Starfell: Willow Moss & the Lost Day

by Dominique Valente

  Willow was taken aback. “You’ve never forgotten what you’ve done before?”

  “Never.”

  Willow’s eyes popped. She didn’t really know what to do with that information.

  Moreg changed the subject. “I believe that you are a finder?”

  Willow hesitated; she’d never been called that before. Mentally she cringed. The closest she’d ever come to being called that was when her sister Camille took to calling her “Fetch” for a large portion of her childhood. She’d stopped that now. Mostly.

  “Yes. Well. No. Not exactly. I mean . . . I find things . . . things that are lost.”

  Moreg said nothing.

  Willow filled the silence in a rush. “I mean . . . I could find your keys if you lost them, but I don’t think I could find an entire day . . . even if it was lost.”

  Moreg raised a brow. “But you could try, couldn’t you?”

  Willow considered. She could. There was nothing stopping her from at least trying. She took a deep, nervous breath, closed her eyes, and raised her arm to the sky, concentrated hard on Tuesday, then—

  “STOP THAT THIS INSTANT!” thundered Moreg, jumping out of her seat so fast she overturned her chair, which hit the flagstone floor with a deafening clatter. Willow gulped, while Moreg watched her lower her arm as if it were a dangerous viper. Clutching her chest, the witch took several sharp, shuddery breaths. “SUCH A FRIGHT! MY HEART!”

  Willow’s voice shook as she spoke in a tone trying its absolute best not to make an accusation. “I don’t understand—you asked me to . . . try?”

  Moreg rubbed her throat, and after a moment her voice went back to almost normal, though there was a faint squeak if you listened closely enough.

  “Q-quite right, quite right,” she repeated. “Yes, I did. I do want you to try, just not quite yet. Dear Wol, no! Not without some kind of a plan first—we can’t just go in and get it. One can only imagine the consequences . . . ,” she said with a violent shudder that she shook off. “Bleugh!”

  At Willow’s frown, Moreg explained. “I believe,” she said, her black marble-like eyes huge, “that had you succeeded in finding the missing Tuesday and brought it into our current reality, the result would almost certainly have been catastrophic—it’s possible that the very structure of our universe would have split apart, creating a sort of end-of-days scenario. . . .”

  “Pardon?” asked Willow.

  “I believe it might have ended the world.”

  Willow sat back, heart jackhammering in her chest. Finding out that she could have ended the world was, to say the least, a sobering thought.

  Moreg, however, seemed back to normal.

  “The thing is, until we know what happened, we could just make things worse. Worse than it already is now, and right now it’s about as bad as can be imagined.”

  Willow frowned in confusion. “What do you mean? I know it’s not . . . um, great that Tuesday has gone missing, but it’s not the end of the world, surely? It’s just one day. . . .”

  A day that no one seems to have missed anyway, so what was the harm, really? thought Willow.

  Moreg blinked. “Actually, it might be the end of the world if we don’t find it. Whatever happened to last Tuesday may affect the very fabric of Starfell, causing it to unravel slowly, thread by thread.”

  Willow’s mouth fell open dumbly as she gasped. She hadn’t realized it could be that serious.

  Moreg nodded. “Which is why we will have to start at the beginning. We can’t very well proceed until we know for sure what happened. Or, more importantly, why.”

  She looked out of the window, frowning slightly, then blinked as if she were trying to clear her vision. “There’s someone I think we’re going to need, someone who can help us . . . which might prove a little tricky, as we need to find him first.”

  “Oh, why’s that tricky?” asked Willow.

  Moreg turned to look at her, a faint smile about her lips. “He’s an oublier, you see, one of the best in Starfell, no doubt, coming from a long line of them. The problem is that finding an oublier is almost impossible unless you know where to look.”

  Willow looked blank. “An ouble—a what?”

  “An oublier. It’s in the Old Shel, you see.” A language that Willow had always thought of as having words with more pieces to them. Modern-day Shel was the language most people spoke in Starfell, apart from High Dwarf, that is, but the latter was mostly because of all the colorful ways one got to swear. “It’s pronounced oo-blee-ay, but you could also call them forgotten tellers, people who see the past.”

  “Like the opposite of a seer?”

  Moreg drummed her chin with her fingers. “Sort of—”

  “Like my mother,” interrupted Willow, whose mother was a well-known seer, and took her traveling fair all across the kingdom of Shelagh telling fortunes.

  Moreg seemed to have something stuck in her throat, because she answered with a strained voice. “Er, yes, like your mother. Though most people who call themselves ‘seers’ and say that they can see the future have no idea how it is really done, and often claim to have some connection to the ‘other side,’ to the dead, who supposedly let them know when things are about to occur,” she said with a disbelieving sniff. “True seers are, of course, very rare. But they have been known to read patterns in the smallest events, allowing them to see possible versions of the future. For instance, if they see a particular flower blooming in winter when it usually blooms in spring, they can work out that a typhoon is coming in the summer.”

  Willow stared blankly.

  Moreg continued, “Unless they somehow encourage the last tree sparrow to build its nest before midnight on the spring equinox, for example. Do you understand?”

  Willow made a kind of nod, mostly because it seemed like it was expected. But she didn’t really understand at all.

  Moreg continued, not noticing Willow’s confusion. “Forgotten tellers, on the other hand, read people’s memories of the past, which come to them like visions when other people are around. They are, alas, rather unpopular compared to seers, and have very few friends, as you can imagine. . . .”

  Willow was puzzled. “Why is that?”

  “Well, seers should be unpopular too. No one wants to be around someone who can predict their death. . . . Yet so very few of them really can predict such things—so they make excellent friends, as they always tell you just what you’d like to hear. Forgotten tellers, on the other hand, seldom, if ever, tell you what you’d actually like to hear. They tell things most people would prefer to forget, things you may wish to pretend never happened. . . .”

  Willow’s eyes bulged. “Really?”

  Moreg nodded. “Oh yes. Take poor old Hercule Sometimes, a powerful forgotten teller. He was found drowned in a well after he walked past the Duke of Dittany and embarrassed him in front of the captain of the king’s army. The duke had been boasting that he had fantastic natural archery skills, and that the very first time he’d used a bow and arrow he’d hit the bull’s-eye. Apparently Hercule stopped in his tracks, slapped his knee, started chortling and said, ‘You mean when you fell over backward in a field after you’d released the arrow and poked a bull in the eye with your bow?’” Moreg chuckled. “See, he’d seen the duke’s memory of the day, and, well, the duke was less than impressed, as you can imagine. . . .”

  “But why did he tell the duke?” gasped Willow.

  Moreg’s lips twitched. “Couldn’t help himself—forgotten tellers see a thing as if it just happened. And they often blurt it out before they realize. They aren’t stupid—they’re just not always aware of what happens to them when they’re having a vision. Making for rather awkward social situations. As a result very few oubliers have lived to tell their tales, and they have an alarming capacity for turning up buried beneath people’s floorboards, at the bottoms of wells, or as the subjects of poison. They often carry their own food. They’re deeply suspicious of gatherings of people, partly because they get f
looded with other people’s memories and partly because the more visions they have, the more chance they have of getting themselves into trouble by offending people. So the few who have survived are virtually hermits, who start running the minute they see anyone approaching. . . .”

  “Oh,” said Willow with a frown. “How are we going to find one then if they’re impossible to find?”

  “Tricky, I said.” Moreg grinned. “But not impossible, if you know where to start.”

  “And you do?”

  “Oh, yes. I’ve found in life that sometimes it’s useful to look back a little, to see when you need to go forward.”

  “Huh?”

  “We’re going to visit his last known address.”

  “Oh,” said Willow, blinking at the ominous use of “we.”

  “I think you may need to pack a bag.”

  “Oh dear,” Willow whispered.

  Meanwhile, far away in a hidden stone fortress, where no magic had been able to penetrate for a thousand years, a figure stood alone in the tower and waited.

  Waited for the raven, and the message that could lead to his downfall, betraying his plans before he was ready to seize power.

  There were shadows beneath his eyes; sleep was a tonic he could ill afford.

  But no raven came this day. Just as it hadn’t come the day before.

  At last he allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief; at last he allowed himself to believe. It had worked.

  He put the box inside his robes, keeping it close to his heart. It had done its job well. Never again would he let the witch get the better of him.

  He left the tower and found his faithful followers waiting on the winding stone staircase for the news. “She can’t remember?” asked one, his face dark, hidden behind the hood of his robe. “Does that mean she won’t be coming?”

  He gave a low, mirthless laugh. “Oh, she will. I have no doubt of that. But this time I will be ready.”

  3

  The Monster from under the Bed

  WILLOW SPENT THE next quarter of an hour trying not to picture the look on her father’s face when he got home from his job as a farm manager for Leighton Apples and found her gone. Moreg, meanwhile, explored the Mosses’ “fascinating cottage garden” in an attempt to give Willow a moment to pack in privacy.

  In her small bedroom, which she shared with Camille, Willow took down Granny Flossy’s old green shaggy-hair carpetbag from atop the cupboard; it was made from the long hairs of a Nach mountain goat. Willow had often wondered if it was age that had turned it green, or if there really were green mountain goats. . . .

  Willow tried to think of what she might need.

  She’d never spent the night away from the cottage before, not even to go to one of her mother’s traveling fairs. She’d somehow always been too young, or when she was old enough, too established as the “sensible one”—which translated as “the one who was better suited to look after her father and Granny Flossy.”

  Not that she minded looking after Granny. They looked after each other, really. The two had been a pair since she’d come to live with them the year Willow turned five. Willow’s father was sometimes a bit embarrassed by his formerly famous mother, whose potions had once been highly sought commodities, but which now mostly exploded in clouds of colored smoke that left rat tails on the ceiling. He tried to forbid her to make them, and tried locking away her supplies. He didn’t seem to notice how Granny Flossy’s shoulders slumped whenever he reprimanded her, or how much it hurt her when he treated her like a child. Willow knew, though, just like she knew where he hid the key. It was why Granny brewed most of her potions in secret in the attic when he was gone.

  Willow and Granny spent most of their days there together, with Willow trying her best to ensure that Granny’s potions didn’t blow off the roof again. And even though Camille said that the pair were perfectly matched because Willow’s magic was rather humdrum and Granny’s was rather disastrous, she didn’t mind. Somehow that made things better, not worse.

  But now, as a result of being at home with Granny Flossy all these years, her worldly experience was rather limited, to say the least, and she had absolutely no idea what someone was supposed to take on a potentially dangerous adventure. Moreg had told her that they might be gone for a week, or two, if everything went according to plan, and that it was best for the moment not to say anything about what they were really doing in case her parents came tearing after them (which might make saving the world harder than it needed to be).

  Willow’s sensible side had come up with a few questions. Like why, for instance, she had the questionable luck of being home alone when the most feared witch in all of Starfell came knocking. Or why this plan meant that no one knew where she was going, or, more important, who she was with. . . . A rather fearsome who, as it turned out. But “no” didn’t seem a word Moreg Vaine heard. So Willow had said yes, partly because she was a bit too afraid to say no, but also because it sounded like a pretty serious problem, so shouldn’t she try to help . . . if she could?

  But mainly she’d said yes because hadn’t she always secretly wished for something like this? Even that morning while she was hanging up her sisters’ underwear on the line, she had wished that she could go somewhere exciting just once, somewhere beyond the Mosses’ cottage walls, and do something that didn’t involve finding Jeremiah Crotchet’s teeth. But, as Granny Flossy always said, wishes are dangerous things, especially when they come true. Which was why, now, she was a bit worried that this was more adventure than she’d bargained for. . . .

  Willow looked at her belongings and frowned. She probably needed more than just an extra pair of socks.

  It took her another five minutes to gather everything she might need, which coincidentally amounted to everything she owned:

  Her second dress, pond green—previously belonging to Juniper and taken in rather haphazardly by Granny Flossy, so that it bubbled around her feet like a balloon

  Three pairs of thick bottle-green wool socks

  A large, rather lumpy fisherman’s jersey of indeterminate color, mostly pea green—a hand-me-down from her father

  An enormous, and very old, slightly moldy-looking khaki-green nightdress—once belonging to Granny Flossy

  One pale-blue scarf dotted throughout with small white horseshoes—still belonging to her sister Camille

  Briefly she wondered why almost everything she owned was a rather unfortunate shade of green. She then stood thinking for a minute, her fingers drumming her chin, trying to make up her mind: should she, or shouldn’t she? Then she knelt beside the bed, and after a bit of scrambling she pulled out the monster who lived under the bed, clasping him firmly by his long tail. This was to his absolute horror, which sounded like this: “Oh no! Oh, me greedy aunt! A pox on you from all of the kobolds!” She put him alongside her worldly belongings.

  “Monster” was a bit of a stretch. Oswin was, in fact, a kobold, a species that only just fell into the classification of monster. But it was best not to tell Oswin this, as he was very proud of his monster heritage.

  Through groggy slits that exposed luminous orange eyes that hadn’t seen daylight for several weeks, Oswin was glaring at her now. His lime-green fur was turning a ripe pumpkin color in his outrage, and his bright-green-and-white-striped tail electrified with indignation.

  “Wot you go and do that for? Grabbing peoples by the tail? Is that any way to treat a body? No respect . . . and me being the last kobold and all!” he muttered darkly. Then he scratched a shaggy ear with a long, slightly rusty claw and grumbled, “I ’ave ’alf a mind to leave. . . . ’Specially after I got you them awfully resistible feet thingamababies, which you never even fanked me for,” he pointed out with a deep hard-done-by sniff.

  Oswin was always a bit cross, so Willow ignored this.

  The “thingamababies” that he referred to were her next-door neighbor Mrs. Crone-Barrow’s ancient, rather dead-looking bunny slippers. Willow had made the mistake of mutteri
ng one night that her toes were cold, so Oswin had gone next door and pried the prehistoric slippers from the old woman’s sticky, corn-crusted feet with a butter knife. Willow had woken up to the feeling of something warm, wet, and icky attached to her feet, followed very closely by the sound of her own screaming when she realized what it was. She still shuddered at the memory.

  Despite this, there was the faint, very faint, chance Oswin might come in handy on an adventure, thought Willow. He was really good at spotting magical ability, as well as detecting lies, and his thick kobold blood allowed him to resist most forms of magic. He was also her only friend, and who would remember to feed him when she was gone?

  Oswin, despite his threat, had made no attempt to leave and was now taking care of some morning monster ablutions: checking his fur for any stray bugs and polishing his teeth with a corner of Willow’s bedcover. In fact, Oswin had been threatening to leave the relative comfort beneath Willow’s bed ever since Willow first caught him three years ago. “Caught” being the operative word, like an infection.

  Willow had been called to the Jensens’ farmhouse to deal with a case of a missing monster, wondering on the way why the Jensens would want to find a monster. . . . She decided not to think about it too much because, as her father always said, spurgles don’t grow without fertilizer. But when she arrived and Mrs. Jensen pointed to the stove, squealing, “It’s in there!” Willow had been a little confused.

  “What’s in there?”

  “The monster, of course.”

  Willow had frowned. “But, Mrs. Jensen,” she’d replied, “I can’t deal with monsters!”

  “You have to—you’re a witch and . . . he’s lost. . . . Isn’t that what you do, find things?”

  “But . . . how can he be lost if he’s right there?”

  It turned out that the Jensens knew he was a lost monster because Oswin had told them so shortly before he took up refuge in the stove. He refused to come out, or to tell them where he was from, for that matter. Later Willow would find out that this was a sore point, as he and his fellow kobolds had been banished from their home and scattered throughout Starfell due to a bit of thievery on the part of his aunt Osbertrude.