Chapter 22

I rode down the old path in back of the baseball field, until it got so overgrown with weeds that I had to get off my bike and walk it. I had never been this way to the river, and by the look of the path, neither had many other people for a long time.

It had started raining hard, and the river looked like a stream of boiling milk, all stirred up with the spray of raindrops. Ahead of me loomed the covered bridge, dark and grim. Just looking at it turned my feet into blocks of ice, and I thought of many reasons not to cross it.

All you have is a feather, I thought. You’re not even sure where it come from. You don’t even know that feather come off Mr. Tricks. And the worst of them all: That bird is probably already dead.

No. I had to keep going. I had to look for Mr. Tricks on the other side of the river. If I didn’t find him there, then I could stop looking.

I had reached the bridge. It looked like a dark mouth open wide to swallow me, and a sour smell of wet wood and moss and decaying fish surrounded it. My pulse thrummed in my ears as I set my bike down.

I stepped onto the abutment, my legs wobbling and my heart pounding, and looked down the cavernous length of the bridge. The water below me on both sides of the bank roared and churned, making me dizzy. Some of the planks in the bridge’s floor were missing, and below them the river roiled and groaned.

Staring into the bridge, I felt that cold water swirling around me, creeping up my legs, and tossing and tumbling me until I didn’t know which way was up. I felt so cold—and could not catch a breath.

River, honey, say a voice in my head. Stay right there.

I gasped and the sensation faded. I had felt that water closing in around me and heard a voice—a woman’s voice—tell me to stay put. Whatever had just happened, maybe it explained why I couldn’t go any deeper into the river than my toes.

Shivering with fear, I ran off the bridge to my bike. The wind twisted around me, blowing my hair in every direction, and then a blink of lightning and then another startled the clouds. A fist of thunder cracked the sky and rumbled away, blending with the river’s roar and the pounding of my heart.

I would have to let Mr. Tricks go. It made me sad, but I couldn’t cross that bridge. I might never cross that bridge.

I grabbed my bike and looked at the path to the baseball field. It had become a lake.