Page 37 of The Guardians of Dreamdark (Windwitch #1)

At the mention of the Magruwen, Orchidspike’s fingers fumbled but she caught her stitch and kept knitting, eyes alert, and Talon’s jaw dropped open. “The Magruwen?” He gaped. “You’ve seen the Magruwen?”

“Aye.”

Talon stammered, “B-but how...? Where? What...what was he like?”

“Mean! Sure he couldn’t care a twitch what happens to faeries or anything else. Calypso was right: He’s through with the world.”

Silence fell, broken only by the clicking of knitting needles.

After a moment, Magpie said with a sigh, “Well, he might be through with it, but I’m not. I’m going to catch the Blackbringer with or without his help.”

“That’s right, Mags!” chirped Pup. “Ye can do anything!”

“How...?” asked Talon. “How do you catch a shadow? It sounds impossible—”

“So ready to cry impossible?” Magpie snapped. “And leave that beast to eat the rest of your kin?” As soon as she said the words she wanted to bite them back. She squeezed her eyes shut.

Talon’s face grew hot.

“Lass, lad...” said Orchidspike in a soothing voice.

“Nay, she’s right, what do I know of impossible?” Talon said in a wretched voice.

Magpie slouched and said miserably. “Neh, I’m sorry. I’m a brute. I just can’t seem to hold it all in my head, what I know of him, what I don’t know...what he is, and how to catch him...”

“Now ’Pie,” Calypso said encouragingly, “ye’ll catch him, sure. Come now, what do we know of the beast?”

She took a deep, shuddering breath and tried to calm herself.

“He’s the Blackbringer,” she said slowly, “and sure faeries only remember him as a nursery story. But that’s our own doom, to forget.

He was the worst devil there ever was. He was the dark come to life.

A contagion of darkness, the hungry one.

..beast of night with flesh of smoke, wearing darkness like a cloak. ..”

Talon had a sudden clear and piercing thought. His eyes flew open.

“He called himself...” Magpie thought back. “ The heavens with the stars ripped out ...but ach, that’s just poetry, neh?”

Talon spoke up. “What if he’s wearing a skin?”

Magpie looked skeptical. “A skin?” she repeated.

“What you said about wearing darkness like a cloak, it made me think of a skin,” he said.

“Usually I can spot a skin.”

“Don’t I know!”

“And made of what? The dark?”

Talon shrugged. “The legends say the Djinn wove light, nay? Why not dark?”

“A skin...I don’t know. When I was inside it,” Magpie said, “it wasn’t just a little patch of shadow. It was...I don’t know, endless, empty... infinite .” The word leapt like a spark in her mind, and she felt the rush of an idea forming. It danced just out of reach.

Calypso asked, “But why would the Djinn make something so nasty?”

“Could something else have made it?” Talon asked. “If it’s a skin, anything could be inside it.”

Magpie stared. Anything, she thought. Infinite. And she was reminded of the glyph for infinity, that eight laid on its side, and her pulse quickened.

“Lad...” Orchidspike said in a frightened whisper, and Talon turned to her.

He saw a look of puzzlement on the healer’s face and followed her gaze to Magpie’s wings.

At first he didn’t know what was amiss. The knitting needles fairly flew along, unfurling neat rows of silk and spells behind them.

He looked back at Orchidspike, then hastily back at the knitting needles.

They were moving very, very fast.

Spidersilk was flying off the bobbin.

“Every choice casts a shadow,” Magpie said low to herself, repeating the Magruwen’s words, “and sometimes those shadows stalk your dreams...”

Orchidspike’s old fingers couldn’t keep up with the furious pace of the spells.

She lost her hold on the needles, and they clattered to the floor at her feet.

Magpie didn’t notice, and neither, apparently, did the spells.

Needles or not, the silk kept right on, zipping off the bobbin into the weave of Magpie’s wings. Orchidspike drew back, astonished.

“He meant the choice between the world and the Astaroth,” Magpie said, speaking faster now, trying to keep pace with her thoughts. “But what does that mean? Fade said the Djinn chose the world, but he never said what they did to the Astaroth. He never said they killed him.”

“Fade?” Talon repeated weakly. He glanced at the bobbin and saw it had almost run out.

That would put an end to it , he thought, but when the tail end of the thread disappeared into the weave.

..with no spidersilk binding them, no physical substance at all.

..the spells kept right on going. Magpie’s wings were knitting themselves, and perfectly.

As fast as her thoughts moved, the spells moved, caught in the flow of some strong magic like leaves in a river, pulled inexorably along.

And that wasn’t all.

Talon suddenly felt himself lose contact with the floor.

He was lifted gently so his feet hung just above it, and he grabbed at the mantel in surprise.

He saw Orchidspike clutching the arms of her rocker and the crows treading air with their wing tips as they all floated, helpless and wide-eyed.

Magpie, too, was hovering above her chair, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“And its eyes,” she said excitedly. “No snag has eyes like that, like the Djinns’ eyes!”

All around the castle, from the biddies to the stable sprouts to the ink-faced warriors on the ramparts, feet floated off the floor, and a collective gasp went up every corridor and down every winding stair.

Magpie had forgotten the healing entirely now, and even as the last spells shimmied along the crisp new edge of her dragonfly wings, she rose into the air on them.

“The fire that burns its bellows can only turn to ash, he said to the Vritra...and... he was the bellows! The Blackbringer’s no snag!

He might be the Astaroth’s final plague, but the Astaroth didn’t make the Blackbringer. ..the Astaroth is the Blackbringer!”

Still hanging in the air bewildered, Talon asked, “What’s the Astaroth?”

Magpie whirled to face him. Her eyes were alight with revelation.

“He’s the worst thing that ever was.” So enthralled had she been in her thoughts, Magpie didn’t feel the impact of them until she heard herself speak those words.

Suddenly she paled. Talon’s feet dropped back onto the floor, and Orchidspike’s rocker settled with a thud.

“The Astaroth...” Magpie whispered. A look of slow horror spread over her face. “Jacksmoke, the skiving Astaroth...”

It all made so much sense now, so much dreadful sense.

The Djinn hadn’t killed him. They had translated him, somehow, into that thing of darkness.

They had robbed him of his element. And he had returned for vengeance.

He was the shadow that stalked the Magruwen’s dreams. “I got to go see the Magruwen again,” she whispered.

She turned to Orchidspike and said a distracted, Thank you, Lady , but the healer was too flabbergasted to respond.

“And Talon...thank you for the idea.” Even in her daze, their eyes caught for a moment, and both felt the air pulse faster around them.

Magpie turned to the window, stepped up onto the ledge, and launched herself out.

Talon saw her begin to fall in a graceful arc, and he felt his heart catch in his throat, thinking sure her wings weren’t ready, weren’t healed yet—they couldn’t be, after all, it was impossible—but then she flicked them sharply and was propelled forward like a loosed arrow, and he remembered, What do I know of impossible?

“Come on, feathers!” she called back, and the crows roused themselves from their own stunned stupor and squeezed one by one out the window after her.

Talon and Orchidspike turned to each other. Their looks said, How? What? but before they could speak, Nettle and Orion charged through the doorway.

“Talon!” Nettle cried. “Did you feel that magic? The devil—”

“Nay,” Talon said hastily. “It wasn’t. It was the lass.”

“What? How?” Nettle looked around the room. “Where’ve they all gone?”

“To the Magruwen...”

“The Magruwen?” Orion gaped.

Talon went to the window. He had a strange look on his face when he turned to them and said, “And I’m going to follow them.”

Nettle and Orion looked at him like he was crazy. “Talon...” his sister began, “how? Sure they’re flying...”

He reached deep into his pocket, pulled out a wadded bit of stuff, and shook it.

It fell open shining and much larger than it had seemed at first glance, and Nettle and Orion watched perplexed as Talon stepped into it, one foot at a time.

“Prince, is that a... stocking ?” Orion asked with a look of dismay.

Talon didn’t answer. He pulled the gauzy stuff over his head, and was Talon no more.

Nettle gasped. Orion stared.

A falcon hopped onto the window ledge and glided off into the forest.