The Warm Stone Wall
Rumi carried the warm flat stone with both hands, down the fern path, into the valley. The rain had stopped an hour ago. Footprints as wide as washtubs held little pools of sky. Rumi's stone had been lying in the sun all afternoon, and it still held the heat, the way bread does. At the bottom of the path was the spring pool, where warm water came up through the pebbles and steamed in the cool air. Rumi liked that pool better than almost anything. They set the flat stone down on the bank and put one bare foot in. Warm. Warm as a bath.
Something rustled. A young dinosaur came out of the ferns, no taller than Rumi, with a frill around her neck like a fan. Her name sounded like Juniper when she said it, so Rumi called her Juni. Juni stepped into the pool and shivered. The water only reached her ankles. Rumi saw why. On the far side, a gap in the stones let the warm water slip away down into the cold stream, fast as a tap left running. "We could stop it up," Rumi said. Juni thumped her tail twice, which seemed to mean yes.
They worked fast, because the sky was going pink. Rumi set the big flat stone at the bottom of the gap, where the push of the water was strongest, and laid smaller stones on top of it. Juni carried moss in her mouth and pressed it into the cracks with her snout. The water slowed. The pool crept up Rumi's shin, warm as breath. "Big stones under, small stones on top," Rumi said. Then Juni went off into the ferns for more moss. And Rumi looked at the flat stone, the warm one, the best one, and wanted it back.
Rumi slid the flat stone out from the bottom and pushed a round one into the space. Then they sat down on the warm stone with their feet in the pool, pleased. The wall held. It held while a bird crossed the whole sky. Then the round stone turned, and the wall slumped, and the warm water went out through the gap in one long swallow. Juni came back with her moss and stared. "The stream pushed it," she said. Rumi looked at the water. "Maybe," they said. The pool sank back to Juni's ankles, and the cool air came down off the hills.
They sat on the bank while the sky went from pink to grey. Juni hummed a little, low in her throat. Rumi's feet were cold now, and something else was cold too, sitting just under their ribs, heavier than any stone. It would be easy to say nothing. Night would come, the moss would dry, and nobody would ever know. Rumi took a breath. "It wasn't the stream," they said. "I pulled the big stone out. I wanted to sit on it, because it was warm." Juni turned her frill. She thumped her tail twice. The cold thing under Rumi's ribs got up and went away.
"We can do it again," Rumi said, and they did. Slower this time. Rumi waded in and dug the flat stone down into the pebbles, deep, where the water pushed hardest. Juni rolled two heavy round ones against it with her nose. Only then did the small stones go on, one at a time, each one tried and turned and tried again. "Big stones under, small stones on top," said Rumi. The moss went in last, pressed into every crack with a thumb and a snout. The water met the wall and stopped. It did not slip away anywhere.
The pool began to fill. It climbed over Rumi's toes and up to their knees, and steam rose off it in slow ribbons that the cool air carried away over the ferns. Juni lay down in the warm shallows with her chin on the bank and her frill spread flat like a fan on the water. Rumi lay down beside her, head on the moss. Far off, something large walked through the ferns and did not hurry. The first stars came out and dropped into the pool, one by one, bright as little fish.
The last ripple went out from Rumi's elbow, crossed the whole pool, touched the wall and came quietly back. Then the water was still. It held the sky without a wrinkle. Rumi's toes were warm. Juni's breathing got slow, and then slower. "Big stones under," Rumi whispered, "small stones on top." Down at the bottom of the wall, the flat stone sat in the dark and held everything up. Soft rain began again in the ferns, and the pool took it in, drop by drop, and settled, and lay still.
