Katarina
Late in the afternoon as the sun was about to fall behind the hills surrounding
Ganse-Stadt, Katarina would head for the hills to bring the cows home. Along the way she often picked up a stick. Usually she used it to swipe at some weeds, or bat a stone down the road. When she got to where the cows were she used it to gently urge them in the right direction towards home. One day she found an unusual stick shaped almost like a two tined fork and if she turned it upside down, it looked like the letter “y”. Katarina couldn’t decide which way she liked the stick, as a fork or a "y". She tried both ways. As a fork it worked ok, she could pick up things with it and toss them aside. But when she held it the other way, by the two tines, she couldn’t do anything with it, it kept pointing to the ground. She raised it up to urge the cows on, plup, it pointed to the ground. Katarina was puzzled, she thought the stick might be magic or something. As she was guiding her cows back into Ganse-Stadt, she passed a big pickle farm. She stopped to chat with the owner for a few minutes, telling him about the stick she found. He sort of grinned and asked her to show him what the stick did. Sure enough the stick pointed to the ground, the pickle farm owner put a stake in the ground right where the stick pointed to. Later when Katarina was back in Ganse-Stadt, she stopped at the Gathering Place and happened to say something about her stick. The flower lady asked Katarina to show what she had done, but do it in the flower garden. Sure enough the stick pointed down again, the spot was marked. Many other residents wanted Katarina to do the same for them in their gardens and yards. A few days later at all the places where Katarina’s stick had left a mark, people were digging. When Katarina asked why all the digging, the answer was there’s water down there. Katarina couldn’t believe it, she was able to find water with her stick. The flower lady found water for her flowers, the pickle farmer had water for his pickles, and the owner of the Gathering Place had all the water she wanted to make her famous brew. Katarina became known as the Wasser Dame, or the lady who can find water. The flower lady thanked Katarina by giving her some flowers, so she could make wreaths and put them around the necks of her cows as she paraded them through the streets of Ganse-Stadt. |