by James Somers
Daniel opened his eyes in the dark. He felt frozen and suffocated. He had no way to tell if he was upside down or how deep under the avalanche he was buried. He only knew that he was cold and he couldn’t move at all.
He tried to spare what little air there was as his mind raced for a solution. There had to be an answer. He could not to give up. Not only was his own life at stake, but Louie and Meineke’s lives were on the line as well. Think Daniel!
He knew he could control fire to some extent, but if he ignited fire inside his tomb of ice, he would simply burn himself up. Not a good plan. He had no way to know where he was in order to bring the wind to his aid or stone and earth. Then it occurred to him. It wasn’t simply having power that was important, but the careful control of it.
Daniel concentrated upon the power and tried to measure its release. Without any reference to his surroundings, He sent heat out in every direction he could--melting heat rather than burning heat.
The temperature around him rose fast, almost too fast. Daniel reined it in. The warmth grew gradually. His body slipped and settled within the melting snow. He spread out the heat with more force, but still controlled the temperature he strived to attain.
Daniel brought the temperature up to the highest level he could stand in every direction. The heat wave liquefied every crystal of ice it came into contact with in seconds. He had solved one problem but created another.
A deluge of melted snow became a rapidly flowing river in moments. Daniel saw light and swam up toward it. His head breached the surface of the water and he saw the effect of his heat wave. A huge portion of the snow in the valley had melted and now carried him away. The warrior had disappeared again.
Daniel turned to see where the water was taking him. Behind the valley, in the direction he had come by, stood the mountain. But in front where the water carried him, there was nothing but open sky where the valley ended. The water sped up as it approached that place. Waterfall!
Daniel tried to swim, but there was no fighting the strength of the current as it pulled him toward the edge. He looked back upstream. Only a little water remained at the upper end of the valley. If he could only—
“AAAHHH!”
Daniel screamed as gravity pulled him and the water over the edge. But it had not simply spilled into nothing. He and the stream shot down an extremely sharp incline.
He watched the water flow ahead of him. The leading edge of the stream foamed white as it followed a winding trough of smooth rock. The stream snaked its way along a corkscrew path with Daniel riding along on the serpents back. Everything happened so fast. He felt sick to his stomach. I always hated waterslides, he thought.
The flow wound along the side of the mountain sloshing water over the lip of the trough. Daniel hoped he wouldn’t be launched out over the side as well. Then the water sped into a tunnel going right through the mountain. Everything became dark for a moment and Daniel heard the violent echo of the water bouncing back from the roof of the tunnel.
The sunlight hit him again as he emerged from the tunnel and back into another sharp curve. Daniel tried to keep his head above the surface of the water as the amusement ride continued. A body of water appeared in the distance. The closer he came, the more Daniel realized it was a huge pond—almost a small lake. The trough leveled out in elevation, but the force of the water behind him kept the speed up.
Daniel came to the spilling edge of the trough and it deposited him into the pond. He swam with all his might and made his way to the shore as best he could. He had never been a very strong swimmer. When Daniel finally arrived at a depth where he could stand, he looked up to the shore only to find another set of stairs. “Hmm, coincidence?” he muttered. “I think not.”
Daniel sloshed out of the water and onto the shore. He collapsed there as exhaustion threatened to steal his consciousness, but he had no time to sleep. His friends still needed his help.
A noise caught his ear and he turned back toward the water. The warrior stood out in the middle of the huge pond. He had perched upon a column of stone rising out of the water to a height of nearly ten feet. Daniel grew angry. The trial should’ve been over, he supposed.
The warrior called several man-sized boulders from the rocky shore behind him and sent them hurtling over the pond toward Daniel on the opposite side. He was tired and wet and beaten up and Daniel Harwick had now had enough of these trials.
He thrust his hand out toward the mysterious warrior and something new and unexpected happened. The water between the warrior and Daniel burst forward as though a giant palm had skimmed the surface in a kid’s splash fight. The resulting wave surged forward with ferocious power and smashed into the warrior knocking him off of his rock and into the water. The boulders lost their momentum and dropped into the pond about half way across.
Once again, his new ability amazed him. He hadn’t expected the water to also obey his commands. He waited for the warrior to surface, but there was no sign of him. “Now the trials are over!” Daniel shouted across the pond. No answer came.
Satisfied, he turned back to the stone steps and followed them upward again. The Fiddler had said three trials and he hoped he would be shown where he needed to go from here. But for now, the only way to go was the path.
As he ascended the steps again, he saw another stone with the mysterious inscription upon it. The same words appeared. “There is a way that seems right unto a man, but the end of it is death.” Frustrated by his fatigue and the fact that he was cold and wet, Daniel did not pause at the stone this time.