She remembered showing him the formula she had found for the bracelet. When she told him of her intentions on his behalf, he all but ordered her to abandon the plan.
"Stay away from land dwellers, they are nothing but trouble," he said, literally shaking his finger at her. "We'll resolve this problem without their interference."
Of course, stung by his patronizing tone, she inwardly belittled his objections and slipped away in the night to do things her way. She hated admitting that he had been right about land dwellers.
With a sigh, Selana sidled over to the stream's edge and sat cross-legged, contemplating her reflection in a calm, shallow pool, sheltered by a fallen log.
"What conceit made you think you could manage such an excursion by yourself?" she moaned at the pinched, pale face in the smooth water. What lunacy had turned a once lighthearted young princess into an abject, weeping fool in the shrubs of some faraway mountain range? She should be frolicking in the beautiful waves of the homeland she loved. If only she could swim again. . . .
Suddenly Selana's eyes went wide. She looked up quickly at the rushing stream. Was it deep enough? What if the current were too strong and she were swept downstream? The water would certainly be far colder than she was accustomed to. And it was fresh water, not salt water, but she could survive in it for a long time.
In spite of these doubts, the sea elf princess's mind was already set. She was awash with the desire to slip into familiar, enveloping water, no matter the consequences. She stood boldly, removing one of her soft leather boots to test the water's temperature with her big toe—it felt like barely melted snow. Replacing her boot, she shivered, only partly from the cold, and reminded herself that it would not feel so icy after she had adopted her thick blue-gray dolphin hide.
Selana closed her large sea-colored eyes. Clenching her teeth, she willed her feet to carry her into the swiftly moving, frigid water. Every nerve shrieked in protest against the assault on her pale, tender flesh. She stood, the waist-high water swelling around her, soaking her to the bone. The sound of rushing water pulsating down the mountainside steadied her nerves. Spreading her arms before her with practiced ease, she drew a deep breath, holding it in her lungs, and dove into the force of the currents.
Selana brought a memory from childhood to mind and centered her thoughts. Instantly the water coursing over her no longer felt icy. She perceived the familiar "joining," which was the only way she had ever been able to describe the sensation of her legs converting to one powerful tail. Her arms shaped into smaller flippers, and her vision spread as she sprouted a bottle-shaped snout with her eyes widely separated to either side.
She felt free!
Swinging her tail, she pressed upstream, carefully testing the depth of the riverbed as she progressed steadily in the current. When she needed her first breath, she couldn't resist the dangerous temptation to leap up in a graceful arc, snatching air in gulps, the way fish gobble flies. She did a barrel-roll and then another, one of the first tricks she had learned as a dolphin. Selana sprang from the water and leaped high in the air again, swishing her powerful tail in a defiant gesture of renewed confidence.
Her spirit sated, she turned her mind solely to the task and swam onward for a short time, trying to cover ground as quickly as possible. Soon she would have to look for signs of the fortress, though she was not at all sure what to look for. Would it be a building, like one from the town? She popped her snout above the surface and cruised along, her black eyes scouring the landscape for any sign of Balcombe.
Selana found negotiating the unpredictable changes in the stream the most difficult part of her journey. In fits and starts the stream would widen to twice its usual size, the bottom dropping quickly to form a calm, slow-moving pool. Just as suddenly it would narrow or the bottom would swoop up, turning it into a shallow, rushing torrent.
As she swam higher into the mountains, the tall fir and aspen trees gradually gave way to shorter pines and scrub. This far upstream she was having to negotiate around large jagged flows of ice and snow that were breaking from the shore. To make matters even more difficult, the stream varied in size, but the depth was decreasing steadily. Selana knew that unless she found Balcombe's hideout soon, she would simply be unable to proceed this way. As a dolphin, she simply could not swim in less than a few feet of water.
Straining against the strong current in a fast-flowing narrow stretch, Selana squawked in pain as her left flipper scraped across a sharp, submerged rock. She both heard and felt the tough hide tearing away. The icy water aggravated the raw wound, and she thrashed in momentary panic. Her spirit sank instantly as she realized she could not possibly control herself in the powerful current with just one usable flipper, let alone continue upstream. Quickly she pushed herself with her tail toward the bank, steering with just her right flipper.
Even more disheartening was the realization that she could not just bob at the stream's edge until her wound healed. She needed her hands to make a bandage and restful sleep to recover her wits. To fall asleep as a dolphin in this current was surely to drown. Accepting that she had no real choice, Selana sighed dejectedly and willed herself back to humanoid form.
She stood with the water lapping at her breasts. At once the wound beneath the sleeve of her soaked tunic, four inches long and deep enough
