Perusina, Perusino and Franz in Canchaque

The fog didn't come slowly.

It sprang. Just a moment before, Perusina saw the narrow path between the coffee plants. The next moment, a white wall swallowed the slope, the trees, the sky, and almost Franz too.

"I'm still here!" the little fox cried. "Just invisible for a moment!"

Perusino stopped. Two coffee beans stuck to his shirt. "Can fog bite?"

"No," Perusina said. Then she listened. Water rushed below them. Not like a stream. More like an animal breathing in a rocky gorge.

An hour earlier, Don Elías, a coffee farmer from Canchaque, had shown them a jute sack.

Empty.

"Tonight, the best harvest disappeared," he had said. "And this was next to the storage."

In Perusina's pocket was a round stone. Dark, smooth, with an engraved spiral. Don Elías had pointed to the mountains. "The spiral points to the stone basins. But don't go there alone."

Of course, they didn't go alone.

They went as a trio.

A crackle came from the fog. Perusina looked down. In the mud lay an imprint: not a sandal, not a shoe, but a wooden sole with three notches.

Then something rolled out of the white wall.

A sack.

It clattered down the slope, tore coffee blossoms from the branches, and sped towards a bend, beyond which the path dropped directly into the gorge.

"The sack!" Perusino cried.

Franz shot ahead, tripped over a root, tumbled, and landed right in front of the sack.

"I wanted to stop it!" he squeaked.

The sack didn't hit him. Perusino grabbed it at the last moment, slipped on the wet clay, and was dragged along. Perusina lunged for his jacket. All three slid across the path until a coffee tree stopped them.

The sack was heavy.

Too heavy for beans.

Perusina opened it. Inside were stones. Round, dark stones. All with the same spiral.

"Someone wanted us to follow this sack," she said.

A short whistle sounded from the gorge. Then another. Franz's tail bushed out. "That wasn't a bird."

They ran on, deeper into the fog, until the path led to smooth rock. Before them lay round basins in the stone. The water swirled in them, jumped into a narrow channel, and disappeared under a rock arch.

A figure in a poncho stood at the edge. Next to her were three real coffee sacks.

"Hey!" Perusino cried.

The figure turned, grabbed a sack, and pushed it into the water.

The sack floated into the first stone pool, spun once, twice, was caught by the current, and slid on.

Perusino ripped off his belt. "Franz! Knot!"

"I'm a fox, not a rope master!"

"Today you're both!"

Franz bit the belt tightly. Perusina threw the other end over a branch. Perusino lay flat on the wet stone and stretched out his hand. The sack came closer. Half a meter more.

Then the figure darted forward and stepped on the belt.

The sack slipped past.

Perusina grabbed the spiral stone. Suddenly she understood. The spiral was not decoration. It was a map: swirl, channel, second swirl.

"Franz, to the left! To the second basin!"

Franz leaped over a rock crevice, landed on slippery stone, and clung on. The sack shot out of the channel. Franz bit.

Not the sack. The string.

Perusina grabbed him by the belly. Perusino pulled both back. The sack splashed onto the rock. Rescued.

The figure tried to flee but slipped on the wet stone. The poncho fell back. Beneath it was not a robber, but a boy.

"I didn't want to sell the coffee," he stammered. "I wanted to hide it. My uncle mixes bad beans in and then claims Canchaque coffee is nothing special."

In the evening, Don Elías's courtyard smelled of freshly roasted coffee. The boy told the truth. Franz sat by the oven, very wet and very proud, with a single coffee bean on his nose.

Perusino grinned. "So Canchaque has fog, whirlpools, and coffee."

Perusina turned the spiral stone in her hand. "And clues that move."