The moonstone was gone. Batty clung to the ceiling of his mountain cave, upside down, staring at the empty ledge where his amulet used to glow. All his life the pale stone had lit his home with soft silver light. Now the ledge held only dust and a single boot print. A collector had climbed up the torchlit path, pried the amulet from the rock, and walked off with the one thing Batty loved most. Batty dropped from the ceiling and landed on the cold stone. His small wings shook. He was a shy bat. He did not chase strangers or leave his cave after dark for anything but food. But the empty ledge stared back at him, and his heart hurt worse than his fear. Here was the problem. He wanted the amulet back. He did not know where the thief had taken it. The boot print pointed nowhere. The path outside forked in three directions, and each one dropped into a dark valley Batty had never crossed. He crept to the cave mouth, where the two torches burned. On the ground, snagged on a rough stone, hung a torn scrap of paper. Batty picked it up in his claws. It was a price tag. One edge was ripped, but faded words remained: half a printed address, and above it, curling letters that spelled a shop's name. Batty had seen that shop once, on a hungry night far from home. A crowded store with old clocks and dusty vases stacked in glowing windows. A place where a greedy man displayed treasures he had gathered from everywhere. The kind of man who would climb a mountain to steal a stone that glowed. Batty's chest tightened. He knew where the amulet had gone. He folded the torn tag against his body and looked down the darkest of the three paths. The wind carried the smell of the valley up to him. Somewhere below, past the trees and the long night, his moonstone sat in a lit window with a price on it. He could go home to the empty ledge and try to forget. Or he could fly into the dark, toward a busy shop full of strangers, and take back what was his. Batty spread his wings. His whole body wanted to hang from the ceiling and hide. Instead he stepped off the ledge and let the wind lift him. He flew down the dark path, the torn tag clutched tight, heading for the antique shop where the collector had hidden his stone. The chase had a direction now. But the shop stood far below, in a valley Batty did not know, and he would have to reach it before the greedy man sold the moonstone to someone else.