Page 55

“You know this witch?” Bartos spat a clump of grass from his lips.

“They may just be speaking nonsense,” Noro pointed out, squirming angrily beneath the bird’s claw. Thorn watched nervously. If Noro could just free himself enough to stab the creature’s leg...

Thump. Ka-thump.

Thorn glanced up. Three of the birds had jumped down to lower branches and hung there, necks drooping like snakes.

“The city there,” said the first bird, jerking its head east. “Lots of girlie girls and dum-dums and monsters.”

“Do his dum-dum and my dum-dum mean the same thing?” Zaf whispered.

Thorn ignored her, peering east. Then she turned back to the bird. “You’ll show me?”

The bird let out a sharp cawing sound, over and over, like it was trying to make itself sick. The other birds echoed the call, and soon the entire forest was quaking with the noise.

“Funny girlie,” said the bird at last. “Katsom help for nothing?”

“That waslaughing?” Zaf whispered.

“Katsom.” Thorn inched closer, despite Zaf’s squeakyprotests, and placed her hand on the bird’s oily wing. “Is Katsom your name?”

“Katsom.” The bird lowered its head to stare. “You?”

“Thorn Skystone.”

“Thorn,” whispered the bird.

“Thorn, Thorn,” echoed the other birds. Another dropped from the trees to waddle closer.

Thorn’s throat was dry as sand. “If we help you with... something you need help with, will you tell us how to find Quicksilver?”

“Thorn!” Zaf hissed, slightly frantic.

“Do not bargain with them,” Noro said sharply. Katsom whacked him with his feathers.

“Will do this thing,” Katsom replied. Then the bird opened and closed its beak three times.Click-click-click.“You here.” Katsom slapped the ground, then flung its wing east. “Quicksilver there.”

Thorn squinted through the starlit forest. “I can’t see anything but trees.”

Katsom waddled forward. Just before it dove, Noro shouted Thorn’s name in fear—but it was too late. The bird used its beak to grab Thorn and Zaf by their collars, and threw them up into the trees.

Bartos shouted after them, and Noro trumpeted furiously, thrashing beneath Katsom’s foot, but Thorn and Zaf were already spinning fast through the air.

Another bird, high in the trees, snagged them as they started to drop and tossed them up, and again and again they were thrown toward the stars, bird by bird, until the last bird flapped laboriously to deposit Thorn and Zaf in the uppermost treetops.

Wedged between several slender white branches, Thorn grabbed on to Zaf, and Zaf grabbed on to Thorn. They huddled together, faces buried in each other’s necks and wild hearts pounding chest to chest, until Thorn, then Zaf, found the courage to look around.

Below, nestled in trees and grass, Thorn hadn’t felt the mountain winds. But above the forest canopy, the winds cut like paring knives. Thorn shivered in the cloud of Zaf’s white hair; Zaf shuddered beside her.

Thorn looked east.

Her breath caught. So did Zaf’s.

A vast country stretched out before them. To Thorn’s left—north—was a massive, sprawling woodland that grew darker and thicker the farther it went, and a distant castle squashed onto a narrow hill glimmering silver with rivers. Beyond thatwas a far-flung snowy landscape capped with white mountains.

Mountains. Rivers. Woodlands. Thorn knew of these things. The Vale had them by the hundreds.

But thecolorof the Star Lands was like nothing Thorn had ever seen.