distraught lemur. “Please, tell us: who are these invaders? Where are they?” Dawn’s gaze swept the area, searching for intruders.
“Yes! Where are they?” echoed the sugar glider. Bismark lifted his arms and took in the surroundings with a flourish of his flaps. “Regardez, there is no one here but us. We are solo. Inoccupato. Alone!” The glider planted his hands on his hips and cleared his throat, as if he were going to continue.
The aye-aye’s stare hardened, but she remained silent.
Dawn took two small steps toward her. “Iris, what do the invaders look like? What poison have they set?”
“Only Aye-Aye Iris knows!” screeched the lemur. “Aye-Aye Iris knows the secret!” She doubled over and wheezed some more.
“What secret?” Dawn prodded.
“Follow Aye-Aye Iris,” the lemur said. She took a step toward the edge of the meteorite and beckoned the Brigade with her finger.
The glider recoiled. Stumbling backward, he gathered his friends toward him with his flaps. “Mon dieu, she’s as crazy as she looks! Muy loco, totally mad! Who would believe such outrageous talk? She makes no sense!” he cried.
Iris’s bat-like ears twitched at the sound of Bismark’s mocking tone, and she let out a garbled grunt. “You don’t believe Aye-Aye Iris, hmm?” She pointed her finger at the sugar glider. “Very well then, very well!”
In a movement of surprising grace, the aye-aye slid from the stone. Then, with her posture slumped, she started trekking across the crater. Her spindly limbs moved like the legs of an enormous spider as she propelled herself away from the Brigade and into the thick dust.
“Wait.” Tobin glanced nervously at the strange lemur moving farther and farther away. “Shouldn’t we stop her?” He turned to Dawn and Bismark. “Don’t you think we should find out the secret? Just in case?”
“No! Don’t be silly, amigo,” said the glider. “She is crazy, bonkers, insane! But I do suggest we vamanos before Lady Loco decides to return and do something to us with those freaky fingers of hers.”
And then, just as she began to recede from view, one of the lemur’s long, lanky fingers emerged from the haze. She pointed it at the Brigade.
“Mark these words, sugar glider! Fox! Pangolin!” Her voice carried through the gloom. “You shall know when you see the glow. Beware the glow!” She paused dramatically. “But also know this,” she continued. “Once you see it, it will be too late.” Iris shook her head. Then she let out a cackle that echoed through the darkness.
The Brigade squinted into the distance after the aye-aye, but they soon lost sight of her altogether. The air hung as heavy and thick as the eerie silence that remained.
“Uh, wait! Muchacha! Perhaps I was a bit rash, a bit hasty. You know, distracted by those fearsome…I mean, fancy fingers of yours!” Bismark called after her.
But there was no response.
The aye-aye had disappeared.
If there was a secret to learn, the aye-aye had taken it with her.
“No, my amigos, it is just as I suspected—there is zippo! Zero! Zilch!” Bismark shouted. Standing on tiptoe on top of Tobin’s pointy snout, the sugar glider peered inside the fallen star’s crack. “But pee-yew! Is the star stone still burning, or did that aye-aye, Iris, leave behind her stench?” He flapped himself away from the rotten fumes rising from the meteorite and landed back on the ground with a huff.
“Oh goodness, are you sure there’s nothing in there?” Tobin asked his friend. “No star creatures? No glow?”
“Mon ami, I assure you—the only creature near this rock was that long-fingered loony,” Bismark said. “Besides, who has ever heard of such a story? Critters from the stars? Poison from the sky? A mysterious glow? Pah, I say. Ridiculo!”
Tobin pawed nervously at one of the small dirt piles around the fallen star. “But what about these mounds?” he asked.
Dawn slowly paced in front of the meteorite, eyeing the crater that it had created and the strange mounds that surrounded it. She stepped closer to the fallen star and was surprised to see her reflection in the stone’s glossy surface. She turned to face her friends.
“The explosion, the smell, this crater—the meteorite caused these things—” she started.
“Couldn’t have said it better myself, mon amour,” Bismark interrupted. “Looks like we’ve cracked the case! Another job well done by the Nocturnal Brigade. We found the stone, though it wasn’t exactly as romantique as I thought it would be, thanks to that cuckoo creature. But no matter. Let’s head on home. Excellent work, mes amis. Muy, muy bueno.”
Tobin watched the fox continue to paw at the mounds scattered around the meteor.
“But I can’t explain these,” Dawn finished.
“Hmm.” Bismark stared into the stone. “For a hunk of cold, hard rock from outer space, this fallen star sure is attractive!” The glider flexed an arm and posed in front of the meteorite, which reflected his movements like the surface of a black, depthless sea. “Mon dieu, I am handsome! No wonder that creepy cucaracha couldn’t keep her eyes off me.”
The fox ignored her friend’s ranting and took one last careful look around the crater. Besides the mounds in the earth, there was no sign of anything unusual or any real harm done.
She sniffed the air and pricked her ears, but nothing odd caught her attention. She frowned. Perhaps she should take the meteorite’s safe landing as a good omen: truly a lucky star, after all. And in that case, Bismark was right—the Brigade had done their duty.
“Let us go. There’s much to clean up in the valley,” the fox said. She turned to lead her friends on the hike back up the crater’s steep slope, her tail swishing as she moved.
“Oh you lady fox! I love it when you hustle and bustle,” Bismark called in reply, trotting to catch up.
As the Brigade made their way back into the forest, the sugar glider stepped alongside the trundling pangolin and extended his pointer finger with exaggeration.
“Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap!” he said, poking the pangolin’s scales.
“Oh goodness, Bismark!” Tobin laughed nervously, glancing about with unease.
“Loosen up, amigo, that aye-aye was a bit bananas, yes, but nothing to be worried about.”
The Brigade continued through the forest. As they neared home, the moon faded in the sky, and the first fingertips of sunrise began to creep across the horizon. Tobin yawned. It had been a very long night.
