Poppy said, “Nothing to do with mannies and monkeys! Just growing things. Dreaming new flowers. Making potions.”
“Potions?”
“Aye. I’ve never been great with glyphs,” she admitted with a pretty blush. “But potions I can see and stir. They make sense to me.”
Potions were a very different art from glyphs, an earthy magic Magpie associated with hearth witches and healers. “What sort of potions?” she asked.
“Oh, say, for better night vision or a singing voice, or seeing lies or remembering your dreams. And for things like wrinkles and warts—”
“Causing them or curing them?”
Poppy laughed. “Both! And there are potions for telling if a babe is a lad or lass before it’s born. And love magic—”
Magpie snorted. “Love magic! I don’t think you’ll be needing any potions to make lads fall in love with you.”
“Me?” Poppy grimaced. “Lads? Echh. Nay, please! But oh, my cousin Kex has been hounding me fierce for a potion to woo the queen.”
Magpie froze and narrowed her eyes. “Queen?” she asked.
“Aye! Haven’t you heard yet?” Poppy laughed a hard laugh. “The heir of Bellatrix has been found, blessings be!”
“That fake’s nothing to do with Bellatrix!” Magpie snapped.
Poppy looked at her, surprised. “Oh, I know that!”
“You do?”
“Aye. Well . . . I don’t know it, quite. But I don’t believe it. It all happened too fast, her showing up here and getting crowned queen.”
“But . . . how did it happen?”
Poppy shrugged. “She had Bellatrix’s crown and tunic. She had some scroll proving who she was. And she had . . . well, she had a city full of folk whose legends were worn out. They just wanted to believe her that bad. To have a new legend, you ken?”
Magpie remembered how, for a moment, she too had wanted to believe in Vesper. Ashamed, she grimaced and asked, “Are faeries so bored they got to invent legends?”
“Bored, aye, and afraid. I know I am. Afraid nothing exciting’s ever going to happen again!”
“Not all excitement’s good,” Magpie warned. “Most isn’t.”
“Well, boredom’s none so fine either. There’s only so much dancing a faerie can do. And it’s not just faeries,” Poppy said. “The imps and creatures have a story of their own. They’ve been waiting for years—so I hear—for the faerie they believe will bring back the Dawn Days.”
“Bring back the Dawn Days?”
“Aye.”
“The creatures got a story about a faerie?”
“A secret story.”
Magpie was flummoxed that she’d never heard it herself. The crows couldn’t keep secrets to save their beaks. “But . . . you don’t think they mean Vesper, do you?”
“Nay. When first she came I wondered. She does make you want to believe! Wait until you see her; you’ll understand.”
Magpie let out a humorless laugh. “Ach, I’ve seen her!”
“Oh, aye?”
“And she’s not like to forget it soon. . . .” Magpie chewed her lip.
“What do you mean?”
“I, er . . . sort of . . . turned her hair into worms.”
Poppy stared at her for a long moment, her face frozen in disbelief. At last she whispered, “Nay . . .”
“Aye.”
A guffaw erupted from Poppy that threatened to knock both faeries from their branch. Her face turned as red as her hair and she couldn’t stop laughing. Magpie had to start in too, and soon both lasses were clinging to the branch, wheezing with laughter. When she was able to gasp out the words, Poppy asked, “How did you do it?”
Magpie’s laughter died away. “I don’t know! I didn’t even vision any glyphs. I don’t know what glyphs I’d even use if I was trying. It just . . . happened.”
Poppy looked puzzled. “Are you sure it was you who did it?”
Magpie shrugged. She knew how it sounded. That wasn’t how magic worked. She thought of the curls of light that had wavered off her fingertips. She wasn’t about to tell Poppy that and get a blank stare in return, so she said, “Well, Vesper believes it, so I reckon I’ve made a nice new enemy, my first day back in Dreamdark.”
“Oh, Vesper, she—” Poppy began, but fell suddenly silent. “Old Father,” she said with surprise, her eyebrows shooting up as she glanced at Magpie. “Blessings to you and the earth at your roots.” Her head cocked toward the linden tree in an attitude of listening. “Aye, very pleased she’s come back. Why? I don’t—” She looked at Magpie, wide-eyed, and said, “Old Father Linden wonders why you’ve come back to Dreamdark.”
“For true?”
Poppy nodded, seeming stunned that the ancient tree was speaking.
“Well—er . . . ,” Magpie stammered, caught off guard. “I . . . I came to find the Magruwen.”
Poppy looked even more stunned. Her expression hovered between disbelief and dismay. “You’re jesting.”
Magpie shook her head. She saw Poppy’s eyes go softly out of focus as she listened to the tree for a time before saying, “Nay, faeries have all but forgotten him. He’s only legend now.” She paused. “The dreamer . . . I like that.” She paused again, then murmured, “Aye, I never thought of it that way. . . .”
There followed a long listening that made Magpie antsy. Poppy’s eyes were far away and her brow creased with worry, and Magpie longed to hear what she was hearing. She tried not to wiggle. Long moments passed before Poppy said faintly, “Aye, old Father, I’ll tell her . . . ,” and blinked her eyes back into focus.
“Poppy!” said Magpie. “What did he say?”
“Did you know they used to call him the dreamer?” she asked slowly. “Because he dreamed a world into creation he couldn’t even live in.”
“The Magruwen?”
“Aye,” answered Poppy, sadness sweeping over her face. “He made a world he couldn’t even touch. Have you ever thought of that?”
Puzzled, Magpie shook her head.
“Wouldn’t you think . . . creatures of fire . . . wouldn’t you think they’d make a different sort of world? One that wasn’t so . . . fragile?”
Magpie saw what Poppy was getting at. For fire elementals, spinning through the eternal blackness of the beginning, to come together and make this delicate place, these fern fronds, these woods . . . it was a beautiful dream, but not a sensible one. They could wear skins to keep from setting fire to their creations, but it wouldn’t be the same. Magpie’s grandfather had said it was like holding hands while wearing gloves. The air elementals could at least dance through the treetops in their true forms and caress the birds they carried in their arms, but the Djinn never could, not without burning everything to cinders. The textures of things, which they’d rendered with such artistry, must always have been a mystery to their own touch.