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except to decide that it was making me feel a little crazy. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I blinked, and looked uncomfortably back at Boe for some help, but he clearly hadn’t seen any of this silent exchange. Whatever it had been.
    I decided that it probably wasn’t a good look Daija was giving me, though I had no idea what I’d done wrong. I was almost starting to look forward to the predictable blandness and torture of training.
    ***
    We finally reached the front of the line and nobody had said anything to each other for the past thirty minutes. It was one of the longest half hours of my life.
    A short young girl dressed as a pixie led the four of us to our own bench, really a smaller version of the benches we sat on for the Tournament and other entertainment. This time there were safety handles attached to the logs that we were asked to hold on to tightly. There was only one handle on either side of each of us, meaning we had to share. I was sitting between Daija and Laciann, and I wasn’t sure whether it would be safer to share the safety handles with the two of them or to just try to do my best to keep my balance without using the handles at all. Remembering what Boe said about this being a special scary performance of the ride made me decide to risk using the handles rather than risk falling off the log in front of everyone. I’d managed to make it through six weeks of the festival without horribly embarrassing myself, and I was overdue for something terrible to happen to me.
    I stared straight ahead and reached down. I grabbed the handle on my left first, where Laciann was sitting. There was no contact, no incident. I grabbed the handle to my right and instead found that I had placed my hand right on top of Daija’s. Oh boy. I looked at her and was surprised to see a shy smile creep across her face. It looked like whatever had happened before, we were still okay. I felt surprisingly relieved. When had I started caring so much about what Daija thought of me? But I did. Quite a bit. Without giving myself time to think about it, I squeezed her hand and left mine on top of hers. She didn’t object.
    The ride started out slowly, as vague shapes appeared in a swirling fog in front of us. Someone with a deep, raspy voice read from a script behind us, explaining what it was we were supposed to be seeing. It was almost comical, at first. Then the narrator stopped abruptly and just as I was about to crane my neck to look behind us and see what was happening with the narrator, there was a shout of alarm from the front row and then two burning orbs lit up, deep in the swirling fog.
    I could see the black silhouette of a dragon growing larger. She was coming toward us, her eyes glowing brighter as she roared through the mist. Puffs of flame seemed to be trailing from her grinning maw. In moments she was upon us and I felt the heat of Dragonsfire and then heard a loud crackling sound. The log dropped suddenly and I heard Laciann scream as I tightened my grip around Daija’s hand. I felt and saw a fire bolt pass overhead, nearly singing my hair. Boe hadn’t mentioned that we’d be in actual danger from this ride!
    We were rocked forward and somehow I knew that the dragon was in pursuit. The swirling mists gave the impression that we were in a dense forest, weaving through tight openings in the foliage. We rose and fell as if we were on horseback; the horse was in a dead gallop, fearing for his life and not caring about the safety of his riders. Behind us, there were loud noises as the dragon felled trees and tore apart underbrush in her pursuit. Now and then we would leap over an oncoming fire bolt or dodge sideways to avoid a shadowy claw. I found myself ducking and cringing at each narrow escape.
    Then, we were seemingly bucked from our saddles as the log twirled and flew upside down. I did all I could to avoid crushing Daija’s hand beneath mine now, trying to hold all my weight with my left