The Last Fallen Star

ONCE I’M EJECTED FROM the spin cycle and my brain stops whirling, my first thought is: Why is it so hot and stuffy in here?

I open my eyes and have to shield them from the glare. Light is pouring in through glass walls, and I realize I’ve landed on my butt in some sort of huge conservatory. Ferns, palms, and other lush, leafy greens fill every inch of the space, and the air is so thick and humid, it’s like I’m in a tropical rain forest.

“Emmett, where are you?” I call, getting to my feet by using Boris as a crutch. At least the dragon-on-wheels doesn’t look any worse for having been tossed like a salad.

I wander around and finally find Emmett sitting by a small pond in what looks like the heart of the greenhouse. Although, to be honest, I can’t be sure about that. This place is seriously big. It stretches so far to my left and right, I can’t see where it ends.

He’s scratching his thigh furiously with one hand, and poking a water lily with the other. He looks like his normal self again.

“Rye, did we just get punked by the cheollima?” Emmett wipes sweat off his brow. “This does not look like a library. Also, they need some AC in here.”

I lean over the pond to check out my reflection. My familiar angled features look up at me, and I frown back. Ah, I get it now. The itchiness must be from Cosette’s glamour wearing off. We’re going to have to find our way out of here as our real selves.

“Cosette said no one’s been able to activate the sacred texts since they left, right?” he says. “So maybe we need to figure that out to reveal the real library?”

My image in the water gives me a wide, welcoming smile, and I let out a yelp. “Em! Did you see that? My reflection just smiled at me.”

He looks at me as if I’ve grown cheollima wings. “Are you feeling okay? I thought I just heard you say that your reflection smiled at you.”

I steal a glance at the water again. Sure enough, my reflection is grinning like it’s won the Powerball. Without thinking, I reach out to touch the surface of the pond. The water ripples under my fingers, and my reflection blurs. But as soon as the image clears again, water-me winks.

The words of the cheollima echo in my ears. Don’t forget to smile. Is this what the horse was talking about?

Tentatively, I move my face muscles. It feels weird to smile at a reflection that isn’t actually mine, but I force myself to do it anyway.

As soon as my cheeks stretch and my expression mirrors the one in the pond’s surface, the water begins to swirl as if someone’s flipped a switch. A red glow emanates from below, and I take a sharp breath. “Em, look at the wat—”

The tone of Emmett’s voice throws me off guard, and I swivel around in a hurry. My jaw drops open.

The conservatory has become overpopulated by birds. Fowl of every shape and size are perched in the greenery side by side, stacked on each branch like colorful book spines on a shelf. There are orange-beaked toucans sitting in the palms, kingfishers balanced on the ferns, and even tricolored scarlet macaws rustling their tail feathers on the lily pads.

Emmett gawks. “Where did they come from?” He shudders. “So many eyes…Just. So. Many. Eyes.”

I study the birds carefully and realize there’s a certain order to them. Each one is different, but they’re organized by color, size, shape, and plumage.

“It’s weird,” I think out loud. “It’s like they’re waiting for something.”

I walk toward the closest flock and tentatively extend my hand toward a bright hornbill. It has a heart-shaped mark on its head, and it squawks at me before nipping my finger. But as soon as I touch its feathers, the bird vanishes. Instead, it is replaced with a heavy tome entitled The Art of Infusing: Love Tonics, Part II. It floats in the air above the tree branch, spine up, flapping its pages like wings.

I gasp and pull it toward me. “Em! They’re not birds—they’re books!”

The sacred texts had been lost to the witches ever since the scholar clan was banished. But I had somehow managed to awaken the books simply by smiling at my reflection in the pond water. Was it because I was of Horangi blood? That might explain why Emmett’s reflection hadn’t smiled at him….

My mind reels. It strikes me that I could’ve had access to a whole world of magic if history had gone differently and I had been raised Horangi. The thought leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

“The birds are books? Shut up right now.” Emmett walks toward a blue parrot and gingerly reaches out to touch its tail feather. Immediately, the parrot disappears and is replaced by a blue hand-bound book about the Spiritrealm and its numerous boroughs. He grabs the flapping book from the air and shakes his head in disbelief. “This is so cray.”

Hope surges through me. “There has to be a book about fallen stars in here, Em. Keep looking. We have to find it!”

We transform birds into books for what feels like hours, all the while growing more and more worried about the cheollima’s shift ending and the new guard discovering us. As we discard the books, they fly in a flock above our heads. And though we find loads of volumes I’d die to read, none of them have anything to do with the Godrealm’s fallen stars, or even the dark sun and dark moon.

Exhausted, we fall onto a bench, startling a nearby stack of books and sending them flapping to the ceiling.

“We’re never gonna find anything,” Emmett whines, rubbing his bird-pecked fingers. “There are just too many, and we’re pushing our luck with time. We need to get out of here, like, now.”

I look down at Hattie’s heart vial and bite the inside of my cheek. “We can’t give up. Hattie wouldn’t lose faith. We just need to be smarter about it.” I scan the next section of birds and think hard. “What else did the cheollima say when you gave him your cookies?”

Emmett thinks. “He said something about books finding their rightful owner. Oh, and if we trust in their wisdom, we’ll have a hoot.”

Propelled by a second wind, we run up and down the conservatory, until, eventually, we find the owl section behind the giant Venus flytraps.

Emmett rubs his palms down his face and groans. “Who knew there were so many owls?”

There are countless types of them, all similar and yet distinctly different in color, markings, and shape. Some with black spectacles around their eyes, some with spotted orange tails, and even some that look like they’re covered in white fluff.

I study their big eyes. The last thing I want to do is get in touch with my cursed Horangi side, but for a moment, I wish I could channel the part of me that summoned the birds in the first place. Maybe if I could, I would somehow know which owl to touch.

Emmett and I roll up our sleeves and get started on the lowest row of owls. I’m just about to tap the third one when something bangs into my head.

“Ouch!” I yelp, as the claws of an owl dig into my hair. “Argh, get it off me!”

Emmett swats at the pointy-eared owl and manages to chase it off for a second. But as soon as it regains its balance, it swoops in and lands on my crown again. It hoots loudly.

I freeze. Books have a way of finding their rightful owners, the cheollima had said.

I try to stay as still as possible. And when the bird stops flapping and scratching, I quickly reach up and pat its side. The owl immediately transforms into a book, falling with a heavy thump onto my shoulder.

“Ow! Why couldn’t they have just made this a normal library, darn it!” I rub my shoulder and pick up the brown leather-bound book. The cover reads The Loyal Tales of the Haetae.

Emmett and I open the book and skim the contents, hoping for clues. But instead, the pages are full of old stories about Mago Halmi’s guardian lion-beast using his time-manipulation powers to help her. I sigh and close the cover.

“Hey, what’s this?” Emmett picks up a piece of paper that dropped out of the book.

It’s a letter, dated almost thirteen years ago and signed by someone named Sora. It reads:

Dear H,

If you are reading this, we have already lost the battle.

We will continue to keep the seventh artifact hidden, but I worry it may already be too late. Something is brewing, and I fear the elders may have figured out our secret.

Please let us know what we should do. Our safety is in your hands.

In Knowledge and Truth,

Sora

Fifth artifact: sword—presumed destroyed

Sixth artifact: midnight bow—presumed destroyed

Seventh artifact: sunstone ax

Eighth artifact: unknown—a celestial object?

I rub my eyes. My mind feels like mush. I don’t understand what this letter is, or why it was in the book. And why did this owl choose me?

I swallow. “Well, Knowledge and Truth is the Horangi clan motto—it’s written on their statue’s plaque in the Gi sanctuary. So maybe they were two scholars writing to each other?”

He clenches his jaw. “This Sora person says that they’re keeping the seventh artifact hidden. But why would they write down what it is when the note could fall into the wrong hands?”

I shake my head, feeling despondent. “I wish I knew. Maybe it wasn’t Sora who wrote that stuff on the back.”

He pauses. “Do you think the artifacts have something to do with what we’re looking for?”

It’s my turn to pause. I study the list and read the words eighth artifact: unknown—a celestial object? over and over again. “Well, a star is a celestial object. So the eighth artifact could be the Godrealm’s last fallen star, couldn’t it?”

Back at Santa Monica Pier, the goddess had told us that the fallen piece of her world could grant divine power here in the Mortalrealm, and it had driven humans mad with greed, leaving only destruction and despair in its wake. She had called it evil. Maybe the sunstone ax had the same effect on people, and the power-hungry Horangi had been keeping it for themselves. Then the council discovered their secret….

I shake my head again, too confused to articulate my thoughts. “I’m not sure yet, Em. But something tells me we’ve stumbled across something big. Something much bigger than us.” I fold the letter and put it in my pocket. “And we’re gonna have to get to the bottom of it if we want to save Hattie.”

I hear a weird clonk, as if something small and hard has fallen on the ground. I look down to see a cloud of smoky purples and midnight blues mushrooming from a tiny round stone.

The weird fog keeps growing until it has swallowed me up to my chest. I try to cover my mouth and nose, but my head is starting to feel a bit woozy.

My body suddenly feels so heavy, like it’s tied to an anchor. And the next thing I know, everything goes dark.