Oooh…the mystery is becoming deeper? Who is your favourite character so far, and who do YOU think killed the queen?

Five

The stoat, who turned out to be called Obsidian, left before explaining to Starwatcher how she knew about the Kiwi queen’s death.

Star was intrigued. Obsidian and Barbie both had reasons for attacking Queen Moonstone – Barbies’ was less valid, but he hadn’t actually provided a reason. She had another question, though, that kept spiralling through her head.

Queen Moonstone couldn’t protect herself? It seemed unlikely a young stoat could kill such a bombastic bird, when Starwatcher herself had been able to defend herself from Obsidian. 

Leaving Barbie as her prime suspect. 

She fluttered her wing feathers. A cool chill had settled over the mountain, and the sky was aglow with sparkling stars and the intangible silver half-moon. Quite suddenly, Star felt very anxious. She wanted a warm dirt hole to curl up in, and hide from the ghostly shadows. But there was no Root Circuit to curl up in. 

So she began scratching away at the earth with her claws, trying to make a half-comfortable hole that might give her a little more protection from the nasty pests romping around in the undergrowth.

Chitters and rustles that echoed through the wood chilled her to the ends of her feathers. She didn’t feel so confident anymore, now that she was alone.

Shortly after the creepiest shriek murmured through the leaves, Starwatcher stared down at her small hole. It could barely fit her inside, but she curled up as tightly as her little body could and patched up the top of the hole with some foul-smelling leaves.

Then she fell asleep. Or dozed. When she woke up, the sky was still dark and cloudy. Dawn hadn’t woken yet.

“I think I’ll go watch Barbie for a bit,” she muttered to herself, squirming out of her hole. Every bone felt stiff as she flexed her claws and wandered into the dark forest.

Barbie was scrummaging around in the leaves close by, his beak snuffling into the churned-up soil. Like usual, those fluro pink Barbie-doll glasses were perched on his fuzzy brown head.

Star hid between some flax, her pale beak poking out and eyes peeking through the brown-and-green strands.

It didn’t take long for her to notice the second hairy Kiwi rummaging through the fallen leaves close by. They were having a conversation, of which Star only caught little snippets of.

“Yes…bad bad business. I suspect it was Ophelia, mind you…”

“Mm-mm-m, I have no choice but to agree with you, Barbie. She’s a nasty one. Foul to the feather she is…”

“She and Moonstone were never alike.”

Star tried to squirm closer.

“Nope. But Moonstone was destined to become queen, whether that brown creature liked it or not.”

“Moonstone’s was the shiniest in the nest. I suspect Ophelia was just angry she wasn’t such a pretty russet-brown like her.”

“Revenge…” Barbie tsked under his breath, producing a fat, wriggling earthworm. “Makes birds do bad things.”

The tone in which those words slipped from his beak made Starwatcher shiver. Almost as if he was thinking of himself…was he remorseful because he murdered the queen? Was he secretly engaged in business with this ‘Ophelia’ character? Or was he a red herring?

His accomplice spat out a sour grub. “Well, I’d best be heading off. My mob is waiting for me. Reflection would be mightily displeased if I was late.”

“Toodles,” Barbie grouched, busily arranging a stack of leaves.

“Barbie?” the other Kiwi asked as he turned to leave the leafy clearing.

“What?” Barbie gruffed, pushing his pink glasses further up his beak.

“You should really consider joining a mob one of these days. You’re not going to survive alone.”

You’re not going to survive alone.

The words rang in Star’s ears, frightening every feather. Mobs? What were mobs?

“I’ve survived in the royal court for decades – I’ll survive a while in the forest, Toadstool,” Barbie spat gruffly.

Toadstool nodded, waved a claw goodbye, and disappeared into the thick forest.

Star’s head was spinning. She had so much information, she didn’t know how to organise it into singular thoughts. Mobs? Ophelia? Barbie’s twitchy demeanour when he spoke of the queen? You’re not going to survive alone? 

She couldn’t go and ask Barbie. She wanted to. She wanted more than anything to barge out of the ferns and demand he answer all her billions of questions. But she couldn’t. Barbie could be the queen’s attacker. He could be a traitor. 

So she just had to arrange her thoughts and connect the feathers into a line.

Obsidian was a red herring. That was obvious. She held a weighing grudge against Star because of their parents’ past, but she didn’t – and couldn’t – kill the queen. Barbie, he-he was mysterious. He hadn’t joined a ‘mob’ , whatever that was, and was bitter about the former queen. But then…then there was this Ophelia character. She sounded nasty. Like the sort of bird who’d hold onto revenge and not let go until she’d gotten it. But…maybe she didn’t kill the queen. Maybe she was just angry, like Obsidian. Who was she?

Barbie’s head shot up from the leaves, almost as though he’d heard her thoughts. Star whirled around and darted into the undergrowth, trying to blend in with a particularly prickly brown plant. She heard the crunching of claws on dry leaves, but they faded to her right before vanishing completely.

“I’ve got to follow him,” she whispered to no one in particular. Quietly, she moved through the plants, following the sound of the big Kiwi’s claws. 

The therapeutic sound of a bumblebee humming a tune to itself as it pollinated a rata blossom exploding with colour snagged her attention. 

Bumblebees were Starwatcher’s favourite kind of bee. They were big, unbalanced and fuzzy, and had an almost charismatic demeanour about them. 

When she turned around to continue stalking Barbie, the hairy Kiwi was gone. She couldn’t even see his bright pink glasses.

“Oh no,” she muttered, cross with herself. “I’ll never unravel these mysteries if I can lose track of an enormous Kiwi wearing fluro pink glasses.”

She wound her way through the towering trunks of the conifers, and springing over little glass-clear streams, and brushing through flax and ferns, until the sound of Kiwis met her ears. 

But it wasn’t Barbie. It sounded like a group of birds talking.

She peered through the branches of a young Kowhai tree that she assumed a Small-mouth had planted, due to the thin blue band around one of the branches. 

Her black eyes fell upon a large open clearing. The grasses were dry and spiky, and long too. The trees grew in an ethereal way around the clearing, almost as though a party of Small-Mouths had maintained it to look that way. The starry black sky burst through the open roof and illuminated the clearing in moonbeams and starlight, and there was a large wooden bench with strange metal strips holding it together, plopped in the center of the grass.

A group of Kiwis were huddled around the wooden-and-metal bench, and one wiry one sat proudly, chest puffed out, on top. 

It was difficult to hear what the birds were saying, because either they announced their sentences to the whole of Aotearoa, or they whispered so quietly it was like ants were having a conversation.

Star’s eyes were still adjusting to the bright moonlight exploding into the clearing, when she heard another Kiwi to her left, rustling quietly between the trees.

The group of Kiwis in the clearing never heard it, for they were too busy chattering away themselves.

Starwatcher caught a flash of pink between leaves. It was Barbie.

The sinewy Kiwi crouched down, and if not for those oversize pink glasses, he would’ve melted into the dead leaves entirely.

Is he going to attack? The little Kiwi wondered, peering hard for his glasses. 

But Barbie didn’t. He just sat there, crouched in what seemed like Aotearoa’s most uncomfortable position a Kiwi could possibly sit. Star turned her attention to the group of Kiwis in the clearing. 

At one point, they spoke so quietly she couldn’t hear anything but the cool nighttime breeze. At another, they all shouted so loudly she was too busy blocking her ears to hear what they were saying.

“Queen Moonstone is dead!” the wiry female Kiwi announced grimly, puffing out her chest and arching her neck. “And we have no ruler. If you vote me ruler of the Kiwi tribe, I promise my tail-feathers I will protect you from anything and everything, just as our glorious queen has done for us before!”

Star observed there was a sneer in this Kiwi’s voice, as though she didn’t really think Queen Moonstone had been glorious at all.

Greedy for power, she thought darkly, inching closer so the tip of her beak was poking out through the leaves.

“Please, my fellow Kiwi comrades, join me as I lift our tribe back to its former glory!” the wiry Kiwi shouted. She sneered, masked by a cough.

Starwatcher shuddered, and the leaves around her rustled.

“Comrades, do you want a trustworthy queen? One who will protect our new village with her life?” the bird shrieked, spreading her tiny wings with a chest so puffed it looked ready to blow.

“New village?” a thin, scrawny Kiwi squeaked from the back, uncertainty coiling around his words.

“Certainly!” the wiry Kiwi beamed, staring into the slowly-lightening sky. “Root Circuit is dead. We can’t live there anymore. But we’re not going to go crying to Queen Moonbeak Of The Kaka Birds Who Are So Arrogant And Snobby, are we, fellow comrades? We will build our new home, right from this very soil! It will be glorious – wooden arches, my name engraved into the throne chair, my favourite jasmine blossoms – and no Antechamber!”

Two Kiwis spoke at once. 

“Queen Moonbeak isn’t snobby. She’s sensible. Intelligent. Respectable!”

“Why no antechamber?”

The wiry Kiwi gave both birds a thin, jeery smile. “Firstly, Queen Moonbeak is a coward. A traitor. Have you ever seen her donate food to our tribe? Have you ever seen her smile at anyone? She is cruel, spiteful and incorrigible. She might’ve been an ally, but no better than a grub. She hasn’t come flapping to our rescue to save our tribe, has she?”

Starwatcher glared furiously at the boasting bird marching along the wooden log. Our tribe should save ourselves! She thought, clenching her claws. We ruined our own home! It’s not Queen Moonbeak’s duty to build us a new one because we spoiled our old one!

“As for your question, Specklebeak, the Antechamber is a pointless hole. Firstly, our last, darling queen died there, and I feel very deeply that it would be disrespectful to build a new one. And secondly, who would wait there for your new queen, when she cuts off all allies?”

The whole crowd of Kiwis gasped in astonishment, fluttering their feathers and squeaking over one another.

“No allies?” they cried.

“Calm, calm down my dear comrades,” the wiry Kiwi smiled. “We are a powerful tribe of birds. We don’t need other tribes to take our resources from under our feathers, do we?”

“NO!” the Kiwis hollered approvingly, clapping their feathers and nodding.

The wiry bird smiled icily at her tribe.

Starwatcher shuddered. These were the Kiwi mobs Barbie had refused to join.