Chapter Five (part c)

Great-grandfather Moffat smiled. "What looks like a tree and thinks like a tree and acts exactly the same as a tree, but it isn't?" he asked.

"That's what I want to know," admitted Jennifer.

"A tree sprite," said Moffat and he put a finger to his lips. "But shhh, don't tell anyone, it's a secret!"

"That's just what he said!"

"That's just what tree sprites always say," said Moffat. "They love to have secrets more than anything, they're their very best secret themselves."

"Well, he told me to tell you to come tomorrow to some secret place and he gave me something to give to you."

"He did?" asked Moffat and he looked quite excited."What is it? Let me see!"

"It's just a stone," said Jennifer and she handed it over. "It's nothing special. It's really quite ordinary."

"Ordinary? You think so? This stone is the most unordinary stone that could possibly be," Moffat told her. "It's a new-moon stone and you won't see many of those just lying around on the ground!"

'A new-moon stone! That's the kind he said we could find," said Jennifer. "What is a new-moon stone anyway?"

"It's a very special stone you can only see by the light of the new-moon, " explained Moffat. "You have to be in just the right place at just the right time to be able to find one. A new-moon stone is a wonderful thing! It's that one special part of the everyday world we forget to notice, the part we've forgotten how to see, the part that remembers the shape of the whole even when it's apart."

"The whole?" asked Jennifer. "The whole what?"

"Why, the whole thing!" exclaimed Moffat. "Everything! The new-moon stones are absolutely key if you want to see what's really going on!"

"Then they're good for something?" asked Jennifer.

"Good for something? Great-grandmother Moffat! New-moon stones have amazing powers!"

"Powers?" said Jennifer. "Powers for what?"

"For all sorts of things," Moffat told her. "But mostly they're used for magic."

"Did you say they do magic?" asked Jennifer.

"I certainly did and they certainly do!"

"What kind of magic can this one do?" asked Jennifer.

"Wait'll you seel" said Moffat and he turned his hand over and let the sprite's new-moon stone dangle on the end of its silver chain. "Watch this!"