Exchanging a worried look with Calypso, Orchidspike went on in her chatty tone, “Robin asked her all about the world he’d only read of in books, and what a picture she wove of beyond! Flocks of macaws that swoop hundreds-strong through the sultry bowers of rain forests, hollow mountains that cough fire, striped cats as big as cattle, and faeries who ride to war on lizardback with fangs pushed through their earlobes. Shooting stars, hooded snakes, spiny trees, islands of ice cutting through the sea like slow ships! And sure you lot have seen all that with your own eyes, but to Robin? It was like a dream.
“I had to shoo him out so she could rest, but not feet nor wings would carry him away, and he slept outside her window and she found him there, and this time it was he who woke to the sight of her eyes, and after that there was no question of parting! Do you know they found a frog who would marry them that very night?”
“That very night?” repeated Pup.
“Aye! And they drifted off together on a lily pad down Spinney Creek. After a week, when Kite’s wings had healed, Robin brought his bride back to Never Nigh.” Orchidspike’s look of fond remembrance became clouded. “She was not well received.”
“Lady Kite? Why not?” asked Pup.
Orchidspike shrugged. “Half the lasses were in love with Robin themselves. How was Kite to make friends among them? Neh, she was never happy here. It was good you birds came along when you did!”
“And good for us,” added Bertram. “If not for her long-life potions, we’d be dust long since.”
“And how spry you are! ‘Tis a fine bit of sparkle!”
“Aye, she tricked it off a witch doctor. Wicked lot, but they have their uses,” answered Calypso.
In the corridor, Talon’s head was swimming with witches and witch doctors, hooded snakes and love at first glance and long-life potions. Such a world beyond Dreamdark! He could well imagine how Robin must have felt back then—but without the love part, sure. Of course, without that.
“ ’Tis a bad crush, indeed,” Orchidspike said in a low voice to Calypso, over by the window. “But I can mend it. Don’t frazzle yourself.”
“But Lady, it en’t just the wings. I don’t like the look in her eyes. It’s like she en’t inside herself.”
“She’s in there, dear. She’s just gone deep. She’s in shock.”
“But what if . . .” Calypso hesitated. “What if it did something to her, right? That devil.”
Orchidspike considered this. “Do you know what it was?”
“It’s being called . . . Blackbringer.”
Orchidspike raised her eyebrows. “Blackbringer?”
“Aye, Lady. D’ye know of it?”
Her bright eyes drifted into memories, back and back through the centuries. She said, “He was just a fireside story, something to frighten bad sprouts. A bogeyman, like old Rawhead.”
“Ye’re saying he weren’t real?”
“Neh, I don’t know. If he ever was real, it was long before my time. Understand, bird, no devil has troubled Dream-dark all my long life, and much longer still. Not since the Dawn Days.”
“Ye think anyone could remember that far? Remember the old stories?”
“I can’t think who.” Orchidspike shook her head wistfully.
“We could ask the trees?” suggested Calypso.
“Ah,” Orchidspike answered sadly. “Bless us, we lost that language long ago.”
Calypso cocked his head. “Truly? Flummox me, I had no notion how rare she was.”
“Who, bird?”
“Poppy Manygreen, Lady. Magpie’s friend. She could speak with ’em.”
“What?” the healer asked abruptly, startling Calypso. “A Manygreen? A faerie with that gift? Here, in Dreamdark?”
Calypso nodded.
“A lass?”
Again he nodded.
“But . . . where is she now?”
“Lady?” Calypso scratched his head with his foot. “She’s the one the devil got last night. She’s gone.”
Orchidspike was silent, and Calypso watched, alarmed, as her expression went slack with tragedy. She lifted trembling hands and laid her face in them. A shudder went through her, and Calypso heard her whisper, “I’d stopped looking.”
Western Dreamdark lay quiet under a heavy sky. No smoke curled from the chimney of the healer’s cottage, and the hamlets on the Sills were all deserted. In Pickle’s Gander and East Mirth laundry snapped forgotten on the lines as a wind gathered and shutters began to slam. The faeries had flown.
They were tucked safe into the Great Hall of Rathersting Castle where the fireplace alone was bigger than most cottages. The sprouts were whooping round the high eaves like warriors, but the older folk clustered together, tense and whispering. A summer storm was weighing down heavy as an iron lid upon Dreamdark. And out there in the blustering trees, they knew, something lurked. It had swallowed their neighbors in the night and snatched the warrior chief from the sky.
The lady of the castle and the young prince and princess had been to speak with them. Nettle had held Lyric in her arms while the lass wept over the dark fate of her betrothed. Talon had painted blackberry juice tattoos on the sprouts’ faces and given them warrior names like “Spike” and “Slash.” But there was nothing they could say that would ease the faeries’ worries. Indeed, their own faces were pale under their ink and they seemed weary, and troubled, and grim.
In Nettle’s bed, Magpie hugged her feather skirt, which contained the last remnant of Maniac, and stared at the ceiling. Whether or not she had truly left herself behind in the dark, her thoughts, at least, were trapped there and wandering blind.
In the adjacent parlor Orchidspike was slumped in a rocking chair, but she wasn’t rocking. One of her precious djinncraft knitting needles had rolled off her lap and she hadn’t noticed, so lost was she in her regret. She was dreaming of an apprentice, bright with curiosity and power, to whom she could at last pass her secrets. Her remorse was like an ache that rode her heartbeat out through her entire body. She’d given up too soon. She’d stopped looking, and missed her.
Messages had been dispatched to all corners of Dream-dark and Never Nigh too, but with Magpie still silent no one had thought to tell of poor Poppy Manygreen’s sad end. Out in the gathering wind a search party of her kin was combing the woods and calling out for her, anxiety turning to anguish in their voices as the day bore on.