I’ve finished chapter 10, and I’m now working on 11! 👍

Seven

Starwatcher saw the same brown Weta blobbing on the little pebble in the gloomy hollow. She felt cold and alone. Her stoat – well, friend wasn’t the right word for it – her stoat accomplice, had left.

“My tribe will be wondering where I am,” Obsidian had said dryly, glaring into the dark undergrowth. “But once I’ve reassured their hairy bottoms, I’ll be back.”

Star had liked the way the rodent had said ‘I’ll be back’. It was oddly reassuring. Odd, because it was coming from her tribes’ arch-enemy. But the brown stoat was serious. She’d vanished into the leaves, and had been gone for three dark-skies and two light-skies. Now, it was light-sky again, and she still hadn’t returned.

She wondered what Kowhai was doing now. Was she plotting a civil war? Was she sending her poor cronies out to attack the other mobs? Was she building a new circuit for herself, called ‘Kowhai Circuit?’. The words felt slimy and gross in her head. Kowhai Circuit was the most pathetic name a bird could give their home. Except for the Tuis. They lived in Kowhai trees, so it was hardly unacceptable for them to call their village that. But for ground-snuffling Kiwis, Kowhai was a terrible name.

She wished her friend would appear in the little clearing not far from her tiny hole by the flax-bushes. She wanted to hear Obsidian’s icy remarks and sarcastic statements. It didn’t make her feel so alone and vulnerable. As the sun oozed through the treetops and whisked the icy mist of the mountain peaks away, a sudden drowsiness rushed into the little brown Kiwi, and she waddled away from the thin hollow where her stoat-accomplice had agreed to meet her. She curled up in a tight ball, closed her eyes, and drifted off into a sad, lonely sleep. 

She dreamed again of Dreamcatcher. This time, she noticed the details of her mother more clearly. The violet amulet hanging from a faded grimy chain, the fierce warrior blood in her feathers, the beautiful ivory beak thrusting into her enemies, and the expression of fury in her eyes. She wondered, in her dream, if that was possible, if Dreamcatcher really didn’t care she was killing animals and birds. If maybe, Dreamcatcher wasn’t an incredible heroine of the Kiwi tribe. 

The bloated gurgle of a toad startled her from her dream. The sky was aglow by the blazing hot sun and she blinked, avoiding the light. 

She turned around and glared at the toad crossly. “There’s no ponds here for you to flop in, except for the waterfall,” she snapped. “You woke me up and now there’s no chance of me falling back asleep in this light.”

The toad looked unbothered and snatched a passing fly from the air, which made Starwatcher less than impressed. “Shoo. I’ve got something to do right now.”

She sat down, trying to remember her dream. It was Dreamcatcher – that’s right – fighting the army of smelly grey rats, thrusting her beak and spear and her violet amulet casting hot sunblazes at her enemies – the amulet.

She felt like she had seen that purple necklace before. Somewhere. She had definitely seen it before, but not paid much attention to it, apparently. The toad cut off her train of thought with another voracious burp. 

Too curious to care, Star wandered deeper into the forest, trying as hard as she could to remember where she’d seen her mother’s necklace. 

The damp leaves squished under her claws, oozing mud between her scales which gave her the most uncomfortable slimy feeling. Where was she going? She was going further and further away from her hole, and her meeting-spot with Obsidian. What if the stoat arrived, and she wasn’t there? Or in her hole? 

The feeling of dry dirt replaced the soggy leaves, and she looked down at her claws. Root Circuit. 

She stared up, and saw the crumbled tunnels dipping into the ground and the holes in the forest floor. The Antechamber! She’d seen the violet necklace in the antechamber! She darted forward, squirmed through the central tunnel, and retraced her clawsteps to the royal rooms. 

Oh grubtails, I’ve gone the wrong way! She thought crossly, and irritatingly, frequently. She avoided the throne-hole as much as possible – seeing her last home, the beautiful Maori arch – all ruined, hurt her too much. 

There’s my hole! 

The little tunnel leading through a heap of collapsed soil was where Star had first dug her way into the Antechamber, looking for clues.

I’ve become fatter, she thought grumpily, trying to squish her legs and bottom through. In one swift pop, she landed head-first in an undignified lump on the Antechamber floor. Trying not to trip over herself,  she carefully waddled over to the log table where the necklace was. 

But it wasn’t there. It had vanished.

Starwatcher’s first reaction had been ashamedly, to stab her beak into the ground and scream at the worms below. When she realised that the worms had no idea what the violet amulet on the silver necklace even was, she started kicking the log furiously. When the log didn’t tell her where the necklace had gone, she flopped onto the soil floor and thought grouchy thoughts. 

The hole was dark. She liked the dark. How long she snoozed, she didn’t know. But when she woke up, she didn’t feel so angry anymore. Instead, she felt curious. She needed to feel curious. A lot of her curiosity had been smothered by Queen Moonstone. Now she could feel curious about anything, whenever she felt like it. 

Who had taken the necklace? Someone had been in the Antechamber after she had, and taken the chain and amulet.

She dusted the dirt from her feathers and peered at the features of the hole. The log was deserted of items. The ground wasn’t flat – you needed to be quick and agile to dart over the little lumps and hills and not twist a foot. Her eyes roved to the back wall. There was another hole. That wasn’t dug by her. She poked her beak into the tunnel, and found that it jerked sharply upwards. The top of the tunnel was the forest floor. And gauged by the amount of light coming through the tunnel, it was dark-sky now. 

Star peered down at the floor where the other Kiwi-bird had appeared. The clawprints were small. There were lots of them – so the Kiwi must have not been able to take large steps. They led straight to the log table, and then turned on themselves and directed back up the steep tunnel up to the forest floor. 

“It can’t have been Barbie,” she murmured, knowing his giant clompy claws couldn’t squish themselves that small even if they wanted to. And the prints were definitely not stoat-prints. They were three lines – one hundred and ten percent Kiwi claws. Irritatingly, they were too small to tell which bird they belonged to.

She wriggled and squirmed her way up the tunnel, and popped up out of it, and onto the forest floor. Two hundred Kiwi-birds standing side-by-side away (the traditional way Kiwis measure distances), was the central tunnel leading into what used to be the Root Circuit. She waddled over to it, and found her way back to her small uncomfortable hole.

But she didn’t stop there. Star waddled and waddled what must’ve been almost five hundred Kiwis side-by-side, until she reached the clearing with the wooden-and-metal chair. 

The mob of Kiwis were there, singing what was supposedly a song titled ‘All Hail To Our Magnificent Queen Kowhai’. It was less a song and more a full-scale assault on the ears, with every note arriving at the wrong time, in the wrong key, and apparently from a completely different song. By the end, even the trees looked embarrassed. 

Once the choir of shrieking Kiwis had finished, Star pulled out the leaves she’d stuffed in her ears and uncovered her eyes. 

Standing, like usual, tall and proud, was Kowhai. She didn’t want to call her ‘Queen Kowhai’ because she wasn’t yet. She hadn’t been crowned. 

Hanging from her thin, crooked (and awfully hunched) neck, was her mothers’ violet amulet.

Starwatcher couldn’t help the furious glare that exploded from her. Her claws were clenched so tight they could’ve crushed the life out of a boulder – or at least given it a very serious headache. That necklace belonged to her mother, not a bird with a voracious appetite for power and moolah. 

She noticed it wasn’t glowing hanging from Kowhai’s ugly neck, as it had in her dream of Dreamcatcher, but was too furious to think much about it.

The choir of birds had begun another song, titled ‘Our Queen Kowhai Is The Coolest Bird In The World’ which was worse than the last.

The sound of mixed octaves and snails dying filled Star’s ears, making her only more furious. She wanted nothing more than to rush out there and strangle Kowhai with her own claws. She wanted to hurt the great big fat bird the way she’d hurt her mothers. 

She’d found Queen Moonstone and Dreamcatchers’  assassin. Or at least, she hoped. 

The amulet had belonged to Dreamcatcher. Star was sure of that – she’d vividly seen the necklace in both dreams. Dreamcatcher had died, and Star was ninety-nine point nine percent sure Kowhai had killed her. When she did, she’d taken Dreamcatcher’s necklace. Then, on that awful day in the Antechamber, she’d squirmed through her own tunnel, held up the necklace, frighted the queen out of her feathers, and killed her. 

There was only one fault with this hypothesis though, Star realised, fury reeling through her feathers so much it hurt.

Why did Kowhai leave the necklace on the table? She murdered the queen, and then vanished, forgetting the necklace. But if she’d taken it from Dreamcatcher when she died, it must’ve been special, right? Then I came along, Star thought, trying to piece everything together, and checked the room. I thought nothing of the necklace and left. Then Kowhai returned and took the necklace, which is how she’s wearing it now.

Her eyes roved to the toxic featherhead clapping and cheering after her party of followers had finished their screaming opera. 

If the necklace meant so much to Kowhai, why did she leave it behind?

Unless, she was interrupted.

By Barbie.

Her fault had an answer now. Kowhai forgot the violet necklace because Barbie, who was posted outside the throne-hole, had alerted everyone. The Kiwis came pouring in, and she didn’t have time to grab the necklace, which she must have dropped when killing the queen. So she squirmed out of her own secret tunnel, and came back later to get it.

Tremors forced her to sit down.

The secret tunnel. The necklace. Dreamcatcher’s death. Queen Moonstone’s death.

It all fitted.

Almost too perfectly.

Star stared across the clearing at Kowhai, who was still wearing the violet amulet around her crooked neck.

Queen Moonstone’s cousin had killed her. And, if Star was right, she had killed Dreamcatcher too. With Moonstone gone, and her heirs gone, Kowhai’s path to the throne would be clear.

Her stomach twisted. She had found the murderer.