The sled was overflowing because all day Bo had been scouring the forest for kindling. He would have finished ages ago if it weren’t for the village children and their games. And if it so happened that he’d accidentally napped half the day by the river’s edge, then no one had to know.
“Stars!” said Bo with a snort. He grinned at Nix. “I think some of those kids still believe in them, don’t you? Even I know Stars aren’t real. Mums and dads made them up so we wouldn’t be so afraid of the Dark.” Bo glanced up: through the canopy of leaves, he saw the Darkening sky. Now it was a deep, pink-tinged blue but soon it would turn a solid, unending black. At least that was what Mads said. No one knew what the Dark looked like, and if they did see it, well, they didn’t live to tell the tale. Not with the Shadow Creatures.
Bo dumped his armful on top of the sled but jumped back as the whole stack came crashing down.
“Skugs fud!”
Nix nipped Bo’s ankle and barked.
“I know,” said Bo. “But Mads isn’t here, is he? The old man can’t tell me off if he doesn’t hear me.”
Bo restacked the kindling, then looped the rope over his shoulder and hauled the sled through the forest. Nix trotted by his side, sniffing the ground for signs of food.
“By the Light, Nix! Are you ever not hungry?” Bo laughed, a snort that danced from his mouth before disappearing into the lengthening shadows. They sure were getting long. A shiver tiptoed up and down his spine. He knew the Dark was coming, but there was still one last job to do before he could go home, a job he was already late for.
Every seventh day, it was Bo’s responsibility to sprinkle a deep gold-red dust around the base of the oldest tree in the forest, a gnarled and twisted beast of a tree that haunted Bo’s sleep. He was meant to do it exactly as the Light hit the third quadrant. “Don’t ask, just do,” Mads always said when Bo complained about this dull task. “Without that tree, there is no forest. No anything.” That was what life with Mads was like—don’t ask questions; just follow orders. Bo’s head was so full of unasked questions he wondered how they all fit in there.
By now the Light was deep into the fourth quadrant, fading ever closer to the horizon. He hadn’t meant to be so late. The Light had been warm and the grass soft and he hadn’t meant to fall asleep, and then the village children had distracted him with their games. Time had slipped away from him. Bo had never once tended to the tree late, but he wasn’t worried.
“All I’m doing is sprinkling a bunch of dust round an old tree,” he said to Nix. “What does it matter when I do it?”
Bo pulled the sled farther into the forest, grumbling about dust and trees and Mads the whole way. When they broke into a clearing, Bo’s heart quaked at the familiar sight before him.
Like a hunchbacked old man, the tree slumped in the center of the clearing, nothing within ten feet of it. “Smart of those other trees to keep their distance,” murmured Bo as he left the sled at the edge of the clearing and hurried toward the ancient tree.
From beside the sled, Nix barked but did not follow.
“Coward,” said Bo.
Nix growled but did not move.
Bo approached the tree carefully. Truly, it was a horrible thing. A trunk like a knotted mass of gray snakes. It wasn’t tall but it was thick and wide and ugly as sin. Deep in the center at the base of the trunk was a hole, like a pit of unending Darkness.
“Let’s get this over with, hey?” Bo unclipped the little pouch on his belt and untied the drawstring. The pouch felt surprisingly light. “What on Ulv?” Bo peered inside. It was empty. “But that’s not possible! I filled it this morning. Mads even watched me do it, like always. He’d never let me leave the hut without making sure I had—”
Bo drew in a sharp breath as he noticed the hole in the bottom of the pouch. When had that happened?
He remembered the sharp pinch at his waist when he was watching the village children and the rip as he tore the vine clean off. He’d thought it was his shirt that had torn, but perhaps it had been the pouch and perhaps the dust had seeped out and . . .
“Skugs fud!” said Bo.
Nix barked.
“I know, I know, but Mads will kill me.”
Bo worried his bottom lip with his teeth as he frowned at the tree. If he missed tending to the ugly old thing just once, it wouldn’t matter, would it?
“I’ll sneak some more of that dust tomorrow and come back then,” said Bo. “Mads doesn’t have to know.” Surely it wasn’t that important. Mads would have told Bo exactly why he should never miss tending to the tree if it was terribly important. Wouldn’t he?
Nix barked again but Bo ignored him. There was nothing he could do about it now. It was getting Dark; he couldn’t stay any longer.
A gentle hoot hoot let Bo know he wasn’t alone—a tawny owl blinked at him from the branches of a tree, holding his gaze for a long, long moment before flapping its wings and fluttering away.
Lucky it’s only an owl and not someone who can tell on me, he thought.
Bo pocketed the ruined pouch and turned his back on the tree. But as he walked away Bo could have sworn he heard a long, low, sighing hum emanating from the Dark hole in the center of the trunk. He looked over his shoulder—was the hole bigger? No, it was just his eyes and ears playing tricks on him.
Bo shivered and closed his eyes a moment. Please don’t let me dream about that horrible tree tonight, he wished.
The True Histories of Ulv, Vol. VI
On Wishes and the Dangerous Art of Wish-Catching
The first recorded wish took place when a lonesome farmer looked up at the night sky and said, “I wish the girl from the butcher’s would fall in love with me.” When Celia Poplin awoke the next morning feeling decidedly more favorable toward a certain farmer, the villagers were abuzz—what witchcraft was this? How did it happen? And how can it happen to me?
It was, of course, pure luck that the farmer happened to look up at the exact Star whose job was to grant wishes—Mathias the Gift-Giver. Once this was discovered and every villager and their dog began demanding this and that and the other, Mathias got rather in a huff and decided to make things harder. The ritual for having your wish granted became thus: Hop on one foot to the highest ground, carrying three jellied pig’s trotters, a wheel of cheese (stinkmonk preferred), and a mug of lindberry beer. Leave the offering on the ground and—still hopping—spin clockwise seven times while singing the Ulvian national anthem backwards. State your wish loudly, swap feet and hop counterclockwise in a circle seven more times, bow, repeat your wish, and—staying bowed—hop backwards all the way home.
Luckily, the Ulvians soon discovered there was another method for making a wish that involved far less hopping.
You see, a wish could also be made on a falling Star so long as you caught it before it hit the ground. Unfortunately, Stars almost always fell in the Valley of One Thousand Deaths (which, as you may guess from the name, is not a pleasant place). Once the Star was caught, the wish-magic could be extracted from inside. This was a tricky process and more often than not claimed one or two fingers. Children were considered the best at extracting wishes because of their small and nimble hands—such children led miserable, short lives and were useful only with all fingers intact.