Page 22 of The Guardians of Dreamdark
Poppy looked even more stunned. Her expression hovered between disbelief and dismay. “You’re jesting.”
Magpie shook her head. She saw Poppy’s eyes go softly out of focus as she listened to the tree for a time before saying, “Nay,faeries have all but forgotten him. He’s only legend now.” She paused. “The dreamer...I like that.” She paused again, then murmured, “Aye, I never thought of it that way...”
There followed a long listening that made Magpie antsy. Poppy’s eyes were far away and her brow creased with worry, and Magpie longed to hear what she was hearing. She tried not to wiggle. Long moments passed before Poppy said faintly, “Aye, old Father, I’ll tell her...” and blinked her eyes back into focus.
“Poppy!” said Magpie. “What did he say?”
“Did you know they used to call him the dreamer?” she asked slowly. “Because he dreamed a world into creation he couldn’t even live in.”
“The Magruwen?”
“Aye,” answered Poppy, sadness sweeping over her face. “He made a world he couldn’t even touch. Have you ever thought of that?”
Puzzled, Magpie shook her head.
“Wouldn’t you think...creatures offire...wouldn’t you think they’d make a different sort of world? One that wasn’t so...fragile?”
Magpie saw what Poppy was getting at. For fire elementals, spinning through the eternal blackness of the beginning, to come together and make this delicate place, these fern fronds, these woods...it was a beautiful dream, but not a sensible one. They could wear skins to keep from setting fire to their creations, but it wouldn’t be the same. Magpie’s grandfatherhad said it was like holding hands while wearing gloves. The air elementals could at least dance through the treetops in their true forms and caress the birds they carried in their arms, but the Djinn never could, not without burning everything to cinders. The textures of things, which they’d rendered with such artistry, must always have been a mystery to their own touch.
“Maybe they didn’t make it for themselves,” Magpie murmured. “Maybe they made it for...us.”
“Maybe. And it’s perfect, nay?”
Magpie nodded. It was.
“He’s asleep in a deep place now,” Poppy said.
Magpie’s stomach flipped. “Did the tree tell you where—”
“There’s a school for humans just outside Dreamdark. In the gardens there’s a dry well. That’s where the Magruwen dreams, at the bottom of it, alone and forgotten.”
Dazed, the two faeries stared at each other. Magpie realized she’d had only dim expectations of succeeding in her quest. It hit her now that she was truly going to see the Djinn King, and a shiver seized her.
“In a well,” Poppy said, a sheen of tears blurring her eyes. “The Djinn King! At the bottom of a well in the belly of the world. It isn’t right!”
“Neh, it isn’t. Did the tree say...why?”
Poppy shook her head. “Nay, but he did say it’s high time someone had the nerve to wake him.”
Magpie took a deep breath. “I reckon it is.”
“But Magpie...you don’t really mean to?”
“Aye, but I do. Come on, I got to go tell the crows!” She stood and sprang from the branch, shooting out through the tickling leaves. “Thank you, Father Linden!” she called as she went.
“Blessings, old Father,” Poppy said reverently to the tree, then opened her own wings and followed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Magpie and Poppy snuck around the side of the stage caravan just as the play ended and cheers erupted in the Ring. They slipped in through the back door to wait while the crows took their bows.
The caravan was even messier than usual. Gowns and tentacles were strewn everywhere from quick costume changes, and every trunk was flung open, so the lasses had to leap over them with a lift of wing. “It’s some fright in here,” Magpie said, but Poppy was taking it all in with shining eyes.
“It’s grand,” she said, surveying the glitter of velvets, snakeskins, and manny jewelry that covered nearly every surface. “Is that where you sleep?” She gestured up at Magpie’s little bunk.
“Aye, home sweet...” Magpie’s words trailed off when she saw that her patchwork curtain was yanked askew. “What the skive?” she growled, flying to it and not seeing how Poppy’s eyes widened in shock to hear her curse. Her book lay out on her quilt. She always put it under her pillow, and she always drew her curtain closed. She thought immediately of Lady Vesper. Her eyes narrowed and she sniffed the air, detecting in it a scent of intrusion. It wasn’t faerie, though, but creature. And there was a hint of something else, clean as snow and utterly foreign.
“Magpie,” said Poppy, who’d been watching with curiosity as the huntress awoke in her friend. “What is it?”
