Hi! Here’s chapter 13 for you all!

Thirteen

“Y-eowch!!” Toadstool squeaked from the back, making Starwatcher freeze with fright.

He held up his foot which had a brown block of wood attached to it, and a thin metal bar crunched on top. The small kiwi shook it as hard as he could, but it stayed set stubbornly  on his foot.

Barbie fussed his feathers back into place, his expression glacial. “I told you to watch your step. We’re in Camp Frogfeather territory now. A place rather notorious for its pest traps.” Toadstool scowled and used his beak to pry off the trap. It left a bloody cut, but nothing worse. 

“So we’re in Camp Frogfeather?” Starwatcher asked cautiously, suddenly wary of every leaf, twig and patch of earth beneath her claws. The thought of lifting it up and having a wooden block strapped to it made her stomach tighten. 

“Indeed, according to my very trustworthy maps. The central camp will be somewhere where the greenery is sparse,” Barbie predicted, peering at his leaves again.

“Just in time too. It’s almost light-sky,” Obsidian announced from the front. Starwatcher noticed the brown stoat held her paws up noticeably higher than before Barbie had confirmed they were in ‘notorious pest trap territory’.

“OI!” a shout made them freeze in their tracks. Slowly, Star turned around, heart thumping hard in her chest. 

To their left was a large, squat kiwi. His face was fixed in a perpetually disgruntled scowl, and tucked under one shaggy wing was a long, pointy spear. On his plump chest sat a battered silver-fern frond, which Star remembered seeing on the KDF generals back home at Root Circuit. 

“Wadda yeh think yeh doin’ in me camp?” the burly kiwi grunted, some snot spraying out his nose.

Obsidian flinched and inched away, flexing her claws. 

“Lady Kowhai – Queen Moonstone’s cousin – is coming; she wants to take over your camp and make all of you follow her,” Star blurted. It didn’t sound very respectable at all.

“I know that,” the other kiwi groused. “That’s why the C.F sent me here to guard the stations – best in the business, that’s me.”

“The ‘C.F’?” Star echoed.

“Camp Frogfeather. Similar to our old kiwi Defence Force. Anyway, meh names’ Geromey. Colonel Geromey Nastibeak.” Colonel Nastibeak introduced himself coldly, showing his crooked beak that was chipped, yellow and covered in green slime. 

“Is…that how you got your name?” Star asked, feeling slightly ill at the sight of his repulsive beak. 

“Mm? Oh yes. Never brushed me beak in meh life, I’ve not. Waste of time. Who could bother.”

Star actually couldn’t remember ever brushing her beak, but her beak certainly didn’t look like that. Trying to ignore it, she continued. 

“I’m Starwatcher.”

Colonel Nastibeak let out a surprised snort, and some more green mucus oozed out of his nostrils. “Starwatcher? The princess?”

Star was incredulous. “You know about me?”

“Pah. O’course. All the royals know yer’ Moonstone’s niece. She hated yeh to bits, little chick, but she had teh keep yeh alive. Ye’v got to continue her legacy. When Dreamcatcher failed to protect her last egg, she was devastated. Then’ the hatchery guard brought your egg to her. As pearl and glossy as an egg could get. It was Dreamcatchers’ orders. She felt so much guilt, rumors spread she committed sewerside. But o’ course it was Kowhai oo killed her. Luckily, the guard got your egg to Queen Moonstone before it was too late.” Nastibeak grunted and saluted. “Anyhoot, princess, you’re welcome. Lady Kowhai might be on her way here now, and no pressure or anyfing, but Camp Frogfeather residents would love a gripping royal battle. If yeh get the choice, fight Kowhai to the death in the royal hall. A statement that’ll make, yes sir.” With that, Colonel Geromey Nastibeak marched back into the ferns.

Star didn’t realise she was quivering until Obsidian gave her a violent pat on the back, ruffling up her neatly arranged feathers.

So that’s why Queen Moonstone kept me,’ she realised, her heart aching in her chest. She shifted her claws on the soft amber brown leaves, disrupting the slaters and bugs living beneath them. Shifting her claws, she only perceived now, in this moment, that shifting her claws was a coping mechanism. She remembered Queen Moonstone’s bitter demeanour and how she used to shift around under her guardian’s icy gaze.

“Starwatcher? Yoo-hoo?” Obsidian waved a paw in her face, accidentally bumping her beak which shook the little tawny kiwi back to reality.

“We have to find the ‘Central Camp’,” the stoat purred frostily, casting another peckish glare at Toadstool, who shrank back behind Barbie.

Star nodded bluntly, and followed her friends through the trees. As several Toetoe  leaves brushed over the top of her head, she had the sickening realisation the only way to save her kiwi friends was to take the crown. (Although kiwis don’t actually have crowns – the royal heirloom she assumed would be her mother’s amethyst chain or something) She was royal – the closest to the queen, and Queen Moonstone’s only other relative was wicked and cruel.

Running ahead up alongside Obsidian, Star gulped and tried to spit out as many words as possible in the correct order.

“I’m going to have to fight Kowhai,” she blurted.

Obsidian wrinkled her whiskers and continued to walk, looking somewhat bored. 

“To the death.”

“Of course you will,” the stoat replied flatly. “You’re the next queen.”

“So that’s what that ‘plan’ was about,” Starwatcher muttered, kicking up a pile of leaves that fluttered up into the air before sinking rather ungracefully back down to the forest floor.

“Barbie said I wasn’t allowed to stuff the overgrown potato into a dumpster,” Obsidian grumbled, watching cautiously through the trees. “He said it was your job to do that.”

“No way! I’m not going to put her in a dumpster,” Star huffed. “I’ll just…talk some sense into her or something. Maybe I won’t even have to kill her.”

Her trail of thought was interrupted by a low hiss echoing through the leaves. Obsidian whirled in a circle, fur pricked up, ears flattened and teeth bared. Starwatcher flexed her claws, watching Obsidian’s back, and hoping whatever was spitting at them couldn’t see the look of terror glazed on her beak.

Barbie and Toadstool had frozen too, and obviously heard the hiss. Unlike Starwatcher and her stoat-friend, they shrank down into leaf-puddles and Barbie was even smart enough to hide his flaming pink glasses under a lump of decaying wood nearby.

Snarling made Star’s blood run cold, and she shrank into her claws a little more.

“It’s a spy,” she whispered quietly to Obsidian, slowly feeling her terror replaced by just the tiniest smidgen of confidence.

The ferns surrounding them rustled, disrupted by something.

“How correct you are,” the kiwi sneered, emerging from the leaves. He was huge – larger than Barbie, and looked as though he’d never visited the Barber-Hole in Root Circuit once in his life. Feathers sagged off every bit of him, and his claws were scarred and dry. He clenched them like a hawk, circling Obsidian and Starwatcher.

“Who in the blazes are you?” Star growled, not taking her eyes of his malevolent gaze.

“One of Kowhai’s faithful spies,” the kiwi responded, reaching for something under his wing. “But you can call me Lord kiwifur. That’s what I’ll be – a royal lord in Queen Kowhai’s Court – as soon as I’ve completed my task of killing you.”

In one swift motion he drew two balls of thorns from under his wing, and thrust them at her. Star ducked – one skimmed her head, jabbing twenty spiky prickles into her feathers. The other hit Obsidian in the back, and she screeched in pain, whirling around and wrenching it out of her fur in one enraged movement, before darting in a brown blur at ‘Lord kiwifur’, claws outstretched and ready to turn him into raw flesh.

The enormous kiwi smacked her out of his path with one claw, and the stoat squeaked, clutching her nose which was now bleeding with red liquid.

Star clenched her claws, embroiled in rage. “Lady Kowhai is not going to be our next queen,” she spat angrily, stretching her claws and cornering the bird up against two thick Rimu trunks.

She knew cornering him was dangerous, but she pretended she wasn’t scared. “I’m the next queen, which is why you want to kill me. I’m the only one who’s blocking your leader’s path.”

“You’re a tiny, insignificant chick,” Lord kiwifur snarled nastily, reaching for more thorn balls.

You’re a tiny, insignificant chick. The words rang in the heroine’s ears so loud it hurt. 

“I am NOT!!” she squeaked, flinging herself at her attacker before he could produce more thornballs. “I’ve survived this long in our stupid, stupid kingdom, and I’m NOT TINY!!!”

Obsidian, Barbie and Toadstool watched, dumbstruck, as their friend lashed at the bird with every ounce of strength she had. 

Lord Kiwifur fought back, snarling and scratching and clawing. Star ducked his claws, slipped under his legs and pushed him up into the air with her own legs. The bird grunted in surprise as he landed beak-first a little ways’ away into a prickly taramea plant, covered in scratches.

Starwatcher darted at him again, biting his feather and yanking clumps of them out. Lord Kiwifur coiled himself in a bundle, then sprang out, raking the little kiwi’s underbelly with his obsidian-black claws.

She squeaked in fright and reeled back, scattering leaves in her wake. Lord Kiwifur loomed above her, his enormous body casting her in an ice-cold shadow.

Frozen with fear, she couldn’t run. 

Before Lord Kiwifur could hurt her any more, an oily voice rippled through the leaves. 

“Starwatcher. I was wondering when you’d run into my claws.”