They were running at top speed. The trees and the incline growing ever sharper as they pounded up the hill. Day glanced behind her and saw them closing the distance even as she dodged to the left and the right. What would happen to Ripple without her? Eventually, someone might come by for the caravan but then she’d be alone, lost. All of her friends without her. She tried her best to run even faster as the eight guards behind her were picking up the pace.

  She turned at the top of the cliff, looking down behind her. A canyon with a river rushed far below. The rocks bounced off below falling a long way in the rapids. On a different time, she might have tried to inspect the area further, but the people were fanning out around her.

  “We have you surrounded. Just surrender. We are not going to hurt you.”

  “As if I am just expected to believe all of you over nothing?”

  “I mean, what’s your alternative?” The elfman sounded friendly enough, but she did not like how his teeth pointed or how the other men were looking at her. They were hot frustrated and in the middle of nowhere with on five men and only her to deal with it.

  “Stay back,” she warned them. “I can harm you.”

  One human against an elf, a mage, and all the rest of us? Pardon us if we don’t believe you.

  The Chiropractor turned and jumped. She would die in their care or she would die by the fall. But either way she would die and nature, while not always her friend, rarely turned against her. She wished for Laural’s ability to ask the fish if the canyon river was deep or where it would perter out at. She wished things had been different.

  “Miss don’t be-“ She jumped.

  #

  “-a hero.” Grumbled the man and then rolled his eyes. A few men scrambled forward trying to grab her, but they all just stopped and stared down at the woman screaming bloody murder as she fell a long way into the water. She did not rise back up. In the switch back currents, they were unlikely to see her doing down the rapids as the bends in the canyon continued up into a higher height.

  “Well,” the leader said. “Do you think she just killed herself?”

  The youngest of his party stared hard, squinted, tilted his head, and then said, “Fuck it! YOLO.”

  And he too jumped over the edge screaming much higher pitches than the woman all the way down.

  “Wait!” exclaimed one of the men frantically. All the other four turned to him. “If you all would stop hurrying, I have a leaffall spell that I’m decent at,” he was a human mixed with reptilian and it was a shock he knew. “If you’ll wait, we can all hop on and travel down to the water safely.”

  Not the tallest, oldest, strongest or anything best, but considered the most confident of the lot which had turned him into the leader of this stupid grab the girl thing, Elder Barry paused.

  “Are you sure it can carry us all?”

  “Definitely. I had to get my scared sheep down once. It got plenty of them. Just hop on.”

  “We need to hurry because Elias is a total idiot, but I’d rather not see him dead and drowned for his stupid YOLO game.”

  They all grabbed onto the reptile but found themselves not close enough to the edge to go over. Everyone shuffled in different directions. None towards the river.

  “Left! Go left.”

  “My left.”

  “Your other left!”

  “We’re all facing the same direction!”

  The voices mingled together shouting at one another.

  “Stop or you all die.” Instructed the reptilian magician. “Now let go. Move back. I’m going to stand at the edge. You all pile up behind me. The last in the row is whomever can give us the greatest heave and down we’ll go. Make sure you all are touching me when we do.”

  “Paper scissor shoot for who’s last?”

  “No. Barnbabies is last. He can yeet us all over.”

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  “What say you, Barn?”

  “Baby, please. Or Bae if you’re in that generation.”

  The magician gave a frustrated sign then stood himself at the edge, reaching his arms out in a T pose to wait for the rest to get going. The others, flustered by this, hastily set themselves in a rough line behind him while Bae, the largest of them all, got his running start.

  “If you all could count to-“ the magician never got finished asking for his count of ten. Suddenly, he forcibly got ejected off the cliff. Hands groped at him, although they only had to stay holding on. It took longer than expected to catch his breath, but he got the spell going in only five frantic, Frank heartbeats. After a collective few seconds of the men still screaming, they all yowled even louder at the strange lurching sensation as it kicked in. They began to float down the rush of the river water spray pushing them along the gorge, hopefully not towards gore, as well as the wind bounding down the canyon.

  All three men got up their nerves to glance out and find themselves leisurely sweeping down the canyon, floating left to right as a bored leaf on the wind. One end of rock to the other and having an excellent view of the striations along the canyon’s lip. The water smelled of fresh glacier. The geographical features now at eye level went into sharp relief of rich russets, cool browns, glittering bronze shot with copper, and the dirtiest dirt of brown. A much better way to come down than jumping. Almost idealtic.

  “I’ll say it,” Elder Barry admitted, “This is actually really cool if we weren’t looking for a two dead bodies.”

  Even the frank cross species magician admitted, “Yeah, this is totally the coolest way I’ve ever used this spell. Hang on to me when we hit the water, I might be able to try one of my other spells.”

  They all touched gently into the water, and then the world went from gently, beautiful humming into ferocious trashing, thrashing. The water in the rapids rose up with a mind that had no care for the occupants caught in its wet grasp. They were suddenly going at the speed of several horses, depending on how you convert horsepower that is, and in every direction. The water swirled around them tossing them into the white foam. The group increase in speed and fairly flew along at speed. They dashed off rocks and tried desperately to see one another while being ripped upon in an uneven fashion. The planned spell sputtered out to nothing.

  They went head over ass in a series of smaller declines two or three feet in which luckily none of them got caught in the tide pools and away they went trashing and trying to stay alive. The river stopped it careening and scattered them out. Elder Barry got his head up and saw all the other men very wet, but all of them swimming toward one another. Still moving but not at the same speed.

  “Rally up,” he shouted. Got water in his mouth spit it out and instead made the “together hunt” signal that all the boys of the village knew. They all started swimming together. By the time they got close enough, they were all shouting about various things.

  “Bloody rocks!”

  “This was stupid!”

  “I can only sort of swim!”

  Elder Barry yelled, “Shut up!”

  “But there is a fucking huge rumbling waterfall ahead,” yelled Elias’s friend. “Can’t you hear it?”

  Elder Barry could not and was just scanning the river side when he heard the mage.

  “That would be a big problem unless any of you happened to know someone with a really, really good spell of leaffall.”

  Obligingly all the men again grabbed onto the one magical being around them, albeit with more struggling and splashing. Around them, the river turned deeper, deadly once again. Speeding itself up for the huge cascading waterfall plunge. The only one who was not making faces was the mage who was now bobbing along, being held up by everyone else while he frantically went through the muttered words needed. The group of four charged over the edge waterfall with the exact same lurking strange feeling, being jettisoned further into the air and away from the water. For a sickening second, they hung in the air their stomach feeling the drop. Instead, the group of four went into the glide now dripping, much more muddied and battered and all of them eyes opened.

  A flock of Pekin ducks eyed them disapprovingly. They cut away from the strange group of not flying, flying species.

  “There’s Elis’a,” exclaimed his friend. “Do you think he’s dead?”

  Elder Barry growled out unconsciously, as he’d said many times over the younger boy. “If he’s not dead, I’m going to kill him for this.”

  The friend gave him an advanced, askance look, but the other two gave grave nods.

  “Look at all that hair. The woman’s down there also.”

  Both bodies lay face down in the mud unmoving and with two or three inches of water around them. Without a spell of leaffall, both of them would have taken a huge beating in the process of going through the rapids and over the waterfall. A process that may well have killed them both. Their spell broke abruptly, spilling all of the men back into the widened watery bog with no remorse.

  “Nice going,” complained one at the reptilian who shouted back, “How about thanks for saving your sorry life? Twice?”

  “Psh-“

  Elisa’s friend took off through the knee high water getting into the shallows and splashing his way over to his friend. They grabbed him and pulled him over. “He’s still breathing! Try the girl!”

  Elder Barry pointed. The two squabblers took off with the younger man’s energy and got over to lift the girl.

  “She’s alive too.”

  “Looks like that fall isn’t so deadly after all.”

  Elder Barry snorted at that. “If we’d not swiftly come after them, both would have died in the two inches of water face down like that. Both of them have no right to be alive after acting so foolishly. And I’ll not have you lot saying otherwise.

  They collectively dragged both unconscious bodies out of the water and went about trying to reheat them.

  “Leave them on their sides,” Elder Barry instructed, “Let the water come out them that way. So the guards exhausted cold and beaten from the wild ride started the fire. As one they all sat down around it to discuss exactly how they were going to get back home again after coming such a long way so quickly and now with not one but two injured people. It would be no easy feat to get themselves back, let alone bringing a prisoner so willing to harm herself and Elisa’s generally unplanned actions. But first, they’d all take a rest and then worry about it before night fell.