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I don’t know why I didn’t fly away right then. Nothing was stopping me and it wasn’t like staying was a good idea. Still, something told me to hang around for a while. I had the feeling I was being watched. My guess was that whoever was watching me was in the woods, but I had my fill of forest for the moment. I decided to walk to the river and empty my head.

The water was clear and cold; the current moved fast. It looked deep too. The view up and downstream gave me no idea how far I was from anywhere, and I wondered if my rescue wasn’t a rescue at all. I wondered if Cane thought I’d be afraid to show my mug in Kringle Town and that I would choose just to starve to death by this river. Cane might have also hoped that I would become some kind of vampire from a mistletoe’s kiss, making me a threat to come after Cane. There ain’t no silver bullets in Kringle Town. But why would he send Comet to rescue me? To get me to trust him? There were too many thoughts taking laps in my head.

I mean, I could fly if I needed to, but there was nowhere to go. Nor was I too keen on the idea of being up in the reindeer’s airspace. If Comet was giving me the cold shoulder, I shivered at the thought of a dogfight with Prancer. As I pondered all of this and the mess I had gotten myself into, I did what anyone would do while pondering: I skipped rocks.

The riverbed was full of them. They were the perfect size and as smooth as velvet. Using a sidearm toss, I whipped the first stone across the water—one, two, three, four, plunk! I couldn’t help but smile. I sent another rock flying—seven hops before it slid into the water as quiet as a seal. Now I was going to have to break my record. I curled my finger around a stone and flung it, snapping my wrist like it had a spring in it. The rock hummed across the river, kissing the top of the water—one, two, three, four, five. Another rock whistled past mine, spraying water like some kind of Neptune pixie before it slipped into the water after eight skips. I turned around to see who or what launched the stone, but there was no one there.

I reached back to throw another rock, but before I could even get into my windup, another stone came from behind me and danced across the water like it had wings. It plopped across the water nine or ten times, cutting somersaults. Show-off.

Again, I turned around. “Pretty cute,” I said to no one. “If you think you can spook me, you’re going to have to try harder.” My answer was a rock that socked my bottom lip. It came from nowhere and skipped off my chin just as easily as it did the water. It stung and it scared me, and I had a hard time not showing it. My hands went to catch the blood and I screamed, “LEAVE ME ALONE! LEAVE ME ALONE!”

After my echo finished ricocheting off the trees for a few minutes, I had to sit and listen to myself sniffle in the quiet. I couldn’t stop. I was beat and they, whoever they were, knew it.

“Boy, I thought someone said the bigger they are, the harder they fall, but I guess a shrimp boat can hit the iceberg too.”

I looked up and saw Rosebud Jubilee. She was working a peppermint stick with that pretty little mouth, and the cocksure rake of her hat seemed like it was mocking me. She had a handful of rocks. “Put some snow on that bottom lip and it won’t be so bad. Sorry about that, toots. My aim’s a little off.”

I did as I was told. The snow was cold, but it numbed the pain. “What were you aiming for?”

“Your upper lip,” she said with a smirk.

“Cute.”

“It’s about time you noticed, Coal,” Rosebud said.

“Oh, I noticed before,” I said. I felt like I had one good tussle left in me. “I just figured there was no point since you were writing ‘Mrs. Candy Cane’ in the margins of your notebook.”

“I never figured you for reading the gossip column, Coal. You read ‘Advice to the Lovelorn’ too?”

“Sure, I want to see if they answer my letter.”

“Did you sign it ‘Short on Romance’?”

“Nope,” I said. “I signed it ‘Size Matters.’ They haven’t printed it.”

“Must have been your purple prose. I guess that leaves you kind of blue,