The Korahku shook her head. “You don’t want to end up there. Myling Mist—very bad place. We must walk around it.”
Bo stared at the map. How had he spent twelve years in such a tiny corner of this land? Why hadn’t Mads told him any of this?
“It’s so . . . big,” he said.
The Korahku laughed, deep and from the belly. “You are small, so everything looks big to you. Ulv is not big. Only a week’s walk to cross from one side to the other. To fly is even quicker.”
Bo scowled. “I’m normal-sized. You’re abnormally tall.” He huffed. Why isn’t there a flutter of wind in this silly forest? he wondered. It was like being smothered in an icy cold blanket. “What I was trying to say,” he continued, “was that this land is much bigger than I thought, bigger than my forest anyway. So how on Ulv did Mads think I’d be able to find the Stars among all this?” He waved a hand at the Korahku’s drawing.
The Korahku grew stiff, pulling her shoulders back and cocking her head to the side. “Stars?”
Bo launched into his tale of Mads’s death, the giant wolf chasing him, and his guardian’s last words: for Bo to find and release the Stars. He shifted under the weight of the Korahku’s narrow-eyed stare. “It’s not as if I want to find them but now that I have nowhere else to go, perhaps it’s—”
“A load of cluckity muck. Stars! Tsk!” The Korahku jabbed the feather into the dirt, at the base of a mountain west of a large inland sea. “Here is the Temple of the Silent Sisters, carved into the face of Lunaris Mountain, on the shores of the Sea of Widow’s Tears. That is where we shall go. They will take you in and look after you, and I can return to my flock.”
Suddenly it was hard for Bo to breathe—the knot in his chest constricted, a gnarled tangle of anxiety, hurt, grief. The Korahku was just going to dump him? On the doorstep of some temple? With people he did not know and who might be just as hateful as the villagers? He gripped the hem of his shirt until his knuckles were white.
“But—”
“Pish! We go this way.” The Korahku raked the feather through the dirt, from the Forest of Tid to the Temple of the Silent Sisters. “Only three days’ walk.”
Bo couldn’t believe his ears. He wanted to protest but all his words were suddenly too slippery to catch.
“I am sorry, child,” said the Korahku, “but I cannot take you with me. If an Irin was caught on Korahku land, you would be fed to the kroklops, where you would slowly rot in the acid of its stomach. A more honorable death than the Fuglebur but unpleasant all the same.”
Bo folded his arms across his chest, a stinging heat bubbling in his veins. It wasn’t that he wanted to go to Korak, but to be cast aside yet again, like the runt of the litter that nobody wanted, was . . .
But what choice did he have? It was that or chase the Stars, which sounded impossible and dangerous.
Bo swallowed the lump in his throat. “If you think it’s best,” he mumbled. His shoulders slumped under the weight of all his troubles. “I’ll go.”
The Korahku nodded sharply before turning away. “It is for the best,” she said.
Nix burst into the clearing and skidded to a halt, dumping a mouthful of leaves at the Korahku’s feet. He waited, tongue flopped out the side of his mouth. But the Korahku said nothing as she wrapped Bo’s calf with the leaves.
Bo gave Nix a scratch behind the ears.
“You are fixed, little Irin,” said the Korahku.
Bo grabbed his bag and cloak and stood, easily putting weight on his injured leg. He looked up at the Korahku—strange how his “enemy” was the one saving him. Even if she was going to dump him the first chance she got.
“My name is Bo,” he said, holding out his hand. “And he’s Nix.”
“I am named Tamira but you may call me Tam,” said the Korahku, frowning at Bo’s outstretched hand. “Do you have something for me?”
“What? No. You shake it. It’s how you greet people.”
Tam picked up Bo’s hand by the wrist and jiggled it. “Like this?”
“Ah no. I mean, sort of.”
Tam dropped Bo’s hand. “Such peculiar habits you Irin have.”
They set off through the forest. Shadows rippled and soft slivers of Light bounced off the metallic tree trunks, stinging Bo’s eyes. He rapped his knuckles against one of the trunks—ping! Bo jerked back. “Are you sure this place isn’t haunted?”
The Korahku chuckled. “You Irin. You think everything is haunted. When I was locked in that Fuglebur, I overheard a group of villagers discussing whether or not a goat was cursed because it had eaten the Innkeeper’s rosebush. It took them three hours of argument to decide it was cursed. Poor goat.”
“But there are witches,” said Bo, thinking back to what Mads had said to the wolf, and what Galvin had said too. “I heard something about a Shadow Witch. Maybe she lives here.” Bo kept his eyes low, stepping only in patches of Light. Just in case.
The Korahku clicked her beak. “So you know some things about the world, then.”
“Do you know any witches?” asked Bo. “Why were you in the Fuglebur? How come your flock didn’t rescue you? What do you know about Stars?”
Tam looked over her shoulder, large beady eyes narrowed. “I promised to take you to safety, not to answer one hundred and one questions.”
As Bo passed a tree, it let out a long, low ping. He hadn’t touched it! “Did you hear that?”
“I heard you asking more questions.”
Bo scowled at the tree, daring it to make another noise. “I know what I heard.”
Tam hurried on. “Typical Irin. Always with ghosts and ghouls.”
But the ping rang out again, louder now; this time more trees joined in, creating a chorus. The Korahku swung around.
“See?” said Bo.
Tam and Bo stared at each other. Nix pricked his ears and whined.
“Perhaps,” said Tam, “we should—”
The forest burst into a cacophony of earsplitting noise. Ping, ping, pong, PING!
The noise came from every corner of the forest, rattling Bo to his core. He covered his ears and crouched, Nix trembling by his feet.
Just when Bo could stand no more, the tree trunks split open and out flew hundreds—thousands—of tiny metallic creatures. Bo ducked and the creatures whooshed past his head, screeching and trilling as they swooped through the air.
“What is this?” he shouted.
Tam was huddled too, swatting at the sea of flying creatures buzzing by her. Birds, butterflies, dragonflies, moths, and bats—gold, silver, and bronze—all of them glinting and shining in the Light.
As the flurry finally began to settle, a small golden bird landed on Bo’s leg. It hopped across the round of his knee, its little wings fluttering as it chirruped. It was made of gold, with tiny cogs and wheels whirring as it moved. Tick, tick, clickety, click, the bird whirred as it hopped along Bo’s thigh, cocking its head inquisitively. Bo spluttered with wild, unexpected laughter. “They’re . . . they’re beautiful!”
“They are pests,” said Tam, swatting a dragonfly buzzing by her face.
“They’re amazing,” whispered Bo. The little bird playfully nipped the back of his hand. “I can’t believe I’ve never been here.” Why hadn’t Mads taken him to this place? It was merely on the other side of the village! His shoulders curled forward—he felt small, head full of fuzzy gray nothingness where things like golden birds and Un-Kings and temples and mists should be.