I’ve already finished the first book in my bird world series, and I’m so, so proud of the ending and writing I’ve done! I’ve still got a few more chapters to post, but I’ve already started on book two which will hopefully be better than the first! Tomorrow I’m going to see Maz, because although Sophie is away on holiday, she said that I could go and hang out with Maz anytime as long as I had an adult with me! Eek! On Saturday I tried leading Maz up the hill which all the horses think are scary, but he wouldn’t go up it so I had to turn back. I was pretty disapointed, because I really wanted to ride him, but anyway, I put him back with his friends. Mum is taking me tomorrow to go see him, and I’m going to try riding him bareback in the paddock! Maybe he’ll be a little better 🙂 When Sophie gets back I’m going to ask her to teach me how to lead Maz properly, and do some groundwork with him, because he keeps stopping dead when I lead him, and I don’t know how to fix that without tapping his butt with the whip, and I don’t want to do that. I’m pretty excited to learn how to do groundwork with Maz, and I’m happy we’ve both got something to work on where I’m not out of my depth! Anyway, enough about Maz – on with the grand story!!

Twelve

Drip. Drip. Drip.

An ice-cold droplet of water splashed onto Starwatcher’s beak, right between both eyes, before rolling quietly down her ivory nose and falling onto the uneven rocky floor below. Her feathers brushed against the sides, and in some spots it became so tight she had to breathe in and hold it so she could fit through.

Obsidian had no issue slipping through the cracks, which she proudly expressed. The bird who was struggling the most seemed to be Barbie, who was bigger than two stoats combined. Many squeezes and pops later, the tunnel widened though, so everyone could breath.

A chilly air clung around them, and freezing water sloshed between their claws, mixed with green slime clinging to the stalagmites rising in sharp angles up from the floor. 

“There’s more water,” Star grumbled miserably, holding her feet up higher. The tunnel floor was now covered in a layer of icy water, which wasn’t deep at all, but unbearably cold. Her voice echoed back and forth, and all of a sudden she began to feel queasy.

“Why do I feel sneepyy??” Obsidian asked drowsily from up ahead, and Starwatcher could hear her paws stumbling on the rock.

“The oxygen in tightly enclosed tunnels is low,” Barbie replied back, his voice carrying past her and further ahead to Obsidian. “If we space ourselves apart it might help. Or breathing slowly. Try counting to sixty minutes and then take a breath.”

“OWCH!!” Toadstool cried from behind Barbie. The sound of rock cracking and claws scratching stone made the little kiwi shiver. 

“Are you okay?” she called back, trying to turn around. The rock pressed against her sides, forcing her nowhere but forward. It didn’t matter how brave she wanted to feel – she felt horribly claustrophobic.

“Just hit my head on a stupid stalactite,” Toadstool grouched back. 

Slosh slosh. Tramp tramp. How long the tunnel went on, nobody knew. 

“Will we have enough air to reach the end?” Star asked, her voice wobbly. She tripped, causing some loose rock to fall into a puddle with a faint splash. 

“Almost certainly,” Barbie responded dryly from behind her. “Assuming there is an end.”

Star stopped walking, incredulous. 

“And assuming it’s not underwater,” he added.

Frighteningly quickly, she began to stumble, hitting her head on rocks and stepping in potholes of freezing water, which probably wasn’t helping her wooziness. Barbie’s concerned words echoed up the tunnel which made the blood freeze in her veins.

“The tunnel should’ve ended by now…” He fiddled with his leaf-maps. “Unless we’ve taken the long one.”

“Of which we won’t have enough air for,” Toadstool chimed in brightly. “Why did I sound like I was happy about that?”

“You’re hallucinating,” Barbie smirked, marching further ahead. “Just watch out for the cockroach in the tutu to your left. It looks a little bit hungry.”

Toadstool passed out. 

“Nice comment, Barbie,” Star grumbled as she tried to do a front-roll between her legs, getting a beakful of cold water. Barbie couldn’t turn back to fetch Toadstool, so of course she had to.

Squeezing past Barbie who grunted, she grabbed a tight hold of Toadstool’s scaly leg and dragged him onward, gasping for air. 

What if Barbie was right? What if they had taken the wrong tunnel? What if they died before they could stop Lady Kowhai from ruining her tribe? What if…what if…WHAT IF??

It seemed to go on forever. The chilly air that clung to her feathers…the tight space pressing against her sides…the awful lack of air that made her and her friends feel faint…not to mention the lump she was dragging with her. 

“I’m running out of air,” she gasped softly, walking faster and hoping desperately the tunnel would end.

“M-me too,” Barbie mumbled ahead, his clawsteps slowing.

“Barbie you have to keep going,” Starwatcher insisted, stumbling over a loose rock and crashing head-first into the hard ground. She winced and limped to her claws. “If you slow down I will too.”

Barbie grumbled something and pushed on. With every step the tunnel squished them tighter. It was pitch-black, and no one could see each other – only hear their raspy attempts at inhaling. 

Slowly, the blackness began to spin. She couldn’t feel anything with her claws or beak. Then everything faded blacker than it had been before.

The warm blinding sunlight was a stark contrast to the blacks and icy colds of the seemingly neverending tunnel before. She blinked twelve times before the greens and browns became sharp again. 

Star was lying on her back, claws sticking up in the air like a dead fly, on the leafy forest floor.

How did I survive? she wondered, staggering to her claws and fluttering her ruffled feathers. She was back in the forest with Obsidian, Barbie and Toadstool. Toadstool was slurping up water from a voracious stream nearby, and she was relieved to see he hadn’t died in the stone tunnel. Barbie was there too, quivering as though he’d seen a ghost. Obsidian was vigorously licking her fur and spitting in outrage. The brown stoat looked up and crinkled her nose. 

“I’m glad to see you survived,” she muttered as a form of greeting.

“I thought you’d died,” Star blurted to Toadstool, who was now scrummaging around in the leaves looking for grubs.

“So did I,” Toadstool agreed with a grim expression.

He pulled a small grub from beneath a damp leaf and stared at it suspiciously. “Then I remembered I still had unfinished business.”

Star tilted her head. “What unfinished business?”

“Eating this.” He popped the grub into his beak.

There was a brief silence. 

“To be honest,” Toadstool continued, chewing sourly, “I’m not sure that was worth surviving for.”

Obsidian stopped licking her fur long enough to glare at him. “Could you try being positive for once?”

Toadstool considered this. “No.” He returned to rummaging through the leaves.

Seeing the grub being smushed around in the small kiwis’ beak made Star’s stomach rumble. She had never felt so hungry, it almost hurt. 

Shuffling her claws, she began sifting through the leaves and stuffing her beak into the ground, drawing it back with a worm on the end. She got up, and peered ahead through the tightly packed greenery. 

“Barbie, where’s Camp Frogfeather now?” she asked uneasily. 

“Not far,” Barbie mumbled through a mouthful of leaves and slugs. “But we’d best be marching off now. Dark-sky is arriving, and us kiwis have our best energy during those hours.”

Toadstool and Star nodded in agreement. Obsidian ruffled her whiskers. “I can hunt at night, too!” she snapped, thoroughly offended. “Unlike you stupid featherdusters, I can adapt my sleeping hours. Notice how I wasn’t whining about how sleepy I was? Hm? Hm?”

The kiwis rolled their eyes at this, and one-by-one finished grooming themselves, eating and drinking, before following Obsidian (who had appointed herself the leader despite the zero votes from the kiwis) through the forest once more.

The cool breeze and sharp smells were invigorating after the eerie cold of the stone tunnel and constant drip drip of water from the tunnel roof. Wind arranged her feathers how it liked, and the leaves here were crunchy and dry, due to the open ceiling. The sky above them was a mixture of pale blue, scarlet, gold and shades of grey that was slowly fading black. The moon peeked shyly through the clouds, ready to light up the mountain when the sky turned obsidian.

Barbie scrutinised his maps again, pushing his pink glasses up his beak and tsking to himself. “Almost there. About two-thousand-three-hundred-and-nintey-one-point-eight kiwis left to go before we arrive.”

Starwatcher sighed with relief. Her legs ached terribly, and she felt hungry, in spite of the thirty grubs and worms she’d gargled down moments before. She could do two thousand more kiwis. 

“Starwatcher,” Obsidian called back. The crunch-crunch of her tough paws was oddly therapeutic. 

“Yes?” the little kiwi replied, half lost in thought.

“What is your plan when we get to Camp Froggles and stop Kowhai?”

Star hung her head miserably. “I don’t know. It feels like I’m supposed to save the mountain and all the kiwis, but I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to kill Kowhai, and I can’t, either. I’m not strong enough. I was hoping maybe you or Barbie could stop her for me.”

“With pleasure,” Obsidian responded smartly, at the same time as Barbie said, “I’m sorry amigo, but this is your fight.”

Star hung her head again, and waddled slowly behind, her claws dragging on the leafy carpet. It didn’t seem real, that she was a kiwi princess. That both her mothers had died. That a bird related to her was so horrible and self-serving. 

But it was real. And she had a plan. It might have been scary, and it might end up with her dead, but she had to do it. For the good of her kingdom. It was time to face Lady Kowhai.