done to me. Did it steal a memory? I racked my brain trying to remember everything important. I searched for some gap, some emptiness. If the bird did steal a memory, I had no idea what it could be.
Kishan touched my hand. “Are you okay? How do you feel?”
“I feel fine. It’s just—” My words fell away as something shifted in my mind. Something was happening. Something was dragging across the surface of my mind like a squeegee over soapy glass. I could feel a layer of confusion, mental clutter, and dirt, for lack of a better word, peeling away like dead skin after a sunburn. It was as if random fears, worries, and dismal thoughts had been clogging the pores of my consciousness.
For a moment, I could see everything I needed to do with perfect clarity. I knew we were almost at our goal. I knew there would be fierce protectors guarding the Scarf. I knew what the Scarf was and I knew what it could do. In that moment, I knew how we’d use it to save Ren.
Munin hopped back and forth in front of Kishan, waiting for its turn.
“It’s okay, Kishan! Go ahead. Let it sit on your shoulder. It won’t hurt you. Trust me.”
He looked at me doubtfully, but he cocked his head to one side anyway. I watched with fascination as Munin flapped its wings and landed on Kishan’s shoulder. He kept its wings open, flapping them up and down lazily as it worked on Kishan’s ear.
I spoke to Hugin, “Is Munin doing the same thing to Kishan?”
The bird shook its head and shifted from foot to foot. It started preening its feathers.
“Well, what’s the difference? What will it do?”
“Waitforit.”
“Waitforit?”
The bird nodded.
Munin hopped down to the floor and held a wispy black strand in his mouth about the size of an earthworm. It opened its beak and swallowed it.
“Uh . . . that looked different. Kishan? What happened? Are you okay?”
He responded quietly, “I’m fine. He . . . he showed me.”
“Showed you what?”
“He showed me my memories. In full detail. I saw everything that happened. I saw Yesubai and me all over again. I saw my parents, Kadam, Ren . . . all of it. But with one major difference.”
I took his hand in mine. “What is it? What’s the difference?”
“That black thread you saw—it’s hard to explain, but it’s like the bird removed a dark pair of sunglasses from my eyes. I saw everything as it really was, as it really happened. It wasn’t just from my perception anymore. It was like I was an outside observer.”
“Is the memory different now?”
“It’s not different . . . it’s clearer. I could see that Yesubai was a sweet girl who cared for me, but she was encouraged to seek me out. She didn’t love me the same way I felt for her. She was afraid of her father. She obeyed him completely, but she was also desperate to leave him. In the end, it was her father who killed her. He threw her viciously—hard enough to cause her neck to break.
“How did I overlook her fear, her anxiety?” He rubbed his jaw. “She hid it well. He took advantage of my feelings for her. I should have seen what he was all along, but I was blind, infatuated. How could I not see this before?”
“Love makes you do crazy things sometimes.”
“What about you? What did you see?”
“I sort of got my brain Hoovered.”
“What does ‘Hoovered’ mean?”
“A Hoover is a vacuum. My thoughts are clear, like your memories are clear. In fact, I now know how to get the Scarf and what comes next. But first things first.”
I jumped up and lifted the nest tucked into the corner of the tree house. The two birds hopped up and down, squawking in irritation. They flew over to me and flapped their wings in my face.
“I’m sorry, but it’s your own fault, you know. You’re the ones who cleared my mind. Besides, these belong to us. We need them.”
I took the camera, my bracelet, and the amulet out of the nest. Kishan helped me attach the bracelet and the amulet chain and tucked the camera in the bag. The birds looked at me sulkily.
“Maybe we can give you something else instead as compensation for losing your prizes,” I said.
Kishan hunted up a fishhook, a Glowstick, and a compass and placed them in the nest. After I put the nest back, the birds flew up to inspect their new