The crowd was thicker
than usual at the downtown Hardbound Booksellers. Busy and noisy.
Normally, Kate would stop by on Fridays after work to pick out a new
book for the week, and she could walk right up to an open counter to
check out. But this week she had squandered her Friday evening on an
unpromising and socially exhausting coffee date, and come to the
Hardbound on Saturday morning instead. And now, there were maybe
twenty people queued in front of her. The row of five counters was
fully st

A
brisk wind sweeps through the canyon as the sun dips toward the
horizon. Far away upstream a natural archway bridges the cliffs,
where the river has carved a tunnel through a brittle limestone wall
over thousands of years. A couple hundred yards downstream, the river
roars over a steep slope before plunging into a basin — a murky
pool some fifty feet across, thick with churning brown and black
sediment, and topped with patches of fluffy white froth.
The
Devil's Bubblebath. That's what I woul