“It’s a hot spring!” said Janna. “Something’s coming out of the thorns to use the hot spring. But what would do that?” Mousebones hopped over to a small, steaming mud puddle and held his wing out over it. “Ahhh…that’s the stuff.” It’s the otters, Gerta wanted to say. That’s a giant otter slide. She’d seen them in winter, near her village. When everyone bundled up and went out to throw snowballs, or to ice fish or check the trap lines, you’d find otters playing on every snowbank, sliding down over and over, until their bellies beat the snow into glossy ice. Then they loved it even more.
