There was a time when the odds of Jessica Hilliard showing up at the Ranstrom home on any given day were very good, whether Justin sent her an email or not. The Hilliards, mother and daughter, lived in a small cottage a quarter of a mile up the road from the Ranstroms.

Jessica had been in Justin's class since the third grade, when she and her mother had moved to Ebbettsport from San Francisco. Her mother ran a gift shop on the tourist side of Highway One, frequently working late. It had quickly become routine for Jessica to go to the Ranstroms'after school. Even in the summer, Jessica was more likely to be found there than at home. It was an agreeable state of affairs. Jessica and Justin got on well together and Sally Ranstrom made no bones about having always wanted a daughter, even a part-time one.

But then Jessica had discovered soccer. This summer it seemed like she was spending more and more of her free time with her friends from the team, Kelsey and Emily. So Justin was glad when he looked out the window to see her pedaling up the driveway.

"So, what is it you've got to show me?" she said to Justin as she came in the kitchen door.

Justin led her into his bedroom. He opened the sock drawer and rummaged around a bit until his fingers found it. It had managed to work its way to the bottom. He grasped the chain with his fingers and pulled the amulet out, dangling it in front of Jessica. She looked at it with a questioning look on her face.

"So? What is it?" she asked, not really all that impressed.

"If I knew, I'd tell you," Justin replied. "But I don't, so I can't. I was kinda hoping you might have some idea."

He handed it to her. She held it up to the window and looked intently at the crystal set in the disk that slowly turned on the end of the chain.

"Not much of a crystal, really," she said. "You know how you get that sort of rainbow like thing when you hold a crystal up to the light? This one doesn't do it."

"Refraction, you mean," Justin said, with just a trace of smugness.

"Whatever," Jessica replied, slightly irritated at Justin showing off his vocabulary. "This crystal doesn't do it."

"Maybe it's not a crystal," Justin said. "But it doesn't look like just a piece of glass."

"It doesn't look like a piece of toy jewelry either," Jessica said, fingering the metal disk that held the maybe or maybe not crystal. "I mean, it's made of some kind of metal, not plastic. Like brass. See the greenish crud in all the little grooves?"

"That's called a patina," Justin said, unable to resist showing off his knowledge of what to call greenish crud on brass. Jessica shot him a dirty look.

"Anyway, it's probably kinda old. See how it must have been worn or carried in a pocket or something, because most of the," Jessica paused for effect, "patina has been rubbed off, except in the low spots."

"What's really odd about it is how heavy it is," Justin said. "I mean, for its size."

Jessica looked at him questioningly.

"Well, it's not really very big," Justin said, a little surprised that she seemed not to have noticed. "The chain is very thin and the metal of the disk is no thicker than a quarter. But that thing is really heavy for its size."

"Maybe to you it seems heavy, Mister Weenie Arm," Jessica replied. "It hardly weighs anything."

She hooked the chain over her index finger and spun the trinket lightly around. "It hardly weighs anything at all," she said again for emphasis.

Justin took it back. He suspended it from one finger. It felt heavy to him, like it was made of lead. He tried to spin it around like Jessica had done, but after a couple spins the weight of it caused it to slip off his finger and it went flying across the room. It landed with a solid thunk on the floor. Justin went over and picked it up.

"Did that sound like something light to you?"

"Well, maybe it feels light to me but heavy to you."

"It can't do that," Justin replied. "It's against the laws of physics."

"Which law?" Jessica asked. "Exactly?"

Justin thought for a moment. He didn't really know the laws of physics, beyond the fact that there were laws of physics and somebody named Newton came up fairly frequently when physics was mentioned.

"Newton's Thirty-Fifth Law of Things Don't Work Like That," he shot back.

"You made that up."

"Maybe I did, but things don't work like that. I say this is heavy. You say it's light. We need to conduct a test."

He led her out to one of the storage sheds behind the house. Part of the shed was crammed with fishing gear and parts for the boat. Most of what was stored there was beyond any possible future use, having been stashed there by Grandpa Ranstrom when Justin's father was younger than Justin was now. It was that old. And some of it was gear that Grandpa Ransrom's father had accumulated. Justin had spent a lot of time poking around, trying to decipher what each thing was used for. One item he'd figured out quickly. It had amused him for several days as he played with it. Now he pulled it out of a drawer and blew the dust off it.

He held it up to show Jessica. The device was a metal bar with a shallow bowl attached at each end by three fine chains. The bar was obviously meant to be suspended by another chain attached to a pivot at its center. Right above the pivot was a small arrow, pointing straight up if the bar was level. Justin held it by this chain. The bar tilted one way and then another like a small teeter-totter, then came to rest at the level.

"Ok, what is it? And what does it have to do with this thingee?" Jessica asked, holding up the amulet.

"It's a scale," Justin said. "Like the gold miners used to use."

With his free hand he removed a wooden box from the drawer and opened the lid. Jessica could see that the box contained small brass cylinders, each one sitting in a hole sized exactly to fit it. The cylinders were arranged in order from smallest to largest, and each one was marked with a number.

"Put the amulet in that tray. Then put these weights in the other tray. When the little pointer in the middle of the bar points straight up, the thing being weighed equals the total of the weights."

Jessica put the amulet in one tray. It dropped as far as it could go. Then she started putting weights in the tray. She picked one that looked like it might be big enough to match the amulet and was surprised when the scales didn't move a bit. She added another weight, then a third. The fourth weight caused the tray with the amulet to start to rise, but she still had to add yet another small weight before the bar leveled out. She looked perplexed.

She took all the weights out of the tray and put them in one hand. She hefted them. She took the amulet out of the other tray and held it in her other hand.

"These weights feel much heavier than the amulet," she said.

"They can't be," Justin replied. "The scale proves they weigh as much as the amulet."

"But they don't," Jessica said. "Look at them. All these weights put together are much bigger than the amulet."

"Maybe you did it wrong," Justin said.

"And how could I do it wrong? I just put the weights in the tray. Maybe your scale is broken. Did you think of that?"

"Here, you hold the scale, and I'll handle the weights."

He gave the scale to Jessica. She held it up by the center chain as Justin had. Justin put the amulet in one tray. Jessica handed him the weights. He picked up what he thought was the first weight she'd used and dropped it in the empty tray. To his surprise the tray sank so rapidly that the amulet went flying out of the other tray.

He picked up the amulet and replaced it in its tray. The tray remained in its high position. Justin removed the weight and tried one that was only half as big. He carefully placed it in the tray this time. The amulet tray rose, but not as quickly. Justin replaced that weight with a smaller one, then another and another until finally the crossbar leveled out and the pointer was pointing straight up again.

Justin and Jessica looked at the weight, the amulet, and each other.

"That doesn't make sense," Justin said. "That weight is much smaller than the amulet."

"I told you, your scale must be broken. Try putting the amulet in the other tray."

Justin removed the weight and put the amulet in the other tray. He started trying the weights again, a large one first. Once more he finally balanced the amulet with the small weight he'd ended with the first time.

"I want to try it again," Jessica said.

She handed the scales to Justin, with the weight and the amulet still in the trays. He grasped it by the chain. Immediately, the tray with the amulet dropped as far as it could and the small weight went flying.

"How did you do that?" Jessica demanded.

"I didn't do anything. I'm just holding it."

Jessica picked up the fallen weight, put it back in the tray and gently pushed the bar down until it was level. She removed her finger and the weight went flying again. She put the heaviest of the weights in the tray. It barely moved. She added more weights and it finally leveled out. Then she switched sides.

"Let me hold the scale again," she demanded.

Justin handed held it out. Jessica held the chain. As soon as Justin removed his hand the tray with the weights dropped and the amulet popped up into the air. Jessica caught it with her free hand.

"Weird!" she muttered.

They both stared at the scale and the amulet for a long time. Then Jessica asked, "Where did you find this thing?"

"At the Witch Ring. It was hanging in a tree."

"You found it at the Witch Ring?" Jessica repeated. "Think there's anything else there? Any more stuff like this?"

"I don't know. I didn't look."

"Wanna go look?" Jessica asked.

She wasn't really that curious about whether there was anything else, but she had a feeling that if she didn't get Justin out of the shed they were going to spend the whole afternoon there fussing with the scales.

"Sure," Justin said. "Let's go."

It hadn't occurred to him that whoever lost the amulet might have lost some other neat stuff as well. Now the possibility intrigued him.