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Without waiting for orders, Mira promised to help. She ran back through the Whisperwood to fetch helpers—Greedy Smurf traded three of his rare marbles for a map he didn’t understand; Handy Smurf fashioned a small prism to carry light; and Brainy, grumbling but intrigued, brought an ancient rhyme he insisted might be part of the weave.

The forest was not the frightening thing the legends made it; it was only very, very alive. Vines hummed like old lullabies, and sunlight pooled in cups on the leaves. Mira followed a trail of tiny footprints that glowed faint as moonlight. The prints led her down into a bowl of moss where a silver stream sang of somewhere else. smurfsthelostvillage2017720pamznwebrip8

And sometimes, when the moon was just so, you could hear a new note in the Smurf songs, a small, bright trill that sounded suspiciously like a chiming flower thanking them for listening. Without waiting for orders, Mira promised to help

Mira’s excitement faded into awe when she heard singing, then talking. From behind a clump of glow-leaves crept creatures like Smurfs and unlike them—slender, with iridescent freckles and hair braided with twigs. They were the Lumin: guardians of the Lost Grove, they said, and they had been keeping a secret. Vines hummed like old lullabies, and sunlight pooled