The Stone That Came Back

Miles knocked on the blue door, waited, and knocked again. Then he went around through the gap in the hedge and rapped on the shutter with one knuckle.

"I'm up," said a voice inside that was plainly still in bed.

"You said dawn."

"I said dawnish." Blankets moved. Something hit the floor, possibly a boot, possibly all of Beno. "Is there bread?"

"There will be bread when we take Barley the eggs. That's the whole arrangement."

Beno came out a minute later with one bootlace trailing and a piece of straw in his hair. He was thirteen, the same as Miles, born three doors down and two weeks later. Miles looked at the straw, opened his mouth, and decided not to ask.

"Plan?" said Beno, around a yawn.

"Eggs to Barley's. Bread home. Tuttle's fence. Then the river, all afternoon."

"How long's the fence?"

"An hour."

"It was an hour last time," said Beno, "and it took three."

"Because you painted your ear. Paint the fence and it's an hour."

Down the lane, Hushvale was waking up. Smoke stood straight up from the bakery chimney, and the light lay low and gold along the thatch. Old Nan was out at her gate, tying up a climbing rose that had given her nothing all summer.

She laid a hand on the gatepost. "Morning, gate," she said, and the gate swung open for her, easy on its hinges, and she came out into the lane. Neither boy looked twice.

"Morning, Old Nan!" they said together.

"Morning, trouble. Tell Barley my order's moved to Tuesday." She glanced back at the rose, bare as a broom handle.

"Still no flowers?" said Beno.

"Not yet." She didn't seem worried about it. "You can't hurry a thing into being yours, dear. You ask nicely, and you keep showing up. The rest happens while you're asleep."

"Yes, Old Nan," said both boys, and Miles was already moving. "Race you to Barley's! Loser carries the loaf!"

"You can't just start one..." Beno yelled, and started.

The race went to Miles by half a doorstep. He raised both fists over his head and jogged a small circle in front of the bakery, and Beno leaned on the wall and gave a speech about cheating that nobody heard, because warm air and the smell of the morning loaves came rolling out of the door and ended the argument.

Inside, Mrs. Barley took the eggs and counted them with one finger. Then she thumped a bowl of dough onto the counter, where it sat flat as a dropped hat.

"That one's being difficult," she said.

Beno got his nose down to the level of the bowl. "Difficult how?"

"Shy, most like. Off the counter, dear, you'll make it worse." And she hummed at the bowl, three notes, maybe four, and went into the back for their loaf.

Beno watched the dough the whole time she was gone. The dough did nothing at all. Then the door creaked, he glanced up at her for half a second, and when he looked down again the dough stood high and golden over the rim of the bowl.

"There we are," said Mrs. Barley. "Loaf for your mother, and tell her the honey's come in."

Out in the lane, Beno walked backwards so he could keep an eye on the shop. "It went up. Miles. I looked away for half a second and it went up."

"Two bowls." Miles didn't slow down. "There's a risen one under the counter. She swaps them when you blink. Watch her elbows next time... the hands'll be too fast."

"Her elbows," said Beno slowly, filing it away somewhere.

At the corner, Beno stopped dead and grabbed Miles's sleeve.

"She's coming," he said. "Look. Look."

Up the lane came the post bird, flying low, a yard off the ground and never an inch higher, copper feathers catching the sun, her tail streaming behind her like a ribbon. She rapped twice on the blue door of the end house, left a letter on the step, and came skimming on toward the boys.

"Don't move," Beno whispered, steering Miles into the middle of the lane. "Stand there. Right there."

"Why am I standing here?"

"Shh."

Renilda came past at the height of their knees... rose... and tipped her head at Miles as she went by, holding his eye for a long, deliberate moment. Then she was gone over the hedges.

Beno punched the air. "She did it! Did you see it, she did it again!"

"She looked at me," said Miles. "Birds look at things."

"Four hundred doors on her round," said Beno, walking backwards to watch the hedge where she'd vanished, "and she checks on you. On you. I've been leaving her bread all year and she's never once checked on me."

"Maybe stop leaving it on the roof."

"The roof is where she flies," said Beno, with dignity, and he let it go, because his best friend was friends with the post bird, and somebody in that friendship had to do the talking.

Mr. Tuttle's fence took until the middle of the afternoon. Mr. Tuttle supervised from a kitchen chair he had carried out for the occasion, and talked about his brother's knee through the first coat and most of the second. By the last post, Beno had painted the fence and one of his own ears, and Mr. Tuttle paid them in plums off the tree by his door, a whole bag.

They went out the back gate at a dead run.

Below the mill, the Millbrook slowed and spread itself into a long glassy pool, clear to the gravel, green under the willows where their branches trailed in the water. The bank at the boys' spot opened into a little beach of clean pebbles, and dragonflies were stitching back and forth above the shallows. A duck saw them arrive and paddled to the far end of the pool without comment.

"Score," said Beno, crouching over the pebbles.

"Forty-one all."

"Forty-one to forty. Me."

"You hit the duck, Beno. Duck throws don't count."

Beno looked down the pool at the duck. The duck looked back at him. "Forty-one all," he agreed.

Miles found his stone in under a minute, flat and gray and the right weight, and stood tossing it and catching it while Beno worked the beach. Beno picked stones up and put them down. He weighed them in his palm. He held one to his ear.

"They don't make sounds," said Miles.

"This one's wrong," said Beno, and put it back exactly where it had been, and kept looking.

He was still looking when Miles wandered down to the waterline to wet his throwing hand, and stopped. Half sunk in the mud below the willow lay a pale shape. Miles pulled it loose without thinking much about it, a stone the shape of a flattened egg, white as the moon on a clear night, and completely wrong for skipping... and then he stood very still with it in his hand.

"Beno."

"Busy."

"Beno. Come feel this."

Beno came and felt it, and his eyebrows went up and stayed up. "It's warm."

"It was under the mud." Miles crouched and pressed his palm flat into the dent where it had been. He held it there a moment, and his face changed. "And the mud's cold. So there's... springs." He stood up, wiping his hand on his shirt, already building it. "Warm springs under the bank. That's a thing somewhere. I'm nearly sure it's a thing."

"Or it likes you," said Beno.

"Stones don't like people."

"You held it first," said Beno, and he looked back up the lane, the way the bird had gone, and didn't say anything else about it.

Miles pocketed the warm stone, out of respect, and threw his flat gray one first, winner's rights. It was a good one. Six skips, long and low, the last three so quick they sounded like one. He turned around with both fists in the air.

"Six! Beat six!"

Beno's throw was pure Beno, both feet off the ground, arms everywhere, no technique in it and all of him behind it. Four skips, and he claimed five, and the argument carried them back up the beach, where it stopped, because Miles had taken the white stone out of his pocket again and was looking at it.

"Throw the warm one," said Beno.

"It's round. It'll skip twice and drown."

"It won't." Beno crouched to look at it, nose to stone. "Tell it what you want first."

"Tell it what I..." Miles looked at his best friend. He looked at the stone, warm in his palm, and felt ridiculous, and did it anyway, so quietly Beno almost missed it. "Right. You and me. Six and we're famous."

The stone went out fast and level. One skip, two, then three more in a quick stitch, dead level with his own mark, and Beno was already shouting "six all, you've tied yourself, that's six all"...

...when the stone stopped.

It stopped on the water.

Forty feet out, a small white dot sat on the surface of the pool while the rings of its last skip spread wide, smoothed over, and were gone. Up at the mill, the wheel went on turning. On the pool, nothing moved.

"Beno." Miles's voice came out higher than he meant it to. "You see it. Tell me you see it."

"I see it," Beno whispered.

"Why is it... stones sink. It skipped, and now it has to sink. Is it on a stick? Is there a stick out there?"

"You told it six," Beno whispered. "Maybe it's not finished."

And then, gently, with no hurry at all, the stone rose off the water. A foot up, then two, and there it hung in the sunshine, white above the green pool, turning slowly. And it began to drift back toward them, across the water, taking its time.

Beno made a sound that started as a whoa and turned into a shriek halfway through. Miles grabbed his arm and shouted something with no words in it, and then they were both hopping in a circle on the pebbles, pointing at the stone with their free hands, yelling "it's coming back" and "I can see it's coming back," until every bird in the willows had gone up into the sky.

The stone crossed the pool at its own pace. It floated up the little beach, chest high, and stopped in front of Miles, and stayed there.

The dancing stopped. Miles looked at Beno. Beno nodded, very slowly. Miles put out his hand, and the stone came down onto his palm with a small settling weight. Still warm.

"It came back," Miles breathed.

"I saw."

"Stones don't come back, Beno."

"I know they don't. Throw it again," said Beno. "Right now. Please."

The stone skipped six times, stopped, rose, and came home to Miles's hand, and the two of them whooped louder than the first time.

"Can I throw it?" said Beno. "One throw."

"Be nice to it."

"I'm always nice to it. I'm nice to everything." And that was true, and the throw was a lovely one anyway, five skips, a stop, a rise, a slow turn in the air... and the stone came drifting back across the water, drew level with Beno's open, waiting hand... and went around him, and settled on Miles's palm.

Beno stared at his empty hand. Then he sat down on the pebbles and laughed until he had to hold his ribs. "It went around me," he managed. "Miles. It went around me."

"It doesn't know you yet," said Miles, kindly.

"I talk to stones." Beno told this to the sky, still flat on his back, delighted with the unfairness of everything. "I have talked to stones my whole life. And the first stone that ever listens picks a boy with a list."

"The list found it," said Miles, and put out a hand and pulled him up.

They tested it all down the gold end of the afternoon. They set it on the pool and it floated in place, riding its own reflection. Miles hid behind the willow with his eyes shut while Beno carried the stone fifty paces down the beach, set it on a rock, and backed away watching it. It waited until he had gone ten steps. Then it lifted, floated up the beach without one wobble, went around the willow, and tapped Miles on the shoulder.

The yell reached the mill.

Beno arrived at a run, and found Miles sitting in the pebbles with the stone held in both hands. "Okay," Miles said. "Okay, okay. The bakery. Have you ever seen her swap the bowls? Ever? Once?"

"...No?"

"Old Nan's gate, this morning. Did her hand touch it? Think."

Beno thought. His eyes went wide, and then wider. "Miles," he whispered. "Who winds the chimes?"

They stared at each other on the empty beach.

"Nobody winds the chimes," said Miles, very quietly.

In Miles's palm, the stone tipped.

It leaned, gently but unmistakably, toward the willow, toward the muddy dent at the waterline where he had pulled it loose. Miles took a step that way and the stone settled. He stepped back, and it leaned again, patient as a compass needle.

"It wants to go back where I found it."

"It just came from there."

"Maybe it forgot something," said Beno.

Miles looked at the dent in the mud. He looked at his own hands, still clean. Then he laughed, rolled up his sleeves, and knelt down in the mud first. "This was not on the list," he said.

"Best thing on it," said Beno, landing beside him.

The digging was glorious for ten minutes, and after that it was work. Under the mud the bank turned to gray clay, laced through with willow roots as thick as their arms, and water crept into the hole as fast as they could bail it out. The plums came out of the bag somewhere in the first hour and were eaten with gray hands.

Then Beno's stick knocked against something hard, and both boys yelled and dug like badgers, and hauled up out of the clay... a cobble. An ordinary brown cobble, about the size of a loaf.

"That's a rock," said Miles, gray to the elbows.

"It's a good rock," said Beno, and set it on the grass to keep.

The white stone sat on the lip of the hole and hummed. Very low, at the edge of what an ear will admit to, like a kettle two rooms away, and the deeper they dug, the warmer the hum grew. Neither boy talked about that. They just dug.

When the stick knocked again, deeper down, the sound was different, rounder, a knock with a space behind it. Both boys went still.

"Miles," Beno whispered.

"I heard it."

They cleared the last of it with their hands, and out of the bank came a box.

And the humming stopped.

Between one breath and the next, the riverbank went quiet, and the hole at their feet looked suddenly very old. Neither boy moved. Even the water seemed to run softer.

"Did we do something wrong?" Beno whispered.

Then the stone hummed again, low and even, warmer than before, and the afternoon came back around them. Beno let out all his breath at once. Miles discovered he was holding Beno's wrist, and let go of it.

The box was pale stone, the same soft moon white as the skipper, the size of a bread loaf and far heavier than it looked. Getting it up the bank took both of them and Beno's jacket knotted into a sling, and when it finally came free they went over backwards with it and lay in the grass on either side of it, breathing hard, mud to the eyebrows, grinning at the sky.

Every face of it was carved, edge to edge, with six-sided shapes fitted together like tiles. Beno traced them with a muddy finger, around and around.

"Miles. Why do I know this pattern?"

"It's the..." Miles started, fast as ever, and then nothing came out. He turned the box with both hands and frowned at it, and turned it again. "I don't know," he said at last, and the sentence sounded strange in his mouth. Then he sat up. "Yet. Help me find the lid."

There was no lid. No seam, no keyhole, smooth sealed stone all the way around, however they turned it. Then Beno set the white stone on top of the box, just to have both hands free, and it stuck there, softly, and held. The hum settled into something low and satisfied, and the box and the stone sat together in the grass while two filthy boys watched them like a fireworks show.

"What is it?" Beno asked, quietly.

Miles was quiet for a long time.

"I don't know," he said again. "But it's ours till someone proves different."

The gold went off the willow tops all at once, and up the lanes above the mill the shutters were folding in, and window lamps were waking, first one, then a street's worth. The boys found themselves walking faster without having decided to, the box slung between them in the ruined jacket, resting on every third wall. Nobody they passed asked what they were carrying.

"Suppose it's a dragon egg," said Beno, at the third wall.

"It's a box. Eggs don't have corners."

"The egg could be inside the box."

Miles thought about that one the rest of the way up the lane.

Up the rope ladder it went, into the hayloft behind Beno's house, under the old horse blanket in the den that had been theirs since they were seven. On top of it, because it plainly wanted to be there, went the white stone.

In the dark under the roof beams, the stone glowed. Faintly, the kind of light you catch at the corner of your eye and lose when you look straight at it. They watched it for a moment from the top of the ladder, and went down to supper without saying anything about it.

Supper happened. Two mothers remarked on two sets of ruined clothes, and the explanations were vague, and leaned heavily on the fence.

Late that night, with the street asleep and the windows open to the summer dark, a whisper crossed the gardens between two houses.

"Miles."

"What."

"First thing tomorrow. Before chores."

"After chores."

"Miles. There's a glowing box in my hayloft."

A pause. The hedge ticked and settled. Down the lane, a last lamp went out.

"...Before chores," said Miles.

Beno grinned at his ceiling. He had questions saved up for morning... what the humming was for, and what you were supposed to say to a stone that came back. He rolled over to try one of them out loud across the gardens, and stopped with his chin on the windowsill.

Out past the garden, the old barn stood black against the stars, and between its boards, in thin bright lines, the hayloft was glowing.

"Miles," he whispered. "Miles. It's doing it brighter."

No answer came across the gardens. Miles was asleep three doors down, mud still behind one ear.

So Beno kept the watch alone, chin on his arms on the sill, while the little lines of light burned on between the barn boards, steady and patient, like a lamp lit for somebody expected.

Morning was coming, and two boys were going to beat it up that ladder. The stone had waited a hundred years under the riverbank. It could wait one more short summer night.