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  In the meantime, not one bat had come their way, and Mira realized this with renewed hope. The creek was only a few paces away; their slow but steady march was almost over and with it this silly competition. Perhaps they really were going to make it…

  A squeal coming from behind them made Mira, Peter, and Kay spin around. Several feet away, Collin was balled up on the ground with his hands over his head while Garth whacked the air with his big arms, grunting angrily. Several jewel bats were swerving in and out of his way, effortlessly avoiding his swings as they circled around him.

  Stop! Mira sent her thoughts their way. They’ll leave you alone if you stay still!

  Collin stopped his whimpering only for a moment to peek through his fingers at Mira.

  “Stay out of my head!” he shouted, his voice echoing through the dark woods like a crack of thunder. It was met with the screech of an angry jewel bat.

  Shut up! said Kay’s frantic voice. You’ll get us all in trouble!

  But this only seemed to make matters worse.

  “Stay OUT!” Collin bellowed, jumping to his feet.

  At that, a pair of jewel bats darted straight at his face. Without thinking, Mira stuck out her hand, and a spray of water splashed straight onto Collin before he had a chance to turn away. The bats changed course at the last second, but Collin was fuming.

  “You’re the ones trying to get us killed!” he roared, pointing at Mira and the others, water dripping down his flushed face. Garth stopped flailing his arms around to glare at them.

  “Mira tried to help you!” Peter retorted, his grip tight on his bow.

  But Collin wasn’t listening. Another screech made him look up, and his furious expression broke into complete shock. Mira followed his gaze and felt the blood drain from her face as she saw countless unblinking, glowing eyes on them from above. There was a breathless moment of silence, and then blood-curdling screeches filled the air as the bats took flight.

  Collin and Garth screamed and disappeared the way they’d come. Mira lost sight of them quickly, for the air was thick with the flapping creatures that darted directly towards the three children by the creek.

  In a flash, Peter fixed an arrow onto his bow and pointed it every which way in a futile attempt to take aim at the swarming bats. He shot it into the air, but the only things it hit were the leaves overhead.

  As Mira watched him, a jewel bat swooped down right in front of her face. Its glowing eye was only an inch away from her nose as it gave an ear-piercing shriek and bared its fangs.

  Her scream caught in her throat.

  Then something swung down hard onto the bat. Peter had given up on shooting and resorted to using his bow to smack the bats right out of the air. He knocked several attacking bats out of the way just as Kay grabbed Mira’s arm and yelled, “Get down!”

  In her haste to move, Mira tripped and fell back into a bush. A sudden stinging in her nostrils made her sneeze. She had fallen into a snufflepod bush, and the red, grape-like pods exploded under her weight, releasing their spicy contents in an eye-watering puff.

  She scrambled back just as another bat flew into view.

  But it didn’t attack.

  With an irritated shriek, it swerved out of the way and flew off into the trees. Then another did the same, flapping away in a wide arc around her.

  “The smell,” she breathed. “They can’t stand the smell!” She jumped up and grabbed Peter before he could accidentally whack her. “We’ve got to break the snufflepods! The bats will be completely blinded if they can’t smell us through the burning spice!”

  She reached down and grabbed a handful of the pods off the bush and held them out to Peter.

  “Shoot them in the sky!”

  Peter grabbed an arrow from his quiver and pointed his bow up at the sky.

  “Throw them high,” he said.

  Mira threw the pods up as far up as she could. A moment later, Peter let his arrow loose. Puffs of red powder exploded high up above them, and the jewel bats immediately scattered away.

  Before the powder could rain down on them, they ran with all the strength they had left. They bounded through the woods, no longer worried about making noise—the trees were already quaking with the angry cries of the bats.

  When they reached the edge of the Mosswoods, Kay spun around and held out his hands. An enormous sheet of rippling water bloomed from the palms of his hands, separating them from the charging bats. He threw it forward, and the jewel bats finally retreated.

  Panting, Mira dropped to the ground. Peter sat down next to her and wiped his forehead.

  “Are you two all right?” Mira looked from Peter to Kay.

  They nodded.

  “Collin nearly killed us,” Kay panted. “You were right, Peter. This was bound to end badly.”

  Peter leaned back and stretched out on the ground, staring up at the starry sky with a satisfied smile.

  “Not terribly badly,” he said. “We made it to the creek while Collin and Garth ran off. We won.” He turned to them and raised his eyebrows. “But jewel bats or not, there’s not a prize in the world that’s going to get me to go anywhere near those woods again at night.”

  Mira chuckled nervously, glancing back at the Mosswoods. There were no jewel bats in the trees near them anymore, but her gaze fell on a nearby bush that gave a twitch as some small animal scurried behind it and through the leaves on the ground.

  “Let’s go,” Mira whispered, shivering as she got to her feet. She suddenly noticed the biting cold of the autumn air on her sweaty skin. “We’d better get home before any other creature decides to hunt us tonight.”

  Chapter Nine

  The Day of Dreams

  “I

  still can’t believe you all made it out in one piece,” Red said once Mira and Kay had told their friends everything about their misadventures in the Mosswoods the following school day during lunch. “I thought you’d walk into class with fang-wounds all over your skin.”

  “Collin hasn’t said a word about it all day,” Lynette said triumphantly as they ate their food, sitting in a circle in the grass behind the library. “Serves him right for yelling at you when you were only trying to help.”

  “Makes winning first pick of the Mosswoods even sweeter,” Kay said, happily biting into his apple.

  But when school ended for the day and they scattered out into the town square, it seemed Collin wasn’t entirely through with them yet. Garth stepped in front of Mira and Kay at the bottom of the library steps, cutting them off. Collin and Wilbur paced around from behind the large boy.

  “You two don’t think you’ve won, do you?” Collin spat, crossing his arms.

  Lynette and Red stopped walking when they realized their friends weren’t by their sides. They turned, frowning at the scene.

  “We don’t think,” Kay replied coolly. “We know. We made it all the way to the creek while you ran off.”

  “You cheated,” Garth said.

  “How?”

  “You used your merrow tricks to scare us,” Collin said, wrinkling his nose in disgust. “You scared the bats, too. That’s why they attacked.”

  “Those bats attacked you because you were blundering about like blind elephants,” Mira retorted. “I summoned water to help—”

  “Us, need your water tricks for help?” Collin cut in with a mean snort of laughter.

  “Water’s a pretty scary thing to you, isn’t it, Collin?” Mira said, trying to keep her voice level. “I wonder what you do when it rains.”

  Collin pursed his lips. “You merrows had better watch it,” he said through gritted teeth. “Keep your weirdness to yourselves, or I’ll—”

  “Oh, go on and cry about it to your daddy,” Lynette snapped from behind him, making him spin around.

  Instead of another retort, Collin turned back to Mira and Kay, his face breaking into a sly smile. “I suppose he’d like to hear about it now.” He turned to look
at something in the distance behind Lynette and Red.

  The others followed his gaze to see a pair of councilors approaching them from the Town Hall. One of them was Mr. Streck. He pressed his lips together in what could have been a small smile but looked more like a grimace to Mira. They stopped a few feet away by the library steps. The other man looked familiar as he leaned over to say something to Mr. Streck. Mira realized he was the thin-faced councilor from Aindel who had spoken about the abandoned antique shop at the meeting she’d eavesdropped.

  “Come for a moment, children,” Mr. Streck called, stiffly waving a hand at them. When Lynette and Red moved to walk with Mira and Kay, he shook his head. “We wish to speak with our two adventurers if you please.”

  Lynette and Red both looked offended, but only until Collin was also turned away with a strict tilt of his father’s head. Biting their lips to keep from smiling, they waved goodbye to Mira and Kay and walked off through the town square.

  Mira’s shoulders tensed. Could Collin have told his father about their midnight competition?

  “It seems you two have created more of a stir than you realize,” Mr. Streck said once Mira and Kay had stopped in front of him. “Merrows in the Old Towns, Shadowveils hiding in plain sight…” he trailed off, shaking his head.

  Mira supposed he didn’t know what they had done the night before, but she cringed under his disapproving stare all the same.

  Mr. Streck continued, “Mr. Hill has only just returned from Rook, where there have been numerous meetings about your…situation.”

  “Situation?” Kay frowned. “What’s our situation got to do with Rook or any other town?”

  “Now, Mr. Streck,” said the councilor named Mr. Hill, pushing his glasses up the long, narrow bridge of this nose, “our meetings are hardly focused on these children. There are far bigger things being discussed.”

  “Like the Empress of the Sea?” Mira said. The sound of the name hung heavily in the air as the councilors blinked in surprise.

  “Among other issues, yes,” Mr. Hill said after a moment’s pause.

  “Found out who she is, yet?” Kay asked.

  Mr. Streck’s eyes narrowed at Kay. “We know that she is a danger to us all, boy. We called you over here to ask you questions, not to be questioned by a pair of insolent children.”

  “What he means is that we’re concerned for your safety,” Mr. Hill said more softly. Mira and Kay threw each other skeptical looks while Mr. Hill continued, “Have you had any signs of the merrows—or rather, the Shadowveils’ whereabouts lately? Any of those dreams they used to give you?”

  “No.”

  “None at all.”

  They stared up at the councilors defiantly until Mr. Hill sighed and nodded.

  “Well, that’s good, I suppose. You’ll tell someone if you do notice anything strange, won’t you? Your mother, at least?” He watched them carefully through his glasses, his eyes sharp as he stared from Mira to Kay.

  “Yes,” Mira said coolly, though her heart was beating fast. Did they know something that they weren’t telling Mira and Kay? About Nesston, perhaps?

  “Very good,” Mr. Hill said with a small smile. He turned to Mr. Streck. “The mayor will be happy to hear of this, back in Aindel. I must be off before it gets too late. I’ve much to tell him.”

  “I will walk you to the stables,” Mr. Streck said before turning away without another word to them.

  Mr. Hill nodded goodbye to Mira and Kay, who stood still long enough for the councilors to go around the corner and out of sight.

  Do you think they know what we’ve been up to? Mira thought. With the conch and the vial?

  Not a chance. They don’t believe Amara’s the empress. They’d never even dream we were trying to track down the Grimmir.

  And the Shadowveil in Nesston?

  If we told them about that, they wouldn’t leave us alone until we gave up what we were doing there in the first place.

  Mira fiddled with a loose thread on the hem of her shirt, her gaze still fixed on the spot where the councilors disappeared around the corner.

  “Well, at least we weren’t lying about not having any dreams,” she said.

  “Yeah, I don’t miss those.”

  By the time the weather grew chilly enough for them to wear cloaks on their way to school, the jewel bats had cleared the Mosswoods and went on with their migration, and the Day of Dreams was upon them.

  The afternoon before the festival, Mira and Kay visited the puppet shop to see Peter. Most of the merchants around them had packed up early for the day to make way for decorations for the Day of Dreams. The puppet shop, itself, was locked, and Mira had to knock on the display window to get Peter to notice them waiting outside.

  “We closed the shop at noon today so we could make a proper stage,” Peter said immediately when he opened the door.

  “I thought you had stages you’ve used before,” Mira said.

  They stepped into the shop to see that the large display table in the center had been moved to the side to make way for a large puppet theater, already set up with a red curtain and an elaborately decorated frame.

  “Papa’s getting the backdrops ready in the workshop,” Peter said, resting his elbow on the edge of the theater and patting it proudly. “It’s the first time we’re putting on ‘The Prince and the Stag’ as a marionette show, so we decided to make a brand new theater, too.” He wiped his forehead, smudging some paint across his hairline. Mira held back a smile.

  “Where are you performing it?” Kay asked.

  “Right outside the shop. But you wouldn’t miss it even if you didn’t know where it was. We’ve got a huge sign we’re going to put up, too.”

  “Since when do you make such a big deal out of the Day of Dreams?” Mira said in surprise.

  “Well, it’s not really the Day of Dreams that’s a big deal…There was no puppet show for the last festival, and so my parents wanted to make this one special.”

  Mira bit her lip as she realized that he meant the Starlight Festival, which of course was when Peter was missing from home. It didn’t occur to her that Mr. and Mrs. Waylor surely wouldn’t have put on their usual puppet show when they were so worried for their son’s safety.

  “It’ll be special, all right,” Mira said, nodding at the grand stage. “I can’t wait to see it.”

  Peter smiled and raised his eyebrows. “It’ll be one the town won’t forget.”

  The following morning, Mira stepped into the cool autumn air, proudly showing off her costume as the clockmaker’s apprentice: she had a stopwatch as a necklace, her sleeves rolled up the way a true gearspinner would look, with charcoal “oil stains” smudged on her arms. Her face and neck were powdered white, as her character had made the fatal mistake of turning back time so far that she began to disappear from the world.

  Mira was rather pleased with herself. She had put together her costume all by herself, as Appoline was still at the observatory after spending the entire night at the telescope. Mira couldn’t wait to show her mother her clever look when she joined them later in the day and hoped that she would wear her own costume.

  Kay emerged from the townhouse as the old clockmaker, wearing overalls and brandishing a cane, his hair turned gray with powder.

  “If Peter gets to be a prince and a hunter, this cane’s going to have to double as my sword,” he said, jabbing the cane in the air.

  Mira ducked before it hit her in the head. “That’s not how an old clockmaker would behave.”

  “And you’re supposed to be disappearing from history, so we shouldn’t be able to hear you,” Kay retorted, leaning on the cane and giving her a crooked smile.

  Mira rolled her eyes and led the way down the bustling street. The changing colors of the leaves mixed with the flamboyant costumes of the townsfolk made Crispin look positively magical. They passed by a family dressed as bears, a man with green-painted skin handing out chocolate coins as th
e Frog Prince, and a man and his son wearing large, feathered wings attached to their arms.

  As they passed underneath a tightrope walker balancing between two buildings, they noticed an arm waving from behind a group of gawking spectators. Peter, Lynette, and Red stood together, each wearing a costume that made Mira beam with delight. Peter was dressed as the prince who hunted a magical stag, equipped with his bow and quiver of arrows slung over his shoulder and a crown made of painted paper resting on his blond hair. Lynette was the mythical warrior-queen Idona who could defeat any opponent using her fighting staff. Red was a legendary dragon-rider and even had his dog, Oberon, dressed as the fearsome dragon.

  Mira laughed as Oberon stood on his hind legs and licked her face when she and Kay reached their friends. Lynette attempted in vain to fix the smeared powder on Mira’s cheeks before they all went off to enjoy the celebrations.

  They played a round of horseshoe-throwing at the stables, where Collin and Cassandra and their friends came to watch and jeer. It came as no surprise that Peter won, considering his impeccable aim, but Cassandra spoke over their cheers.

  “How about your winner plays against ours?” she said in a falsely sweet voice. “I already won by five throws this morning. Let’s see if our little puppet can handle that.”

  Peter hesitated, but Red pushed him forward.

  “Why not let me have a crack at him?” Collin smirked and rolled up his sleeves. He and his sister were wearing flowing robes in the style of ancient royalty, with patterns of the moon embroidered into them. Mira recognized at once that they were dressed as the mythical prince and princess who defended the kingdom against invaders using the power of the moon.

  Collin’s expression turned sour as soon as his sister let out a mean laugh.

  “You’ve already come in second against me,” Cassandra said, waving him away as she stepped in front of him. “I wouldn’t take the risk of losing again if I were you.”