Journey on the Stone Path

A girl named Adelle finds adventure on a path of mysterious gray stones when she visits a nearby pond. She befriends a One-eyed Miner and must find a way to stop turning to glass.

Adelle decided that today she would explore the pond near her house. It was summer and she had grown bored with being indoors. It was not a large pond, but sometimes if she was lucky an interesting bird would be resting close to the edge. When she got there, Adelle noticed large gray shapes floating in the greenish water.

She walked closer and realized that they were stones, but she had never seen stones like these before, each of them was larger than her head. The girl cautiously stepped on one of them, and it stayed in the same place. More confident, Adelle hopped from stone to stone, walking farther away from the shore.

The farther she went, the wider the pond seemed to become.  She continued walking across the stones for a long time. By the time she noticed how far she had gone, the shore was out of sight.  Adelle began to feel nervous, being alone in the middle of a pond which had swollen into a sea.  She shook her head to scatter these thoughts and continued walking.

The girl thought she saw something moving near the horizon.  Curious, she quickened her pace, bouncing across the path.  The stones bobbed up and down, but never sank.  As she got closer, she realized the figure was a person.  Adelle hoped that he was friendly and approached him.

She gasped.  He had one gigantic eye one the right side of his face.   She quickly closed her mouth, remembering her parents telling her that only savages were inpolite.  "Good day, sir." she began.  "My name is Adelle."  

The boy burst into laughter.  "Why so formal?" he asked her.  She blushed.

"Why so bad-mannered?" she asked in reply.  "You haven't even introduced yourself."

"My name is Inkling, but many people call me the Miner." he said.

"The Miner." Adelle repeated the name slowly.  "What is it that you mine?"  He smiled and his eye widened.

"Gold.  There's pieces of gold inside these stones.  They whisper to me, telling me where they are.  They ask me to find them.  The gold wants to be free."

The girl thought about this for a while.  Talking gold, it sounded so impossible.  She would have thought a one-eyed miner to be impossible as well, but here one was standing in front of her.
"Where are you headed?" Inkling asked her.  "It's important to have a destination on this path, or you'll never be able to get anywhere."  Adelle had not thought of this.  

"I'm only exploring."  she replied.  "You can join me, if you want.  An adventure's much more exciting with a friend."

The miner briefly closed his eye then nodded.  "A friend. You're right, I suppose it is.

The two of them walked quietly for a while.  The stones in the path started to float into the air.  At first, they only hovered half of an inch above the water.  This distance gradually grew into a foot, then several feet, until they were finally suspended high above the sea.  

Adelle was overwhelmed with surprise when she realized what had happened to the stones.  Inkling, however, barely seemed to notice.  He was clearly no stranger to the mysterious nature of this path.  The girl wondered about his eye.  Had he always looked like that?  Or did something happen, something that made him so unearthly? She wanted to ask him, but could not think of a way to approach the question.

"You're wondering about my eye, aren't you?"  Inkling asked her. Adelle's eyes widened.  She wondered is she had been staring.

She nodded.   The miner smiled at her, and she relaxed.  "I used to be human, as you still are." he began.  "Adelle, this path is different than anywhere in the world." Inkling laughed softly.  "It changes people.  You shouldn't stay here for too long. Oh dear, it's already happening to you."

A spark of fear struck the girl as soon as he said this.  "What? What's happening to me?" she asked him.

"You're turning to glass."  Inkling replied, his voice shaking with every word.

Adelle grasped her head.  He was telling the truth, her dark brown hair had changed into clear crystalline glass.   "This can't happen!" she cried.  "What can we do to stop it?"

For a long moment, the boy said nothing.  When he finally looked up at her, he uttered a name. "Amadeus."  He continued.  "He's an old sky mole I used to travel with.  He knows more about the path than anyone else.  Amadeus may know how to help you."

"How can we find him?" she asked.

"We won't.  He'll find us." Inkling replied with a smile. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small silver whistle.  The miner brought it to his lips and blew on it, and a tiny high-pitched sound emitted from it.  

Suddenly, Adelle saw a small shape slice through the air.  It zoomed closer and closer to her until she could realize what it was.  Hovering in front of her was a brown mole with large gray wings.  "Inkling," said the mole.  "It's good to see you.  It's been far too long."

Inkling nodded.  "Amadeus, this is my friend Adelle.  The path is changing her into glass.  Is there any way we can prevent this from happening?"  he asked the mole, who was floating above them.

"Well," Amadeus began, examining the glass shards that had replaced Adelle's hair.  "There is one thing you can do."  He dove down and pushed the girl off of the stone she was standing on.  

"You'll thank me for this!" he called after her.

Adelle screamed as she fell from the path.  She was falling towards a sea with no shore in sight.  The girl was deathly afraid of deep water.   It was filled with all kinds of terrifying creatures that she had read about in the books her father brought home.

She shut her eyes when she was about to hit the surface.  Instead of falling into the water, she landed on an enormous sheet of solid ice.  Disoriented, Adelle stood up and looked around.  The entire sea had frozen over.  She looked up at the sky, expecting to see the path.  The sky was clear blue and completely empty.

A single word appeared in her mind.  Home.  She needed to go home, and was afraid she would not be able to find it.  Adelle walked in the direction that she believed she had came from.  Her pace grew increasingly brisker until she was running across the ice.
After running for a long time, Adelle came to a point where the ice stopped and sea water began.  Near the edge of the ice was a wooden dock and a small rowboat.   Suddenly, she heard a soft sound on the ice.

She turned around to find Inkling running towards her.  "Adelle!" he exclaimed.

"Inkling!" she smiled.  "I didn't think I would see you again. How did you find me?  Did you fall off of the path?"

He shook his head.  "I ran back down the path.  It changed direction.   When you fell, Amadeus explained to me that you needed to get away from it.  The path was turning you into glass.  If he hadn't pushed you off of it, you might have been glass forever."

"I wish he had told me that before he pushed me." she said.  She felt her hair and to her surprise, it was no longer made of shards.  "Amadeus was right!" she said happily.

"You have to go home." The miner said quietly.  Adelle nodded.  "Will you come with me? I'm sure Mother wouldn't mind." she told him.  

Inkling shook his head.  "I have to find the path." he said.  "The pieces of gold need me to save them."

"I'll miss you." Adelle said sadly.

"I'm going to miss you too." he replied.  "Visit the path when you dream.  I'll still be there."  

She walked over to the dock and stepped into the boat.  Adelle waved goodbye to her friend and picked up the two oars.  The girl began to row away from the ice.

While she rowed, Adelle noticed that the sea was narrowing back into the small pond it was before.  The moment she stepped onto the shore, the boat sank into the water.  Out of the corner of her eye, the girl thought she saw a frog with one large eye on the right side of its face leap into the pond.