Anne and I continued to make up excuses to go back in the forest. Going on a picnic, going to play Speak or Do, to look at animals, anything that wasn’t near the forest. We checked on the stones so much, I was pretty sure I had all of their spots memorized. When we were there longer, when my mom was shopping or cooking or working, we would start to organize stones my color. We also summoned the brooke and collected more stones, or just put our feet in the water. We had lots of fun.
I also tried to find ways to make those stones into rings. No such luck. Until…
“Anne wanna go to the vault today?” We had started calling it ‘The vault’ instead of ‘the stones’ or ‘the boulder’.
“Sure, let me go tell my mom I’m doing something with you.” Anne said. “Meet at the back of Big Hut.”
“‘Kay.” ‘Big Hut’, as we called it was the biggest hut in the whole village. Probably big enough for a family of ten. They also had a lot of animals in the front. I wondered what they did for a living. I ran home and told my mom I was going to check out the new baby pigs at the animal pens where you could buy almost any animal. People mostly just bought useful animals, like cows. No one really used cows for meat until they got really old. You could just buy cow meat at the shopping area.
“Mom, it’s gonna be so fun!” I prompted. “I heard they are little and pink, and smaller than-”
“Kate! I said you can go.” My mom answered. “I just want to know, why have you been going all around the village, every day, for as long as you can?”
“Um, ‘cause I want to hang out with Anne. I feel like we haven’t been spending enough time-”
“Kate.” My mom said sternly. “Are you avoiding me?”
“No, Mom.” I said truthfully. “I just, after being grounded for a week, I needed to have some fun.” My mom didn’t seem to believe me, so I added, “And I needed to get my mind off of the attack.”
My mom’s eyes softened. “Honey, I’m sorry if I scared you, but you were the one who wanted me to tell you.”
“Mom, I know-”
“Kate! Kate, you ready? I, uh, want to get there before it’s too crowded! With people who want to see the piglets!” Anne’s voice called from outside.
“Mom, I gotta go. Bye!” I grinned.
“Bye, Kate! Have fun! Be safe! M-”
“Mo-om!” I complained, running out. I met Anne in front of my house.
“I thought we were meeting behind the Big House…?” I said.
“Well, you were taking so long, but it’s a good thing I heard you talk about those piglets, or we would’ve been dead!”
“Thanks for saving me, Anne. My mom can be pretty overly...overly, well protective.” I said.
“You’re welcome. Okay, so today, I want to see how far back the cave goes!” Anne told me. “Oooh, Anne! Great idea!” I praised.
“Oh, Kate! Watch out, other person!” I looked to where Anne was pointing, and saw a boy my age, Alex. He saw us looking at him and turned red and ran away. Anne and I giggled. When no one was looking, we went into the forest. I was starting to enjoy going through the rock, I had never really felt anything so exhilarating. I still hadn’t been able to keep my eyes open during the shaking of the cave, but I would soon. When we got in the rock, we started towards the back. We couldn’t actually see the end of the cave, so we decided to see how far back it went.
“Woah! Come on, Kate!” I was walking very slow because I was admiring all the stones. The farther back we went, the more stones there were, forcing us to wade through the stones. We finally reached the back. There was something very unexpected.
“Wow, Anne! That’s weird!” I marveled. In the back was a rock ledge jutting out of the back wall like a shelf. On the shelf, there were a bunch of metal….metal ring bands, bracelets, and necklaces! There were different types of metal, just simple metal, bronze, gold, copper (I’m assuming most of these, I’m not 100% sure). And, there were spots in all of them to place different size stones!
“Wooowwww!” Anne yelled. “Now we can make jewelry ourselves!” We cheered. As we were choosing which ring bands to use, Anne made a good point.
“Isn’t it weird that the day after we wish and wish for rings bands, some ring bands appear the day we decide to explore the back of the room?”
“Yeah, but I’m not complaining.” I laughed.
“How do we get the stones to stay in there?” Anne asked, once we had both picked out bands. I pushed my stone in, and it stayed. I could still pull it out, but it fit so perfectly it was easy to take out, put in, and it would stay in even if I shook it.
“Wow, that’s cool.” Anne admitted. We both fit our stones into the ring bands and slipped them on our fingers.
“Wow.” I almost teared up. “I actually have jewelry! Real, true jewelry!” We sob-laughed and hugged each other.
“We should probably get back.” I finally said. Then I noticed something most peculiar.
“Anne, what are those?” I pointed to the farther side of the ledge. We went over to investigate. “Holy….” Anne started.
“Holy we’re-gonna-be-rich!” I finished. The end of the ledge had piles of a bunch of random stuff, either with nice material, spots for stones, or both! Sandals, hair clips, dresses, shirts, pants, lanterns, pencils, random fabric, and a bunch of other stuff.
“Wooooooooow!” Anne and I probably would’ve filled the place with drool if we didn’t close out mouths. We wowed quietly at first, then started wowing and screaming very loudly. We started planning what we would do with it.
“...and buy more animals! And a door for our house!” I shrieked.
“...stuff for the baby! New dresses, yeah pets!” Anne cheered. We decided to tell our parents we found some jewels or shells or something and traded them for a bunch of stuff. We didn’t get shells here since we weren’t near any water except the river. We cheered as we marched back through the jewels, cheered as we shouted the password (We decided to call it the password) and cheered as we were spit out of the rock. We admired our new rings as we started to walk back. We decided not to take any of the stuff back with us except for a new dress. We were a couple minutes out to the village when we saw something moving. We didn’t have time to hide because it saw us.
“Kate? Anne? Is that you?”
“Eloise?!” Anne and I shouted in unison.