Lifting the Sky by Mackie d'Arge

leg. The bumps were still there. I scratched over them by crooking my fingers and then dragging them through the lumpy air. I noticed that doing that seemed tosmooth out the bumps, so I raked and scraped the air above Wonder Baby’s body till the lumpy air and the tingles and prickles dwindled away to nothing.
    Wonder Baby snored. Somehow, I’d banished the bumps. I’d also put her to sleep, so I slipped off her cast and examined the break. It didn’t seem worse, but then again, it didn’t seem better. Cripes, I thought. If it wasn’t such a long ride to the highway, I’d ask Mam to take her to a vet to get it checked out.
    Being careful not to wake my bum, I slipped off to the house. Mam had started keeping a supply of medical stuff in the cabinet above the sink. I grabbed a bundle of elastic bandages and tape and some disinfectant and hurried back to the pen.
    I’ve learned a lot in one week,
I said in my head as I wrapped Wonder Baby’s leg and slipped on the makeshift cast again. But if I’m going to use this light …
    My head was swimming. This light. What I’d almost said was this
power.
    My schoolwork would’ve been almost all done by now if I hadn’t had so much other stuff to do. I hadn’t even had a chance yet to go off and explore! Sure, I’d taken different routes down to the barn and the cookhouse, and hiked through the fields and along the edge of the woods by the creek, but I hadn’t yet climbed one single hill. A long, purplish hill ran along one side of the ranch. Steep cliffs rose up along another side. But the biggest, most climbable hill was behind the house on Indian land, just a short way from thefence line. I could hardly wait to get up it and check out the world from the top.
    That afternoon I scribbled a note.
Gone for a hike. Be home before dark.
Then I grabbed my backpack, whistled for Pot, and struck out.
    When we got to the fence I stopped. The sign near the road had said “Absolutely No Trespassing.” Mr. Mac had said
not
to. But obviously there was no one around to ask for permission….
    â€œI’ll tiptoe,” I whispered to Pot, “and no one will know I was there.”
    I trailed along the fence until I found a place where the wires had come loose. By the tracks and the hairs in the barbs I could tell it was where antelope slipped under and where deer, elk, and moose leaped over on their way down to the creek or back toward the mountains. I tugged up the top strand of barbed wire and squeezed through.
    Stew Pot loped ahead of me, sniffing under rocks for chipmunks and such. “We’re on sacred land,” I reminded him. “Behave. Sniffing is fine, but no chasing!” Not that Pot does—he’s a ranch dog and knows better.
    Halfway up I flopped on the ground to catch my breath—funny how a hill suddenly became so much steeper when you actually started to climb it. I took a detour over to a rocky ledge that dropped into a deep narrow canyon. “Whoo, whoo!” I yelled down to hear what the canyon would answer. The hills rang with echoing whoo-whoos as I turned and hiked the rest of the way up the hill.
    â€œMaybe this is why the top of a hill’s called a crown,” I wheezed when I caught up with Stew Pot. “It’s ’cause you feel like a queen—or a king, in your case—when you finally get there. And this”—I threw out my arms—“this will be my throne.”
    â€œThis” was a juniper tree, a tree so big it fit the word “majestic.” Even before I got close to it I could feel it. A thick field of energy seemed to surround it, like what I’d been feeling around the bum calves. The field seemed much bigger than the actual tree. What I could
see
around the juniper was a fuzzy green haze.
    The juniper leaned over the rocky rim as if spying on the valley below. Its roots wrapped around boulders and dipped into and out