Page 72 of The Guardians of Dreamdark
“Eh? I never heard of that.”
“Neh, no one did. Things went bad betwixt ’em. The Astaroth made the devils, so the Djinn did away with him. I thought Fade meant they killed him, but now I think maybe they just changed him somehow, into the Blackbringer.”
“What’s this about Fade?” Talon asked, arching an eyebrow at her.
“Er...” Magpie said, and nimble lies filled her mouth, ready to tumble out. But she bit them back. “Well,” she said slowly, her eyes holding his gaze steady. “When Snoshti took me away before...I met him.”
“What?” he asked with a laugh, thinking she was joking. “Where?”
“In the canyon where he lives.”
He stopped laughing. “I thought he was dead.”
“He is.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve been to the Moonlit Gardens.”
She just looked at him.
“Impossible!” he exclaimed, remembering only as he said it:What do I know of impossible? Less and less every minute, sure, he thought, and paused before asking, “Okay, but...how?”
“That blessing ceremony I told you about...” she said, and took a deep breath, blushing. “Talon, listen, this is all going to sound mad, but here it is.”
She told him everything in one swift rush. By the end of it, he was just staring at her, and she said peevishly, “You wanted to know, now you know. Say something.”
“So it’s...the Tapestry? The...energy...that’s all around us? Like a river?”
Magpie cocked her head and looked at him keenly. “You feel it, too?”
He nodded. “When I’m knitting, it’s like my mind falls into a river full of glyphs that just takes me...”
Magpie was nodding, too, and that wondering smile was playing at the corners of her lips. “Flummox me,” she said. “And Poppy felt it, too. I guess I’m not alone like I always thought.”
“Do you think all faeries feel it?” Talon asked.
“I know they used to, before the Djinn forsook us.”
“Maybe when the Magruwen dreamed you his dreams sort of spilled over and touched other sprouts who were being born, too.”
“We are all the same age,” she mused. “And we were all born in Dreamdark. I wonder if it’s just us or if there are others, too.”
“I wonder.”
“So you...believe me?” Magpie asked timidly.
He shrugged. “Sure I never knew anyone like you before,” he said easily. “But Magpie...if you were in the Gardens, did you happen to see...my folk?”
“Neh. The Blackbringer’s victims aren’t there.”
“What? Then where are they?”
“I don’t know,” she said in a bleak voice.
Batch rolled over then and farted in his sleep, and Magpie and Talon both had to suppress snorts of laughter. “It’s good to know,” said Talon, “that nothing’s ever so serious that a squelch can’t make you laugh.”
“Words to live by,” Magpie agreed.
Calypso said in an exasperated voice, “Jacksmoke, faeries! Do I have to knock ye on the heads to make ye rest?”
