Many years ago, in a tender valley, four stone houses stood among green fields under a grey mountain. In the next valley stood another four houses. On a clear day people could see the cooking smoke from four houses still farther away, at the edge of the world.
 
Once a quiet woman came here to live. Wild animals helped her build a sanctuary, singing as they worked. The stag carried branches for her walls. The eagle brought grass to thatch her roof. The salmon gathered hazelnuts that fell into his pool for her evening meal. At last the quiet woman slept under green grass, and the animals fell silent.
 
Years later a girl called Cengri lived in a house near the sanctuary. Even after her parents slept forever, Cengri liked going to the small stone hut. She could kneel with her bare feet tucked warmly under her skirt while their hermit sang his strange words. Sometimes after his blessing he gave the children currant cakes.
 
Walking to the sanctuary one cold grey day, Cengri tripped and fell.
 
“Filthy child, playing in the mud!” cried the woman who had arrived one day saying she was Cengri’s aunt. “Wait for us outside.”
 
Cengri trudged into the round yard as the others went into the warmth. She found her two broken white stones deep in the grass on her mother’s grave and sat down to play. One stone was carved with a flowering vine, the other with a sleeping cat; they were Cengri’s secret.
 
Soon rain swept down in a silver wall from the mountain, and Cengri huddled against the south wall. Rain misted on her hair. Cold seeped into her bones. She stood on one foot until it grew numb, then on the other foot, thinking about currant cakes. One tear trickled, but she wiped her face quickly so Aunt wouldn’t see.
 
Cengri’s face was dry again when one drop of water fell on it, as warm as a summer breeze. She heard a sound overhead and stepped out into the cold rain to look up. Where the stone wall was thickly supported, right at the top, she saw a small grey stone face.
 
The face had a sharp chin and pointed ears. It was not quite a human face, not quite a cat’s face, not quite like anything. Cengri remembered travellers resting by her mother’s hearth, long ago when she was little. They told of fierce stone creatures that protected great halls in the city. But this was only a small creature.
 
“I will be your friend,” Cengri said.
 
The rain on her lashes made her think for one instant that the creature blinked its eyes, grey in grey like living stone.
 
Then the door creaked open and Cengri heard the hermit blessing the children. “Peace be with you.”
 
Cengri loved peace best of all things in her world. Not being scolded, not being pinched, not falling asleep over her work and being slapped awake. Peace.
 
“Hedd can be your name, creature. Peace. And peace be with you.”
 
Aunt marched around the corner. “Wicked child, making us wait.”
 
Cengri smiled all the way home, even though Aunt’s daughter stuffed her cheeks with currant cake while her own stomach rattled like an empty churn.
 
 
One cool sunny morning, Aunt sent Cengri to the old hermit with a basket of fresh eggs. He was too blind to see her bruises, but he smiled at the fragrant wayside flowers Cengri had picked for him. She ate his stale currant cake in two bites and ran across the yard.
 
“Hedd?” Cengri looked up at the grey stones.
 
A pointed grey face peered wisely down at her. Today she could see more of the stone creature. It crouched in a hole halfway between the green valley and the pale sky. It was only the size of a half-grown cat, but its fearsome claws looked strong enough to break stone.
 
Cengri swung her empty basket as she told Hedd about the currant cake and about Aunt. She told it of the fierce stone creatures that guarded the great halls in the city. One drop of warm water fell onto her forehead, though the sky above her head was clear blue.
 
She stood on her toes and stretched up her arms, but the stone creature perched beyond her reach. “Hedd, are you lonely? Come home with me. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
 
Cengri went to play with her secret stones, forgetting that she had firewood to chop. Aunt’s girl found her there and threw the carved white stones far across the yard. Together they splashed into the deep pool, lost forever. She dragged Cengri home by the arm.
 
After dark, when her work was done, Cengri crept into the room behind the dairy. Long ago she had a pretty room over the garden. Her mother would sing as she braided ribbons into Cengri’s hair and sing as she folded her into her sweet-smelling bed. Now the garden was a tangle of weeds, and Cengri slept on straw in a room that had once held turnips and onions.
 
In the morning Cengri had a sore throat, but Aunt pushed her out the door to hang laundry. “Lazy child. We should sell you at the market.” She had sold almost everything else: the embroidered linens, the silver spoons, the harp, the horse, the cows and Cengri’s cat that kept mice from the barn. Now empty casks rolled like thunder in the empty dairy.
 
Cengri coughed all that night. The next day and night passed in a coloured dream of fever and chill. Once she dreamed someone came with gifts. Once she dreamed Hedd clawed through his surrounding stone and was free. Once she dreamed she wandered alone in mountain snow, and someone led her by the hand to a sunny place. Cengri woke alone under her thin blanket in the cold room that smelled of onions. She was hungry.
 
In the parlour, people were singing too loudly. Cengri crept out past the dairy, through the winter kitchen, away across fields that sparkled white with frost. No one answered when she knocked at the hermit’s house. Back across the yard she stumbled on numb feet.
 
But at the sanctuary there was no stone creature, only an empty hole high in the south wall. Cengri searched the long grass, calling softly, “Hedd, can you hear me? Hedd, where are you?”
 
Three windfall apples lay in a neat row on her father’s grave. Cengri chewed them to the core and crept home.
 
Aunt and Uncle lay snoring on the parlour floor in a litter of broken crockery. Cengri crouched by the cold hearth, cradling the sharp fragments of the painted bowl her mother had loved best. If she piled up all the firewood she had chopped, it would make a great blaze. If it fell to the floor, it would burn the house.
 
Instead Cengri laid a small fire on the grate. Then she lifted down the filthy cauldron to scour it, and soon she stirred a steaming broth. She woke Aunt and Uncle and fetched Aunt’s girl, trembling and dull-eyed, from her hiding place in the barn loft. In her cold room she pulled her thin blanket over her head and slept.
 
The night was almost done when she woke to a scrabbling at the window. She opened the shutters but saw only two wet, white stones on the windowsill. One stone was carved with a flowering vine, the other with a sleeping cat. She hid them under her blanket.
 
All that day Cengri worked in the hen house. She gathered the fresh warm eggs and propped up the broken laying shelf, talking softly to the hens. She hauled out the mucky straw and carried sweet new straw from the barn. Once she thought a voice quietly spoke her name, but it was only the swallows murmuring in their nests between the sun-warmed stones.
 
Cengri stole a minute to cup one soft yellow chick in her hands. It peeped and snuggled, wanting its mother, and she put it inside. After she latched the hen house door, she went to fetch firewood.
 
Uncle brought in the oldest speckled hen for Aunt’s birthday supper. Afterwards everyone sang, and Aunt told riddles. It was almost like the good times long ago, when harpers sang by the fire and there was always enough to eat. Then the dog barked outside.
 
“Fox in the hen house!”
 
Uncle ran out yelling, and soon the barnyard swirled with lantern light. The fox had fled in a storm of feathers. One hen lay still near the open door, and a fuzzy yellow chick peeped and pushed against it. Cengri kneeled and cupped its little body in her hands, giving it warmth.
 
“Careless child! You left the door open!” Aunt started across the barnyard shaking a stick.
 
“I latched the door.” Cengri nudged the chick inside the hen house and got to her feet. “And I will not answer to you. You are not my aunt, you are a thief in my house.”
 
The woman’s stick came down so swiftly that it whirred like a swallow’s wings, and everything turned to red and black and screaming. As Cengri crumpled onto the slates with her hands pressed to her sticky face, she saw a grey stone hurtle from the hen house wall. The screams shrilled louder and faded away.
 
When the sky brightened, Cengri crawled and rested and crawled again. At last, in the sanctuary yard, she lay down to sleep between her mother and her father. A warm rain fell. Cengri awoke under a blanket of fragrant leaves. Her head was pillowed on a grey stone, and she clasped her two secret stones in her sticky hand.
 
“Good child, blessed child, what have they done?” In bright noon light the hermit kneeled to wipe her face with a wet cloth that dripped red onto his threadbare hem.
 
Cengri could not speak. The hermit called out for help to the blacksmith passing by, but she would not let go of her stone. The blacksmith shrugged and lifted the child and her grey stone as easily as a windfall apple.
 
 
All summer, at dusk, Cengri paused on the blacksmith’s doorstep to look across the yard at her empty house. Its shutters were latched and its door barred. The woman and the man and the girl had fled like a false rumour.
 
One autumn day, when the small red apples were sweet with first frost, Cengri carried Hedd to the sanctuary apple tree. Three yellow chicks had survived the fox, and now a young rooster and two hens pecked around her feet as she went. A bob-tailed orange cat crouched on the lowest branch of the tree. Under the currant bushes a hare and three mice timidly snuffed the air. A doe and her spotted fawn browsed near the wall. The creatures talked softly as Cengri picked apples and Hedd sat in the grass playing with pebbles.
 
The hermit went to the orchard gate to greet the blacksmith’s wife. In the still afternoon Cengri heard their quiet words.
 
“I fear she will not be parted from that grey stone,” the hermit said.
 
The blacksmith’s wife set down her bucket and wiped her big red hands on her apron. “It gives her peace.”
 
“She will be safe now.” The old man blessed them all as she walked on.
 
 
Across the yard, the blacksmith’s hammer rang out repairs. Last week when his widowed sister came to visit, Cengri asked if she would stay. Every day they sang as they weeded the garden and scoured the dairy from beams to slates. Soon travellers could sit by the fire again telling of far places.
 
When her basket was full, Cengri sat beneath the apple tree and lifted Hedd. She liked his warmth on her shoulder this cool day. Geese cronked overhead, flying to some sunnier place.
 
Then Hedd pulled himself upright and whimpered at the sky. Cengri lifted his claws from her braid and looked up.
 
The flying creatures were larger than geese, larger even than swans. As their great grey wings beat slowly, their ragged cries dropped like fragments of song. Hedd cried out wordlessly and strained toward the sky, but the great ones flew too high to hear one earthbound voice.
 
Cengri stroked his grey head. “I know, little one.”
 
A long shadow fell across her feet. The great creature that crouched under the apple tree watched her carefully from wise eyes in a grey face. It was not quite a human face, not quite a cat’s face, not quite like anything. Its powerful wings were furled, and its claws safely sheathed. Cengri had never seen a living thing so terrible in its beauty.
 
Hedd scrambled down and across the grass. Cengri took one fearful step forward. Claws like stone knives curved around Hedd and drew him close. The two creatures nuzzled and chirred until the great one gently pushed Hedd back toward Cengri.
 
“But why?” she whispered.
 
The creature glanced at the sky.
 
“Until he can fly?”
 
Grey in grey like living stone, its eyes blinked once. Then broad wings opened and the creature climbed singing into the cool autumn air.
 
Cengri and Hedd watched the great creatures dwindle until the sky was clear blue above the green valley and the grey mountain.
 
Together they gathered the last windfalls and took their basket in to bake apple cakes. A friend might visit from the four houses among the green fields, or even a traveller from the edge of the world.