Page 61 of The Guardians of Dreamdark
Silence fell, broken only by the clicking of knitting needles.
After a moment, Magpie said with a sigh, “Well, he might be through with it, but I’m not. I’m going to catch the Blackbringer with or without his help.”
“That’s right, Mags!” chirped Pup. “Ye can do anything!”
“How...?” asked Talon. “How do you catch a shadow? It sounds impossible—”
“So ready to cry impossible?” Magpie snapped. “And leave that beast to eat the rest of your kin?” As soon as she said the words she wanted to bite them back. She squeezed her eyes shut.
Talon’s face grew hot.
“Lass, lad...” said Orchidspike in a soothing voice.
“Nay, she’s right, what do I know of impossible?” Talon said in a wretched voice.
Magpie slouched and said miserably. “Neh, I’m sorry. I’m a brute. I just can’t seem to hold it all in my head, what I know of him, what I don’t know...what he is, and how to catch him...”
“Now ’Pie,” Calypso said encouragingly, “ye’ll catch him, sure. Come now, what do we know of the beast?”
She took a deep, shuddering breath and tried to calm herself. “He’s the Blackbringer,” she said slowly, “and sure faeries only remember him as a nursery story. But that’s our own doom, to forget. He was the worst devil there ever was. He was the dark come to life. A contagion of darkness, the hungry one...beast of night with flesh of smoke, wearing darkness like a cloak...”
Talon had a sudden clear and piercing thought. His eyes flew open.
“He called himself...” Magpie thought back. “The heavens with the stars ripped out...but ach, that’s just poetry, neh?”
Talon spoke up. “What if he’s wearing a skin?”
Magpie looked skeptical. “A skin?” she repeated.
“What you said about wearing darkness like a cloak, it made me think of a skin,” he said.
“Usually I can spot a skin.”
“Don’t I know!”
“And made of what? The dark?”
Talon shrugged. “The legends say the Djinn wove light, nay? Why not dark?”
“A skin...I don’t know. When I was inside it,” Magpie said, “it wasn’t just a little patch of shadow. It was...I don’t know, endless, empty...infinite.” The word leapt like a spark in her mind, and she felt the rush of an idea forming. It danced just out of reach.
Calypso asked, “But why would the Djinn make something so nasty?”
“Could something else have made it?” Talon asked. “If it’s a skin, anything could be inside it.”
Magpie stared. Anything, she thought. Infinite. And she was reminded of the glyph for infinity, that eight laid on its side, and her pulse quickened.
“Lad...” Orchidspike said in a frightened whisper, and Talon turned to her. He saw a look of puzzlement on the healer’s face and followed her gaze to Magpie’s wings. At first he didn’t know what was amiss. The knitting needles fairly flew along, unfurling neat rows of silk and spells behind them. Helooked back at Orchidspike, then hastily back at the knitting needles.
They were moving very, very fast.
Spidersilk was flying off the bobbin.
“Every choice casts a shadow,” Magpie said low to herself, repeating the Magruwen’s words, “and sometimes those shadows stalk your dreams...”
Orchidspike’s old fingers couldn’t keep up with the furious pace of the spells. She lost her hold on the needles, and they clattered to the floor at her feet. Magpie didn’t notice, and neither, apparently, did the spells. Needles or not, the silk kept right on, zipping off the bobbin into the weave of Magpie’s wings. Orchidspike drew back, astonished.
“He meant the choice between the world and the Astaroth,” Magpie said, speaking faster now, trying to keep pace with her thoughts. “But what does that mean? Fade said the Djinn chose the world, but he never said what they did to the Astaroth. He never said theykilledhim.”
