Galactic Mage 4: Alien Arrivals by John Daulton Page B

run with the hunt to make her, that is up to you. But the rest of us will run until it is done.”
    “I’m not going to run,” Pernie said. Her voice sounded small, snuffed nearly to nothing by the noise of so many creatures all around, the elves and the animals, the forest swallowing up her words. She felt it and repeated herself, though the elves, keen of hearing as they were, had heard it fine. “I said, I’m not going to run.”
    “You must run. It is the only way,” Seawind said.
    “I want to go home. I’m not doing it anymore.”
    “But you are getting better.” Seawind even managed to sound as if he believed it, but she knew better. Grown-ups always said things like that, even when they weren’t true.
    “I am not,” she said. “I’ll never run with your stupid hunt. It will always be the same. Next time the croc really will eat me. Or you’ll miss my leg and spear me through the head when I fall. The snake will get me, or the spider-apes. I hate it. And I hate you. I want to go home.”
    “I’m afraid you can’t go home until you have mastered the spear.”
    That made her look up at him. She hadn’t heard that before. “What do you mean, mastered the spear ?”
    “When you’ve mastered the spear, you will be eligible to take your first test. Pass it, and you will be free to go.”
    “I can throw one as well as you,” she said, defiant and reasonably convinced she could. She’d been throwing her own homemade spears nearly all her life, ever since the first day she’d discovered the value of a good, straight stick. She reached for his. “Let me try.”
    “You cannot have one until you can run with the hunt. You already know how it must be.”
    “Well I won’t.”
    “That is up to you.” He turned to the rest. “Are you ready?” All nodded but Sandew, who sent both Seawind and Pernie a nasty look. “Very well. Off with you, then,” Seawind said. And, as always, they seemed to simply melt into the trees. Only Seawind stayed behind.
    “I won’t go,” she said, resetting the cross of her arms and huffing loudly to make sure that he would hear. “I won’t.”
    “Patience, little Sava. You must keep trying. It will come to you.”
    “No, it won’t. I’m slow and stupid, just like Sandew says. You said yourself the others before me could do it faster than I could.”
    “The others before you had different gifts.”
    “What gifts?”
    “I cannot tell you now. You must do this on your own.” He squatted down before her, and looked her straight in the eye. His huge almond-shaped eyes seemed kind to her then, possibly for the first time. “But you can do it, little Sava. You didn’t come here by accident. It is the will of Tidalwrath. It is simply a matter of time.”
    Her mouth wriggled like a worm on a warm rock, but she didn’t know quite what to say. He spared her having to, however, for he jumped up, touched her cheek gently, and ran away, off into the trees after the rest of them. Again.
    She watched him go. Arrows hardly shot away so fast. She would never run like that. Not in a thousand million years. So what did they think it was that she could do? And why wouldn’t he tell her how Djoveeve and that other woman before her had done it? There was obviously some kind of secret.
    It must be magic, she thought. But she couldn’t use magic yet. At least not predictably. Not even when she was mad. She hadn’t been able to get out of the crocodile’s teeth. Or the beak of that giant bird. She’d surely been about to hit the ground that day she went off the cliff. So what, then?
    She sat right there on her log and thought and thought and thought. She felt like there must be some kind of riddle. But, for the life of her, she knew not what. After a time, she gave up trying to think about it and let herself cry for a while.
    She missed home. She missed Kettle. She missed eating real food instead of stupid fish strips and fruit. She wished Master Altin were here to save her like