Even if the city was called Spurwood, the woods had long since been turned into farms and meadows. What remained of it was a copse preserved by the city by the strictest laws, for in that copse sat a flat-topped stone invaluable and irreplaceable. On it, once a year, the city placed a tablet and awaited the next day more than any holiday, for invariably an unknown hand etched tidings of the coming year of unquestionable accuracy in the proffered item.
Not only had Spurwood benefited from the opportunities and warnings given it as a gift beyond human expectation, but every year the wealthy both local and foreign bid for the right to provide the blank tablet hoping, as sometimes happened, that there would be news particularly for the provider. So it was one year when a rich stranger visited the city.
Able to indulge their eccentricities, wealthy bidders often came with entourages as that man did or refused to give their names. Fewer of them held spears down which some yellow liquid like molten sunshine dripped from the head down the shaft and left spots on the ground for a second only before disappearing. In any case, he bid as was his right whatever accessory he chose to wedge in his white-knuckled hand, and he won as well whereupon he offered a rectangle of copper as the tablet.
The ceremony proceeded as usual, and the hand which could only be guessed but never known wrote the city a graceful epistle as always. Much information it held in neat lines, but first of all the message said the year would be typical all in all, which was good for the city but a great shame and sorrow to the man with a spear that was not his. The man went away with all his entourage and his spear, or whoever's spear it was.
Finis
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