Page 23 of The Guardians of Dreamdark
“Someone’s been in here,” Magpie answered, reaching for her book. She could feel her protective spells were still intact, so she was startled when a slip of paper dislodged from the pages. It fluttered to the floor at Poppy’s feet, a trail of light unfurling behind it like the tail of a comet. Poppy picked the paper up, and Magpie could tell her friend didn’t see the blaze-bright aura that hung on it, slower to fade than the brief traceries she’d seen that morning flying into Never Nigh. Poppy handed the paper to her, and she took it and sniffed it like a feral creature.
The strange pure smell was strong on it. Wary, Magpie turned the paper over and read it, and the ferocity left her eyes and was replaced by puzzlement.
“What?” Poppy asked.
“This wasn’t in my book before,” she answered.
Poppy moved to her side and looked at the paper, which had elegant writing on it.
Magruwen’s Favorite
To a batter of lily flour, oats, honey, and beetle butter, add:
1 half walnut shell of fish’s tears
3 strokes of tangled wind
1 shadow of a bird in flight
1,000 years of undreamed life
Stir together with twig from a lightning-struck tree, and bake until a porcupine quill inserted in the center comes out clean. Place in a starling’s nest to serve.
B.
“Magruwen!” exclaimed Poppy. “But...who put it there?”
“Flummox me,” Magpie said. “I haven’t told anyone but you and the tree why I’ve come!”
“Could the crows have put it here?”
“Neh. They’d just give it to me.”
“A mystery, Magpie!” Poppy said, excited. “And a riddle! What can it mean, a thousand years of undreamed life?”
Magpie puzzled on it. “Undreamed life? A life that hasn’t started yet, that hasn’t even been dreamed up...”
But something you can bake into a cake?
“Like an egg? There’s a life inside that hasn’t been dreamed up yet.”
“And will never be life, if you crack it into a cake.”
Magpie shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said, looking at the strange recipe card. She suddenly squinted and looked closer. “Jacksmoke!”
Again, Poppy looked startled by Magpie’s cursing. Magpie caught her look this time and blushed. “I mean, skiffle...”
“What is it?” Poppy asked.
Magpie opened her book and leafed through it until she found a page marked with an iridescent snakeskin. Her eyes shifted rapidly back and forth between the book and the recipe.“Poppy, look.” Pasted to the page was a scrap of parchment gone sepia with great age, once ripped in half and carefully seamed back together. It read:
Hurry home, love, through the dream-dark glade,
Where moontime beasts lurk in darkling shade.
Never linger, love, where the shadows grow.
The Blackbringer hunts where the light fears to go.
