Page 9 of The Guardians of Dreamdark
“Who are you?” he demanded in a voice to scald the ears.
Trembling, Batch answered, “I am Batch, Lord. Just a lowly imp. A low creature...”
“Low creature?” repeated the Magruwen. “You insult the craft of the Djinn who shaped your kind. We made no creature low. If you are low, it is because you choose to creep. Are you low?”
Batch froze. His master had schooled him in just what to say, and he’d already botched it. What was he to answer? Was he low or wasn’t he? No ideas came to him, so he blurted, “The riddle, it’s new!”
Fume hissed from the Magruwen’s mask like a sigh. “Ask,” he said.
With relief Batch straightened up, cleared his throat, and recited:
I have a dozen wings to rake the sky,
a dozen eyes to find the dead,
A thousand souls within my guts,
a single will in many heads.
I’ve drifted in the ocean’s womb,
I’ve prowled through catacomb and tomb.
I’ve swept the cobwebs from the clouds,
I’ve wiped my talons clean on shrouds.
I’ve soul of shade and heart of smoke,
I’m ink and stain and clot and cloak.
I’m what you’ve never dreamed about.
I’m tongues gone dumb and fires put out.
What am I?
Fires put out? The Magruwen gave a snort that sent fireworks and salamanders streaming from his eyes and buttonholes. This was an audacious imp, to come before a Djinn and speak of putting out fires! But the Magruwen ceased thinking of the imp when the answer to the riddle brushed his mind like the wing tips of a moth. He flicked it away. It was impossible, just a fancy, and one he was only too glad to ignore. After all, he didn’t care about riddles anymore.
The fireworks subsided. He wanted only to fall back to sleep. “Choose a treasure, imp, and be on your way,” he said wearily.
Batch’s eyes lit up. He’d won. He’d won! “Ha ha HA!” he cackled. He capered about. The Magruwen didn’t even ask the riddle’s answer but simply cleared the smoke from the floor with a languid sweep of his arm. Batch stopped when he saw what lay beneath it. It was too much, too much for a scavenger to bear.
‘You may choose one thing,” said the Magruwen.
Batch swallowed hard. He’d been in treasure chambers before—he was a scavenger imp, after all. He’d wallowed in gold ingots and pried gems from the eyes of icons with a shrimp fork. He’d plundered robbers’ caves rigged with booby traps and pyramids riddled with curses. He’d even napped in a mummy’s armpit! But nothing had prepared him for this.
The cavern floor glimmered as opals, amethysts, and moonstones caught the glow of the Magruwen’s flame and held it burning in their bellies. There were chalices and lyres and mirrors framed in pearls, broadswords and tiaras and bolts of wondrous cloth. Quite forgetting the reason he’d been sent here, Batch flexed his toes and waded in.
He caressed a clockwork hummingbird that could be wound up to collect nectar in a teacup in its belly. He trailed his fingers over a cauldron of sapphires and paused at a ruby-crusted scimitar. The Magruwen watched. That blade had a nasty habit of turning to smoke at the moment of need. Such dark treasures lay among the bright, and one could not always tell from looking which was which. That paring knife lying there so plain beside the scimitar, for example, could cut through any metal ever forged.
Batch moved on, a pendulum of drool swinging from his lower lip. He didn’t know what he wanted until he saw it, but as soon as he did, desire gripped him by the guts, and a new obsession began to take root in his soul. There upon stacks of folded lace lay a little pair of silver bat wings, just his size. Of all the absurd dreams an imp can harbor in his secret soul, Batch’s was the silliest. He had always longed to fly! To twirl like a faerie in the shimmering forest light. To swoop. To soar! He had a vision of himself fluttering back up the deep shaft of the well and gliding over the world. His fingers reached trembling for the wings.
But he jerked his hand back and wailed. The terrible voice had surfaced inside his head. “The pomegranate,” it had said,and he remembered why he had come. Snuffling, he turned from the wings and faced the Magruwen.
“My lord” he said, “the treasure I desire is not here.”
“What is your desire?” the Magruwen asked.
