Hushvale, Part I: The Way-Stone

Best friends Miles and Beno skip a stone that floats back to them, and dig up the Way-Stone, the lost heart of the Old Road. To save the road that ties the world together, they must walk all nine Reaches and return it to the First Stone. In the green valley of Hushvale, magic is as ordinary as plumbing. Dough rises when the baker hums, gates open when you greet them, and the whole valley has never needed to wonder why. Miles is thirteen and always three moves ahead of everybody. Beno is thirteen and has never once known where both of his shoes are. When a warm white skipping stone refuses to sink, then drifts back across the river to Beno's hand, the boys discover in one afternoon that their whole ordinary world has been magic all along. Buried where the stone lay is an ancient puzzle box, and inside it the Way-Stone: the glowing heart of the Old Road, whose living map of light shows a world far bigger than their valley, and a road going dark, Reach by Reach. The stone has chosen its carrier, and it will carry for no one but Beno. So with Hazel, twenty-three, local, unimpressed by absolutely everything, and Renilda the copper post bird flying scout, two beginners set out along the fading road: over the wind-bridges of the Downs, to the whale-watched cliffs of the Saltmarge, through fogwood and moor and root-tunnel and glowworm cave, and up the Thousand Steps to the top of the world, where the First Stone waits for its heart to come home. A twelve-chapter quest through all nine Reaches, where the road ahead is always stranger than the road behind and there is no way back. Funny and full of wonder, with stakes that climb Reach by Reach. Written for listeners twelve and up, and made for the whole family on a long ride.