The long-awaited chapter eight…the mystery continues of Starwatcher the young Kiwi and her friends through the suspicious Kiwi tribe…

Eight

The forest was silent. Again, not a worm stirred. Cold dark-sky fog settled in the canopy, blocking any possible warmth to the understory and forest below. The clearing with the wooden-and-metal bench seat was empty. Moonlight illuminated the metal, casting scattered beams into the surrounding forest.

Star felt numb. She was so angry, and so scared, and so…she didn’t know what else. But there were more feelings mixed in her head than those two.

“Hello,” said a warm, familiar voice. 

The little Kiwi, on the verge of crying and punching caterpillars, whirled around, so happy to see a kind face.

Well, the face was sarcastic frequently, and most often glaring or scowling, but it wasn’t any of those things to her. 

Obsidian nudged her kindly, sitting down and staring into the clearing. “You look sad. Why are you sad?”

Starwatcher sighed. “I’m angry, mostly. I figured it out. Now I wish I hadn’t.”

“You figured out what?” Obsidian, for the first time, looked alarmed. She growled. “If anyone put a shrivelled feather on you I’ll feed them to lockjawed beetles and bury them under a pile of grub poo!” 

Star shook her head. “Thank you for your vicious protection, but no. I can protect myself. You were right, Obsidian. The assassin killed Dreamcatcher and Queen Moonstone.”

The brown stoat looked startled, but she hid it with a furious glare. 

“It was Kowhai.”

“I’LL FLAY THE OVERGROWN KIWI FRUIT ALIVE! She couldn’t outsmart a TURNIP, and I’ve met turnips!” the stoat spat, reeling in fury as Star had done. Instead of controlling her fury and curling up a ball for a calming nap like her friend, Obsidian began boxing a passing caterpillar into smithereens.

“Stop it!” the little Kiwi cried, elbowing her companion away from the caterpillar.

“It’s dead now,” Obsidian stated frankly. 

“I know that,” Starwatcher grumbled, scooping up the little bug and burying it under a pile of leaves. “Only because you flattened it.”

She sat down again, too overwhelmed to say anything more. 

“How did you figure it out?” the stoat growled, hunch-backed and licking her paws.

“I dreamt about Dreamcatcher,” Star explained with a despondent sigh. She rested her head on the soft leafy carpet. 

Obsidian looked like she’d stood on a squishy slug. “You dreamt about her? How on earth did you find the queen’s assassin because you dreamt about a bird?”

“Dreamcatcher had a necklace!” Star snapped, sitting up again, fury boiling in her veins. “And I remembered seeing that very same necklace before – once in another dream, and once in real life – in the Antechamber. I went looking for it, but it was gone. There was another tunnel-not mine, hidden in the corner that led up to the forest floor. The prints were too small to be Barbie’s clawprints, and I thought about Kowhai, or maybe a bird from her mob of fools. So I went to the clearing with the metal-and-wooden-chair–”

She was interrupted by Obsidian making yet another sarcastic remark. “The Metal And Wooden Chair is quite a mouthful,” she stated. “I suggest we call it Kowhai’s Stump.”

Starwatcher wrinkled her beak. “Kowhai’s stump?”

“Well you couldn’t call it Kowhai’s throne, could you?” Obsidian snapped. “It’s just a place where she marches above everybody else and acts like the most important potato in the vegetable patch.”

Star smothered a snigger. She could’ve sworn some of her brains snorted out of her beak. “Very true. Okay then, Kowhai’s Stump.”

“Excellent. The final vote has been accepted – The Metal And Wooden Chair is hereby called Kowhai’s stump. Please, continue.” Obsidian resumed licking her paws.

“I went to Kowhai’s Stump and she was there, conducting a series of horrendous songs her mob of followers hollered out. It was so terrible I could feel my ears trying to crawl back into my head. I’ve heard a possum being stepped on with more musical talent.”

It was Obsidian’s turn to snort, and she’d just eaten a grub.

“Anyway, Kowhai was wearing Dreamcatcher’s necklace.”

“What does that have to do with her killing Queen Moonstone?” Obsidian asked brusquely. 

“Because Kowhai is Moonstone’s cousin. She knew she just had to attack the heirs and get rid of my mother, who was Moonstone’s fiercest warrior, and get rid of Moonstone herself and then she’d be queen,” Star explained impatiently.

“But how do you know it was Kowhai who used the secret tunnel?” the stoat asked.

Starwatcher felt herself getting crosser by the second. “I don’t know. But it fits so perfectly it must have been her.”

“Well,” Obsidian said calmly, but frostily at the same time, “We’ll just have to get some evidence.”

The hollering of Kiwis thrummed in her ears. The loud TRAMP TRAMP of claws on dirt spiralled infinitely, growing louder with every thunk. The sneering, oily voice of Kowhai made her feel as though she wanted to vomit up her insides. 

Star awoke with a start. Her feathers were fluffed up, and she was quivering. The hairy brown stoat was snoring beside her, claws twitching. She assumed Obsidian was dreaming about fighting someone. 

The squawking and tramp-tramping and crashing was still there, somehow wriggling its way under the leafy fern where the Kiwi and stoat were snoozing.

“It’s a fight,” she whispered to herself, crawling to her feet and cautiously poking her long pale beak out of the plant. “A kiwi fight.”

When she glanced back, her accomplice was still snoring, and was now wrestling a twig.

I’ll come back for her, Star thought, carefully waddling out into the undergrowth.

The foliage here was a lot thinner here, on the other side of the Kowhai Stump Clearing. The leaves were still soggy and smelly, but the plants weren’t smushed together or fighting for space. She could comfortably go for a stroll and observe the different flowers and trees without brushing aside ivy or climbers.

Shrieks echoed through the leaves, and she could hear the cracking of young tree stems being snapped by pairs of kiwi birds locked in fight. Tentatively, she inched closer to where the tree-line vanished and the moon and starlight set the long grasses aglow.

It was still dark-sky, but the clouds were reddish, and warm yellowy light peeked shyly through the clouds, scaring the black and dark greys away.

What she saw was something so frightening it could’ve made a spider write it’s own will. 

Over one hundred Kiwis – all from her once-peaceful tribe – were locked in combat, stabbing, squeaking, clawing and wrestling. She could see more than twelve kiwis lying lifelessly in the tall beige grass, maroon water sprinkled on their fluffed-up feathers. Two birds closest to her were trying to see who could insult each other the worst whilst pulling out the others’ bottom-feathers.

“Your survival instincts are as sharp as a rotten sausage roll!” one shouted, narrowly avoiding the others’ giant black claws.

“You’re shaped like a deformed cabbage!!” the other squeaked, head-butting the other.

“TURTLE-HEAD!!”

“FEATHER DUSTER!!”

Starwatcher was shaking. This was her tribe? This was what the Kiwis had become? Her eyes roved to Kowhai’s Stump, where two birds were viciously clawing each other so wildly blood oozed from several wounds on each kiwi. The first one she recognised as Kowhai herself – her small, wiry frame, the violet amulet thumping on her puffed-out chest and the awful icy expression smushed onto her face. 

The other was a similar size – small, thin and just as wicked-looking. It lunged at Kowhai, enormous sharp claws flexed.

“You killed her!” it spat, raking across Kowhai’s back. “You wanted to be queen!”

Kowhai smirked, her sly grin causing Star’s blood to freeze in her veins.

She was right. Kowhai had murdered Queen Moonstone.

“How dare you accuse me of murder!!” the bird gasped, clutching her necklace in a sudden burst of sadness and sobs. 

The other snarled, claws clenched and beak ready to stab. “Where were you when Moonstone died? Hiding. Because YOU killed her! You ruined our lives!! Now we’re in these stupid mobs!!”

“You don’t need to be,” Kowhai smiled sweetly, dodging her combat’s beak. “I’m Moonstone’s cousin. Her only living relative. I’m the rightful queen, and you know it!”

“You’re not the rightful queen!” the other Kiwi screamed. “I watched you with my own eyeballs when you killed Dreamcatcher! You knew she was the only bird who could stop you from hurting the queen! So when she returned, having failed her task to protect the queen’s last heir, you took advantage of her misery and killed her in her private hole! I saw you, Kowhai, and NOTHING  YOU CAN DO WILL CHANGE THE FACT THAT YOU’RE A SPITEFULL, SADISTIC, DEMONIC MOULDY AVOCADO, AND YOU’LL NEVER, EVER BE THE RIGHTFUL QUEEN OF THE KIWIS!!”

Those insults were the last word the poor leader ever said. Kowhai, reeling in fury, lunged at her, slashed her face with her claws, and stared, cackling, as her opponent fell to the ground.

Every bird in the clearing heard the dying birds’ last words. Every bird stopped. Their claws retracted away from their opponents. Kowhai’s followers gazed up at her, terror embalmed in their expressions. 

Starwatcher’s stomach was tying itself in tightening knots, so hard she could barely breathe. Her heart pounded in her chest so hard her ribs could snap at any moment. She was right. That merciless bird had just killed another, and over one hundred Kiwis had seen her do it.

Rage overwhelmed her. She couldn’t stop it. She wanted to tie Kowhai into a pretzel and stab her into a million pieces. She wanted to hurt that awful bird in the cruel, sadistic way she’d killed both her mothers. 

Then she lunged forward.