ended, with a modern blessing on her father's soul and all those he had loved. No words of ashes and dust; very little about death at all. Death wasn't fashionable. Kelsa had to admit that it was the ultimate grind, but when someone died you really ought to talk about the "dead" part. The minister had done his best, she supposed, given that the man he was eulogizing had never set foot in a church in his life.

  "I like the churches God made better," he'd told Kelsa one autumn afternoon, gesturing to the towering peaks around them, the sweep of meadow and sky.

  But none of this was the minister's fault, so Kelsa shook the man's hand and accepted his condolences with a polite mumble of thanks. He wasn't sweating, which either meant there really were miracles or the tempcontrol in his black coat worked better than hers.

  Her mother was sweating, and she was so pale that despite the thorny wall of her anger Kelsa felt a flash of concern.

  The minister must have shared it. He picked up Joby, handed him over to Kelsa, and had her mother separated from the crowd and headed toward the waiting cars of the funeral cortege in short order.

  Their car had a driver supplied by the mortuary, which was just as well. Kelsa wasn't sure her mother was up to driving.

  As soon as they were aboard, the repulsers lifted the car off the pavement and the chiller kicked on, ruffling Kelsa's damp bangs with a burst of cool air.

  "Thank God that's over," her mother murmured, sinking back in her seat.

  Kelsa was suddenly furious all over again. You were saying goodbye to your husband! How can you be glad it's over?

  But they'd both been saying goodbye throughout the last four horrible months, ever since the doctor pronounced her father's cancer too far advanced for even modern medicine to cure. And Kelsa knew her mother had loved her father.

  She just hadn't loved him enough.

  ***

  One of the good things about her mother's faith was that neighbors were there for each other in bad times. When someone died, that translated to a refrigerator full of casseroles, salad, and bread.

  It also meant babysitters. When the car reached their house, Mrs. Stattler was waiting to take Joby off to play with Mike. Kelsa's mother took two aspirin, since the Reformed Church didn't approve of stronger drugs unless they were necessary, and lay down for a nap.

  Kelsa, with nothing to do till dinnertime, fought down an unjust desire to be angry with Mrs. Stattler too. Mrs. Stattler's willingness to add Joby to her own gaggle of boys was one of the things that made her mother's excuses such carpo.

  I can't take care of a five-year-old boy and a dying man, Kel. And you have to go to school, though Kelsa knew—both of them knew—that the school would have let her skip classes for months to nurse a dying father. She could have homeschooled while she did it. She wouldn't have quit. Kelsa always finished what she started.

  But her mother had refused even to ask the school. Even to try. That was what Kelsa couldn't forgive. Just as her mother couldn't q
uite forgive her for siding with her father when he refused to give in to what he called "the great irrational." Because he wanted to spend the final months of his life with his family, instead of being prayed over by strangers.

  It was his choice.

  And it wouldn't have worked, anyway.

  Kelsa watched as her mother brought Joby home from the Stattlers' and programmed the multichef to heat their supper. She banished the sneaking sympathy as her mother picked at her food, and forced herself to respond to Joby's chatter about the mud city he and Mike were making. Mr. Stattler was an enthusiastic gardener, and his yard contained things that weren't often found in this suburban neighborhood, including old- fashioned dirt.

  Including, Kelsa suddenly remembered, an old-fashioned posthole digger. Mr. Stattler always let neighbors borrow his tools. Would he be willing to lend Kelsa his posthole digger for this?

  No, he'd be horrified by what she'd done, the lies she'd told.

  Yes, he'd understand.

  Or he'd think she was traumatized by grief and forgive her.

  Kelsa knew that Mrs. Hennesy, her guidance counselor, had already told her mother that Kelsa "needed to talk to someone."

  This wasn't so much because Kelsa's grades had fallen—no one expected your grades to be perfect when your father was dying. It was because when Mrs. Hennesy had taken her mother's side, Kelsa had stopped talking to Mrs. Hennesy.

  Kelsa's mother had suggested several times that Kelsa talk to the grief counselor at the hospice. But Kelsa had hated the hospice, hated everything about it, and she'd refused.

  Of course her furious refusal made her mother, and everyone else, even more concerned about her emotional stability.

  If I'd agreed, if I'd appeared more stable, would they have let...

  No, she knew they wouldn't. And it was too late to change anything now.

  If prayer could have saved him, Kelsa's would had done the job.

  Dinner lasted far too long.

  Her mother put Joby to bed, reading aloud to him as she'd once read to Kelsa. It made Kelsa's heart ache, despite everything.

  She was letting her mother down. But her mother had let her father down too, so life was tough all over, wasn't it?

  Eventually her brother went to sleep. Not long after that her mother went to bed, exhausted by the stresses of the day despite her nap.

  Kelsa lay in her own bed, waiting as the distant hum of traffic tapered off, as the breeze through her open window began to cool. She'd planned to wait, dramatically, till midnight. But by eleven fifteen she was certain her mother was sleeping, and if anyone else saw her it wouldn't matter. She'd gone on so many late-night walks with her father, eluding the heat of Utah's summer days, that even if the neighborhood patrol spotted her they'd only wave.

  She dressed in dark jeans and a plain cotton stretchie—tan, not suspicious burglar-black. Then she reached up to the top shelf of her closet, feeling behind her winter clothes till her fingers located the thick plastic bag that held her father's ashes.

  They were heavy. So much heavier than the flour she'd substituted for them in the granite urn, that she'd raided her father's tackle box and thrown in half a dozen weights to make up the difference. The ashes were a different color as well, grayish, so she'd gone up to the attic and swept up a pan of dust to mix into the top layer of flour. It was still too white, but her mother never opened the urn to look, and Kelsa didn't think anyone else would either.

  Her father might have. He'd had a scientist's curiosity about most things, and he'd been too logical to care how he was buried.

  Kelsa cared.

  She put the plastic bag into her day pack, and in case she was stopped by some patroller who didn't know her, she folded a light jacket over the top. Water, because her father had insisted she never set out on any hike without it, and rain gear too, no matter what the weather report said. In case her mother woke up and checked on her, Kelsa left a message on the house com board saying that she couldn't sleep and had gone for a walk. Her personal ID card would identify her to the house security system, so she could lock the back door and leave the system on behind her. Kelsa might be angry with her mother, but she wasn't about to take chances with her family's safety—not even in a quiet neighborhood like hers.

  The night air was rich with the smell of petunias, and the moonlight was so bright she could almost see their colors. Kelsa's house backed onto an urban greenbelt, with a rubbercrete path running down it. Their fence was so low she simply swung her legs over it. The Stattlers' fence, five houses down, was almost as low, but pulses of red light flashed along its base, prepared to offer a discouraging shock to wayward rabbits—and if Kelsa shook the fence on the way over she might get shocked as well. The rabbits eventually tunneled under the barrier and ate Mr. Stattler's lettuce anyway, but at least, he said, they had to work for it.

  In the end Kelsa climbed into a neighbor's yard, up into an old fruit tree, and then leaped over the Stattlers' fence. The Stattlers' trees would let her depart the same way, but for now ... she'd remembered correctly; the tool shed wasn't locked.

  It was so dark inside that Kelsa couldn't see a thing, and she knew the cluttered tools could make an incredible racket. She frowned, and after a few seconds managed to focus her eyes in the way that brought up her night vision, her tense shoulders relaxing as the stacked tools, boxes, and sacks emerged slowly into sight.

  She'd had to get her vision corrected in second grade. The Reformed Church felt the same about mechanical vision enhancements as they did about unnecessary drugs, but her mother was moderate enough not to argue when Kelsa's father said that as long as they were messing with her eyes she might as well get the standard package.

  She used the enhancements so seldom that she sometimes had trouble bringing them up, and even with her ability to see what she was doing, one of the shovels clanked against a laser trimmer. It wasn't loud enough to wake anyone, and Kelsa finally extracted the posthole digger. Its cylindrical blades were attached to a shaft over four feet long, with a plain wooden bar crossing the top. Wood and steel—the old-fashioned tool felt right to her. You should have to dig to make a grave, metal carving the earth. She hoped she'd raise a sweat, that her hands would blister, her muscles ache.

  She tossed the awkward tool over the fence and climbed out of the Stattlers' yard. She didn't see any patrollers on the familiar walk down the greenbelt, down two streets, while moving in and out of the street lamps' coppery glow. She did swing wide around the traffic lights. Their cameras generally came on only if someone ran the light, but the police could set them to continuous wide scan at will, and you never knew.

  The quiet was soothing. Kelsa was almost sorry when she reached the willow-lined creek that flowed through this part of Springville, a tiny strip of brush and weeds in the midst of the urban world. If you got off the rubbercrete pathway, you could see the tracks of magpies, cottontail rabbits, coyotes, and even deer in the mud of the meandering streambed.

  It was her father who had taken her off the path, who'd taught her to identify both tracks and scat. This scrap of undeveloped land wasn't the vast, open wilderness he'd loved, but it was their favorite city hike—as close to rightness as Kelsa could get.

  She walked for twenty minutes, crossed the footbridge, and then cut off the pavement onto a dirt trail the local kids, and possibly coyotes and deer, had beaten upstream to the place where the queen cottonwood loomed over a shallow bend.

  Leaves rustled a welcome. Kelsa dropped her pack and pressed her palms together as if in prayer, then swept them up into a wide circle that ended with her hands folded at her waist. She bowed, finishing the whimsical homage to trees her father had taught her.

  "Greetings, your majesty."

  Kelsa had always had a sense of the presence that lived in trees. Not aware, exactly, but old and patient and very alive. The bioplague that had wiped out so much of the South American rain forests hadn't even begun to come this far north. Its first traces were only now app
earing in Mexico, and reporters on the holovid, and in the online papers and magazines, were certain it wouldn't spread outside the tropics. Of course, five years ago they'd been certain it would never spread out of the small corner of the Amazon where it had been released. Certain that even the trees there would fight it off eventually.

  The scientists who published in scholarly journals, which her father had allowed her to read despite her mother's protests, were a lot more worried. Her father had gone to the Amazon to study the plague himself, as soon as the infected zone had been declared safe for humans. Sometimes Kelsa felt that his cancer, diagnosed over a year later, was an extension of the bioplague—as if he'd caught it from the trees.

  But that was impossible, and her mind knew it. It was her heart she couldn't convince.

  She set the point of the posthole digger against the earth and turned it. She'd never used this tool before, but it was easy to master. The dry clay near the roots was hard going, but about four inches down it grew damp and began to soften. Soon every few twists of the handle allowed her to lift out a scoop of earth, which she shook onto the growing pile.

  Eventually, the handles brushed the ground. Kelsa emptied the last scoop, laid the digger aside, and reached into the hole. Cold dirt grated against her arm, but her stretching fingers couldn't find the bottom. It was deep enough. And so much better, truer, than the manicured grass and lifeless stone of the cemetery. This place, where foxes and raccoons still left their tracks, where the remains of his body might lend a bit of strength to the towering ancient whose leaves whispered in the moonlight—this was what her father would have wanted.

  She hadn't been able to let him die the way he wanted to, but at least she could bury him that way.

  Trying not to think, because if she started to think she'd start crying—again—Kelsa pulled out the plastic bag and ran the slider down the seal. The ashes thumped into the bottom of the hole. She felt odd about throwing the bag in the trash with traces of ash still clinging to it, so Kelsa went down to the stream and captured some water in the bag, which she then poured into the hole as well.