Authors: Rebecca Rupp
The Waterstone
Prologue
The Magpie’s Treasure
The young magpie collected things. Her shaggy nest was crammed with treasures, all lovingly sorted into heaps and piles. She had — she counted on her wingtips — a curly yellow ribbon, an orange butterfly’s wing, six striped feathers, a handful of scarlet berries, two silver beads, a pink snail shell, and a glittery gold-flecked stone. It was an outstanding Collection — one of the best in the Flock, the magpie thought privately, though she was too well brought up to say so. Still, even the best Collection was never finished. Collecting was a way of life, and a good magpie was always watchful, searching for new and better additions for the hoard.
Today she had found a prize.
She had spotted it far below her — at first just a tempting glitter, a sudden flash in the sunlight, like a fragment of mirror glass. She dived toward it, heart pounding. There it was. A once-in-a-lifetime find. Half hidden in a little hollow littered with dead leaves lay a snow-white crystal the size of a robin’s egg, streaked with shining threads of silver. Its facets captured and reflected the spring sunshine in a dancing dazzle, and from within, it glowed with a mysterious, soft cool light. Unable to believe her luck, the magpie stooped, deftly plucked it up, and rose triumphantly into the air. In her excitement, she barely noticed the approaching foe, until he squawked demandingly in her ear.
She had seen him before. A scruff-tailed bully from the other side of the forest. Because his own Collection was so paltry — crumbly gray lichens, a pinecone, and a few withered heads of red clover — he often tried to snatch finds from cleverer, more talented birds. Well, today he wasn’t snatching. Not from her. She dodged adroitly, glaring fiercely at the interloper. But he wouldn’t let her alone. He followed her, squawking greedily, deliberately bumping against her, trying to knock her out of the air. His wings buffeted her head. She screamed in fury.
The crystal was falling. It plummeted downward through the air, dwindling in an instant to a vanishing silver pinprick, and splashed, with dreadful finality, into the blue lake far below. Beneath the surface it fell onward, plunging down through the clear water, gleaming whitely and trailing a long comet’s tail of tiny silver bubbles. Above it, unheard, a horrified male magpie fled, pursued by an enraged female with blood in her eye.
The crystal slowed in its long descent, drifting gently to the lake bottom. In its wake a shadow fell. Suddenly the quiet water trembled as if something better left sleeping had come awake.
Tad was beginning to hate the spear.
It was his first spear, and — when he had woken on the morning of his twelfth Naming Day to find it leaning against the wall beside his bed — he had thought that it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. His father had always pretended that Naming Day presents were brought each year by the Moon Elves, who traveled to Earth on moonbeams and brought gifts to well-behaved girls and boys. But it had been a long time since Tad had believed in the Moon Elves, and besides he would have recognized the handiwork of his father, Pondleweed, anywhere. The spear had a broad chiseled flint point, a polished wooden haft painted in red-and-black stripes, and a leatherleaf handgrip, just the right size for Tad’s hand. There was even a decorative tassel at the end, made of braided silkgrass threaded with brightly colored seeds. No boy, Tad was sure, had ever had a finer weapon or a better Naming Day gift. Just owning it was enough to make him almost burst with pride.
Of course, it wasn’t the way the spear
looked
that was the problem. It was the way the thing behaved. No matter what Tad did, the spear simply wouldn’t do what he wanted it to. It acted as though some magicker had put an evil spell on it. It seemed to have a mind of its own, and that mind was mischievous, contrary, and sometimes just plain mean.
This time his throw should have been perfect. He had taken his stance just as Pondleweed had taught him: one foot forward, knees braced, back straight. He had taken his time, drawing back his arm, rehearsing every move in his head, taking careful aim. The target was a square of birch bark with a great round eye — the Owl’s Eye, Pondleweed called it — painted with red berry juice in the center. A good spearsman, Pondleweed said, could hit that Eye with every throw — and every man of the Fisher Tribe, it went without saying, was an expert with the spear.
Tad just knew he had it right this time. It
felt
right. As the spear flew from his hand, he could almost hear the solid
thunk
of the stone point hitting home and the satisfying hum of the quivering haft. He had even opened his mouth to give a delighted yell of triumph. And then, at the very last minute, everything went sour. The spear wobbled, veered sideways, and dived abruptly out of the air. It bounced once, slithered under the blackberry bushes, scooted across the ground, and splashed heavily into the pond. It floated there for a moment on the water’s surface; then — deliberately, Tad thought — it sank, leaving behind a mocking trail of bubbles. Tad stared after it in dismay.
The pond erupted in a chorus of croaks from a bevy of startled frogs, followed by a raucous burst of what sounded like loud amphibian laughter. A blue jay, balanced on an overhanging branch, set up a derisive squawk.
“Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”
She sounded as if something were squeezing her around the middle. Tad wished it were him.
He glared at the blue jay furiously. It wasn’t wise to pick a fight with birds, Pondleweed said; even seed-eating birds could be dangerous, with their knife-edged claws and their dagger-long beaks capable of pecking an unwary Fisher right in two. “If it’s near as big as you or bigger,” Pondleweed always said, in that serious voice that he used for things that were important, “chances are it’s not your friend, and even if it’s got no mind to hurt you, it still might. So don’t you go worrying any birds.”
The blue jay gave a last loud giggle and flew away. Tad clenched his fists and kicked angrily at the ground.
“Mudpats!”
he muttered under his breath. He looked guiltily over his shoulder, but there seemed to be nobody within earshot. He paused for a moment, trying to think of something even worse to say.
“Fish pee! Weasel droppings!”
The red Owl’s Eye seemed to be looking right at him with an expression of mocking contempt. Tad bent down, picked up a pebble, and threw it at the target as hard as he could. The pebble missed too. It was his seventeenth miss that day. Tad felt mad enough to pop like a milkweed pod. At the same time he felt like bursting into tears.
“Tad?”
Tad jumped. It was his little sister, Birdie. Birdie had turned nine on her last Naming Day, in the cold Moon of Bare Trees, and her present, Tad remembered, had been a willow-twig doll. Fisher girls were supposed to cook and sew and grow up to be good wives and mothers. Nobody expected
them
, Tad reflected bitterly, to perform impossible tricks with hateful mudsucking stone-pointed sticks. Birdie didn’t know how lucky she was.