The sun was still high in the sky when the child resumed her journey on the Big Road, swimming in a haze of thoughts.

She was surprised that the sun hadn’t seemed to move at all in its descent towards the afternoon since she first entered the fortune-teller’s tent. She fancied she must have spent a few hours with him, yet the sun still shone all the brighter, seemingly in contempt of time.

Perhaps, she thought, the old gypsy was a master of time as well, and what hours they had spent together he had frozen into a single skip of the heart.

Now that she had left him behind, she wondered why the gypsy had given her so much of himself in return for nothing.

Could he really be the fortune-teller he posed as? If not, who was the real face behind that wizened mask? Even as she asked herself these questions, the child felt peculiarly confident that she would find out before her journey’s end. In the meantime, she resolved to bear all the things he had told her close to her heart.

She carried on along the riverbanks that ran by the Big Road, preferring the feel of the crumbled earth under her feet to the metal-hard tarmac of the road. Besides, in walking by the river, she could race with it and see if she could keep up with the same currents she had stumbled on a moment ago.

She was eager to reach the Enchanted Lake soon and walked even at night until she was too tired to walk further. There was a single star in the night sky that guided her on her journey. Together, the star and the river spoke the same language of hope that enabled her to journey on and find her way forward.

Always, she kept a lookout for the second singing stone she was supposed to find, but not once did she see it. She was not old enough to be impatient and to demand to find the next singing stone so soon after the fortune-teller’s gift, so it never occurred to her to give up hope. She only trusted that she would find it when the time was right.

Nearly two weeks after she met the fortune-teller, the child entered a new village that was said to be very close to Algondiz. As she walked, she saw two men coming towards her on the Big Road.

The first, who was built like a warship, was forcibly dragging his companion by the arm, which stuck out like wire on an ironing board. Together, they sailed forward combatively, the prow of the warship man’s mighty nose steering its wretched enemy to battle.

“This will teach you now, for stealing an honest man’s ideas!” roared the warship man.

“Ooh, how nervous-making,” whined the wire man in mock terror.

“Shut your whimpering, or I’ll box your ears!”

“If you do, we’ll have more to reckon with when we reach the magistrate.” The wire man sneaked a crafty glance at his formidable foe.

By now, the two men had reached the child.

“Why are you going to see the magistrate?” she asked curiously.

“To get my money back of course!” answered Mr. Warship.

“Has he taken your money then?” asked the child sympathetically.

Mr. Wire snorted.

Mr. Warship ignored the snort. “You could say that! He stole an idea I came up with, and has been profiteering from it since. That’s as good as theft!” In his anger, his mouth foamed like the sea.

“What idea was this?”

The Warship, happy to have found a willing audience to whom he could air his grievances, began explaining, “In our village, the tradition for hundreds of years now has been to carry water in metal containers. I think it has to do with a holy man who once lived here. He only carried his water from the river in a metal vessel.

“The holy man is revered here, so the villagers have been imitating him for centuries, transporting their water in these horrible containers that boil in the sun and blister their hands. But for all the suffering this has caused, people have stupidly stuck to their metal vessels, perhaps thinking to find enlightenment there.

“Times have changed though, and most of the younger people either don‘t know the story or don‘t care about old dead saints. But because we humans are creatures of habit, no one ever thought to question why they had to use these metal vessels to carry their water, until I came up with the brilliant idea of making wooden containers instead, with proper handles so that they can be easily carried from river to home and back.”

“Wonderful!” said the child.

“Yes, wonderful idea isn’t it?” said the Warship, rakishly tilting his chin.

“Well then?”

“Well then,” continued Mr. Warship, “I was having a friendly coffee one evening with this grinning villain here, who I considered my pal at that time, and shared with him my idea. And what do you know? He goes off right after that and begins making the first wooden containers! By the time I catch up with him, he’s already placed orders with almost everyone in the village! No one will buy from me now, because they say they’ve already bought one from him.”

He cast a baleful glance in the direction of the ‘grinning villain,’ who was as a matter of fact grinning with seeming amusement.

“My containers are much better than the schlock you produce anyway,” retorted Mr. Wire proudly, clearly uncontrite even after the revelation of his tale of guilt. “Your containers are heavy and bulky like your body, but mine are light as corks and easier to carry.”

The Warship bristled with rage at the insult to his physique. “You wretched bit of string!” he shouted. “It doesn’t pardon the fact that you STOLE my idea, and have given me neither thanks nor payment for it!”

“I wonder,” said the child calmly, “if ideas can ever be the unique property of any one person, and if they are not gifts from the universe that anyone might receive…”

“What do you mean?” asked Mr. Warship suspiciously.

“I mean, if I had an idea and happened to share it with someone, and that person went off and put my idea to use and made money from it, I would be very pleased for that person’s good fortune. Imitation is rather like a form of admiration, don’t you think? And then…”

“And then what?” snapped the Warship, unconvinced.

“And then I would move on and think of a better idea that would make even more money than my first idea. I would be so flattered by the person’s success with my idea, you know, and see it as an invitation to do even better, to improve my first idea that was so popular with everyone.”

“What rubbish!” shouted Mr. Warship. “Don’t you see how brilliant I was in thinking of making wooden buckets for water instead of metal ones that heat up in the sun? How much better can you get than that, huh?” He stuck out his fat lower lip thuggishly.

“Well,” said the child peaceably, “you could design a wooden barrel that can store more water than the current bucket, so that people only need to make one trip a day to the river. What’s more, you can fix lids and straps to it so that it can be rolled or dragged easily across the ground without any of the water spilling. That way, no one need tire themselves carrying it on their heads.”

The two men’s mouths fell open together.

“If you aren’t a little genius,” they chorused.

And, “What a great money-maker this would be!” exclaimed the unrepentant villain appreciatively.

Turning angrily to him, the Warship snapped, “Don’t you dare go stealing this idea too before I make the rollable, draggable water-barrel!”

“Now now,” said the wire man in protest, “did the young lady here even say that she was going to give you the idea?”

“Oh yes,” said the child hastily, “I freely give you the idea. Because it is your path and your passion to make water containers. My path is to find the City of Dreams. I certainly wouldn’t care to make water-barrels even if they made me a lot of money!”

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