The plane swiveled, then struck something hard below the surface. That caught the airframe for an instant, and inertia punched them all forward before the aluminum skin tore free with a scream of rending metal.

Then they were pinwheeling, spinning across the water like a top in a fog of droplets and shaved ice as they slowed. Another groan from the frame, and he shouted as an impact wrenched at them again, brutally hard. Loose gear flew across the cabin like fists. Things battered him, sharp and gouging, and his body was rattled back and forth in the belt like a dried pea in a can, nothing to see, only a sense of confused rushing speed…

Then the plane was down by the nose and water was rilling in around his feet, shocking him with the cold. They were sinking fast, and there was almost no light now, just a gray gloaming far above.

With a gurgling rush the ice water swept over the airplane's cockpit windows.

Two

Hopping Toad Tavern

Corvallis, Oregon

Tuesday, March 17th, 1998

6:14:30 p.m., PST

Change minus thirty seconds

"On a bright Beltane morning

I rise from my sleep

And softly go walking

Where the dark is yet deep

And the tall eastern mountain

With its stretch to the sky

Casts a luminous shadow

Where my true love doth lie-"

Juniper Mackenzie dropped her guitar at the intolerable white spike of pain driving into her eyes, but she managed to get a foot underneath it before it hit the floor. Shouts of alarm gave way to groans of disappointment from the crowd in the Hopping Toad as the lights and amplifier stayed off.

Whoa! she thought. Goddess Mother-of-All! That hurt!