by Marissa Burt
Prickles crawled over Wren’s skin. She imagined telling her parents about all of this—from the flying bird to the children’s rhymes to the Fiddlers—and wondered what they would say. If they couldn’t see the stardust for themselves, would they believe her anyway?
“What others?” Wren swung the cloak around her shoulders and began fastening the buttons. In that moment, she knew that it didn’t matter if no one else in the world believed her. It didn’t matter if she had to keep the secret forever. If there was magic in the world, she wanted to play it.
FIVE
Wash the dishes, wipe the dishes,
Ring the bell for tea.
Three good apprentices,
I will give to thee.
Mary led them through the workroom to an alcove nestled in the back. There was a circular green door in the center, and Mary knocked on it.
When the door opened, a delicious smell wafted out. It promised pies and cookies and every delicious thing Wren had ever seen in a bakery window. The man standing beyond it looked older than Wren’s father. His dark hair was shot through with silver, and the crinkles around his eyes hinted that he often smiled. As if to confirm Wren’s suspicion, his face broke into a wide grin.
“Mary,” he said in a booming voice as he pecked the air near her cheeks. “You’re just in time for supper. Liza will be pleased.”
“Liza’s back? Where is she? Did she bring the potions I asked for?” Mary brushed past him into the room beyond, which glowed orange from the fire blazing in the stone hearth. Worn-looking furniture sat next to tables crowded with books. Shelves full of glass jars and bottles covered the walls, so that the space felt like a strange blend of an old-fashioned sitting room and an herbalist’s shop.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” the man in front of her said with a formal bow. “I’m Baxter, and I’d wager you must be the apprentices Mary told us about. Outstanding. I never thought I’d see the day. Two new apprentices from the wild.”
“Mary told you about us?” Simon asked, reaching for the pencil behind his ear. What he found noteworthy in that statement, Wren couldn’t imagine, but he rifled through the pages of his notebook and began to write.
“I’m Wren,” she said. “And this is Simon.”
Simon grunted and continued to scribble, talking without looking up. “This stardust,” he said. “How does it change the appearance of things?” He frowned down at the page in front of him. “Is there a material alteration? Or more of an optical illusion? Perhaps it might be both, because there’s no way the cottage we saw outside was as big as this place—”
“Do you like cake?” Baxter asked, bypassing Simon’s interrogation.
Wren opened her mouth, hunting for the thread of the conversation. Was this some secret code for stardust? Was Baxter talking about magic? Then Baxter laughed. “Why am I even asking? Who doesn’t like cake?”
He ushered them past the musty furniture and into a kitchen nearly the size of the first floor of Wren’s house. An iron chandelier filled with flickering candles hung from the ceiling. Two large stone countertops flanked the room, with all manner of cookware spotting their surfaces. Large bowls piled high with red and purple berries crowded next to one another, and a huge butcher block squatted in the center of it all, covered with flour. In one corner of the room, a black falcon perched next to another feathered in deep purple.
Baxter examined a row of tarts that were set out next to a flat circle of dough. “Beautiful!” he exclaimed, kissing his fingertips.
“Those look good,” Wren said. “You must like to cook.”
Baxter narrowed his eyes at her. “Like to cook? Oh, child,” he said, “you have much to learn.” He wiped his hands on the long white apron that hung from his waist and reached for the huge oven door. “One doesn’t just like to cook. One is born to cook.” He slid out a round chocolate cake, inhaling deeply as he set it down on the counter. “Or, as the case may be, to bake. Here, you take care of the whipped cream.”
While Wren scooped the perfect white peaks from a mixing bowl into a smaller serving dish, she looked around the kitchen. There was a pot of something steaming on the stove, and Simon had been put to work arranging fruit and cheese on a wide platter. Baxter hoisted a tray of frosted glasses and beckoned Wren to follow. They walked into a dining room where the walls were all windows that looked out on to a tangled green forest.
“Where are we?” Wren stared at the trees. This didn’t look like the college campus at all.
“Right where you belong, darling Wren,” a throaty female voice said. A woman with dark hair curving around her tanned face came up to Wren and kissed her, first on one cheek, then the other. The woman set the fluted glass she was holding on the nearby table, then lifted a perfectly manicured hand to riffle Wren’s bangs. “I could do something with you, I think.” She stepped back, examining Wren as though she were something for sale. The woman was dressed in black, her form-fitting clothes drawn together by a wide red belt. “Much potential.”
“Good luck,” Baxter said under his breath as he passed her with the chocolate cake, and Wren opened her mouth to snap out a retort until she realized he was wishing her luck with this woman.
“Leave Wren alone, Liza,” Mary said as she helped Baxter set the table. “She needs lessons in stardust, not in fashion.”
“Really, Mary, you’d never know we’re sisters.” Liza began picking at Mary’s ratty hair. “There is a most fabulous salon in Paris. If you would only—”
Simon had swapped his notebook for one of the maps he had brought to the coffee shop and was now unfolding it. “There is the observatory,” he mumbled from behind the wrinkled page. “And with Main Street running there”—the map jiggled as he poked it—“and the edge of campus here. Aha!” Simon carefully folded the map. “That must be the forest outside of town.” He looked around triumphantly. “I don’t precisely know how we got here, but it appears that Pippen Hill stretches underground somehow.” He glanced over at Liza and Mary, seeming to notice for the first time that there were other people in the room having a different conversation. “Oh, sorry. Wren asked where we were, and I . . .” He trailed off.
Liza raised her eyebrows and exchanged a look with Mary.
“Clever ones, these new apprentices of yours,” Baxter said as he set down the chocolate cake, now garnished with a bright red dipping sauce.
“They’re not mine,” Mary said stiffly and turned to Simon. “Well done, Simon.”
“He’s right?” Wren looked out at the forest.
Mary calmly picked up a pitcher of water and began to fill the glasses. “We were here long before the university, though they, too, found this to be a prime stargazing spot. The stardust hides the entrance to Pippen Hill. It’s how we keep out the nosy non-Fiddlers. They have no more idea that we’re here than you did.” The ice cubes in the glasses clinked together as she poured.
“But I’ve come to the observatory hundreds of times. How is it that I’ve never seen anything?”
“Because I didn’t yet want you to see anything. Now that you’ve awoken to the reality of stardust, you will find that many things are different than you’ve always perceived them to be.” Mary nudged her to a seat at the table. “Don’t look so distraught, Wren. The ability to do things unseen by non-Fiddlers is one of the perks of stardust. You can count on there being many others.”
She and Liza shared a laugh, obviously enjoying Wren’s confusion, and found their seats. They looked as much like sisters as the sun and the moon. Mary was fair, her long strings of beads trailing over her ruffled dress like some waifish hippie. Liza was swarthy and mysterious, her glamour straight out of the pages of a runway magazine.
“Decadent as ever, mi amor,” Liza said to Baxter as he set one of the perfectly baked tarts before her. It was shaped like a heart, and Wren could tell by the way Baxter winked at Liza that they were a couple.
Wren took a seat, her mind spinning. Hiding a whole house in plain sight?
What else was possible with stardust? The mouth-watering smell of the cake Baxter slid onto the plate in front of her was irresistible. She felt a laugh bubbling up from somewhere down below. Magic was real. And she was going to learn how to use it.
“What do you think of our little feast, Wren?” Baxter was watching her carefully. “Good?”
“Perfect,” Wren said.
SIX
There was a Crooked Man,
And he walked a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence
Against a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat,
Which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in an ancient Crooked House.
And when will Wren come train with me?” Liza sipped her coffee. She and Mary were bartering, dividing up days and skills and setting out a course for the apprentices’ Fiddler training. “I think I’ll take both of them at once.” She winked at Wren. “Perhaps they can stay at my villa on the Mediterranean. Young people should enjoy themselves.” She raised a hand at Mary’s protest. “There are other things besides stardust, you know.”
“And of course,” Baxter chimed in, “I must teach them to bake.”
Mary scoffed, and Baxter cut her off. “You’ve always undervalued the ways in which our natural skills influence our Fiddler talents.” He looked at Wren and Simon. “Capitalizing on their strengths can only enhance their training. What are you good at, Wren?”
Wren’s mind froze. No one had ever asked her that. They’d just always known. “I’m pretty smart,” she finally said. She hoped they could tell she wasn’t bragging. “With science and stuff.”
Baxter waved this away. “Of course you are. All Fiddlers are smart. If you weren’t, you’d never have seen the stardust. Instead, you’d be all wrapped up in whatever foolish thing is popular these days. What is it now, the motorcar?”
Liza laughed at him.
“What I mean”—Baxter waved Liza’s mockery away with a grin—“is what are you good at? What is it that it seems you alone were made to do?” He trailed a finger through the whipped cream and licked it off the tip. “Perfect.” He took another swipe and continued. “I couldn’t live without baking.” He nodded toward the women. “Liza is a healer. Like a goddess of old.”
Liza gave him a slow smile, and Wren could tell his comments pleased her.
“Mary grows things,” Baxter said. “Plants and animals, and”—he raised his eyebrows at Wren and Simon—“young people, apparently. This year, she’s single-handedly found three new apprentices in the wild. That’s unheard of these days.”
“I like animals,” Simon said, setting his notebook aside. His face went pink. “My dad says I have a way with them. That I’d be a good veterinarian or zookeeper.”
Wren watched him fidget with his pocket watch chain. His voice had lost the lecturing tone.
“I sensed that connection in you.” Mary looked at him fondly. “I greatly anticipate seeing how the falcons respond to you.”
“Kinship with the animals.” Liza tapped a fingertip on her lip. “Very interesting.”
Simon smiled shyly back. “Do you really think so?” Wren listened while he talked about how a species of moth was being destroyed by disease, which turned into a tutorial about dying habitats due to overpopu-lation by humans and ended with a hypothesis that stardust might save the day for the entire moth world. Even the grown-ups’ eyes looked glazed over by the time he was finished.
“And you, Wren?” Baxter jumped in, while Simon paused to search his notebook for a fact on moth recovery. “Where do your strengths lie?”
Wren didn’t know how to answer. She wasn’t into theater like her mom or running like her dad. She had a feeling spending time on the computer or babysitting didn’t fall into the special skill category either. “Astronomy, I guess?” She said it like a question, because she doubted that someone could technically be good at stargazing. “That’s kind of my thing.”
“Interesting.” Baxter pounced on it. “Perhaps you can interpret the prophecies.”
“A skill in traveling, maybe?” Mary said, peering at Wren as though seeing her for the first time.
“Astronomy,” Liza said. “After all these years.”
The room grew quiet. Mary cleared her throat. “A long time ago—two hundred years or so now—I found another Fiddler apprentice who was especially gifted in astronomy. He was so strong, in fact, that his knowledge of the stars gave him unusual insight into the properties of stardust. He is gone now, but your strength in astronomy speaks well for your potential, Wren.” Her smile looked forced. “The Fiddler Council will be very interested in you.”
Liza snorted at this, and Mary gave her a dirty look.
“What?” Liza raised her eyebrows. “Do you expect me to let that remark go unchecked? Cole and the rest of the Council may be interested, but why send the girl off to a pack of fools?”
“Cole,” Mary said, her voice stiff, “is not the fool you make him out to be.” When Liza gave her a look, Mary cracked a tiny smile. “At least not all of the time.”
While the grown-ups talked about the Fiddler Council, Simon started to clear the plates, and Wren moved to help him.
“Two hundred years?” Wren asked once they were out of earshot. “She found another apprentice two centuries ago?” Baxter’s comments about motorcars ran through her mind. They looked like average grown-ups, but . . . “How old do you think they are, anyway?”
Simon stacked the dishes in the sink. “Three hundred? Four, tops.”
“What?” Wren nearly yelled, then dropped her voice as the conversation in the other room paused. “What do you mean?”
“Of course they’re long-lived.” Simon scraped some leftover tart into the garbage. “Every legend about magicians talks about prolonging life. Besides, some species of turtle live for two hundred years easily. And that’s without stardust. It’s a perfectly natural conclusion.”
Wren sniffed. Perfectly creepy, more like, but there was no way she was going to let Simon know that if he was so matter-of-fact about it all. Mary had said something earlier about stardust changing the way she perceived the world, but this was beyond anything she could have imagined. What else could be true?
Wren rearranged the silverware to make a tottering stack of plates next to the sink. “You know, some of the earliest astronomers were certain that, if you learned the secret, you could wield the Earth’s elements and do magical things. Maybe they were looking for the Fiddlers all this time.” She squirted some soap on a sponge and turned on the faucet.
“Well said. Bravo, bravo, whoever you are,” a voice spoke from behind them, and Wren spun around to see a boy who was only a little taller than Simon standing in the doorway. His apprentice cloak hung open, revealing a thick cable-knit sweater that hugged his neck.
“And who are you exactly?” the boy said.
“I’m Simon,” Simon said as the boy moved to clasp his arm like they were in a secret club.
“Good to meet you, Simon.” He moved toward Wren, nodding in the direction of the dining room. “Mary and Liza in the same room and no one’s yelling yet? Is it a holiday or something?” The newest arrival looked at her with his uncommonly bright blue eyes. He had closely cropped black hair, and the way it was cut made his face look all angles.
“My friends call me Jack,” he said, and his smile made Wren feel like she was going to be one of his friends, too.
“I’m Wren,” she said, holding out her hand. He clasped her arm, the same way he had done with Simon. Just then, the sound of breaking glass came from the other room.
“Let the catfights begin,” Jack said, and Wren and Simon followed him to rejoin the grown-ups. Liza stood by the fireplace, staring at the shards of glass littering the floor at her feet. Mary’s eyes were ringed with red, as though she’d been crying, and Baxter was standing between them, hands raised midspeech.
“—let the past stay in the past,” he was saying.
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The tension in the room evaporated as soon as the grown-ups saw Jack.
“Jack!” Mary scrubbed a hand across her eyes, giving him a watery smile and a motherly hug. “Where have you been?”
“What uncommon timing you have, Jack,” Baxter said. He ignored Jack’s secret handshake thing and patted him on the back instead. “As always, the welcome of my house is yours.”
“Thanks, Bax,” Jack said. He seemed to belong with the others, like he was a real Fiddler, too, even though he didn’t look any older than Wren and Simon. Maybe it was because he talked to Baxter like he was his friend rather than a grown-up. “I would have sent you a text or something, but that would mean you’d need to have this crazy little thing we call a”—Jack held his hand up to his mouth theatrically—“phone.”
Baxter laughed. “Nonsense. It all changes too quickly for me to stay current. Keep your newfangled gadgets to yourself.”
“I will.” Jack reached into his apprentice coat. “But I’ve brought something very old with me tonight. In fact, it’s why I was late.” He drew out a stone the size of his palm, its surface worn glossy smooth. “My grandfather found it in an antique shop that was closing down. I think it has something to do with the Fiddlers. Look.” He pointed to a symbol on the bottom that looked like a flame dancing over a circle.
The grown-ups crowded closer. “This stone is from the old days, when there was fighting among us,” Baxter said, clearing a space on the table so Jack could set the stone on top of it. “Fiddlers hid messages in them during the war.”
Liza’s eyes grew wide. “It’s a dangerous thing, to travel with anything that carries this mark,” she said, her hand roving over the flame without touching it. “The Fiddler Council would punish you for less.”