Page 10 of The Guardians of Dreamdark
“Your pomegranate, my lord, is my desire.”
The Magruwen’s flames quieted, clenching into a white-hot ball at his very core. “What did you just say?” he asked in a low, dangerous tone.
“The pomegranate,” cried Batch. “The pomegranate!”
Belatedly, the Magruwen hissed, “What was the answer to your riddle?”
“The answer is my master! Escorted through the sky by vultures! He said you must give me what I want if you don’t guess it!”
“Imust? Your master seeks to bind me to the Djinn’s honor?”
Batch nodded uncertainly.
The Magruwen laughed. It started low as a cat’s yowl but grew to raging, and the old skin burst open and fell away in tatters. Uncloaked, he stood before Batch as a tornado of fire, frenzied and churning, and the imp cringed away from the dazzle. Smoke crept back in like a tide to swallow the treasures.
At last the Magruwen’s awful laughter subsided. “Very well” he said, “since honor requires it.” And while Batch crouched with his face in his hands, the Magruwen stretched out long arms of smoke. They grew longer and longer until they disappeared through the ceiling of the cave. Up they reached, across strata of earth and rock and root, through the bleachedribs of a dragon and a dark spring swum by water elementals and their imps, through layers of rabbit warrens and forgotten plague cemeteries, finally reaching the school vegetable garden. Smoke fingers plundered among the roots until they found what they were looking for.
In the garden a human lass sat back with a gasp as a turnip top was tugged right out of her hand to disappear in the soil.Gophers, she thought, and moved down the row with a nervous glance at the smoke curling up from the hole.
“Here’s your pomegranate,” said the Magruwen, tossing Batch the scorched turnip. “Send your master my regards.”
Preoccupied by the activities of his tail, Batch missed, and the vegetable skittered into the smoke. He fumbled for it and shoved it into his satchel without a glance. He succeeded in hooking the bat wings and drew them to him beneath the smoke, but just as he made to shove them into his satchel, he saw a salamander clinging to them. It grinned at him before sinking its teeth into his fingers. “Aiii!” he shrieked dropping the wings.
“So you’d like to fly, would you?” asked the Magruwen.
Batch brightened. But before he could answer, the Magruwen sucked all the encircling smoke into himself and blew.
A fiery gust somersaulted Batch backward and right out the door. Up, up, up the well he rocketed, until he flew out into the world and landed in the branches of a tree. He lay there, skin singed bald and whiskers sizzled to bristles, unconscious and twitching, for quite some time.
It had not been the kind of flight he’d had in mind.
Down in his cave, the Magruwen paced and muttered. He held a withered, ancient thing, a pomegranate so old the skin was no longer red, but brown and brittle as parchment. As delicate as it looked, however, it was unharmed by the Djinn’s fiery grip.
“I’ve drifted in the ocean’s womb...” the riddle had said. He should have guessed then, but the other clues hadn’t matched. The vultures—that was clever, weaving them into the riddle to seem like one creature. It was so clear now. “Fires put out...” The Magruwen wondered which one it had been, which Djinn, where. This was the world to which he had awakened, a world diminished by one Djinn, a tremendous absence that he should have recognized instantly. One of his six brethren had been extinguished, and more had gone out of the world than that one smoldering fire. And something else...something else had come back in.
“So,” he whispered. “Ocean spit you out? Have this world, then. I don’t use it anymore.”
He was so weary. He retreated into the depths of his cave and sank back into oblivion, subsiding once again to a smolder, the pomegranate still tight in his grasp. He dreamed that an immense tapestry was hanging from the eaves of the world. He’d dreamed of it many times, but this time the tapestry shivered and fell to dust and all that remained was the deep black of space with no world spinning in it, graceful and green. No world at all.
CHAPTER FIVE
Magpie and the crows flew by night, high enough above the human lands that the jumble of painted caravans they towed wouldn’t attract attention. They didn’t worry about meeting anyone up here. The pathways of the skies were traveled by winds and white geese, wheeling bats and butterflies, but they never encountered other faeries here, and it had been decades since they had seen a witch silhouetted against the moon.
“Take ’em down, my lovelies!” Calypso croaked, sweeping along the line of airborne caravans. “The sun, she stirs! Time to fill our bellies and shut our eyes!”
There was a bloom of light on the horizon. Day was coming on. They bade the wind goodbye and dropped down toward the forest far below. This stretch of Iskeri was the last place of safety before the channel they would cross the next night on the way to Dreamdark. They eased through the treetops and set their five caravans down gently in a nook between roots.
The gypsy wagons were a marvel of color in the shady woods. They were carved with sunbursts and stars and painted in jewel tones, with real gems glimmering like mosaic tiles in the designs. The big spoked wheels were radiant red, the roofs were vaulted and the windows round, and each had a brightcopper chimney and weather vane, one a dragon, one a whale, a tiger, a phoenix, and a heron with its wings spread wide.
The crows bustled in and out the doors as they set about making camp, and before a half hour had passed they had a fire snapping in a freshly dug pit and were toasting cubes of cheese on the ends of twigs.
Pup caught his cheese on fire at once and took to waving it like a firebrand, while Mingus quietly handed Magpie a chunk that was toasted to perfection. “Thanks, feather,” she said affectionately, and he just nodded and smiled.
“How ye planning to find where the Magruwen’s hid, darlin’?” asked Bertram, dipping his cheese in his brandy and taking a wet bite.
Magpie admitted, “I don’t quite know. It’s just a guess and a hope he’s stayed in Dreamdark, but if he is, he’ll be someplace deep. We’ll ask the burrowers and scamperers. Badgers. Hedge imps.”
“Like that old hedgie who took care of ye when ye were wee?” asked Swig.
