Page 67 of The Guardians of Dreamdark
“Aye, and he’s woken up from his long sleep.”
“The old scorch himself! Explains why carrots and turnips been coming out of the ground already cooked!”
“Turnips?” Magpie repeated, flicking a glance to the window Batch had climbed in. She muttered, “That explains where the turnip came from, anywhich.”
“Hoy,” said Strag. “Better hurry on. Slink’s back.” The cat was perched on a fence post staring right at them.
“I’ll distract him,” Magpie announced. Seeing the two human lasses so near, she added, “I’m going to try on my glamour!” and she took a step and blinked herself into a little brown bird. “Talon, run for the pipe. Thanks, Strag. Blessings!”
“My pleasure, Foxlick!” he called.
Magpie made straight for the cat, and she might have looked like a dull garden bird but she flew like a faerie. She zinged spirals round his head as he batted at her, and she scolded, “For shame, you suck-toe, gawping after manny scraps! The Djinn dreamed you finer than that!”
“Djinn?” scoffed the cat. “It’s the humans’ world now, bird, and we cats’ll be snug in their laps while they pick the bones of every last creature! They’ll clean their teeth with yours, if I don’t first!”
Magpie gave the cat’s whiskers a good tweak and darted out of reach so it keeled over backward swinging for her and toppled off the post with a yowl. Then she spun round and saw Talon had made it to the drainpipe and was well up it, so she sped to the windowsill, stepped out of her glamour, and sat herself down to wait for him.
When his head came into view, she said, “Slap the—” But he knocked her hand away and scowled at her. “Ach, what the skiffle, lad?” she asked, surprised.
“I didn’t come all this way to play eejit sports,” he growled, climbing up onto the windowsill. “Or to maraud manny schools with some lass who’ll tell her secrets to some plucked chicken but not me—”
Magpie stared at him.
“I saved your life,” he went on, “and I got you that skiving knife back that you near slit my throat with, and you just scolded me for it like I’m some sprout, and I helped knit your wings, and I haven’t asked you who you really are, even though I’ve seen you do things no faerie can do, and for all I know you’re in with that devil yourself!”
Magpie flushed, “I didn’t ask you along, if you’ll recall,” she replied hotly, “and I’ll be happy to ‘maraud’ without you! But I am sorry if I insulted you by including you in ‘eejit’ games I’ve been playing with the crows since I was wee. You want to get back to Dreamdark and sit around fretting with all the others, you go. Better still, go on to Never Nigh, where they’re saying I’m in with the devil. You’d fit right in! But about the knife...” Her hand went to Skuldraig. “The only reason I didn’t want you touching it is ’cause it’s cursed, and if you’d tried to use it, it would have murdered you!”
There was a thick silence between them until Talon said with an awkward frown, “Oh. Well, maybe you shouldn’t leave it lying around then.”
Magpie’s mouth dropped open, and she chuffed indignantly. “I’m sorry if nearly dying, I didn’t keep betterinventoryof my things!” Then a flicker of shame came into her expression, and she chewed her lip and said roughly, “But about saving my life...of course, thank you. Of course! I’m sorry I didn’t say so sooner. I could barely even think; I just lost my friends...”
Now Talon looked ashamed, and his blush deepened. “I know,” he said quickly. “It’s okay; I’m not grubbing for thanks. Just, all the secrets...I thought maybe you’d tell me, but you told that shindy—”
“I didn’t! Strag knew it all before I did! I only just found out myself—”
“Found out what?”
“Er,” Magpie said, coloring crimson as she tried to imagine telling him what she’d learned. Even in her own head it sounded preposterous, so after a long pause she blurted, “The imps and creatures gave me a blessing ceremony. I don’t even remember it. They gave me gifts, like that glamour and seeing in the dark and all. First I knew of it was when Snoshti...er, took me, yesterday!”
Puzzled, Talon asked, “Why? Why’d they bless you?”
Magpie shrugged. “Look, you want to maraud or neh?” she asked in a surly voice. “Or you can leave. Whichever.”
Scowling, Talon said, “Okay then, let’s go,” and they turned their attention to the window.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Inside was an empty schoolroom with two neat rows of desks facing a world map and a globe, and shelves of books on the far wall. “It looks like the schoolroom at the castle,” Talon said, “only huge.”
They leapt to the floor and crossed on foot to the door. Peering out, they saw they were at the end of a corridor, with two more doors facing them. The first room was cluttered with painting easels and lumps of clay in sad replicas of manny heads, and it stank of turpentine. The second room stank too, but the odor wasn’t turpentine. Magpie fluttered up to the top of a cabinet, and Talon climbed up beside her. Grimly they surveyed the room.
On shelves high and low creatures stood and crouched, frozen still, their eyes peeled open but lusterless. There were varmints with their tiny claws outstretched, tails curled, whiskers eerily still. Mice, voles, raccoons. A long row of dull-eyed birds stood upon the highest shelf; and below them, a sad little collection of their nests and eggs. Nothing moved. For a moment, Magpie thought the creatures were under some enchantment, but then she saw the jars.
They were jars not unlike those in a manny’s pantry, from which she’d once or twice pilfered jelly. But in these were noapricots or honey, only creatures afloat in stinking liquid. Skinks, snakes, tiny frogs. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed. So many eyes in the room, and nothing blinked.
“All dead...” murmured Talon, stunned. Ill from the stink and the horror of it, he quietly took Magpie’s hand. She held it tight.
“It’s a collection,” she whispered, seeing how each dead thing was labeled in neat letters.
