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minutes.”
    Until now she hadn’t fully understood what it meant. But in just the past five minutes the sky, so transparent that you felt you could reach up and touch the sun, had disappeared.
Whammo
, everything had fallen into darkness under bruise-colored clouds.
    The wind was driving hard from Yakutat, pushing ahead of a storm like a warning.
    Cody handed Derek a rain slicker over her shoulder. She tied the bandanna over No Fear to keep it from blowing off and snapped the rubber skirt around her waist. Earth and water. Now wind. It seemed as if the entire universe were against them.
    We can find some kind of shelter
, she thought,
even if it’s only under a rocky ledge. Tie up and wait out the storm. Then turn around and battle the current back to Yakutat
. That’s what she told Derek. But she knew storms like the one coming were unpredictable.
    No food. No fresh water
pounded at her. And
No one knows we’re out here
.
    She checked her watch. She knew they wouldn’t be missed until Mom and Aunt Jessie returned from Juneau. The plane wasn’t due in until the next day, weather permitting. Small planes were grounded during storms.
    Her mother wouldn’t find the note she’d left—scrawledon a used envelope and taped to the milk carton inside the fridge so that Derek wouldn’t see it—until she came back to the cabin.
    Cody turned the kayak around. The wind swirled in minitornados that churned the water and sent it splashing over the bow. The kayak lurched forward in awkward spurts, lifting and falling as it slapped wildly at the uneven swells.
    That was when she heard it.
    A deafening crash rumbled through the steep mountain corridors. Thunder. She shuddered at the sound. It was too close. And it seemed to be in front of them. It didn’t seem possible. All the wind was blowing from behind, chasing them, closing in.
    Maybe a second storm was coming at them from the ocean. They could be squashed by two raging storms.
    The noise was like a firecracker set off in a tin can. Another bend in the fjord. There were no rocky ledges here either, or secluded coves. There was no shelter of any kind, except a giant tidewater glacier with its snout edging into the water.
    “Is that Hubbard?” Derek hollered over the wind.
    Cody shook her head. “It can’t be.” She couldn’t believe the massive wall of ice less than a mile away. The frozen face was as long as a football field across and more than ten stories high.
    A woeful moan grew into a deafening roar, like the dull static of white noise. It hadn’t been thunder after all. A chunk of ice the size of Yakutat Tavern broke loose and plummeted into the water. Seagulls appearedfrom nowhere, swooping down to feed on the brine shrimp brought up by the turbulence.
    “Backpaddle!” Cody shouted.
    A series of icy walls of waves four or five feet high rolled out from the broken chunk, now an enormous iceberg bobbing in the salt water. The giant waves aimed at the kayak.
    Cody knew she should keep paddling, put as much water as possible between the iceberg and the kayak, but the undercurrent was too strong and much too swift. If the waves slammed the craft just right, her paddle would be torn from her grip.
    “Hang on to your paddle!”
    The first wave hit them sideways, spraying salt and buckets of water. The kayak dropped into a deep trough, tipped unsteadily, and nearly capsized. It lolled on its side and would have spit them out if it hadn’t been for the rubber skirts holding them in. The kayak rolled back the other way and righted itself.
    Derek cried, “Here comes another one!”
    The second wave struck harder than the first, lifting the kayak and letting it coast on the crest. One, two, three seconds. It seemed like a lifetime. Then it dropped flat into a deep trough. The wooden craft shook when it hit bottom, threatening to split at its canvas shell.
    Wave after wave.
    Boom, boom, boom
.
    The next wave sailed right over the bow and slapped Cody in the face. She