Page 28 of The Guardians of Dreamdark
“What was that song about?” Poppy asked as they flew slowly away, trying not to slosh the tears. Not understanding a word of it, she’d still felt a tug at her heart, so mournful had been the sound.
“Lost love.” replied Magpie with all the feeling of a child to whom such a thing is mere words. “Woe and heartache. The usual.”
The Manygreen lands sprawled across a varied terrain of speckled meadows and scrubby rises laced with tree cover. As they were growers and plant mages, they lived where the trees were sparse and the sun could dip down and kiss their growing things to life. Poppy guided Magpie to a soft landing atop a tangle of wild plum roots at the edge of a garden in riotous summer bloom. There were checkered heads of drooping fritillary mixed into swaths of bird cherry and cloudberry, kiss-me-quick and creeping jenny, primrose and bee orchid and yellow archangel. Fuchsia and wild peony tumbled over rocks, and fiddleheads unfurled among stalks of honey daphne. From tree to tree rolled carpets of wood anemone, and above it all a fringe of whitebeam and flowering plum waved its plumage in the wind.
“Oh, Poppy...” Magpie breathed, taking it all in. “It’s wonderful here...”
Poppy beamed. “There’s my workshop.,” she said with a flourish of her arm. Emerging from a nook between roots was a many-gabled roof bristling with copper chimneys. Poppy ledMagpie through a covered porch into a single large room. Herbs and blossoms hung upside down from the ceiling to dry, and the walls were hidden entirely by shelves and glass-fronted cabinets. A pair of big slab worktables were covered in a tumble of kettles, crucibles, and cauldrons, bubbling vials, interconnected tubes, beakers, shining instruments, and books.
Magpie looked at it all, wide-eyed. “Skive,” she murmured. “I’ve never seen the like!”
Poppy pulled a bowl down from a shelf and emptied the tears into it.
Magpie read from tiny labels on earthen jars: “SONGBIRD TISANE, LOVER’S POSEY—a cure for hiccups and nightmares.MOONLIGHT MIST...What’s that do?”
“That helps you remember your dreams.”
“Sharp! Does it work?”
“Aye, sure. Here.” She poured some of the blue cordial into a little metal flask and screwed the cap on tight. “For later. Just a sip before bedtime.” She handed it to Magpie.
“Thanks!” The flask had a ring on its cap that Magpie threaded through her belt. “How’d you make it?”
“You’ve got to collect full moonlight all night long in a mirror, set out someplace no shadows will fall over it from dusk to dawn, and at first light tip it, and pour the moonlight through a sieve of mist into a jug with a sprig of lavender and then distill it for a moon’s time.”
“There’s one for my book!” Magpie said. “How’d you think that up?”
“Sometimes,” Poppy said with a bashful glance at Magpie, “I just sort of...feelwhat to do, like the magic’s already there, all around, and I just have to sort of let my mind open—like a flower—and then...I don’t know, I...find it.”
Magpie stared at her, and Poppy blushed, looking back down at the bowl in her hands as she said quickly, “It’s just a fancy, really.”
“Neh” said Magpie, a push of her wings carrying her half across the room. “Poppy” she said earnestly, “is it like...a pulse?”
Poppy looked up sharply and said, “Aye...”
“Like...” Magpie went on. “Like invisible blood pulsing through the veins of the air?”
Poppy nodded eagerly. “Like if you could feel the roots of things alive under the ground, twisting and living and growing, even though you can’t see them, but it’s not just underground, it’s everywhere, all around, and it’s faster than roots growing and bigger, bigger than anything—”
“And it’s warm and alive and—”
They spoke the next words in unison—“and it carries you along with it”—and stood staring at each other.
Tears suddenly sprang to Poppy’s eyes. “Magpie, I’ve never...no one else has ever understood...”
“I know,” said Magpie. “Me too!”
“Have you always—?” Poppy started to ask, but just then a crow poked his head through the window.
“Mags,” he croaked. “C’mere a secky, darlin’.” It was Swig. He had a hunched, serious look about him that Magpie knewcould mean nothing good. She went to the window at once. Beyond, she could see Maniac and Mingus in close conversation with a raven so large he made the crows look like hatchlings.
“Who’s that feather?” she asked.
“Algorab’s his name” said Swig. “Dreamdark bird. He’s heard something, Mags.”
“What?”
“Little hamlet called West Mirth? There’s bats who hunt bugs round the pigeon stables there by night. They say last night something came through.”
