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or two breathtaking sprints, but this was a run that went on for so long that it wasn’t possible to keep holding her breath. She was soon exhausted and panting, as if it were she and not the horse who was doing the running. And all the while, there was the steady
creak-creak-creak
of the horseshoes, like rusty hinges opening the door to … 
who knew what
?
    Suddenly, they plunged into deep shadow. Daisy looked up and gasped. Over the jagged tree-tops, the snowcapped mountain loomed, shockingly close and glowing pale pink in the rays of the lowering sun.
    “Yep!” Jesse said, as if his suspicion was now confirmed. “That’s where we’re headed. High Peak!”
    “Emmy’s first nest,” Daisy said, and a shiver of anticipation rippled through her.
    The path grew steeper, and now the sock balls became single socks, stretched out like bright arrows pointing the way upward in the gathering gloom. The route they were on was familiar from hikes they had taken with Uncle Joe. Old Bub leaped up the steep paths with the nimbleness of a mountain goat.
    Jesse lay along Old Bub’s neck, arms grimly tangled in the mane. Daisy clung to Jesse, her cheek pressed to his back. Beneath her interwoven fingers, she felt the wild beating of Jesse’s heart. Daisy was sure her own heart was beating just as rapidly. What had been exciting was now terrifying. What if the horse’s hooves slipped on the rocks?What if the two of them slid off his back? Would they tumble backward off the side of the mountain?
    After a long while, the terrain began to level off a bit and the horse slowed to a trot. The wind pounded Daisy’s back like icy fists and made her glad for her winter coat. She opened her eyes and looked around. The trees had dwindled to almost nothing. They were on the upper slopes of High Peak, above the timberline. It was a good twenty degrees colder up here. The wind whipped their hair every which way and worked its frigid fingers down the collars of their coats.
    Jesse untangled his right hand from Old Bub’s mane long enough to point to a group of boulders lying up ahead. This was the spot where Jesse had found the geode from which Emmy had hatched. But Old Bub lurched right past the spot and crunched up the snowy hillside toward the summit.
    At the top of High Peak, there was a lake, no bigger than the pool of a large public fountain but much, much deeper. Uncle Joe always said that it was deeper than the highest skyscraper was high, because it was the water-filled crater of an extinct volcano whose core reached down to the magma layer beneath the earth’s crust.
    Old Bub stopped on the banks of the lake and, reminding Jesse of a bus that had come to the endof the line, released a long puff of steam and settled his body to say he was done.
    The cousins gratefully slipped down from Old Bub’s back. The horse wandered off and dropped his head to nibble at the blades of dull-green dried grass poking up through the snow. Jesse and Daisy staggered around, catching their breath, shaking out their limbs, and checking themselves for bruises.
    Jesse stopped suddenly and looked at the lake. It was a body of water so freezing cold that nobody ever swam in it, even after a vigorous climb on the hottest day of the summer. In the last rays of the setting sun, wisps of steam rose off its glassy surface.
    Daisy knelt, dipped a hand in the water, and quickly pulled it out. “It’s boiling hot, Jess.”
    The cousins stared down into the water’s crystalline depths.
    “And look!” Daisy said, pointing. “See it? There’s another sock … under the water.” Shivering, Daisy straightened and stepped back.
    Jesse went behind Daisy and unfastened the backpack. Daisy watched as he came around and unscrewed the top of the purple canteen. Throwing back his head, he took a healthy swig from it. At first, his face puckered up something fierce. Thenhis eyes popped open, his mouth gaped, and he began to pant.
    “Jesse Tiger, what in Sam Hill are