Chapter 16

Safron was helping!

She carried the stone in her hand. It was the size of her fist, and it was special. It didn’t just look special, althought it did. Look special. It was a shiny stone that was half crystal and had been found on a hill where it had been drinking in the sun for millions of years, according to her father, who had written the stone’s properties on a slip that Safron couldn’t read but her mother had red to her.

But that wasn’t what made the stone special. It was special because it had a fire spirit inside.

Safron knew that even without being told because the spirit was whispering to her. She couldn’t quite make out the words, and she knew that she was supposed to ignore them because the spirit would want to be her spirit and she both wasn’t ready for a spirit and also would get a better one than this stone.

No. She was four years old but she wasn’t old enough to have a spirit like her brother and the other children yet. But she could still help.

Today she was helping by hiding the spiritual stones that her mother was giving her to hide so that her brother had to find them. He was training himself to search for the homes of real spirits, so that he could pay back the family for the cost of his mistake with the stupid Zang family.

Safron didn’t really understand anything that had happened in the city, only that her brother had to look for special stones now, and that she could help by hiding the ones that they had. She didn’t even have to worry about finding them again because if her brother couldn’t, then her mother or father would.

So she ran out into the small forest beyond the edge of the farm and looked for a good hiding spot. She searched and searched for hours to find a good spot, and finally she found a hole in the ground that was just perfect. She put the stone inside the hole, and that was when she saw the fox.

The fox was staring at her. She stared at the fox, afraid for a moment. Then she ran away.

It wasn’t until much later that she realized that she’d given the fox a spiritual stone. Her brother could never find the stone that she’d hid that day, and her parents couldn’t find it either when they went looking for it.

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They did find the fox, however. It never preyed upon their chickens, but it was constantly watching the humans of the farm from the periphery.

Her father said to leave it alone. That it was a special fox now. She watched one day as her father walked over to where it was and spoke with it for a few moments, then he came back and he said that the fox had agreed to live peacefully with the Shen farm and that it was okay to leave out scraps for it to eat.

Safron thought that the fox was very pretty and she liked leaving little things out for it to find and eat. She never could get it to eat out of her hand, though, and when she went back to the hole in the ground where she’d put the stone to bring it back, she picked up the stone and found that it didn’t whisper to her anymore. She gave it to her father anyway and he’d simply shrugged.

“A spiritual fox is worth more to this family than a spiritual stone sitting in the shed anyway,” he commented. “Don’t worry. Everything worked out for the best.”

So Safron stopped worrying about the stone that she’d almost lost because her father said it wasn’t a big deal. Tan managed to find all of the other stones that she’d hid for him, and she continued to help him by hiding the stones every day for him to find.

Then another stone went missing. And the next day a rabbit came to the farm and looked around for a while, and it even let Safron pick it up and show it to her parents. Her parents praised the rabbit and introduced it to the fox and made the fox promise not to eat it. The fox didn’t say anything that Safron could hear, but they seemed to get along.

When Safron asked why the bunny was special – she knew it was special she just didn’t understand why – her mother told her that it had bonded the earth spirit inside the stone that Safron had hid in its den. Safron hadn’t realized that the hole she’d put the missing stone into was a bunny rabbit’s den.

She apologized again for costing the family a spiritual stone, but her mother simply shrugged it off.

“A spiritual rabbit watching over the farm is worth more than a spiritual stone sitting in a shed,” she’d said, and she praised Safron for finding good hiding places to help Tan train his stone-finding skills.

Tan was getting good at finding the stones she hid, and no matter where she put them he could usually find them in less time than it took for her to hide them. Eventually he declared that he didn’t need any more practice, and that he was going to go out and find the five stones that he’d cost the family.

Pao declared that he was going on the hunt with the younger boy, and Ko and Won got in on the action as well. So the children left the safety of the farm and went on an adventure together.

Safron never forgave them for leaving her all alone with just her parents to keep her company. But at least they waited until after Tan’s birthday so that they could have his party together.