Bo licked his lips again, his eyes on the glass jar. “How much do you need?” he asked. “I can get more.”
Galvin’s eyes danced. “Come back when you have a hundred times that amount.”
Bo tried to hide his gasp—a hundred times? How would he get hold of so much money?
“I’ll be here tomorrow,” said Galvin, but he was already waving Bo on again, trying to clear a path for paying customers to approach. “Come back then. I’ll just take two . . . no, three Raha now as compensation for the rabbit your fox ate.” He snapped several coins out of Bo’s hand before Bo could protest.
Bo shook his head as he walked away. “It’s a trick,” he said to Nix. “Has to be. No way that’s a real wish. Stars are made up.”
But still, as he headed back to Mads, looking over his shoulder at the strange Irin and his stall of glittering oddments, Bo couldn’t help but wonder.
Chapter Three
Later that day, once they had returned from market and the Light was hanging low in the sky, Bo hurried to the center of the forest, a mended pouch of stolen powder beating against his thigh as he ran.
“Hurry, Nix,” panted Bo. “We’ve got to get this done before Mads returns from collecting water at the river.”
As he ran, Bo couldn’t stop thinking about the man from the market. On the way home, he’d asked Mads about the Stars. “If they’re real, then where have they vanished to?” he’d said. “Wasn’t really a magic wolf, was it? That’s just a game and I’m too big to play it and I’m definitely too big to believe it’s true. Right?” His questions had earned him a clip around the ear. “Don’t be asking nonsense,” the old man had snapped. “You’re on slop duty for a month.”
Bo broke through the line of trees and into the clearing, then stopped dead in his tracks and gasped.
No, thought Bo, it couldn’t happen that quickly.
With a hammering heart, Bo inched forward, his wide eyes following the path of crinkled and blackened leaves slowly raining down from the beastly old tree’s branches. The branches themselves were a sickly pale gray, and where once they had spread wide, they now drooped. But the worse part was the black hole in the center of the trunk. Overnight it had grown twice its size.
There was no denying it: the tree was dying.
Bo looked from the pouch grasped in his trembling hand to the tree in the center of the clearing.
He had failed. The most important job Mads had given him and he’d failed. His stomach lurched as he thought of telling Mads what had happened, the sting of the old man’s boot as he would kick Bo out of the hut, telling him never to come back.
And Bo would be alone.
Alone.
Bo paused when he heard a strange whispering, swishing sound coming from inside the Dark hole. “I could throw the powder from here?” he said, a quiver in his voice. “That will fix it, right?”
From the edge of the clearing, Nix whimpered.
“I’ll do it quick,” said Bo. He untied the pouch and dug his hand in, grabbing a fistful. “Please be okay,” he said as he flung the dust toward the base of the tree.
Nothing happened.
Bo frowned at the gaping hole in the center of the tree’s trunk. “I’ll come tomorrow and it will be back to normal,” he said. Despite his confident words, his stomach was twisted in knots, just like the tree trunk.
Again, Nix whimpered.
Bo retied the pouch and hurried back to Nix.
It was close to the half-Light, the dull gray hour between Light and Dark. The Shadow Creatures would begin to awaken soon. “We’d better get back,” said Bo.
He glanced over his shoulder one more time; the tree whispered and swooshed, the dead leaves falling. He couldn’t help but think he had done something terribly, terribly wrong.
He ground his teeth together to stop his chin from trembling. Mads kept a roof over his head and food in his belly and all Bo had to do to earn his place was complete his chores; he had nothing else to offer, no other skill or use to prevent Mads from tossing him aside like curdled milk. What would happen now? Where would he go?
It would be okay. It had to be okay.
“Let’s get back,” he said to Nix.
But as he turned to leave, an unexpected noise stopped him in his tracks: Ah-wooooo! Ah-wooooo!
A wolf’s howl. A real wolf’s howl.
He gasped and spun around, fear pulsing through his veins. Where was it? Was it close? Mads always said, “Run if ever you hear a wolf. Hurry home and don’t look back.” But wolves never wandered into the forest. Not this forest. It was just Peter and his blanket and the game and—
Ah-wooooo!
The bottom fell out of Bo’s stomach: It was real. And it was close.
He broke into a sprint, Nix right behind him.
“Hurry!” he shouted. “Hurry, Nix!”
They hurtled through the dense forest, tree branches clawing at them, Light fading fast, the wolf’s howl echoing again and again. Bo ran until he tripped, landing face-first in the mulch.
He sat up with a groan, feeling Nix’s cold nose sniffing his face.
“I’m all right,” said Bo. He felt his head for bumps and looked up.
He froze.
He was on the edge of the small clearing that surrounded their hut, and in the center of the clearing was a giant wolf.
The blood drained from Bo’s face: the creature was two times—no, three times—as tall as Bo, scraggy and lean, his white fur burnt in patches, the skin etched with scars.
Bo dared not move. He dared not breathe.
Had the wolf seen him? Heard him?
“Long time sleeping,” rumbled the wolf, creeping toward what looked like a felled tree, a lump of knotted wood on the opposite side of the clearing. “Long time. In Dark. But. Suddenly I wake. And find you. At last.” The wolf’s voice was rough, as if the words had been dashed against rocks.
The fallen tree let out a loud, croaking groan as it began to . . . to rise? Bo gasped: it wasn’t a tree—it was Mads! And oh . . . Bo’s throat constricted as his guardian struggled to his knees, blood dripping from a gash in his shoulder, trickling down his arm to his fingertips. Drip, drip, drip onto the fallen leaves.
“It’s impossible, Ranik,” wheezed Mads. “You were gone. Burned by the Light. You fell.”
The wolf crept closer. “I woke. In Darkness. Now. I come back. To find. Brother. Whispers across land. You have answers. I need. Tell me.”
Next to the giant wolf, Mads looked like the smallest piquee bird. He winced as he tried to stand. “You’re too late. The Shadow Witch killed your brother. She wanted to destroy the Stars and all good magic with them.”
Mads always said there were no such things as witches. Even when Ma Yulg had been strung up by her ankles for a week after Lucky Karl said she’d cast a spell on his best pig, Mads had said it was all nonsense—there was no such thing as magic. He’d been the one to cut her down and threaten anyone who tried to tie her up again. So why was he talking about a Shadow Witch? And Stars?
“Liar,” growled Ranik. “You know. Where to find. Keys. To cage. Brother still alive. Locked away. But alive. The owls talk. And I listen. Because they know. Everything.”