The Passage to Mythrin 2-Book Bundle by Patricia Bow Read Free Book Online Page B

between the rocks and the tree roots.
    â€œAmmy?” he called back. “You coming?”
    â€œYeah.” She sounded breathless.
    Simon nailed his attention to the next two feet of path. Ike’s head bobbed in the edge of his vision below. From above and behind came sounds of irregular breathing, thrashing cedar boughs, and steel on ice.
    â€œHalfway down!” Ike called. Another couple of yards, and Simon started to relax.
    Then Ammy yelled, and the yell swept closer. “Ike!” Simon gasped. “Watch —”
    Something hit him behind the knees.
    Ten seconds later, Ike picked himself up and nodded up at the cliff. “There, we’re down. Not the way I planned,” he said, bending to pick up his hiking pole, “but it wasn’t so bad.”
    Ammy struggled to her feet and rubbed her hip. She said nothing, which Simon thought was ominous.
    â€œNext time you mention ski poles,” Simon said, unfolding himself from the ground, “I’m going to go home and lock the door.”
    Ike uncased his digital camera and checked it over. “No harm done. Ammy? You okay?”
    â€œNo!”
    â€œYou look okay. Let’s head on out.”
    Travelling along the flat rocks at the base of the cliff was easier than climbing down, Simon found. You slithered and slid and fell down a lot, but at least you couldn’t fall far.
    The climb to the cave turned out to be the easiest part of the expedition. The cave mouth and the rocks below it were sheltered by the overhanging top of the cliff and almost completely free of ice. The rough layers of stone and the scrubby cedars, deeply rooted among the rocks, gave plenty of handholds and footholds.
    Ike was the first to climb level with the rock apron in front of the cave mouth. “Hey!” he yelled. “Something’s been here! Look at the evidence!”
    A minute of breathless scrambling, and the three of them stood together on the ledge in front of the cave, all crowded against the cliff so as not to mess up the evidence. The entrance to the cave was about three feet high and wider than it was tall.
    â€œFunny kind of tracks,” Simon said.
    They were looking at a trail of scuffed footprints leading from the bare rock inside the cave and across the snowy ledge to the cliff, where it disappeared. One or two of the prints were clear. Somebody with long nails on his feet, Simon thought. His
bare
feet. An image flashed through Simon’s brain: a man with huge bare feet and toes with long talons, like a gigantic lizard. A chill ran down his spine. He stared at Ike, and Ike stared back at him.
    Ammy, who had been very quiet, ducked down and peered inside the cave. Then she dropped to hands and knees and crawled in.
    â€œDon’t mess anything up!” Ike called after her.
    â€œIke,” Simon said, “it snowed this morning. These tracks, whatever they are, can’t have anything to do with last night.”
    â€œI thought of that. They must be the second wave.”
    â€œOf?”
    â€œIntelligent dinosaurs, obviously.” Ike had his camera out and was taking pictures. “What else could have made those marks?”
    Simon studied them. “So you’re thinking...”
    â€œUFO.”
    â€œYou’re serious?” With Ike, it was sometimes hard to be sure.
    â€œI wasn’t at first.” Ike’s freckles stood out sharply, the way they always did when he was scared. “I mean, I was, but not seriously. But now it all hangs together. Don’t you think?” He clutched his camera. “The blue flare with no known cause. Ammy with half her brain sucked out. That alien artifact she found.”
    â€œWhat? Oh, that ring.”
    â€œAnd now this.” Ike waved at the strange tracks. “If a gigantic lizard didn’t walk there, what did?”
    They studied the tracks. “Grizzly,” Simon said, after a moment. “We looked them up last winter for