07 The Return_ Midnight - L. J. Smith

other Godawful Hellacious monsters in the Dark Dimension—its great bulk—was now turned against
it. Elena felt her chest tighten as if she were wearing a corset.
Even as she watched, though, the animal became calmer. She stopped trying to get her
left hind leg out of the ice, which meant that she stopped churning up the ice around it.
Now Biratz was in a sort of crouching position, trying to keep her three dry legs from
going under. The problem was that she was trying too hard, and that there was nothing to push against
except breakable ice.
“Elena!” Stefan was within earshot now. “Don’t get any closer!”
But even as he said it, Elena saw a Sign. Just a few feet away, lying on the ice was the
tickle-prod that Pelat had used to get the thurgs going.
She picked it up as she skated by and then she saw another Sign. Reddish hay and the
original covering for the hay—a giant tarpaulin—were lying behind the thurg. Together they formed a
broad wide path that was neither wet nor slick.
“Elena!”
“This is going to be easy, Stefan!”
Elena pulled a pair of dry socks out of her pocket and drew them up over her boots. She
fastened the tickle stick to her belt. And then she started the run of her life.
Her boots were fur with something like felt underneath and with the socks to aid them,
they caught on the tarpaulin and propelled her forward. She leaned into it, vaguely wishing Meredith
were here, so she could do this instead, but all the time getting closer. And then she saw her mark: the
end of the tarp and beyond it floating chunks of ice.
But the thurg looked climbable. Very low in back, like a dinosaur halfway into a tar pit,
but then rising up along the curved backbone. If she could just somehow land there…
Two steps till jump-off. One step till jump-off.
JUMP!
Elena pushed off with her right foot, flew through the air for an endless time, and—hit the
water.
Instantly, she was soaked from head to foot and the shock of the icy water was
unbelievable. It caught hold of her like some monster with a handful of jagged ice shards. It blinded
her with her own hair, it squeezed all the sound out of the universe.
Somehow, clawing at her face, she freed her mouth and eyes from hair. She realized that
she was only slightly below the surface of the water, and that was all she needed to push upward until
her mouth broke the surface and she could suck in a lungful of delicious air, after which she had a
coughing fit.
First time up, she thought, remembering the old superstition that a drowning person will
rise three times and then sink forever.
But the strange thing was that she wasn’t sinking. There was a dull pain in her thigh but
she wasn’t going under.
Slowly, slowly, she realized what had happened. She had missed the back of the thurg,
but landed on its thick reptilian tail. One of the serrated fins had gashed her, but she was stable.
So…now…all I have to do is climb the thurg, she puzzled out slowly. Everything seemed
slow because there were icebergs bobbing around her shoulders.
She put up a fur-lined gloved hand and reached for the next fin up. The water, while
making her soaking clothes heavier, supported some of her weight. She managed to pull herself up to
the next fin. And the next. And then here was the rump, and she had to be careful—no more footholds.