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tug-of-war with the ray until my arms got tired. Pulling wasn’t working, so I yanked the pole back and forth as fast as I could. The stingray didn’t let go—instead, its pincers broke off as if they were made of glass! I felt terrible. I hadn’t meant to hurt the creature.
    I pulled the pole onto the raft. The ray hovered nearby, as though it were hoping the pole would come back. Just before it got bored and swam away, I saw the nubs of new pincers where the old ones had been. I touched the broken pincers on my pole. They felt like glass. I pried them off and held them up to the light. They really looked like glass. Queen Patchouli had used the name Glass Lake. Maybe the lake didn’t just look like glass—maybe all the plants and creatures in the lake
were
glass!
    When I started poling again, I kept looking down at the water as well as up at the mountains. Scanning the lake became part of the poling motion. I was alert for living creatures but not for other dangers. When I was halfway across, I pushed, expectingmy pole to touch bottom. It didn’t, and I almost fell off the raft. I didn’t fall—I just sat down hard—but now I had another problem.
    I didn’t have a paddle, and the water was too deep for me to use the pole. The raft just bobbed. I was stuck lying down and paddling with my hands. Unfortunately, it turned out that my fingers looked like something tasty to eat and that the little glass fishies were scared of nothing. Although I paddled as fast as I could, I was nipped several times. I was so busy trying not to be fish food, a few minutes passed before I felt the breeze on my neck.
    Looking up, I saw dark clouds scooting across the sky from behind me. In a moment the calm surface of the lake would be hit by the strong wind. Ripples were starting already, and if I didn’t move fast, the raft could be swamped by waves! If I fell in the water, I doubted that my clothes would turn into a sleek wetsuit without the river maidens’ magic—the weight of my boots alone would pull me down before I could possibly swim to shore!
    I was just about to take my boots off, when I got an idea. It was crazy, but worth trying. I unfolded my coat and put it on, but I didn’t fasten the buttons. I stood up, gripped the front edges, and held the coat open like a sail, facing the wind. The breeze seemedto embrace me as it filled the coat, and the coat’s soft, strange material expanded as the wind filled it, turning it into a small sail. The wind in my sail-coat pushed the raft toward the far shore. I closed my eyes, the wind blowing in my face, as I raced the oncoming storm.
    Bending my knees, I was able to ride the raft like a surfboard. I had no sooner settled into that rhythm than I was pelted by something. I opened my eyes to see flying fish, seemingly made of glass, zipping past me. The small fish weren’t hitting me on purpose. We were going in the same direction, fleeing the storm. Most of the fish cleared both the raft and me, but the ones that hit me and fell to the hard logs shattered. Some left tiny cuts on my hands and neck before their school changed course and moved out of harm’s way.
    I sailed the raft the rest of the way across the lake—almost. The storm died out as quickly as it had risen, my coat shrank to its normal size, and I folded it back up. Then I used the pole to push the raft the last fifty yards to the beach. I jumped to the shore and hauled the raft onto the sand, stowing the pole underneath. Picking up my coat, I paused to look around.
    The sandy beach was edged with large scattered rocks. Beyond the rocks was a wall of stones. Thewall was quite high, and looked to be covered with moss of some sort. I wondered if I could climb it.
    The three mountains were still some distance away, and I had to crane my neck to see the peaks. The golden glow over the tops of the Three Queens shone brilliantly even in daylight. With no other clues