“What are you doing here?” Bo asked.
“Magic is returning,” said ghost-Mads. “The lock was broken and magic is seeping through. It gives me the strength to return too.”
There was a flutter in Bo’s belly. This time it wasn’t fear—it was hope.
“You’re coming back? For good?” Bo licked his lips. “Because the Shadow Creatures have been running wild and Galvin said it was because of the Shadow Witch and everybody’s leaving the village and I think the forest is dying and the Innkeeper chased me out of town because I met a Korahku and she says I have to go to the Sisters to be safe, so I’m sorry but I can’t look for the Stars—I can’t—not on my own.”
Bo could see through the shimmery apparition to the swamp and the claw-trees and the bleakness beyond. The ghost of Mads looked so temporary, so fragile, so vulnerable. Like a flame—all you needed was a puff of wind and it would be snuffed out.
“But you must find the Stars,” said ghost-Mads. “I need Star-magic to be powerful enough to return. Don’t you want me to come back?”
“But you said magic was already returning. Why do you need me?”
Ghost-Mads flickered, like a candle dancing in the wind. “Without the Stars, magic is wild, untamed, a tangle of chaotic forces at war with one another—it makes magic so much easier to corrupt. Why do you think the Shadow Creatures are growing in strength? They feed off this chaos and only the return of the Stars can stop them. Soon, they will be strong enough to hunt in the Light. Do you want that?”
“But you said Stars were a myth! You said . . . you said . . .” Bo stopped, breathing deeply, trying to untangle his tongue. “I don’t know anything about the world,” he said finally. “Why did you never tell me anything?”
The ghost knelt, placing a warm hand on Bo’s arm. Bo startled at the unexpected softness.
“There was a wolf,” explained ghost-Mads, “a greedy, magical wolf who climbed into the sky and ate the Stars because he wanted their power all for himself. He was captured by a wizard, who worried that the wolf had proven how easy it was to steal the Stars. So he hid the wolf in a cage far, far away where no one could find him and use the Stars for their own selfish needs.
“But that was a mistake, you see? Because without the Stars to maintain a good balance, magic was corrupt. All magic had to be locked away to save the land from being overrun with Shadow Creatures. But the lock broke and now magic is returning. Except, without the Stars, there is no balance again. So much evil magic is coming.” Mads tightened his fingers around Bo’s arm. “There are three keys needed to open the wolf’s cage. Find the keys and then find the cage.”
Bo pulled at his shirt uncomfortably. His chest still burned—why was the pendant so hot?
“You said something about a witch before you . . . a Shadow Witch who was after the Stars. It was her that broke the lock, wasn’t it? And—”
Mads squeezed tighter. “Listen to me, child! Magic is returning but the Shadow Creatures are feeding off it and growing stronger. We need the Stars to defeat them once and for all. You will be a hero!”
Uncertainty prickled at the bottom of Bo’s belly. The land was so big and he knew nothing. And who would help him? Tam couldn’t wait to get rid of him, and the villagers wanted to feed him to the Innkeeper’s dog. He was nothing. No one.
Mads pulled him close and placed his palm against Bo’s forehead. Suddenly, Bo could see himself running through his forest home, laughing and carefree. He ran, weaving through the trees and jumping over fallen logs, until he saw her.
His mother.
He knew it was his mother even though they had never met. Not really. He could feel it, deep in his heart, deep in the part of him he kept hidden, the part that ached with need and loneliness. His mother’s face was hazy but he knew she was smiling as she knelt and opened her arms wide. Bo ran into her embrace with such force that they both fell over, giggling and giddy and holding each other tight. “I’ve missed you so much,” his mother told him. And Bo believed her. Because this was how things could be; with a wish, Bo would finally have a mother who wanted him.
Mads withdrew his hand and the vision was gone. Bo felt heavy with the loss; never had something tugged so tightly on his heart. All those years of longing to know her, to run into her welcoming arms, to have what every other child in the village had . . .
“The Stars will give you what you crave,” said Mads. He was beginning to flicker in and out of focus. “Any wish will be granted.”
The hairs rose on Bo’s arms and nape. His fingers ached with the need to reach out and touch the vision Mads had shown him. He wanted it so much.
A shadow passed over Mads’s face, twisting his features from soft to hard. He shot out a hand and gripped the leather strap of Bo’s necklace, pulling it out from under his shirt.
Bo whimpered as he was jerked forward, the strap cutting into his skin as Mads examined the necklace closely. “You gave it to me,” explained Bo. “Before you . . . I thought you wanted me to have it. I’m sorry. I’ll give it back. I’m—”
Mads shook his head. “There are words,” he said. “Ancient Ulvish carved into the leather. See? ‘The first shall be found with the king who has no crown.’”
Bo squirmed, trying to wriggle free of Mads’s grasp. “A riddle? You said—you were talking about the keys and you said something about a riddle leading me to them and—”
“Yes!” cried Mads, the shadow finally clearing from his face. “Yes, I did, didn’t I?” He let the necklace drop; Bo’s hands flung to his neck, and he pressed the cool of his palms where the leather had rubbed his skin raw. His eyes pricked with tears but he said nothing. He did not understand what had just happened, but it sat like a cold lump of pond scum in the pool of his belly.
Mads turned his keen gaze on Bo, clamping his hand on Bo’s shoulder. Bo hissed as the old man’s fingers dug into the flesh—he was a ghost! How was that possible? “The answer is where you will find the first key,” said Mads, excitement carrying his voice loud and raw-edged through the marsh.
“But what does the riddle mean?” asked Bo.
Mads flickered, his edges fading; the hand on Bo’s shoulder was little more than a wisp of silver mist. “Curse the Moon,” he snapped. “Not enough magic to sustain me.” He bent close; when Bo huffed out a breath, parts of Mads floated away. “Solve the riddle and find the first key,” Mads implored, but his voice was weak.
Bo tried to grab Mads’s hand as the old man was suddenly turned from mist to liquid silver, then sucked back into a ball of Light, which hovered in the air in front of Bo.
“Wait!” he cried. “Mads! Please! You can’t go.”
But the suffocating mist was returning.
Bo coughed and spluttered—the mist was filling his lungs and he couldn’t breathe. And the heat! Why was there still a ball of heat against his chest? Bo gripped Mads’s crystal pendant. It was on fire!
“Don’t go!” cried Bo. “Don’t leave me!”
But the Light flickered once, twice, three times, and then it was gone.
Bo stumbled back, gasping for air. “Help me,” he wheezed.
And then he fell.
Bo braced himself for the impact that didn’t come. He just fell and fell and fell. Where was the ground? The world grew Dark, and the last thing he heard was a light peal of laughter and somewhere, in the distance, a wolf’s howl.
Chapter Nine
Laughter echoed in Bo’s ears as he woke, lying in the dirt with no idea why his head ached. A cold, wet nose pressed against his cheek, followed by a familiar bark.
“Careful, Nix,” said Bo, gently pushing the fox away as he sat up. “You’ll lick me to death.”
Rubbing his tired eyes, Bo glanced around: behind him the Forest of Tid shimmered gold, copper, and silver, and in front, fields of green stretched for miles. His brow wrinkled; the last thing he remembered was falling through the mist, so how could—
“Come eat,” said a curt voice.
Bo swung around and saw Tam sitting on a rock, stoking a fire. A rabbit sizzled in the flames, skewered on a branch. Bo’s cloak was neatly folded on the ground, his rucksack resting on top of it.
“How did you find me?” Bo hobbled over and sat cross-legged in front of the sparking fire. The smell of roast meat made his mouth water. “I was in the mist and—”
The Korahku’s eyes shone with mirth. “I bound myself to protect you, remember?” She carved sinewy strips from the rabbit’s carcass and tossed a handful into Bo’s lap. “But it was Nix who found you.” Tam jutted her beak at the fox, whose golden eyes had locked onto the meat in Bo’s lap. “But not in the mist. Here. On the edge of Tid. A little Irin like you would never survive the mist.”
Bo shook his head as the memories came flooding back at once. “No, I was in the mist and there were ghost-children and ghost-Mads told me about the wolf who ate the Stars and how the Dark can be destroyed. All I need to do is figure out the riddle and—”
“Nonsense, child. You simply hit your head and wandered off for a moment. You must have been dazed.” Tam flung a chunk of meat into the air, caught it in her beak, and jerked it down. “You need to watch where you are going and you need to forget this silly business with the Stars. We go to the Silent Sisters and that is final.”
Bo winced, all his hopes for finding the Stars vanishing with a whoosh like the ghost-children being sucked into nothingness. He reached around and felt the back of his head: there was a lump there—had he dreamed it all? He gave half his meat to Nix and ate the rest, frowning to himself. No. It had been real. It had been real.
He was certain he had fallen into the mist.
He remembered everything Mads told him.
He remembered the riddle and the cage and the wolf and the Stars.
And if he tried very, very hard, he remembered how it felt to be held in his mother’s arms, even though it was only a vision. And there was nothing he wanted more than to feel that warmth again.
To feel it for real.
Tam kicked dirt over the fire, extinguishing the flames, and stood. “I have been around a long time, so perhaps you should believe what I have to say over a ghost you dreamed up. Now we leave, yes? Or do you wish to be gobbled up by Shadow Creatures?” She marched away, not even checking that Bo was following.
It was clear.
Tam may have saved him from the Innkeeper’s dog and looked for him when he was lost in the mist, but she wasn’t Bo’s friend; she was just someone else who didn’t want him around.
Bo packed up his things and hurried after the Korahku. “Come on, Nix,” he said.
They hiked for miles, keeping away from the main roads and the Irin soldiers who patrolled them. It was a cloudless day, the air warm and spicy with the end of the Burning Season; soon, it was hot enough for Bo to remove his cloak and tuck it into his rucksack. In the distance, the grassy plains swept into undulating hills—it was going to be a long, hard walk.
“Wouldn’t it be quicker to fly?” he asked.
Tam strode ahead.
Silence.
“Guess not,” said Bo.
He hitched his rucksack over his shoulder, stumbling through the unfamiliar grass—it was long and sharp and made his nose itch.
He never thought he’d miss the forest—the shadows, the crunchy mulch underfoot, the fir trees, and air so cold Bo swore it had teeth to bite him. But he missed it so much he ached.
If he was brave enough and if he was smart enough, he would find the Stars, and Mads would come back and Bo could wish for his mother and it would all be worth it. He would return to his forest a hero—perhaps the village children would invite him to play with them. Everything could go back to the way it was, only better. And no one would leave him again.
He dawdled, letting Tam march out front so he could discuss the riddle with Nix.
“The first shall be found with the king who has no crown,” recited Bo, an idea already tickling the back of his mind. There was something he had heard . . . “What do you think it means?”
Nix barked.
“There is so. Well, actually there’s a queen of Ulv—Tam said so—but there is a king of Irin, too. Or, no. It was an Un-King because no one wanted to be beheaded and oh—” Bo pulled up short, face alight. “The Un-King doesn’t have a crown. That’s what Tam said. Could he have the first key?”
Nix nipped at Bo’s ankle.
“Yeah, but he could. It’s worth a try. I mean, do you have a better idea?”
Nix trotted ahead, snout lifted to the sky.
“Just what I thought,” said Bo with a snort.
Bo’s excitement cast a long shadow over his insecurities—Take that, Innkeeper! Take that, village children! Take that, everyone who ever called me a curse! If the Un-King had the first key and Bo had worked out the riddle all on his own, then surely he could find the Stars and put everything back to rights.
“But how do we convince Tam we need to see the Un-King?” he said.
Nix scooted off into the undergrowth, snout to the ground.
“Fine,” grumbled Bo. “I’ll work it out myself, shall I?”
Bo trudged on. With his eyes scrunched shut, he pictured the gnarled tree and its maze of branches that marked the site of the Irin Un-Royal City on Tam’s map. It was in the northeast of the province, wasn’t it? Bo opened his eyes and tilted his head to the Light—it was straight ahead, nudging the end of the third quadrant. So they were already headed in the right direction. Perhaps if—
Nix appeared with a bird wedged between his jaws and dropped it at Tam’s feet—a gift. He sat back on his haunches, waiting to be fussed over.
Bo snorted. But then he realized it was a bird Nix had just offered Tam. A bird. “Nix! You can’t—”
Tam clicked her beak. “You eat pig, do you not?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then I can eat bird.”
“Wait. Are you saying Irin come from pigs?”
Tam laughed as she walked away. “Alas, they do not. But the resemblance is uncanny. For instance, Irin are small, round, and beady-eyed. And to me, Irin language sounds like a pig squealing and—” She stopped suddenly, lifting her foot to glare at the green gunk dripping from her talons.
Bo laughed until his belly hurt. “That,” he said, wiping his eyes, “is Skugs fud.”
With her beak held high, the Korahku scraped her foot clean on the grass. “We best keep walking, little Irin,” she said. “After all—”
Tam stopped abruptly and when Bo heard voices on the other side of the hill, he understood why. She dropped, motioning for Bo to lower too.
“It’s dead,” said a woman.
“Time of year for it,” said another.
“Not like this,” said a man. “I’m telling you it’s the work of Shadow Creatures, maybe even the Shadow Witch herself.”
Bo hugged Nix close to his side and parted the grass. He peered down the gentle incline that led to a road snaking through a scatter of trees. A convoy of Irin pushed their carts, loaded high with possessions.
The voices belonged to three who had stopped, their cart leaning precariously on the edge of a ditch on the side of the road. They were nervously inspecting a charred, leafless tree.
“You don’t think—” The man snapped his mouth shut and gave a passing family a narrow-eyed glare. Once they had trundled out of hearing distance, he leaned in and lowered his voice. “You don’t think she could be around here, do you? You don’t think she could be one of them”—he jerked his chin at the family—“in disguise?”
“Who cares about a tree?” exclaimed one of the women. “There’s Shadow Creatures slaughtering whole families in the half-Light! They’ll kill every one of us!”
All three startled as another nearby tree lost its leaves in a single violent shiver. The Irin clutched one another as the leaves floated to the ground in a cascade of ash.
“She’s here! She’s here!” The man rushed for his cart, gripped the handles, and
pushed it away from the ditch. “Hurry! To the Un-King! Before she turns us all to ash!”
They disappeared around a bend in the road, wailing and whimpering.
Beside Bo, Tam snorted. “See? Superstitious.”
Bo’s heart beat so hard against his ribs the sound echoed in his ears as he stared at the charred trees. “You don’t think that’s strange?” he said.
“Everything in this province is strange to me.”
“What about Shadow Creatures attacking in the half-Light? That’s not normal.”
Tam clicked her beak and said nothing.
When the last of the traveling procession rounded the bend and disappeared from view, she stood, rolling back her shoulders. “Come, child. We must find a safe hut for the night. There are many situated near the roadside for travelers caught in the Dark.” She stalked away before Bo could even open his mouth to respond.
“This is exactly like being with Mads,” Bo hissed to Nix. “Except Mads never had plans to dump me the first second he could.”
Nix barked.
As Bo chased after the Korahku, his rucksack bounced against his back with a thump, thump, thump and the sharp, reedy grass whipped his legs.
Tam led them to a rickety hut beside a tree, bare and windswept and bowed. The hut was set back and away from the others, those closest to the road and crowded with Irin travelers. “There is our safe hut,” she said. “You will get a good night’s sleep and tomorrow you will understand that I am right.”
The air was chill and the Light was a murky gray and the world so unfamiliar and frightening; Bo had no other choice. So he followed Tam inside and lit candles and ate stale bread and checked his wounded leg and crawled beneath the blankets and closed his eyes, biting his tongue the whole time.
It wasn’t fair.
Why didn’t Tam listen to him?
Why was she set on turning him over to the Sisters?
Why did everyone always leave him?
Dark fell quickly. But Bo did not sleep. The Shadow Creatures howled all night.
The Boy, the Wolf, and the Stars Page 7