Now that she could see where the web had broken, redirecting the flow to eliminate the loop was easy. A few tweaks, and the spell was whole again. And hopefully fixed too. She felt for the three pages, gathered them up, folded them over, then opened her eyes. Flicker sat on a nearby rock, idly pulling dry leaves from a bush and incinerating them on his palm in little puffs of smoke.

“Where’s Erdrodr?” Alice said.

“Up the hill a ways, drawing a bug. Did you figure it out?”

“I think so. I’ll leave two of these here for you to set up. Make sure they’re spread out, and don’t stand between them.” As a magical creature, Flicker would be caught in the ward as well. “In fact, you two ought to hide once it’s set up. I’ve got an idea on how to play this.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

HITCHING A RIDE

AFTER EXPLAINING HER plan to Flicker and sending him off to corral Erdrodr, Alice took off her shoes to leave with her other things drying on the bank, tucked one of the three parchments into her undershirt, and walked back down to the river’s edge. Another turtle cruised past and gave her a superior look as she waded into the shallows.

With a deep breath, she wrapped the devilfish thread tight around herself. Transitioning from air- to water-breathing was always hard. As her body shifted and changed, there was a moment of confusion and panic; she flopped ungracefully into the water as a huge, toothy, Alice-sized fish. She wriggled out of the shallows and into deep, cool water, savoring the feel of the river as it sluiced through her gills.

Green light from luminescent patches on her sides illuminated the sandy bottom of the river, and smaller fish darted out of her way in terror. She suppressed the instinctive urge to snap at them as she crossed the river, fighting against the current. When she felt her back break the surface, she released her grip on the devilfish thread and changed back into a girl, standing hurriedly and gulping fresh air.

The parchment had gotten a bit damp, but not soaked—it had gone to the same who-knows-where place that her clothes went when she transformed—and Alice flapped it in the air to dry it as she hiked up the bank. She pulled on the Swarm thread to give her skin a bit of toughness, mostly for the sake of her bare feet, and pressed on until she reached a stand of bushes that would hide her from the river. There she paused, searching the opposite bank, until she found the tiny figure of Flicker. The fire-sprite jumped up and down, waving his arms, and Alice waved back.