The vultures had been routed and the crows’ reputations preceded them to Rathersting Castle. Warriors saluted the bedraggled flock in the corridors and they nodded back, distracted, all their focus on Magpie.
Orchidspike assured them all she would awaken.
Fretting like biddies, they waited. Nettle’s little room was so crowded with crows that every time Talon contrived to pass by the door and check on Magpie, some ragged crow part would be tufting out of it, a tail or a wing, as if all six crows could not quite fit in at once, but couldn’t be persuaded to wait outside. Orchidspike just shrugged, forbade smoking, and made hearty use of her elbows when she needed to reach the bedside.
Talon slouched around the castle, restless and a wee bit peeved his home had been overrun by birds. He wouldn’t consider that he might be jealous of the warrior’s welcome they’d received, or because the lass whom he had saved belonged to them, and that while they cradled her and crooned to her, he couldn’t so much as get a glimpse of her through all those feathers.
They’d thanked him, sure, with gusto and smothering wing hugs and jarring brotherly smacks on the back. And Nettle gave him a great proud grin. He was proud of himself too—he’d saved her, and Orchidspike said she’d be okay. But still he was anxious. He lurked in his room next door where he’d be able to hear the crows’ voices and know when she woke, but the hours passed and he ran out of reasons for lurking, and at last he had to go see to his own folk.
When she did wake, the first thing Magpie did was count crows. It was the middle of the night and the weary birds had finally fallen asleep, slumped against walls and snoring softly. “Six,” she whispered, and Calypso heard her and opened his eyes.
“Maniac,” he murmured.
“I know. Saving me.”
“I didn’t see, ’Pie.”
“Poppy too.”
“Aye. That I saw.”
Magpie’s quiet sobbing woke the other crows. They touched her lightly with their feathertips, mourning too and shaken to see their lass cry.
“Darlin’,” said Bertram. “Maniac wouldn’t like to see you like this.”
“He’s been so mad at me,” she said, her voice smaller than the crows had ever heard it. “I . . . I made him be Bellatrix . . . and then there was the porcupine . . . and it’s been ever so long since I’ve told him I—” She looked stricken and didn’t finish her thought.
“He knew, Mags,” said Mingus in his low, gruff voice. “He might puff up and act mad but he’d do anything for ye. Even die. We all would.”
“Die?” repeated Magpie. A shadow of anger crossed her face. “That’s not death,” she whispered, thinking of the leeching, sucking darkness.
“Then what . . . ?” ventured Calypso cautiously.
Magpie shook her head. “I don’t know.” She remembered the look on Poppy’s face as she disappeared, her pleading eyes, her final silent scream. “Not death,” she said, “not proper death,” and a look of desolation swept over her features, erasing the spark of anger and leaving her blank. The crows didn’t know what to do. The blankness was worse than the uncertain sleep or the crying, because her eyes were open but she was lost somewhere inside, and they didn’t know what to say to make it right.
TWENTY-THREE
“It seems Windwitch lasses only come to me broken,” said Orchidspike in her matter-of-fact way. “You know it’s how I met your parents too?” she asked as she eased open Magpie’s crumpled wings to examine them. “Ach,” she muttered when she saw the extent of the damage. “Wadded up like a bad poem.” She smoothed them carefully, humming.
Slumped at the edge of the bed with her back to the healer, Magpie said nothing.
“Your father wrote poems, you know,” Orchidspike went on. “There was such a litter of them around him while he waited for your mother to wake up. We didn’t even know her name yet, then. She’d just fallen from the sky!”
“Probably scrapping with a witch, knowing Lady Kite,” said Calypso.
“Aye, the witch Stain it was, who was not ever seen again, by the by.” Orchidspike nodded. “These Windwitch lasses are not to be meddled with, well you know.”
The crows squawked their agreement, but Magpie’s eyes were far away. Frowning at her silence, Orchidspike went on, her voice cheery. “Robin saw her fall from the sky and land in the cattails at the edge of Lilyvein Pond. Scratched and bruised and unconscious, a strange lass with her wings torn to ribbons! So he gathered her right into his arms and carried her to me!”
The lass seemed not to be listening, but just outside the door, someone was. Talon leaned against the wall and heard every word.
Orchidspike carefully smoothed open the folds and furls of Magpie’s limp wings, trying not to rip the tender membrane along the creases. She went on talking in a casual voice, though her face was somber. “Their first glimpse of each other’s eyes came as he carried her, so close their breath was on each other’s lips. His eyes were blue as the robin’s egg he hatched from, and when she woke again hours later, it was that blue she looked for. He was sitting right there, waiting, and when they saw each other I swear there was a fizz of magic in the air. Even I felt it.”
Talon recalled the way the air had pulsed when his hands had touched Magpie’s in West Mirth and his face grew hot.
“They’re still like that!” said one of the crows.
“I believe it. I never saw two faeries that much in love, and at first glance! She told us her name was Kite, after the little hawk with the forked tail. . . .” The healer winced as Magpie’s left wing tore along a particularly harsh crease. If Magpie felt it, she didn’t flinch. Calypso’s eyes darted anxiously between her damaged wings and her blank face.
Through a veil of shock, Magpie was dimly aware of a voice. She had a fleeting vision of her father’s eyes, but it faded. Her thoughts sank back into the darkness. Surely she’d left herself there. What sat here in the world looked enough like her to fool the others, she thought, but it was an illusion. A shell echoing with the drone of the endless ocean. She was back in the darkness where she could find Poppy and Maniac and guide them out. She hoped. Because if she wasn’t there with them, they were alone. And if she wasn’t there, where was she? Not here. She knew the feel of her own skin and this wasn’t it, this blurred and fragile shell. It couldn’t be.