He saw it plain as a picture.
There was not a thousand years in the acorn, because in three hundred the massive oak that was to spring from it would be struck by lightning and charged through with mystery. The Djinn squeezed shut his inner eyes, thinking sure he read wrong the new magic the faerie was even now weaving, unaware of it though she might be.
But there it was. Flutes carved of the oak’s heartwood would sing directly to the Tapestry. They would sing like many pure, interlacing voices, working upon the threads in a way no faerie could when visioning glyphs. They would draw down from it such complex magicks as the Magruwen himself had never gifted to faeries, that would humble the power of those of the Dawn Days as greatly as a single sprout’s voice is humbled beside a choir of seraphim.
Such power for faeries . . . The Djinn had an impulse to stop her from planting the nut, to unweave the threads before it was too late, but something stilled his fingers, some hint of familiarity, like a forgotten dream.
In all the dreams of his long slumber, coming one upon the next like waves upon a shore, had he dreamed a new golden age for faeries? Had he dreamed to life this one who would bring it? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t believe it. How could he have forgiven in his dreams the faerie betrayal he had never ceased mourning in his heart?
Watching the mesmerizing dance of new threads in the Tapestry, the Magruwen was sure of only one thing. He wasn’t tired. For the first time in a long, long time, he wasn’t tired at all.
SEVENTEEN
“If she hollers, let her sing . . . ,” whispered Batch, eyes agleam as he peered out of the shadows. “The lovely song of a faerie scream . . .” A thick rope of yellowish drool dangled from his lip. Slowly he sucked it back up into his mouth and savored it, his eyes never shifting from the wings that fanned gently before him in the late golden light. He felt like an impkin at a sweet shop window with a pocketful of gold.
He’d never seen finer wings.
He wanted to taste them. He wanted to wear them.
He crept closer. The faerie was a lass, kneeling in her garden murmuring to the flowers. He didn’t care a twitch for her. In the grip of his obsession, she was truly no more to him than a bit of stuff attached to his new wings, something to be rid of.
He launched himself at her and saw her start to turn just before his weight slammed her to the ground, facedown. She screamed, and Batch did nothing to stop her. There was no one near to hear. He’d made sure of it. He wound his tail round her ankles, braced his long pink feet against her back, and reached for the solid joints where her wings met her shoulders.
She screamed and screamed. Many voices joined hers, earthy voices and wispy, rough as bark and soft as moss, and their screams radiated into Dreamdark as more flowers joined in, and more trees. But it little mattered. Batch didn’t hear it, and nor did anything else not rooted to the earth. The only faerie alive in the world who could hear those voices was pinned facedown with an imp on her back. His fingers curled lovingly around her wing joints, and he began to pull.
“I think he liked ye, ’Pie,” Calypso told Magpie as they flew above the forest.
Magpie snorted. “Sure, he just adored me. Remember that part when he said I should be a skeleton? That was sweet.”
“Ach, well, count yer blessings. Ye’re alive.”
“Aye, for true.” She spoke of it lightly, but Magpie was shaken and shivered by her ordeal in the Djinn’s cave. She wished she had time to write a letter to her parents, but time was something she didn’t have.
“What next?” asked Calypso.
“That Rathersting lad said his kinsmen disappeared at Issrin. I reckon that’s our best lead. We’ll go see what we see.”
“But darlin’, ye heard all the Magruwen said, neh, ’bout this thing being beyond ye?”
“Aye, I heard. I’m just thinking to spy, try and get a look at the skiving thing at last. I won’t go take him on, I promise.”
Uneasily, Calypso said, “All right, all right.”
“I want to see Poppy first, so she knows we’re not scorched. And give her this acorn to plant.”
Afternoon was just beginning to fold into evening as they spiraled in toward the Manygreen lands. Just seconds before her feet set down, Magpie heard the scream. She landed in a crouch and swept the garden with a searching look. Calypso likewise went on alert. The muffled cry came again from beyond a frill of ferns and in that instant Magpie was airborne again, rocketing through the lacy fronds.
She saw the creature standing on Poppy for only the briefest moment before she somersaulted in the air and crashed feetfirst into it, sending it sprawling. The impact spun her aside but she landed neat as a cat on all fours, her eyes flashing at the thing that tumbled into a heap, crushing ferns beneath it. She knew it at once by its long rat’s tail and its soft reek of decay. A scavenger imp.
Poppy jumped to her feet and fluttered her wings wildly. “Magpie!” she cried.
“Poppy! Are you okay?”
The imp cowered beneath the wild wing beats and squawking descent of Calypso, and Poppy fluttered her wings again, trying to look at them over her shoulder. “I think so . . . ,” she said, distraught. “He . . . he was trying to take my wings!”
“Take them?” Magpie repeated.
“He was trying to rip them off!”
Magpie turned to the imp, her chin lowered and eyes glinting dangerously. “Trying to mutilate a faerie?” she cried.
“Neh!” He was wailing in his desperate wheeze of a voice and trying to squirm away from Calypso’s sharp talons. “I just wanted to fly away! Don’t take me back to master!”
“Cussed vermin!” the crow croaked, and Magpie saw the imp peer up at him with one squinting eye, then fall limp with relief.
“Blessings!” Batch whimpered. “I thought ye was the vultures!”
“Vultures?” Magpie demanded, remembering the lad had mentioned vultures. “And master? What master?”
The imp looked at her, snuffled, and gave her a meek, imploring smile. “Missy faerie call off the bad birdy?”
Calypso was standing on Batch much as Batch had stood on Poppy, and Magpie knelt in front of him. She smelled scorched fur and saw how his whiskers were frizzled like burnt broom straws. In the scamper language she’d learned from Snoshti as a babe, she asked, “What happened to you, imp? Fall in a fire?”
“Fire fell on me!”
She gave him a penetrating look, remembering how the Magruwen had accused her of being a treasure-hunter. “First an imp and now a faerie,” he had said.