He tried to hold it back, to slow the Sprint’s forward momentum, but he had lost control. He was tearing into the maze of rocks and trees so fast that he could barely make out where he was going. But somehow he managed to keep the vessel righted and on course, though barely able to track the terrain ahead. He felt a rush of adrenaline sweep through him as he maneuvered the craft through its twists and turns, this way and that, bank and slide, raise and lower—look out!—everything suddenly becoming a part of what he could feel more than what he could see.

He screamed with joy, unable to contain his excitement.

Then, just for a second, he lost his focus, momentarily distracted by a shadow’s movement to one side, and his attention wavered just enough that he lost control. The Sprint yawed wildly, sideslipped through a maze of rocks, skidded into a nest of branches, and flipped upside down in midair. Railing hauled back on the thruster levers and dropped the power to almost nothing, fighting to stay airborne. In the split second that was left to him, he wrapped himself in a cocoon of the wishsong’s magic and waited for the inevitable.

It was just enough.

The Sprint went down in a tearing of radian draws and a shrieking of ripped hull boards, its mast snapping clean off. He felt the steering come loose completely and the light sheaths collapse. The Sprint slid wildly across the ground, bouncing off trunks and boulders, spinning and rolling. Railing lost all track of where he was, tossed first one way and then the other against the safety harness, fighting to maintain the wishsong’s flow. He kept his head down and his limbs tucked into the cockpit, teeth clenched against his expectation of pain and maybe death.

But when the Sprint finally came to rest, he was still alive. He could scarcely believe it. He lay motionless inside the cockpit, tipped sideways and turned backward, clouds of dust and debris billowing all around him, the sudden silence unexpected and deafening.

He was still trying to decide if he was hurt when Redden appeared next to him, frantically working at the buckles and straps of the safety harness, trying to help him get free. “You idiot!” he was screaming. “What were you thinking? Are you all right? Shades, that was a monster crash!”

Railing nodded. “Oh … I don’t know. It wasn’t so much.”

Then he passed out.

When he regained consciousness, he was out of the cockpit and lying on the ground nearby. Redden was kneeling beside him, holding him up so that he could drink from the aleskin.

“Am I alive?”

“Alive?” Redden snorted. “You aren’t even hurt! How did you manage that? I thought you were …” He trailed off, looking exasperated. “You better not try something like that again!”