Suddenly, as he watched, as if it were the amber or ivory beam of a lantern in the water, he saw a pale brightness ascending. And all in a moment the Water-midden was there rocking on the dark green water beneath the arching sedge. But her hands, when Nod looked to see, were empty, floating like rose-leaves open on the water. But he spoke gently, for he could not look into her beautiful wild face, and her eyes, that were like the forest for darkness and the moonlit mountains of Tishnar for loveliness, and still be angry, nor even sad.
"Tell me, O Water-midden, where is my Wonderstone?" he said.
The Water-midden smoothed slowly back her gold locks. "You told me false, Mulla-mulgar," she answered. "All day long have I been sitting rubbing, rubbing with my small tired thumb, but no magic has answered. It is but a common water-pebble roughened into the beasts' shapes. It means nothing, and I am weary."
And Nod guessed she had been rubbing the Wonderstone craft to cudgel, and not as the magic went, sama-weeza—right to left.
"If it is but a water-pebble, give it back to me, then, Midden, for it was my mother who gave it me."
But the Midden smiled with her red lips. "You did deceive me, then, Mulla-mulgar, so that you might seem strange and wonderful, and far above the other hoarse-voiced travellers, the beloved of Tishnar? You may deceive me again, perhaps. I think I will not give you back your stone. Perhaps, too," she said, throwing back her tiny chin, so that her face lay like a flower in leaves of gold—"perhaps I rubbed not wisely. You shall tell me how."
"Show me, then, my Wonderstone. I am tired out for want of sleep, and long no more for Tishnar's fountains."
Then the Midden floated out into the middle of the stream, and with one light hand kept herself in front of Nod, her narrow shoulders slowly twirling the while in the faintly-rosied starlight. She took with the other a long thick strand of her hair, and, unwinding it slowly, presently out of it let fall into her palm the angry-flaming Wonderstone. "See, Mulla-mulgar, here is your Wonderstone. Now in patience tell me how to make magic."
And Nod said softly: "Float but a span nearer to me, Midden—a span and just a half a span."
And the Water-midden drew in a little, still softly twirling.