Everyone screamed as the girl vanished and there was a tremendous splash when her body hit the water thirty feet below.
"Oh my," Miss Dubbers gasped. "Stay away from the edge girls," she warned. "Can anyone see her?"
"There she is miss," a sharp-eyed pupil pointed as a dark head bobbed up near the foot of the cascade that filled the pool, the contrasting white foam making her easier to see. Others had already begun climbing down the side towards the pool in a bid to make a rescue attempt but there was no need.
Danique swam along with the current in the pool towards a slab of moss covered rock and with a swift, athletic movement she pulled herself up and out of the water. Her hair hung limp around her shoulders and mermaid-like she took it by handfuls and wrung the dampness out of it.
"My goodness, she's all right," the mistress could be heard sighing and spluttering as the older girls reached her and proferred first aid. To their surprise Danique stood up, a little unsteadily, and waved away concern as she began walking up the winding path to the top of the plateau again where Miss Dubbers awaited her with a blanket and fussy little attentions.
"Whatever happened child?" she asked anxiously, once she had ascertained one of the pupils under her immediate care was unharmed. "You must take extra extra care in this wilderness for we are far from help."
"I'm sorry miss, my foot slipped on a loose pebble I think." As she made this explanation Danique gave Bubbles an arch look and the briefest of smirks.
"Well, thankfully the day is hotting up nicely so you should dry out fairly quickly. I hope you did not swallow any of the pool water. Please drink this cordial just in case."
"Steam will be coming off her in no time, miss, once we get hiking again." This helpful observation was made by Vanira Suthiam, who stood hands on hips, giving the clumsy first year a rueful look.
"Indeed. Oh look, her locator wristlet thinks she's at the bottom of Lake Topaz. That's part of another watershed entirely so quite an impossibility. I shall message the school regarding the accident so Miss Plazenby will have no undue worries as to why one of the expedition appears to be swimming with fishes two hundred miles from where she should be."
Following that clarification the matter was passed over without further comment and everyone packed up for the resumed journey north.
They now traversed a difficult highland plateau broken up by interminable ridges that wearied the limbs and shredded the patience of girls more used to the gentle slopes of playing fields devoid of boulders and prickly snags.
"Bev's inflatable mattress would have been killed long ago," someone snorted as they helped a girl untangle her hair from a low-hanging branch. The groups of girls had naturally fallen into their respective years, the far largest group being third years, and as Bubbles had expected, Vanira seemed to delegate to herself the leading of that group. The seconds stayed near the mistress, listening to her botany and geology lectures as various sightings inspired each topic in turn.
"How far now miss, to our campsite?" one said, the one called Eventa, Bubbles thought. She and Danique naturally gravitated to each other as fairly new girls, mere babies in the eyes of the others.
"We have one final ridge to surmount and we shall be there. I guarantee girls the view will be a treat," Miss Dubbers insisted. She indicated a forbidding wall of rock that filled half the sky ahead of them.
"That was no accident," Bubbles said, nudging her still damp friend as they began to climb a mountain trail that wove in and out of ancient stands of spruce and fir. The girl gave her a neutral look.
"No accident I survived a near death experience," Danique lightly dismissed the matter.
"A story to impress your friends later back at the school perhaps?" Bubbles suggested. For answer Danique reached down, picked up a twig, and threw it at a cluster of red and gold butterflies that hovered in a patch of sunlight. They scattered without taking any harm and then as if this callous action had evoked the ire of the land there was a shaking of the ground followed by a distant rumble. Girls shrieked and some fell over. A boulder half the size of a house could be seen tumbling down the side of a distant cliff, tearing through bushes and felling trees in its unstoppable path.
"Have no fear ladies," Miss Dubbers could be heard over the echoes that followed. "We are on a safe path and are in no danger of being crushed by an avalanche."
"Pity," muttered the Evernight girl but only Bubbles heard this ominous comment.
"Please continue the journey. Once we reach the top of this hill all will become clear," the mistress added, waving everyone forward. Finding themselves on a slope which might at any minute collapse beneath them made the girls increase their speed to reach the peak, for from there it was in theory impossible to be flattened by falling rocks.
Bubbles was one of the first to the top and she took her rucksack off and let it drop on the grassy mound, immediately forgotten as she took in the view revealed from this eminence. Others gathered and gasped and whistled and clapped. Miss Dubbers stood tall among them, proud of the sight.
"Behold my children, that which makes a Winkel a Winkel."
Fifty miles away on the other side of a sloping valley sprinkled with flowers and bisected by numerous rills lay a ridge of burnt and fractured rock. Above this boiled and thundered clouds of purple and yellow vapour, flickering every now and then with bright blue flashes of lightning. The storm barrier, an impassible force of nature that defined the northern boundary of Frangea. A place of instant death to anyone foolish enough to approach too close. Out of the corner of her eye Bubbles caught a movement. It was Danique Ferale, taking a step closer to the deadly storm clouds, closer than any of the other girls. In her dark eyes there shone a light of awe mixed with what might be fear, and something else, something Bubbles could not quite understand. It was a look of utter hatred.
