“Well then, I probably don’t either,” he told her.

  “Why did Keshua make awful creatures like the Stone Walkers? They’re evil. Why did he want to make them at all?”

  Botan thought it over. He didn’t often answer such questions, but that wasn’t because he didn’t think about them. Mindik or Chera usually answered the hard questions, because their minds worked faster and they came up with answers before he could.

  This time, however, he had time to think.

  “When Keshua first made them, they wouldn’t have been evil. They must have turned evil later.”

  Pesom objected. “I don’t agree. They were always evil, I think.”

  “Why? Because they’re made out of stone? Long ago Stone Walkers might have liked people. Maybe the people back then enjoyed trying to talk to them. I would have.”

  “But what about their touch of death? A good creature would never want to petrify others,” Pesom said with a shudder.

  “Maybe they learned to do it on their own or maybe Keshua intended them to stiffen harmful things, but they turned their gift to bad use.”

  Pesom said, “humph,” but the tightness in her face relaxed. Botan knew it did, because he kept glancing over at her as they walked.

  It didn’t take long for Pesom to notice.

  “What is it, Botan? Why do you keep looking at me?” she asked.

  Botan’s face was the one that tightened this time, only he added to the overall look, a bright shade of red.

  “You wanted to go this morning because I was going,” he muttered.

  Pesom sighed. She was tired and a baby, even a loved baby, gets very heavy.

  “Yes, I did,” she said.

  Her answer didn’t seem to satisfy the young man next to her. He strode along, and his pace quickened as his face got even redder. Pesom had to hurry to keep up. She glanced hopefully at him several times, but he kept on walking, staring straight ahead.

  Pesom sighed again.

  “Will you marry me?” burst from Botan’s mouth so loudly two birds flew from the tree in front of them.

  “Yes!” answered Pesom just as loudly.

  Botan stopped and stared at her.

  “You mean it?” he asked in amazement.

  Pesom shifted Midget again. “You are the biggest idiot. I’ve loved you ever since we got back from Rosehip Mountain, but you ignored my hints, and I didn’t know what to do.”

  “What hints?” Botan blurted out.

  Pesom sighed for the third time that afternoon.

  “I’ve been beside myself. I wanted you to know, but I didn’t want to come out and say it, because I couldn’t figure out how you felt. All you talked about was what a good exploration team we made. I could have screamed.”

  Botan thought back while the red on his face faded.

  “I was dense—but not anymore,” he said tenderly.

  Botan stood a foot shorter than Mindik and Chera. His face was too broad and his nose twisted over to one side. Pesom smiled at him and saw only Botan—shy, fun-loving, dependable Botan.

  It was hard to kiss with a baby between them, but Pesom was happy with the results. Botan must have been happy too, because he was leaning over for another one, when he stopped and sniffed.

  “Do you smell something?” he asked and an expression of horror came over his face.

  Pesom giggled. “Uh oh. We forgot diapers.”

  “No,” Botan groaned. “Two Stone Walkers on the loose and a dirty diaper—it can’t get worse than this!”

  Immediately, as if planned by someone who not only had a great deal of power but also a good sense of humor, rain sluiced out of the thick clouds above them, a green deluge of rain that looked as if it intended to keep on sluicing the rest of the day.

  Pesom and Botan stared at each other and, despite everything, burst into laughter.

  R

  Mindik and Chera tore along the path through the woods. They ran until they had to slow down and then they jogged.

  The Stone Walkers had a head start, but at least they had left an easy path to follow. Up and down, over the hills and valleys before them, the big boulders had pushed mounds of fallen leaves to either side and trampled flat every fern and small bush in their way.

  When the brothers passed the unnaturally still bodies of two rabbits, the small heads and shoulders crushed flat, neither young man said anything. What was there to say? They knew what they had to do. They only hoped they would arrive in time to do it.

  As they neared Parsleyville, Chera lifted a panting head and grunted. The path was swerving off to their left, skirting the village.

  Mindik wheezed, “What a break! Cherry’s cottage is dead ahead.”

  Both of them stopped and leaned over gasping, but Chera was staring to the left while he caught his breath. His forehead wrinkled deeply.

  “They eat…small rocks,” he reminded his brother between breaths.

  Mindik’s eyes widened.

  “The quarry,” he whispered, and their brief rest period ended.

  The brothers sprinted along the path that now led around the village toward the newly cut rocks in their father’s quarry.

  R

  Earlier that same morning, a familiar pounding on her bedroom door woke Bumble.

  “Get up, girl,” shouted her uncle.

  Bumble could vaguely remember a time long, long ago, when she had awakened with the birds and jumped out of bed keenly anticipating a new day. Now she slept until Uncle Finken pounded on her door. She never felt anything keenly.

  That wasn’t true. This morning more than ever, Bumble felt so depressed she wanted to die. She kept her eyes closed and thought about leaving Tarth, leaving her tiredness and sadness, and going to the Great One and her parents. How she wished—

  “Bumble,” her uncle shouted again.

  Finken usually had to call his niece twice before she got out of bed. This morning was no exception. The floor in her bedroom creaked after the second call. Faso could hear it from the kitchen sitting area where she had sat in her chair to put on her shoes.

  Finken walked into the kitchen.

  “So she’s up?” asked Faso, stifling a yawn.

  “Yes,” he answered shortly as he went straight to the old desk in the corner and picked up the brown jewel he had released from its rough encasing three days ago.

  Faso watched him shamefacedly. She hadn’t gotten around to polishing the stone until the night before, when the light had been so dim her husband hadn’t been able to give it a thorough inspection. Exasperated at her, he had put the jewel in the small wooden bowl reserved for stones in progress and gone on to bed.

  Slowly now he ran his finger over the stone. Faso fully expected him to reach for his jeweler’s pick. She knew he was a perfectionist. Even after a stone was polished, he would not tolerate the slightest feeling of roughness. This morning he surprised her. Instead of reaching for the sharp tool, he turned the stone over and over in his hand, as if listening to something it was telling him.

  She rocked contentedly in her chair. In the past Faso had worked more on the jewels, but she’d gotten out of the habit over the last couple of years. It probably had something to do with gaining weight. The more weight she gained, the less energy she had.

  “That’ll be a good one,” she commented finally, right before Bumble slouched into the room.

  Finken had ordered Faso not to talk about the more valuable jewels in front of their niece. She knew he’d been strict about it because he hadn’t wanted the growing girl to get ideas of her own. Bumble’s parents—

  That was a bad train of thought. Faso jumped nervously when her husband broke his own rule.

  “It’s the best one we have. It’s worth three of the other ones, the other good ones,” he stated, staring at the jewel in his hand.

  Faso squirmed, darting an uneasy glance toward Bumble, but the young woman went across the kitchen and knelt at the wood-burning stove as if she hadn’t heard a word. She blew on the coals, but no red gleam responded.

  “You must not have banked it well enough last night. You’ll have to start a new one,” Faso told her.

  Awkwardly Bumble stood up and got a handful of wood shavings from the box behind the stove. Laying the shavings inside the stove in a clump, she took the flint and steel pieces from their drawer and hit them against each other. A spark flew out and extinguished itself on the stove side. She tried again with the same result. The third time, a spark hit the thin pieces of wood, and a small flame darted up.

  Carefully she fed the flame with kindling and then added larger pieces of wood, but Faso noticed her niece was clumsy this morning, even for her. As soon as the stove started producing steady heat and steam rattled the top of the water kettle, the older woman pushed up from her chair. It was time to brew the tea.

  While it was true that Bumble did most of the chores, Faso had kept a couple of favorites for herself. She always fed Sunshine because she enjoyed the cat’s pleasure in eating, and she brewed their tea because she firmly believed her mother had taught her the best possible way to do it.

  Lovingly, she filled the teapot with hot water and picked up a handful of tea leaves—no, too many. Letting a few leaves drop back into the canister, she sprinkled the rest onto the hot water and put the top on the teapot.

  Then she said, as she did every morning, “We’ll give it a few minutes to steep.”

  Bumble didn’t reply. The girl didn’t usually reply, but Faso felt a little uneasy.

  “You’re looking peaked. I’ll put extra tonic in your tea this morning. It keeps you going, you know,” she told her.

  Bumble believed her aunt. The sun rose every morning; she had daily chores; the tonic kept her going. All three maxims had formed the framework of her life for four years.

  Her aunt reached for three tea mugs and lined them up near the sink in the familiar morning routine. Everyone had a favorite mug. Finken’s was dark blue with a green rim. Faso’s was pink with light blue dots. Bumble’s was yellow with bumbly bell flowers on its rim.

  Bumble’s mother had painted the flowers years ago, and though Bumble had rarely been stubborn over the past four years, she had adamantly refused to use any other mug.

  “That one makes you sad, girl,” Finken had often told her.

  “I want it,” she’d muttered, and her uncle had shrugged his shoulders and gone on to something more important.

  This morning she watched listlessly as Faso dropped two teaspoons of tonic into the yellow mug. Just then a demanding mew resounded from the windowsill, and Sunshine stalked across the counter and leaped to the floor. The cat lifted imperious eyes and mewed again. It was time for food.

  “That animal eats too much. We ought to get rid of her,” complained Finken from his desk chair.

  He had finally picked up the sharp jeweler’s pick and was gently touching it to an objectionable spot on the brown jewel.

  “I eat too much and we’re not getting rid of me,” Faso retorted, straightening up from placing Sunshine’s filled bowl on the floor.

  She laughed merrily and went to sit in her rocking chair, panting from all of her exertions. Finken didn’t reply.

  Bumble finished cooking the eggs for breakfast and then reached under the sink for the big washing bowl. She put the bowl in the sink, dropped in a handful of soap powder, and filled the bowl with boiling water. It was necessary to use boiling water to melt the soap powder, but the hot boiling water hurt her hands. Preparing the soapy mixture ahead of time meant it would cool down to a bearable temperature by the time she needed it.

  The bubbling suds in the bowl made a pleasant homey sight, but they didn’t give her any pleasure this morning.

  “Tea’s ready,” Faso announced from her rocking chair’s comfortable depths.

  Bumble picked up the pot and poured tea into the three mugs on the edge of the sink, automatically moving an elbow away from Sunshine who had finished her breakfast and jumped back onto the counter.

  When the cat remained on the edge of the counter and flicked her ears, Bumble knew she was supposed to stroke from the top of Sunshine’s head to the beginning of her tail, being careful not to go down too far on the sides. Sunshine’s stomach was off limits to everyone, including her family, and Bumble could testify to that fact, having received several biting reminders in her younger days.

  As usual the big yellow cat yawned and stretched when she was ready to move on. Bumble obediently quit stroking her, and Sunshine started walking toward the windowsill. As she passed Bumble’s mug, she paused, barely breaking stride. With one quick jab from a front paw, she batted the yellow mug off the edge of the sink into the bowl of hot sudsy water.

  Bumble gasped, but she did it silently. She had learned to stay silent. Unnecessary noise brought fuss and scoldings.

  While Sunshine jumped unconcernedly onto the windowsill, as if batting mugs of tea into hot water was part of her normal morning routine, Bumble stood motionless at the sink. She didn’t know what to do. She stared at the mug bouncing up and down in the water. Her tea with its two teaspoons of tonic had blended instantly into the water.

  An idea wandered into the girl’s mind, a depressing idea, but one she was increasingly certain she wanted to carry out. If she didn’t take tonic that morning, it wouldn’t keep her going. If she didn’t take tonic all day, she would die. Her eyes blinked away a few tears, but the tears didn’t stop her from rinsing the cup and quietly filling it up with more tea. No one would know the tea didn’t have tonic in it.

  After breakfast she washed the dishes, tidied the kitchen, and started on her chores. Finken and Faso sat in their chairs in the kitchen sitting area. Whenever she passed them, they would stop talking and wait until she walked out of hearing range. Then they would start talking again.

  She didn’t even notice; it was all quite normal.

  “There’s enough,” Finken announced after Bumble had left the kitchen and stumbled down the hall to the supply closet.

  “Enough what?” asked Faso in a distracted tone of voice.

  Reaching for a handkerchief had taken her out of her chair. She wanted to sit down again before Sunshine jumped onto the chair cushion, but the cat seemed determined to get there first. A cloud had darkened and cooled the favored windowsill, and Faso knew her cat wanted a warm lap. The problem was she wanted a warm lap right away.

  Faso had to scoop the heavy cat up with one hand and grab the arm of the chair with the other before she could finish lowering herself.

  Sunshine didn’t appreciate being held in the air by one hand. She twisted out of Faso’s grasp and landed with a thump on the blue rug in front of the chair. At the same time Faso landed with a thump in the seat of her rocking chair.

  Cat and woman glowered at each other. It was Sunshine who broke eye contact first. With what appeared to be deliberate intent, the cat poked a hind leg straight up into the air and started washing her lower parts. Faso sniffed, certain she was being insulted.

  Finken jutted his head toward her, looking exactly like an irate rooster.

  “Enough jewels, woman,” he hissed.

  “Enough jewels. What does that mean?” she asked, startled.

  He didn’t answer right away. Instead he reached for a cloth and rubbed it carefully over the surface of the brown stone. Then he held it closer to the light.

  “Oh-h, it’s beautiful,” said Faso admiringly.

  “That it is and we’re at the beginning of summer too. If it were winter, everything would have to wait. Summer now, summer is the time to travel,” Finken replied without looking at her.

  As he placed the brown stone carefully back in the small wooden bowl, Faso stared at him in a disgruntled fashion. They had talked for years about moving to Munta Hill, but she’d never seriously considered what it would involve. A move sounded like a lot of work and trouble when they already had a home.

  Finken was her husband though, and Faso knew he was smarter than she was. She had always done whatever he told her to do.

  “What happens now?” she asked hesitantly.

  Finken jerked his head closer and opened his mouth, but just then Bumble walked through the room with the mopping bucket in her hand. He drew back into his desk chair as she passed.

  Their niece stepped onto the porch, closing the door behind her, and Faso heard Lynn call from her cottage. Bumble mumbled back, and Lynn responded in a quick determined voice. Faso couldn’t understand most of the conversation, but she heard the word, archery, loud and clear.

  When she turned back to her husband, there was an ugly expression on his face.

  “First thing we’ll do is teach a lesson to someone who doesn’t know better than to meddle in my business. Make her sick, that’s what we’ll do.”

  Faso started to shake. “No, Finken. Let’s not do it. Let’s not. Think about when your brother—”

  Her voice trailed off and a muscle twitched in the side of Finken’s neck.

  “I didn’t say I was going to let that happen again. It was a long time ago anyway.”

  “Your brother—” Faso started again.

  He cut her off. “My little brother always thought he was better than me. He bragged about it growing up. Then he got too good to brag anymore, but I knew he still thought it. He had a better job, married a better wife, lived in a better cottage, and had a child, but when he started moving into my gem business, I’d had all I could take.”

  Faso had never heard her husband reveal this much. He had always refused to talk about the past, especially the part of his past that had to do with his younger brother.

  Her mind latched onto one thing.

  “You said you didn’t want any children,” she whispered.

  Impatiently he said, “I didn’t want a girl who breaks everything she touches. I might have wanted a son though.”

  “You never told me,” she stated shakily.

  He didn’t respond.

  Though she knew better, Faso couldn’t help following her former train of thought. “You, you gave it to them—”

  “I didn’t mean them to drink so much,” snapped Finken, several muscles on his face twitching now. “It was their own fault. They would only have gotten sick if they’d had a glass apiece like normal people. Besides, I told you, I’m not talking about doing that again. I’m talking about teaching Lynn a lesson.”