Page 68 of The Guardians of Dreamdark
“It’s murder,” Talon answered.
They heard muttering at the same moment their eyes fell on the butterflies. Case after case hung on the wall, of butterflies and moths pinned open dead and arranged like art.
And there in their midst was Batch Hangnail.
He stood poised at the edge of a tall cabinet. He seemed to be wearing wings. As Magpie and Talon watched as he brought his hands together, bent his legs, and sprang. It was the imp version of a swan dive, and for a moment he seemed to float, his luna moth wings catching the air, and a pure and nearly beatific look of hope came into his face. The next moment he dropped like a stone and hit the ground cursing.
“Come on,” Magpie said, dropping Talon’s hand and taking to her wings. Talon followed, leaping easily from cabinet to cabinet. They reached the corner the imp had plunged from and found there a sickening sight. The luna moth wings had not been Batch’s first attempt, clearly. One of the framed displays had been smashed open and plundered, and the cabinet was littered with butterfly carcasses bereft of their wings. One glance over the edge at the floor showed what had become ofthem. A litter of wings had gathered below in a drift, like leaves beneath an autumn tree, and Batch lay on his side in them, half buried and moaning.
With an icy look, Magpie stepped off the edge and dropped to land sharply in front of him. He peeled open one eye and saw her, snapped it shut again, and redoubled his moaning. “Oh, woe...” he whimpered in scamper. “Woe to poor Batch...”
“Get up,” Magpie said impatiently, nudging him with her foot, then harder when he didn’t respond. “I said get up!”
Snuffling, he sat upright. A pretty blue morpho wing was plastered to the dribbling mucus on the side of his face.
“You’re lucky those butterflies were already dead, imp, or you’d have a bitter time of it!”
“Already dead...” He nodded and moaned. “Mannies killed ’em, not me! I just want to fly away...”
“You didn’t really think dead wings would fly you, now, did you?”
The great slubbering imp sat in the sad debris of spent wings and sobbed. Talon came headfirst down the edge of the cabinet like a lizard and stood next to Magpie, and they both listened as the imp moaned about how the magic had worn off his flying surrey as he made his great escape.
“Can’t really blame a wretch for wishing to fly,” Talon said under his breath.
“Neh, perhaps, so long as he’s given up on maiming faeries. But you know what Icanblame him for?” She knelt down in front of Batch and forced him to look her straight in the eyes as she said, “For not telling me about his master’s tongue.”
The life seemed to drain from Batch, so that he drooped into a miserable, quivering mass. “The tongue...” He fumbled for the tip of his tail with shaking hands and shoved it into his mouth, commencing to suckle it with loud, wet sounds, and his eyes squeezed tight shut.
“Imp, listen up!” Magpie said harshly, in no mood for pity. “You left out some details before, neh? And because of it I lost some friends to your master! Now you’ll tell me something else. You said your master sent you to the Magruwen for a turnip. Well, that’s blither! What’s he really after?”
With a long, snuffling sigh, Batch answered her. Speaking around the tail in his mouth, he said something sounding like “Mommamammid.”
“Eh?”
“Mommamammid!” He repeated the slobbering mumble until Magpie reached out and yanked his tail. “Pomegranate!” Batch said as it whipped out of his mouth, flinging a spray of warm spittle.
Wiping her hands and grimacing, Magpie repeated, “Pomegranate?”
Batch nodded.
“Well, that doesn’t make much more sense than a turnip! What’s he want it for?”
“Flotched if I know!” retorted the imp. His tail groped for a large and particularly lovely monarch wing, and he held it to his face and honked his nose into it repeatedly before crumpling it and tossing it back onto the heap. Particles of orange wing clung to his quivering nostrils.
“A pomegranate,” Magpie said to Talon. “What the skiffle?”
Batch caught sight of Talon’s face then and did a double take. “Munch! Ye’re one of them shouty faeries,” he declared, drawing back.
“Aye,” said Talon. “You want to tell me what happened to the others you saw?”
The imp sniffed and snuffed, wiped at his eyes and nose with the backs of his hands, pulling himself together. “Master happened,” he told him with a shiver that worked itself all the way down his tail and set his rings to rattling.
Talon noticed the brass handles on the cabinets were rattling, too, and realized it wasn’t Batch’s shiver that was doing it. He nudged Magpie and said “mannies.” They both turned to the door.
“Quick,” Magpie said. “Put on your skin. And you, imp, you’re coming with us.”
As Talon pulled his falcon skin out of his pocket, Magpie visioned the glyph for floating, and Batch rose right up out of his mound of butterfly wings with a squeal. Magpie stepped hastily into her bird glamour and grabbed his tail.
