Page 83 of The Guardians of Dreamdark
“Aye.”
From behind them, Bertram cut in. “I don’t like it, Mags. Sure I want Maniac back, but not if ye got to risk yerself.”
“He’s right, ’Pie,” said Calypso. “I en’t spent this life raising ye up ever so careful, and Lady Bellatrix didn’t talk Fade’s ear off all them years just so ye can go like that.”
“And if he gets ye,” added Pigeon, “who’ll get him? Sure nobody could, and that would mean the end of everything, forever!”
“And wouldn’t yer mum skin us then!” squawked Pup. “Andgood-imp Snoshti! She shivers me fierce.”
“Ach, birds! You’re supposed to be on my side!”
“We are,” answered Bertram. “On the side of yer skin, love. How can ye keep from turning shadow like the others?”
“There’s got to be a way.”
“Maybe you’ll dream it tonight,” Talon suggested.
“I hope,” she said. She hugged all the crows good night and went her way, calling back, “Good night, Talon.”
“Good night, Magpie. Dream of magic,” he called back.
“You too.”
But the kind of dreams they meant, the ones that come tumbling like springs from unmapped deeps, full of hints and secrets, wouldn’t visit them this night, because both faeries were too anxious to sleep.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Magpie closed herself into her windowless chamber deep within the castle and slouched on the edge of the cot, chewing her lip. Magic didn’t come to you only in your sleep, sure. The Djinns’ dreams—the luminous threads—those were open-eyed dreams, things of intention and will. But they were art, and hadn’t the Djinn shown her just how artless she was? The magic she’d made—turning Vesper’s hair to worms, sparking the Magruwen awake—had she ever done a bit of it on purpose? It just blurted from her like curse words when she was in temper and made chaos in the Tapestry. That was no way to take on the greatest foe her folk had ever known!
She opened her book and leafed through it. So the Magruwen would give her a star to light her way. That was something. But did she know any protection spells strong enough to withstand that sucking dark? Unlikely. Nothing in these pages would help her. She slammed the book closed. Things were different now. Bigger. And the same went with capturing him when that time came. Her usual tricks would be useless.
She stared at her hands, remembering the tingling that had come into them when the warriors in the hall had laughed at her. She’d had to bite her lip to quell the magic she’d felt surging up in her. How could she summon it when she needed it? How could she bend it to her will? The Magruwen had saidthe Tapestry would be no use to her unless she understood it. Well, she didn’t, but there sure wasn’t time just now to learn!
She sighed, wondering how the champions had captured the Blackbringer before. Suddenly she sat up straight with a grin.Why not ask?she thought. She closed her eyes and did as Snoshti had taught her, imagining herself fading while she visioned three glyphs in her mind, for threshold, for moonlight, and for garden, linked in just the right way. She held her breath, waiting to feel the winged touch, and when she did she sighed with relief, opening her eyes to the moon-washed riverscape.
Crossing the bridge to the Moonlit Gardens, Magpie caught the startled looks of faeries who’d witnessed her first crossing and who were stunned to see her come again. They whispered amongst one another and pointed, and she gave them a shy wave before taking to her wings and setting off toward the cottage carved into the cliff. Flying beside the whispering river, she felt a pang of loneliness. To be here, the only living soul in this quiet land, made her wish for the stuffiness and dust of that trunk in the mannies’ attic, for the crows gathered round on all sides, the stolen picnic, the farting imp, and Talon.
Talon. She realized she’d memorized his tattoos as if they were a glyph and wondered what would happen if she visioned them like one. Would it summon him? She smiled at the thought. That would be sharp. He wasn’t so bad to have around.
She reached the cliff’s edge and descended on her wings down the rock-cut stairs, but as they curved and Bellatrix’s garden came into view, she slowed and stopped. The lady was sitting there on the same stone bench where she’d braidedMagpie’s hair. She seemed to be looking out into the canyon, but one glance at her face made it clear that whatever she was seeing, it wasn’t the familiar landscape.
Her beautiful face was a portrait of longing, of loneliness, and need. She had the eyes of one who knows exactly where the border lies between hope and despair and who has stood before it many times and looked across. Magpie had never seen such a look, and a wave of sympathetic misery washed over her to see Bellatrix in such a state. She who was so brave...But it was more than bravery that bound Bellatrix here and kept her from joining the seraphim in the high planes.
What was it? She’d called it obstinacy, but even Magpie, who had but a sprout’s understanding of it, could see that it was love, and it shivered her.
Love. She’d always thought of love as...affection, the look that passed often between her parents, or the feel of their arms around her. But wasn’t it this, too, the core of iron in someone’s soul that made them capable of impossible things? It seemed a terrifying force.
If Kipepeo had never fallen to the Blackbringer, Magpie wondered, where would the world be now? If Bellatrix had followed the path laid out for her, had lived her life in the world, crossed the river as a biddy, and joined the seraphim when it was her time, there would have been no one here to notice when things began to go wrong. There would have been no one to trick the Magruwen, and Magpie might never have been. It was the lady’s tragedy as well as Fade’s that gave a flicker of hope to the rest of the world.
Magpie longed to give her hope in return. She thought of telling her of her dream, of the sparks trapped inside the Blackbringer, but she was afraid. What if it was all a fancy? Or would it be worse if it wasn’t? Even if she could rescue some souls, surely Kipepeo had long ago subsided to darkness. Surely his spark couldn’t be among those dull embers after so many thousands of years. She resolved to say nothing of it.
Bellatrix sensed her presence then and turned to Magpie, and her face lit up. She stood and held out her arms. “Magpie, blessings, I needed a breath of life just now.” Magpie went the rest of the way down the stairs and stepped into Bellatrix’s arms, and the lady clung to her and whispered, “Child of my heart.”
A little later, when Bellatrix had poured some cordial for them into crystal glasses and they were sitting on the cliff’s edge with their feet dangling over, watching the dragons, Bellatrix asked her, “What brings you to visit, child?”
“I was wondering, Lady, how you...” She hesitated, knowing the question would bring memories of Kipepeo, but she went on. “How did you capture the Blackbringer before?”
Bellatrix nodded. “Ah, aye, I thought it might be that.” Her eyes went far away into memory. “We tried many things,” she said. “But it was one glyph that worked in the end, though there were six of us visioning it together. Magpie, do you know what a vortex is?”
