The wind has swept the sky clear, leaving a brilliant smattering of stars as our only source of natural light above the leafless branches. The skinny moon doesn’t provide much in terms of illumination. It’s also much colder. Clear nights always are. I pull up my hood before shoving the book away and arming myself with the flashlight instead. Morgan continues to wield his phone.

The bare birch branches above us are lined in silver and there, surprisingly, are my crows. Rekku, Musti, and even Kamu. Somehow, they’ve managed to keep up with the bus and follow me all the way out here. We plunge deeper into the forest. Usually, I don’t mind forests because—usually—they’re a place of comfort.

Sure, there might be wolves or bears in the woods, but I’d rather deal with a bear than ninety percent of my schoolmates. They aren’t the bloodthirsty predators so many stories make them out to be—the bears and wolves, I mean. And yet, out here, my fingers tremble and my bones feel spongy. I can’t help wonder if a chaos mage is lurking in the shadows.

“I feel something.” Morgan comes to an abrupt halt, leaves squelching beneath his feet. “It’s… I don’t know. There’s something here. This way.” He shoves his phone into his pocket and takes off, leaving me to play catch-up through a scraggly copse of birch.

Am I imagining it, or do I feel something too, something more than the prickle of unease from being alone in the dark?

“Shouldn’t we keep following the river?” I ask. It’s not a river so much as a narrow ribbon of black snaking through the trees.

“No, it’s this way. Come on.” His words come out in puffs of steam.

I don’t argue despite my legs burning with the effort of walking up the hill. I shiver even though I’m sweating; I’m definitely feeling something, like a breath on the back of my neck, but there’s no one behind me and my hood is up.

“Hey, slow down,” I call out when Morgan disappears over the rise.

“I’ve found it!” he yells back. “Hurry up, you have to see this.”

I force my legs up the steepest part of the slope, annoyed by their shortness, and finally stumble into a glade. And there, right smack in the middle of it, stands the tonttukivi.

My crows crawk in warning as they flap a hasty circuit around the stones. Their wings shimmer purple. The flickering light turning the glade blue isn’t coming from my flashlight—it’s coming from the stones.

A spherical boulder perches on top of a large, rectangular one all gray and brown and boring. It looks like any other bit of stone found in a Finnish forest, except for the fact it’s glowing.