Arlo looked first at the strange pebble in the woman’s outstretched hand, then at her pleading face.
She wasn’t like the beggars who came to the crossroads. Sitting against the signpost in her dusty raspberry-red robes and scarf, older than him but still curiously beautiful, as silent as the wheat fields all about. There was no empty cap on the pale earth beside her, no empty palm. Just the proffered pebble.
Others in his villager said she must be some kind of witch or demon. They’d hurried past her, refusing to take her pebble, sure it was cursed. When Arlo had left the village in the cool of dawn, his donkey loaded high with his honey and beeswax, he’d assumed he’d do the same. But now, seeing her for himself, he tugged his donkey toward her.
And took her pebble.
It was not a normal pebble, more like an oversized hazelnut covered with an intricate flowery pattern. The pattern recalled the mystifying dark runes on the ancient standing stone more than the witches’ hexes etched in the bark of so many blackthorn trees. Maybe the pebble was magical, like a toadstone or the Stone of Giramphiel.
The woman was smiling broadly and bowing her head in a show of gratitude. Seeing this, Arlo decided he should give her something in return.
He reached into his donkey’s paniers and drew out one of the clay honey pots. The smallest one, of course, but it made no difference. When he offered it to her, her smile wilted and her eyes closed.
When he arrived at the town, Arlo headed straight for the marketplace. As he was unloading his donkey, he noticed a tall man sitting in the shade of an ash tree.
In the town, many people sat watching the passing day, and usually he didn’t pay any attention to them. Yet this man not only wore a tunic of the same raspberry red as the robes of the woman at the crossroads, he also offered out a patterned pebble in his long arm.
Without hesitation, Arlo stepped forward and took it.
The man smiled and bowed his head as Arlo examined the offering. It seemed identical to the woman’s pebble, and it was only when Arlo pulled the other from his pouch and compared them side by side that he could see how their patterns differed.
Again, Arlo offered a small pot of honey in return for the pebble, but the tall man, like the woman at the crossroads, smiled and closed his eyes.
Arlo realized he could also offer the woman’s pebble, but hesitated. He turned it in his hand, traced the strands of its mysterious flowery pattern, wondered again if it could be magical. In the end, he extended his arm, hoping the man’s eyes would stay shut.
But they flashed open immediately, and the tall man reached for the pebble. Then, clutching it to his heart, he started swaying back and forth, like a flower dancing in the breeze. Many townspeople stopped to stare.
When Arlo returned to the crossroads on his way home, the woman wasn’t there. This surprised him, disappointed him.
He wanted to tell her of the flurry of fortune her pebble had initiated. During the day, he’d exchanged pebbles with several people wearing raspberry red, and each one had clutched the received pebble to their heart and swayed back and forth. After each time, townspeople gathered to buy his honey and beeswax, and for the first time in his life he’d sold all his wares and filled his pouch with coin.
Reaching into his pouch, he pulled out the last patterned pebble he’d been given and placed it on the earth next to the signpost. A gift for the woman when she returned.
He was about to leave when he noticed a bee. It was the kind of honeybee he kept, and it likely came from one of his hives. Circling down, it landed on a flower growing right beside the signpost. This was not a type of flower he’d seen before, and —curiously— was the same raspberry red as the woman’s robes. The bee spent a while sucking nectar and, when it finally departed, its back legs weighed heavy with pollen.
