She rose up, horrified, shrieking, transformed (though she didn’t know, and for a long time wouldn’t know, just how transformed). The small being raised a finger, longer than it ought to have been, and pointed at Kits, and bared its stubs of teeth. Kits flew, and the little someone ran after her, faster than Kits would have thought it could, reaching up its long arms and twiggy fingers as though it could take hold of her. And Kits knew: That thing around the child’s neck was hers, and she wants it back. She wants it back as much as I want to keep it. I will never give it to her and she will never cease to seek it from me.
That day she began to leave that country and People. But she carried the stone with her, inside her, and never passed it. And the Small People, whose stone it was, followed after. Whatever lands Kits came to, wherever she and a mate would settle, after a time the Small People would begin to appear. The thing she had stolen, that gave her this length of life, was the same thing that keeps Small People in existence forever—Kits was certain of that. And for forever they followed her—or followed Crows, because they couldn’t tell which bird it was who’d robbed them.
“From that day to this,” Kits said. “From then until now.”
“No,” Dar Oakley said, appalled. “Not possible.”
“They can be found, around here, not so far away.”
“But Kits,” he said. “Two Crows? Each given the one thing People most want, or stealing it right out from under them? Then each finding the other, after who knows how long?”
“Why not?” she said. “There could be many of us. We could be common.” She had that stance, that stance that said, Don’t believe me when I say this, even if I’m telling you it’s so.
“Many?”
“As many as there are ways to find that thing and get it. It’s ours; it’s meant for us.”
“We stole it, Kits. From them, from People. Both you and I.”
“Don’t they say that about everything we have or get? Thieves: Isn’t that who we are to them?”
Dar Oakley flitted, resettled his wings, shook his head and bill in confusion.
“Well, tell me this, Dar Oakley,” Kits said. “Who did you steal it from in Ymr, that precious People thing?”
This Dar Oakley could see vividly, as though he were there again, as though Kits’s question flung him there: to the top of the tallest Beech—yes!—and the house where the black Dog and the black Pig kept watch. The house of the Crow of that world.
He’d stolen the Most Precious Thing from a Crow.
“It’s not for them, Dar Oakley,” Kits said, “that thing. Not People big or small. No matter who of their kind thinks it is. The story of it may be, but not the thing. The thing’s for us. It was and is. And this is why I sent for you to come.”
The sun had gone to the West again, and the long autumn evening was thickening.
“I’m dying, Dar Oakley,” Kits said. “Dying for good. And there’s only one thing that can be done for me. You must go into the . . . realm, did you call it, that realm of Small People from whom I stole the stone of life everlasting. And steal it for me again.”
“Never make fun of the Small Ugly People,” One Ear told the Crow clan children and others gathered around him. “Never laugh at them. They know they’re ugly and they’re ashamed of it, but they can’t change it. They hear better than any other being, and they’ll know you mocked them. They’ll hide from you ever after, and you won’t find them even when they could do you some good.
“They’re water-folk, and they hide in streams; when they choose to they can appear to be Otters. If you see Otters sliding on their mudslides in spring and you keep still, you can sometimes hear them talking as Otters never talk. But if you startle them, they will swim down to a country of their own below the water.
“Anyway, some say that. Some say they prefer caves and deep fissures in the rocks, where they keep things precious to themselves but useless to others. Or maybe they build stone houses—piling stones on stones to make a small round lodge no bigger than a hornet’s nest. They love stones, and roll them around in the night for reasons only they know—have you ever heard them? Maybe it’s a game. At night when you hear a Nighthawk, look for them. Sometimes you’ll think you hear the whine of a Dragonfly, but not see one—that’s them too.
“They live very long lives, and almost never have sons and daughters, so the number of them always stays the same. They love children, though, and sometimes they’ll come to women in childbirth. Now listen. A long time ago there was a boy whose mother was in labor and the baby wouldn’t appear, and it looked like both would die. The boy went out into the night forest and when he heard the Nighthawk call, he begged for the help of the Small People for his mother. No answer came, but as he went back to his lodge he felt that he was followed. Rather than go into the lodge, he hid by the door, and after a time he saw a tiny woman go in to where his mother lay. He knew he mustn’t look, but through a chink in the wall he saw the Small Ugly woman kneeling between his mother’s legs and speaking softly and urgently into her, and to the baby inside, and after a time it appeared. It was dead, with the cord wrapped around its neck. The Small Ugly woman freed the baby, and she tied a string around its neck where the cord had been, and on the string was a little bead: a small, ugly, discolored stone. The baby opened its eyes at that, and cried.
“The little woman put the baby—almost as big as she was!—to the mother’s breast, and whispered in her ear, and though the words were strange to her, the mother knew what she had been told: Never ever take the stone from around the baby’s neck; for as long as it remains, the child will live and grow.
“It was so. The child grew fat and strong, until one day she was sitting in the sun with her brother and a Crow came near. You know that Crows love things that catch the sun and glitter. Before the brother could chase it away, the Crow had snatched the bead and flown away.
“When the boy told his mother, she was grief-stricken, and sickened with fear. That night when the moon was risen the boy took her to where he had spoken to the Small Ugly People, and begged for the little woman to come help.
“Not until the moon was down did the boy and his mother hear words spoken. They saw no one, but they were sure it was the voice of the Small Ugly woman. They were told that the child would do well and grow, but it was too bad the stone was stolen, because as long as the child wore it she would never die. Now that it was gone, she would live only as long as it was her nature to live.
“Well, the woman cried happily at that, and thanked and thanked the Small Ugly woman. With good luck and care, her child, who should have died at birth, would live to have children of her own, and grandchildren, and be loved and cared for in her age, and one day she’d lie down and die and go to a far world where her own mothers waited for her; and who could want more than that?
“No more was said, but in the darkness they heard a tiny weeping, as soft as the whine of a Dragonfly at your ear.
“That was very long ago in another country, and for sure the mother and her son, and the child and all her children, have lived their lives and died since then. But maybe that Crow who stole the Small Ugly People’s stone is still alive.”