Quin’s Puddle Crown — At the reed rack beside Whistlepond, Quin pinched a muddy ring between both thumbs and smiled. Read the full story →
At the reed rack beside Whistlepond, Quin pinched a muddy ring between both thumbs and smiled. It looked like a bracelet for a beetle, but Quin called it a crown and tucked three flat leaves into its rim. The pond smelled like wet clay and minty stems. Plip, plip, went the water as he added one cattail fuzz tuft for royal wobble.
He set the crown on a broad lily pad to dry in the sun. While it warmed, he carved tiny lines into a fallen stem with a shell, then poked dots around the ring until it had a bumpy, important look. “No store crown has pond freckles,” Quin said, and a frog burped like it agreed.
Then the tallest lotus slowly lifted its face. The crown was not on the lily pad anymore. It sat neatly in the lotus’s golden center, where each little dot matched the holes Quin had poked, and the petals curled around it like a laughing audience. Quin laughed so hard a dragonfly zigzagged backward.
He bowed to the bloom and made a second crown for himself, wobblier and better. Next time you spot the round center of the lotus, see if Quin’s muddy crown is still wearing its pond freckles.
