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know,” said the girl. “I think I may have killed him.”
    “I doubt it, dear. It is very hard to kill a person.”
    The girl looked at the old woman. “I stabbed him in the heart with a sharp stick.”
    The old woman opened her mouth, and then shut it again. Finally, she spoke. “Who really needs the stars anyway? They aren’t very useful when you think about it.” Then she got to her feet and shuffled off.
    That night the girl walked down to the river. Even the stars around her wrist seemed lonely. She sat by the water, who, for the first time, had absolutely nothing to say.
    “Say something. Anything!” pleaded the girl.
    The water tried very hard to help the girl.
    “Nutmeg,” it said. “Squeakriot. Gimberschnickel.”
    “Thank you,” said the girl, and she was grateful.
    The water didn’t say anything again for a long time, and then it suddenly piped up. “You’re crying!” it yelled.
    “What?” said the startled girl.
    “You’re crying for the broken-handed boy!” The water sounded triumphant.
    “No, I’m not!” The girl was indignant.
    “Then what is this, then?” The river popped something round and smooth out of the water toward the girl. She caught it and held it in her hands. It was a large, white pearl.
    “It’s a pearl,” she said.
    The water waited expectantly.
    “You giving me a pearl doesn’t mean that I’m crying!” The girl was getting angry. Suddenly she noticed that a tear slid down her cheek, fell into the water, and turned into a pearl. In fact, there was quite a large pile of pearls beneath her in the river.
    “Oh,” she said softly.
    The water snickered.
    The baby stars around her wrist seemed absolutely delighted at the pearl, and swarmed around it. They pulled it out of her hand and started to chase each other around her wrist, bouncing the tear-pearl back and forth between them like a ball. It was the cheeriest that they had been in days.
    “Find him,” said the water, and it began to hum.
    The girl wanted very much to find him, but she didn’t know how. They had always flown to the nest, and she didn’t know how to get there from the ground.
    “I wish to find him,” she said. “Very much.”
    Suddenly she saw a bright light, and heard a familiar sound. She turned around to see a cascade of stars falling from a tall tree not too far away. The stars clinked and glittered and chimed as they landed on the ground and in the water.
    “Wishing stars!” she said, and ran as fast as she could toward the light. There were more stars than she had ever seen, and on each one she made her wish. “I wish to find the boy! I wish to find the boy!”
    When she finally reached the tree, she blinked the stars out of her eyes and looked way, way up. She thought she saw a nest at the top of the tree. Taking a deep breath, she started to climb.
    The tree was higher than she had originally thought, and difficult to climb. The branches tore her dress and skin, but she kept climbing. The stars continued to fall, much more slowly, and they got caught in her hair, and eyelashes, but she didn’t stop to shake them out. She was concentrating too hard on making her way to the very top of the tree. Finally she reached the nest, and using the last of her strength, she pulled herself inside.
    She lay gasping for a minute, and then looked around. There lay the boy.
    “Hi,” he said. He looked too weak to move. “I’m glad that you came.”
    “Hi,” said the girl. She was too weak to move, too, and smiled at the boy. “I’m glad that I didn’t kill you earlier.”
    “It kind of felt like you did,” said the boy. He didn’t sound at all mad.
    “I’m very sorry,” said the girl, quite honestly. “I thought that I was doing the right thing, and maybe I wasn’t.” She took a deep breath and managed to crawl a little closer to the boy. She lay down again, and looked at him. “Are you all right?”
    “I think so,” he said. “I’m feeling much better today. It was quite