Willodeen's father takes her into the woods, where they encounter a mother screecher nursing five babies.

A devastating fire kills Willodeen's entire family, and two village neighbors named Mae and Birdie take her in.

The village places a bounty on screecher pelts, and each autumn the hummingbear migration grows smaller than the year before.

A hunter fires an arrow at Sir Zurt's nest while Willodeen watches, scattering the last screecher she had been tracking.

Connor Burke joins Willodeen to search for Sir Zurt after dark, and they find the old screecher dead.

Willodeen speaks up at the council meeting to defend screechers and suggest they affect hummingbears, but the adults laugh her out of the room.

Willodeen returns to retrieve Connor's grass creation and instead finds a live baby screecher with the same markings in its place.

Willodeen traps the baby screecher under her coat and carries her home to Mae and Birdie for safety.

Mae, Birdie, and Connor agree that Willodeen's angry tears brought the grass creation to life; Connor names the baby Quinby.

Willodeen discovers peacock snails growing near the blue willow roots, and Quinby devours them hungrily for the first time.

Hummingbears appear and nest only in the two blue willow trees where Quinby has been digging for snails.

Willodeen tests Duuzuu's bubble against leaf samples from different trees and proves that only Quinby's digging trees hold the bubble.

A fire erupts along the ridge; Willodeen shouts that she loves Mae and Birdie before sprinting to join the bucket brigade.

Villagers contain the fire just after midnight, and Willodeen discovers Quinby has escaped through the open gate during the chaos.

Willodeen presents her screecher-willow-hummingbear theory at the emergency council meeting, and the village enacts new policies to restore the ecosystem.

In a village where hummingbears once migrated every fall, an eleven-year-old named Willodeen watches both the hummingbears and the screechers she loves quietly disappear. After hunters kill the last screecher she had been watching, Willodeen speaks up at a village council meeting and is laughed away. In her grief, she accidentally brings a baby screecher named Quinby to life, and caring for the creature leads her to uncover a hidden connection between screechers, peacock snails, and hummingbear nesting. When a wildfire threatens the village, Willodeen finds the courage to act for the people she loves rather than hide from the flames. She presents her discovery at an emergency council meeting, sparking policy changes that eventually bring the hummingbears and the fall fair back to Perchance.

The headline events driving Willodeen's journey from grief to discovery.

Willodeen's pet hummingbear Duuzuu survives the family fire but suffers burned wings that leave him unable to fly.

Willodeen tries to return Duuzuu to the wild hummingbears, but they reject him because he cannot fly.

Willodeen confronts the angry hunters who shot at Sir Zurt but runs away rather than hear them justify killing screechers.

Willodeen names the sole surviving screecher she can find 'Sir Zurt,' believing he deserves a title just for surviving.

Villagers taunt Willodeen about smelling like a screecher as she walks past the fall fair preparations in the village center.

Willodeen arrives home reeking of screecher and unexpectedly bursts into tears; Mae and Birdie wrap her in a long embrace.

Mae and Birdie splurge on a birthday cake for Willodeen despite scarce resources, lighting a candle and asking her to make a wish.

Connor arrives unannounced at Willodeen's home, and Mae and Birdie invite him inside to learn about his animal creations.

Walking to the council meeting, Connor asks Willodeen directly whether she thinks his nature creations are odd.

Quinby claws free from Willodeen's arms near the fair setup and bolts; Willodeen and Connor work together to catch her.

Connor fashions a harness for Quinby, and the group settles into a daily routine of taking her snail hunting in the grove.

Hunters corner Connor and Willodeen because they smell of screecher; Connor convinces the hunters the wheelbarrow contains manure.

Willodeen feels like part of a real family for the first time when Mae and Birdie rush to comfort her after a nightmare.

After the emergency council meeting, Connor walks Willodeen home and she tells him to take Duuzuu to live with him permanently.

At the restored fall fair, Connor tells Willodeen that his written story about Quinby is almost finished.

Behind the story's main events, a quieter set of moments slowly shapes who Willodeen becomes. Her pet hummingbear Duuzuu, rejected by his own kind after the fire, mirrors Willodeen's sense of not belonging, while confrontations with hunters and taunting villagers harden her resolve to protect the creatures others despise. After Sir Zurt is killed, small acts of kindness from Mae, Birdie, and Connor begin to chip away at her loneliness. Caring for Quinby forces Willodeen and Connor into a daily partnership that deepens their friendship through shared routines, close calls, and quiet discoveries. By the time the crisis is resolved, Willodeen has learned to let others in, and she marks the change by giving Duuzuu to Connor and rejoining village life at the restored fall fair.

The quieter moments that shaped Willodeen's world and relationships.

Willodeen's father tells her that people who hate screechers without reason are not the ones likely to make sense.

Willodeen reads through her old journals and realizes she has not heard a single screecher night call in almost a full year.

On her birthday morning, Willodeen finds a screecher made of grass and mud left by Connor on her rocking chair.

Mae and Birdie declare that angry tears hold magic while Willodeen tries and fails to think of a birthday wish.

Mae and Birdie urge a reluctant Willodeen to attend the village council meeting and channel her anger into something useful.

Willodeen shocks herself and the entire assembly by blurting out a challenge to the council over who is responsible for killing the screechers.

Connor notices the bow tied around the live baby screecher's neck matches exactly the bow he had knotted on his grass creation.

Quinby refuses every food Willodeen and the others offer over several days, leaving the baby screecher's survival genuinely in doubt.

Willodeen learns that Connor also lost a parent when he was very young, and she begins to truly open up to his friendship.

Willodeen takes Quinby alone to the willow grove and carefully gathers labeled leaf samples from all five trees to compare.

Willodeen smells smoke and, instead of fleeing, turns back toward the cottage where Mae, Birdie, Duuzuu, and Quinby need her.

Quinby slips through the open gate during the fire chaos and disappears into the night before anyone can stop her.

Before the emergency council meeting, Connor hints that school would be more enjoyable if Willodeen attended, and she quietly agrees to consider it.

Mae and Birdie silence the hostile council crowd and demand that every adult in the room stop and listen to Willodeen speak.

A hunter returns Quinby to Perchance, and she finds the willow grove and releases a wild, free screecher call into the night.

Willodeen's journey is driven as much by internal shifts as by external events, beginning with her father's early lesson that hating screechers without reason says more about people than it does about screechers. A chain of small revelations — angry tears said to hold magic, a bow on a living creature that matches one tied on a grass creation, and the discovery that Connor also lost a parent — gradually opens Willodeen to trust and connection. Her methodical observation of the willow grove produces the scientific breakthrough that explains the hummingbears' disappearance. When wildfire threatens the village, Willodeen chooses for the first time to run toward the people she loves rather than away from danger. She brings her findings before the village council, and the story closes with Quinby — wild and free — returning to the grove where she belongs.