Alice looked up from her task and found that the turtle had pushed off from the bank, swimming out into the middle of the river. She waved at the ice giant and said, “Do you think you could take me back to the bank? I don’t want to get wet.”

“That would be a tragedy,” agreed the turtle. It immediately began to submerge, great shell sinking beneath the water, leaving Alice treading water in the middle of the river.

“Stupid ape,” the turtle scoffed. “An intelligent creature would never have believed such a thing. As a superior race, we would never get an itch in a place we were unable to scratch.” Then, without waiting for an answer, it ducked its head back under and went on its way.

Alice struggled back to the bank in her clothes and boots, hauling herself out of the river a few hundred yards downstream from the other two, where the current had carried her. She lay on the dirt for a while, breathing hard, then got to her feet and trudged back up to meet them.

“Turtles,” she said, “are jerks.”

“Looks like it,” Flicker said. Alice thought he might be fighting back a grin.

“They certainly don’t seem very friendly,” Erdrodr said. “Should we try talking to the next one?”

“Yes,” Alice said. “But first I think we should make sure we’ve got its full attention.”

It was warm enough that Alice had stripped off her soaked outer garments and laid them out to dry in the sun. She wrapped herself in her sleeping roll and glared down at the three sheets of parchment she’d dug out of her pack.

“Those are the things you tried to use on the bluechill, aren’t they?” Flicker said. “I thought they didn’t work.”

“There’s something wrong with them,” Alice said. “I’m going to see if I can fix it.”

She closed her eyes and reached out with her mind, feeling the magic embedded in the pages. Part of the web she’d so carefully laid down was torn and flapping loose. Alice let herself flow through the links and joins of the spell, feeling for the path the power would have to take.

Oh. She felt like slapping herself on the forehead. There was a loop in the spell, a place where the energy fed back against itself. No wonder it didn’t work before. It was drawing more and more power from me, trying to be stronger than itself, until the spell couldn’t take it anymore. A bit like a short circuit, if Alice was the battery. Ending was right when she said I ought to test it.