Starfell Willow Moss and the Lost Day (Starfell #1) - Dominique Valente Page 0,4
chest, the witch took several sharp, shuddery breaths.
‘SUCH A FRIGHT! MY HEART!’
Willow’s voice shook as she spoke in a tone trying its absolute best not to make an accusation. ‘I don’t understand – you asked me to … try?’
Moreg rubbed her throat, and after a moment her voice went back to almost normal, though there was a faint squeak if you listened closely enough.
‘Q-quite right, quite right,’ she repeated. ‘Yes, I did. I do want you to try, just not quite yet. Dear Wol, no! Not without some kind of a plan first – we can’t just go in and get it. One can only imagine the consequences …’ she said with a violent shudder that she shook off. ‘Bleugh!’
At Willow’s frown Moreg explained. ‘I believe,’ she said, her black marble-like eyes huge, ‘that had you succeeded in finding the missing Tuesday and brought it into our current reality, the result would almost certainly have been catastrophic – it’s possible that the very structure of our universe would have split apart, creating a sort of end-of-days scenario …’
‘Pardon?’ asked Willow.
‘I believe it may have ended the world.’
Willow sat back, heart jack-hammering in her chest. Finding out that she could have ended the world was, to say the least, a sobering thought.
Moreg, however, seemed back to normal.
‘The thing is, until we know what happened we could just make things worse. Worse than it already is now, and right now it’s about as bad as can be imagined.’
Willow frowned in confusion. ‘What do you mean? I know it’s not … um, great that Tuesday has gone missing, but it’s not the end of the world, surely? It’s just one day …’
A day that no one seems to have missed anyway, so what was the harm, really? thought Willow.
Moreg blinked. ‘Actually, it might be the end of the world if we don’t find it. Whatever happened to last Tuesday may affect the very fabric of Starfell, causing it to unravel slowly, thread by thread.’
Willow’s mouth fell open dumbly as she gasped. She hadn’t realised it could be that serious.
Moreg nodded. ‘Which is why we will have to start at the beginning. We can’t very well proceed until we know for sure what happened. Or, more importantly, why.’
She looked out of the window, frowning slightly, then blinked as if she were trying to clear her vision. ‘There’s someone I think we’re going to need, someone who can help us … which might prove a little tricky as we need to find him first.’
‘Oh, why’s that tricky?’ asked Willow.
Moreg turned to look at her, a faint smile about her lips. ‘He’s an oublier, you see, one of the best in Starfell, no doubt, coming from a long line of them. The problem is that finding an oublier is almost impossible unless you know where to look.’
Willow looked blank. ‘An ouble— A what?’
‘An oublier. It’s in the Old Shel, you see.’ Which Willow had always taken to mean when words had more bits in it. Modern-day Shel was the language most people spoke in Starfell, apart from High Dwarf that is, but the latter was mostly because of all the colourful ways one got to swear. ‘It’s pronounced oo-blee-hair, or – as they are more commonly known today – forgotten tellers, people who see the past.’
‘Like the opposite of a seer?’
Moreg drummed her chin with her fingers. ‘Sort of—’
‘Like my mother,’ interrupted Willow, whose mother was a well-known seer, and took her travelling fair all across the kingdom of Shelagh telling fortunes.
Moreg seemed to have something stuck in her throat because she answered with a strained voice. ‘Er, yes, like your mother. Though most people who call themselves “seers” and say that they can see the future have no idea how it is really done, and often claim to have some connection to the “other side”, to the dead, who supposedly let them know when things are about to occur,’ she said with a disbelieving sniff. ‘True seers are, of course, very rare. But they have been known to read patterns in the smallest events, allowing them to see possible versions of the future. For instance, if they see a particular flower blooming in winter when it usually blooms in spring they can work out that a typhoon is coming in the summer.’
Willow stared blankly.
Moreg continued, ‘Unless they somehow encourage the last tree sparrow to build its nest before midnight on the spring equinox, for example. Do you understand?’