T*Witches: Split Decision by H.B. Gilmour, Randi Reisfeld Page A

burned one.
    “Don’t you seem to be the special one today?” Sersee remarked. “Let’s see how well you do with Amaryllis aiming for you — she’s the one who baked them.”
    Cam was up for the challenge. Her innate competitiveness — combined with disgust at the shabby way Sersee had been treating Epie — fueled her desire to ace this game and show Sersee up.
    She brushed off her shorts and skipped around the candles, once, twice … still, Amaryllis had not pitched the egg. Cam was almost finished with the third go-round when she saw it hurtling toward her.
    She was trying to duck out of the way when a sudden powerful blast of air hit her, striking her solar plexus like an icy fist. In the split second before she tumbled backward, she caught sight of Epie. The girl’s cheekswere puffed out and her mouth was puckered as if it were she, and not nature, who’d blown Cam over.
    A split second of eye contact followed by Epie’s apologetic shrug told Cam that, improbable as it was, Sersee’s punching bag had provided the gust that sent Cam plummeting into the pond.
    Immediately, she felt a tidal pull in the murky water, a whirling force dragging her down. Her feet found the pond’s floor, which, instead of stopping her descent, seemed to open beneath her, sucking her down farther. There was no bottom. There was only sand. Quicksand.
    Cam knew that flailing would only drag her deeper; she knew that crying out could fill her mouth and then her lungs with water and thick suffocating grit. She struggled against the desire to yell, to wrestle up and out of the soft, squashy sand. Her terrifying premonition was coming true.
    No!
her brain screamed.
No, this can’t be happening!
But her visions always meant something. Why hadn’t she listened to the warning?
    She swung her arms around, her hands grasping for something, anything firm enough to pull herself back up. Nothing held.
    She could feel the gritty dirt rising around her; she could already taste the coarse, granular mud. She could resist no more. “Help! Help!” she screamed as the sandrose around her. Why hadn’t anyone rushed in to save her?
    She could see Shane on his knees at the perimeter of the pond. “Hang on!” he was calling. “I’m coming!” But all he was doing was stretching out his arm, reaching out for her. And he wasn’t close enough.
    Cam put one hand over the next and went into coaching mode.
Pull yourself up. You can do it. Don’t panic. Concentrate!
She was up to her neck in quicksand now. She bent her knee, trying to push off, to force a dent in the thick sludge, anything temporarily sturdy enough. But every time she lifted her knee, the sand collapsed around her.
    She was sinking fast, the thick swampy water bubbling around her neck. Desperately, she reached for her sun charm. Would its strange power help her? By what magick could she forge a way out of this? She didn’t know —
    The sand reached her chin. It felt as if she were wearing a bodysuit of mud filled with scratching, scrabbling insects. And all she could do was flail her arms, pull, push, stretch, claw.
Just keep moving,
she told herself,
someone will reach you.
The pond wasn’t that wide. And they were witches! Surely they could find a long branch, something sturdy she could hang on to.
    Unless, of course …
    The last thought unglued her completely. It had been a trap after all.
    Out of nowhere, the last line of the poem about the woods came to her.…
But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.
The long sleep of death, that’s what it was about. The poet was saying it wasn’t his time to die. And it wasn’t hers, either!
    She screamed, “Get a branch! Hurry!” But as she threw back her head to breathe, sand filled her ears and she could not hear.
    Cam fought to breathe, to keep her head above water until someone came. Miranda! Wouldn’t her mother know? Couldn’t she sense Cam’s peril? Surely someone who loved her was on the way.
Alex!
her