Two posts in one day, but there is going to be almost a post each day for the next week, a mix of Featherclaws and riding posts, so stick around!! 🙂

Here is the apparently eagerly-awaited chapter three of the first book in my Featherclaws series, so I hope it’s just as gripping and well-written as the ones before!

Three

The lumpy brown Kiwi standing before the queen might’ve gotten himself a higher rank in the queen’s royal council if he’d spared himself of the ridiculous glasses perched on his nose. 

Barbie was a sinewy, incorrigibly grouchy, and sour bird. Sometimes Star sniggered to herself that he was related to the queen with all that insolence they seemed to share.

The reason the formidable bird had such a peculiar name was simply because of those glasses sitting on his head. Silver spectacles might not have been as bad, but the flaming-pink movie-star style glasses were a shocking contrast to the browns and greens of the Circuit and forest. 

On the side of the pink glasses were the words Barbie, which was how he got his name. 

Keep in mind that the Kiwis have never seen ‘Barbie’ before in their lives, so it was just an unusual name that didn’t really match the Riverspeaks and Leafclaws. 

“Your majesty?” Barbie said gruffly, saluting. His salute was barely one respectable for a queen, and he looked five times sourer than he usually did when saluting a bird with a higher rank than him.

Starwatcher poked her head out of her hole cautiously, but curiously at the same time.

“There’s a guest waiting for you in the antechamber.”

Starwatcher’s curious expression turned electric. “A guest?” she squeaked. “Can I come?”

“SHUT YOUR BEAK!” Queen Moonstone and Barbie growled in sync, which made Star even more sure they were related, even though it was quite obvious they weren’t due to the difference in size and feather-colour.

Star clamped her mouth shut and stuffed herself back in her hole.

“Barbie, there’s something I’ve got to tell Starwatcher before I meet this visitor,” Queen Moonstone said through a gritted beak. “You waddle along and say I’ll be there in five minutes.”

Barbie nodded and waddled out of the room, griping about something under his breath.

“Starwatcher?” Queen Moonstone snapped impatiently. “The one time I actually need to speak to you, you’re curled up in your hole.”

In three huge leaps, Star was standing in front of the queen, stabbing her excitement. The queen never told her anything without her asking a million questions and prying the answers out of her. 

“There’s something I ought to tell you,” she began tightly, as though it was actually causing her pain speaking to the fizzing tawny Kiwi.

“Yessss??” Star pressed, leaning closer with her giant eyes as large as moons with excitement. 

“It’s about….” There was some coughing and wheezing before the sentence was continued. “It’s about your future,” Queen Moonstone spat out, now glaring at Star just because she needed to.

“What about my future?” Starwatcher was beginning to grow impatient. 

“You’re-you’re destined to–” Queen Moonstone looked like she’d rather murder herself than finish the sentence.

Luckily, or not so luckily, screams tore off the end of her words. Shouting and shrieks and honking spiralled through every tunnel, boring through the walls and thrumming in every birds’ ears.

“FOR GOODNESS’ SAKES!” Queen Moonstone shrieked, leaping up, grabbing her spear and shooting Starwatcher a furious glare. “Stay out of it, or you know what will happen.”

Starwatcher’s blood was boiling like an overfull jug. The queen – her guardian – was just about to tell her the most important sentence in Aotearoa, and then some idiots started screaming for the heck of it! She stormed into her hole and curled up in a ball, crushing her essay between her claws in fury.

Gradually, the hollering died down, and Starwatcher could hear nothing but the silence of the empty tunnels. When that eerie silence continued, she felt a knot of uneasiness wriggling in her stomach. Surely someone would walk past the arch now? Or Queen Moonstone would return? But the tunnels stayed silent. Nothing stirred. Not even a grub.

Star wriggled out of her hole and poked her head around the wooden arch and felt the hollow carves brush against her feathers. 

There wasn’t a soul in the tunnel for as far as the sharp corner twenty-four Kiwis side-by-side away.

Cautiously, stepping on her tip-claws, she crept down the hall. She hoped to her lucky stars that Queen Moonstone wouldn’t suddenly come marching down the hall and see that she’d disobeyed her orders. 

But when she reached the turn, no Moonstone came bombarding through. There wasn’t a single bird in that tunnel either. The frightened whispers of birds cramped together in one room met her ears on the fifth corner. She stepped into the hole which was titled ‘Antechamber’, and everyone hushed silent.

“What’s going on?” she asked, her voice tight with anxiety. 

The biggest birds shot her grumpy glares. A small female Kiwi spoke up. 

“Queen Moonstone…is-is…is dead.”

“NO!” Starwatcher screamed, wriggling through the birds’ feathers. In the center of the circle lay the queen – her guardian – with a spear through her chest. Her beautiful neatly-trimmed russet brown feathers were stained maroon, and the amethyst necklace that always hung from her noble, arched neck was gone. 

The one who might’ve shouted at her a lot, but the one who protected her from everything was dead. She’d lost two mothers in a row. A tear trickled from her once-sparkling obsidian eye. 

Her Queen Moonstone…

“What do we do now?” the Head Chef, Grubmuncher, demanded at Star. 

“We-we…I don’t know,” the little brown Kiwi mumbled, sitting down beside the queen. 

“Someone murdered her!” a large bombastic Kiwi shouted from the archway. 

“I bet it was you,” a smaller Kiwi spat, turning on the Kiwi beside him.

“Oh-scoff- yeah right, like you haven’t been gloating about what an awesome King you’d make, idiot!”

A pair of Kiwis on the other side of the Antechamber started accusing each other, too.

“You stabbed her!”

“Yeah RIGHT! I’ll bet my lifelong stash of snails it was you!”

“You’re a…a hairy avocado on legs!!”

“At least I’ve got a brain! Your brain was replaced by a smushed potato!”

Within minutes the hole was an uproar of shouting, accusations and fighting. Starwatcher’s head began to spin as Kiwis lunged at each other, claws outstretched and screaming insults. 

“Wait!” Starwatcher cried as a pair close to her started wrestling. “Can’t Queen Moonstone’s daughter become Queen? Isn’t that what happens?”

Her world was spinning in a blur of brown. All of a sudden, she didn’t remember ever meeting Queen Moonstone’s daughter.

A Kiwi grabbed her wing from behind and she squeaked in terror. “The queen doesn’t have a daughter,” the foul-smelling bird snarled. He twisted her wing in his claws.

“Let GO!!” Star screamed in his face, wrenching her wing free and latching onto his face, clawing at his beak. 

“You touch my wing again and I’ll give you to a cat to play with!”

The bird staggered backwards, unable to see, and bonked into the wall, causing a heap of dirt to fall from the ceiling and engulf him. Starwatcher leapt off his head just in time.

She fought her way out of the Antechamber, pushing Kiwis out of the way until she burst out into a heap on the soil floor of the tunnel. She was so confused she couldn’t feel grief for her queen.

“Queen Moonstone doesn’t have a daughter?” she whispered to herself. The words felt wobbly as they fell out of her beak.

A pair of birds exploded through the arch and wrestled their way down the hall, rolling and squeaking and clawing. The tunnel crumbled, and several clumps of compacted soil fell from the roof, smushing the two birds as it landed on the floor. Starwatcher leapt back, and dashed down the tunnel, fighting back tears. She crawled into her hole and stayed there, her eyes tightly shut, wishing all the bad things away.

Someone killed Queen Moonstone, she thought, staring at the shard of glossy white eggshell. And what if that same bird killed Dreamcatcher? 

What was going to happen to her tribe? There was no queen or princess, according to the Kiwis. Already birds were attacking each other with accusations; their kingdom would fall apart if a new queen or princess wasn’t elected. 

She had a new thought. One that hurt her entire body.

What if…Queen Moonstone wanted me to become the next queen? What if that’s what she wanted to say to me before she died? 

She didn’t want to become queen. She didn’t want to tell other birds what to do, and act all grouchy and mean. 

She didn’t want to sit on a wooden throne all day and do nothing except growl a lot. She didn’t want allies yakking about trade deals and resources. No. Someone else would become ruler of the Kiwis. Lots of birds wanted to. Her guardian had made a point of loathing her, and she wouldn’t choose a non-royal hatchling she seemed to truly dislike to take her role.

It hurt her to think about a new ruler, instead of Queen Moonstone. Sure, the old bird might’ve been cranky, but she kept the tribe in order. She didn’t take anything for herself and hoard it. She followed her role and dutifully cared for all the Kiwis on Karioi. So what would happen now, when she was gone, and all the greedy birds beneath her wanted her position?

Starwatcher was scared to find out.