This was in the youngest days of the world, when magic brimmed like rainwater on the edges of green leaves. All manner of strange creatures lived then. Some live still, and to them we give names in dead languages, call them species, call it science. Some are long vanished, and those we name with ancient words, whispered in awe or fear, and this we call fable and folklore and myth. But back then, it was all truth, and this is about the truth that happened on the marshy banks of a great winding river, there in those youngest days.

The First Raccoon called himself Pirrik because it was something like the sound he most enjoyed making. He was still learning how to be himself, but he found he also liked exploring by the water. There were all sorts of good things to eat there, and odd new things were always getting washed along by the current.

One day, while Pirrik was digging in the dark mud, something white shone out at him. He plucked it out of the muck and washed it off carefully. It was sharp at one end, and smooth, and it glittered like a hard little star in his black paw.

Right then, Pirrik knew something else about himself. He liked this thing, and he wanted to keep it and look at it. He went to his den and placed it under a bed of dry leaves, and he was happy.

A few days later, someone else came to Pirrik's stretch of the river. She was a sea-maiden, half pale woman and half paler fish, sleek and cold and beautiful, with long dark hair like streaming water. She skimmed the riverbed, her hair swirling about her, searching. She swam to the bank and pressed the mud through her thin white fingers, searching. She looked beyond the water, into the trees, searching.

At last she saw Pirrik. "Come to me," she whispered in a voice like claws rattling, and Pirrik went. He was a young beast yet and had not learned to be wary.

"Tell me," she whispered in that same dark-water voice, "have you found something here?"

Pirrik scratched one ear. "There are sweet crunchy things under the rocks. Lots of those."

"Not to eat. Something different. Something very small, and very beautiful. You would remember it if you'd seen it. Especially you. You are very clever, aren't you?"

Pirrik didn't know if he was clever or not, but he liked her telling him he was. "I... might have seen something like that."

"Then you will bring it to me, won't you, clever little one? It's something very important I've lost, and I miss it terribly."

"Well, all right." Pirrik trundled back to his den. He gently lifted the dry leaves away and looked at the shining thing again. It looked rather like a tooth, but flatter, and whiter than any tooth he'd seen so far, with a shimmer of blue at one edge. He hated to give it up, but he clutched it between his jaws and carried it back to the riverbank. When he got there, he hid the thing under one paw.

"The thing you lost," he said. "What did it look like?"

"It is the scale of a sea-dragon, pointed and flat, bright as sunlight on water. I must have it, or I will never find my way home to the sea, and I will die in this horrible water. You wouldn't want me to die, would you?" Her dark eyes pleaded with him.

Pirrik thought. "If someone had it, what would you give them for it?"

The sea-maiden was angry now, but she dared not show it, for the power within the sea-dragon's scale would be snuffed out like a candle if the one who bore it had it taken from him by force. She wanted to drag the ugly little furball into the water and take what was hers--but that would be her death. It had to be given of his own free will.

So she put on her most charming smile. "Oh, I might give a great many wondrous things. I have magic, you know. Shall I show you?"

The sea-maiden turned over a flat rock at the water's edge, and when a crayfish scuttled out, she multiplied it by a dozen.

"That's a handy trick," Pirrik said. He tried one to see how it tasted. "Could you make 'em bigger?"

The sea-maiden obliged, though she was getting impatient. "There--twice the size. Now isn't that worth such a little thing?"

"I dunno," Pirrik said with his mouth full. "It was awful pretty and shiny."

The sea-maiden's eyes glittered. "Oh, not so very much. There are many more beautiful things in the sea." She dipped her hand into the water and drew up a green silk purse. She tossed it onto the bank, and it burst open, spilling out pearls of every color, some small as a grain of sand, others bigger than grapes.

"My," Pirrik breathed, gazing into the largest one.

"Is it a fair trade, then?" the sea-maiden asked.

"Well..." Pirrik looked at the pile of shining pearls and thought how he could place them all over his den, how it would look like the sky at night. "All right."

He held out the sea-dragon scale, and it fell from his paw into her white palm. In an instant, her hand closed tight around it, and with a flash of her tail she was gone, not even a ripple in the water to mark where she had been.

Pirrik was sorry to lose the scale, but the other things were almost as nice, and there were so many of them. He decided he would gather them all back up in the bag, so he could carry them to his den all at once. He reached for the biggest one--but as soon as he touched it, it melted into sand. He gave a startled cry and grabbed for another pearl, but one by one they all turned into nothing but sand scattered across the bank.

Pirrik never forgot the beautiful things he had lost. He spent the rest of his days with his paws in the water, searching through the mud and under the rocks, hoping to find something like them again. His children seek them to this day. The sea-maidens and their dragons are long gone from this world, but Pirrik's children roam wherever they please. Ashamed at being tricked, they learned to be as cunning and clever as Pirrik should have been. And when they find something that glimmers or sparkles or shines, they clutch it tight in their little black paws--and they do not give it back.

This work and all characters (c) 2010 Renee Carter Hall ("Poetigress"). May not be reprinted or redistributed without written permission.