by Marissa Burt
“Wait!” The woman must have seen her. “Dreamer! Wait!” Someone ripped aside the curtain around Wren’s bed, and she saw the woman standing there, her grubby hand reaching for her, but suddenly a dark silhouette loomed in the doorway behind her, towering up and over. As the shadow expanded, the whole scene disappeared with a thunderclap.
Wren woke in her bed in Pippen Hill, the sheets and blankets a tangle around her ankles, her heart pounding. The curtains hung as she had left them, open, and showed her room at Pippen Hill as it should be. A nightmare. That was all it was. Only a nightmare. Her neck and shoulders were stiff with fear, and she had to breathe deeply to still the racing of her heart. It was dark outside, the few stars now blotted out by heavy cloud cover. The wind set one tree branch tapping against the window, as if to remind her it was all a dream.
Wren leaned back against the pillows. This dream wasn’t like other nightmares she’d had, ones where memories of events faded with each passing minute. Instead, every detail seemed clearer to her waking mind. The grainy feel of the scene, almost like it was an old black-and-white film. The smoky look of the room. The tense conversation. The woman’s final frantic approach. Dreamer, she had called to Wren, as though she knew Wren was asleep and dreaming.
Wren shoved off the covers and switched on a lamp. The adrenaline rush had chased away any chance of going back to sleep. She slid her feet into her shoes and made her way down to the kitchen. The orange warmth of the old-fashioned stove set off a cozy glow, leaving the farthest corners of the kitchen bathed in shadow. Wren wished that she could rummage in her own familiar refrigerator, maybe find a piece of leftover chocolate cake and pour an ice-cold glass of milk. If she was lucky, her dad might come down, and they could sit together, sharing the cake and talking things over. Maybe he could help her understand what was going on, why she felt haunted by the thought that it was more than a dream.
“You couldn’t sleep either?”
Wren jolted, bumping her elbow on the wall, the too-recent feeling of fear returning with a rush.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” Jack said with an apologetic smile. “I thought you saw me come in.” He pointed to a door tucked under the corner staircase. He reached into a cupboard and pulled out a plate of cookies.
“Yeah, I couldn’t sleep,” Wren said. She took the cookie he handed her. “Though now I’m kind of glad.”
“When I visit my grandfather out in the country and can’t sleep, I go outside and stargaze,” Jack said, and Wren knew they were going to be friends for sure. “And other nights I don’t want to sleep.” Jack bit off the edge of a chocolate chip cookie. “Mary says the stardust can affect our dreams. I had the hardest time my first month after touching it. Crazy nightmares. Sleepwalking. You’ll get used to it.”
“That’s a relief.” Wren breathed out a sigh and tried to make it into a joke. “I was beginning to think I might be going crazy. I’ve never had such intense dreams.”
“‘All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.’ Didn’t Edgar Allen Poe or somebody say that?” Jack pulled up the collar of his sweater against the early morning chill. “It’s no surprise, really. Especially with all that you just learned about Fiddlers. Let me guess, you dreamed about magicians or blackbird pies or golden eggs or something.”
“A golden key, actually.” Wren grinned, sliding onto one of the chairs next to the big kitchen worktable. Now that she was awake she knew where she had heard the name in the dream. “And the Fiddler that Mary and Baxter were talking about—Boggen?—was hunting for it. I guess all the stuff I heard about the Fiddlers got jumbled up in my brain.”
“Any clue as to where the key was?” Jack joked. “Maybe we can beat Boggen to it.” He winked at her. “Welcome to the Fiddler nuttiness.”
Wren supposed her dream made a strange kind of sense, what with her discovering nursery rhymes were tied to magic and stardust and all the talk about the Crooked House. “I think I’m having a little trouble making sense of everything.”
“Only a little?” Jack grinned at her. “When I found out that magic was real, my mind was blown for a month. But soon you’ll be in what I call magical mode. The impossible won’t seem strange anymore.”
“How long have you known?” Wren stood and pulled on the sideways chrome handle to open the fridge. Talking to Jack had awakened a whole flood of questions. “When did you become an apprentice? How did Mary find you?” She grabbed the milk and poured them each a glass.
“Thanks.” Jack took a big gulp. “Actually, I found Mary about six months ago. My grandpa’s kind of a conspiracy theorist. He thinks everyone is working together to pull off some big lie.” Jack tipped his chair back so it was balancing on two legs. “He’s always thought magic was real, and that the rich and powerful people are hogging it all for themselves. Trying to learn about magic got him all obsessed with alchemists—you know, those old scientists who thought you could use elements to turn rocks into gold and stuff?”
Wren nodded impatiently. She knew that some of the earliest astronomers had been alchemists and had theorized that atomic particles might have had magical properties. “So? What did your grandpa find out?”
“Nothing.” Jack smirked at Wren’s expression. “I’m the one who did the finding. Grandpa had all these faded newspaper clippings and journals full of notes about alchemy clubs. Most of it meant nothing, but one woman’s face kept popping up in the newspapers. She was this botanist who exhibited at the world’s fair. But she was also a friend of Marie Curie. And then I found copies of her scientific papers and essays on women’s suffrage.” He let his chair fall to the ground with a thump.
“Who was she?” Wren asked.
“I’ll give you three guesses,” Jack said, but Wren didn’t really need them.
“It was Mary?”
“Sure was. I did some more hunting and found her in some old photos. Shaking hands with Albert Einstein. Congratulating Feynman when he won the Nobel. In the front row at one of Stephen Hawking’s lectures. Of course, at the time, I didn’t know it was the same woman.” He paused for dramatic effect. “I thought it would be her descendant, and I wanted to talk to her and see if she knew anything about the alchemy stuff.” He gulped the rest of his milk and set the glass down, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “So I did some searching online and found out she was going to be at an herbalist’s convention in Manhattan—which isn’t that far from where my grandpa lives. When I started asking about alchemy she got all funny, and then she threw stardust at my face. None of the people around us could see it, I guess any non-Fiddler wouldn’t, but I started shouting at her, and then she realized I could see it, and, well, the rest is history.”
“Wow,” Wren said. “I mean, I knew she was old, but hearing about her doing all those historical things makes it so real.”
“So your grandfather knows?” Simon’s voice took Wren by surprise. He was leaning against the wall at the bottom of the stairway, and Wren wondered how long he’d been listening. “About the Fiddlers?”
“Sure.” Jack ran a finger around the neck of his sweater like he was loosening a tie. “I mean, he was right, wasn’t he? There is a huge conspiracy going on.”
“It must be nice to not have to lie,” Wren said, her guilt over not telling her parents returning in full force. “To have it all out in the open.”
“Sometimes,” Jack snorted. “Except he’s always pumping me for information and showing me random old Mother Goose rhymes and stuff. But he’s not bad for all that.”
“Come sit with us,” Wren said to Simon, scooting the nearly empty plate toward him. “There’re cookies.”
“Nah. I’m headed out for an early run,” Simon said, and that was when Wren noticed that he was fully dressed, ready for the day.
She groaned. “It’s morning already? I barely even slept.”
“Sleep is overrated,” Jack said, popping the last cookie in his mouth. “Wait for me, Simon, and I’ll come with you. Wren? Want t
o join in?”
“Pass,” Wren said, piling the dishes in the sink. Even if she was tempted to go running, which she most definitely wasn’t, the night was catching up with her, and she made her way back up to her room, fingers crossed for dreamless sleep.
NINE
Mother Goose, when she wanted to wander,
Would ride through the air on a very fine gander.
Later that afternoon, Mary led Wren, Simon, and Jack through a long tunnel that sprouted from the cellar of Pippen Hill and opened up into a wilderness of trees. They walked for a good while through an orchard in full bloom and beyond into a less tended crush of forest.
“How in the world,” Wren said as she pushed her way through the underbrush, “is all this right next to a university campus? How come we’ve never seen this before?”
Jack gave her a playful look, both eyebrows raised. “And three, two, one . . .”
Wren stared at him. Was he playing some kind of game?
“Come on, Wren. You still can’t figure out how a Fiddler could make something appear different than it truly is?”
“Oh,” Wren said, feeling sheepish. “The stardust. Of course.” They now walked single file behind Mary. Simon first, then Jack, and Wren bringing up the rear.
“Ordinary people can’t see the stardust at all.” Mary’s voice floated back to them. “And you’ll find that keeping the effects of stardust hidden reduces unwanted questions. For example, can you imagine the attention my falcon would have drawn if I hadn’t used the stardust to mask it at your science convention? Think of the time we would waste coming up with and maintaining a credible reason for Pippen Hill’s existence. Using stardust to preserve our privacy saves valuable time for research.” The branches crunched under her feet, and she raised her voice. “The Crooked House is isolated enough that you’ll find we can wield stardust freely there.”
Wren thought this over. She’d probably passed by Pippen Hill countless times on her treks to the observatory. And all the time a whole magical world had been right under her nose.
Jack pushed aside a thorny branch that was blocking the path and held it so Wren could pass through. “I am so pumped about the falcons. I haven’t flown them yet—I can’t believe Mary’s taking you on your first day.”
“The falcons. Right. I forgot,” Wren said in what she hoped was a normal voice. Some part of her had hoped that the whole bit about tending the falcons was simply part of keeping Pippen Hill a secret. The only way she wanted to see a bird of prey was through a glass window at the zoo. She wrinkled her nose. “How close do you think we’ll have to get to them?”
“What? Afraid of a little falcon?” Jack shot a teasing look at her. “Don’t you want to know everything there is to know about stardust?” Jack let the branch twang back into place. “I do. Falcons are part of that. And so is the Crooked House. Apprentice lessons are going to be so much more intense now. First falcons, and then, well, all the Fiddler secrets.”
“What exactly is the Crooked House?” Wren asked, ignoring the whole topic of falcons and picking at the brambles that were now stuck to her jeans. Mary had been surprisingly closemouthed when Wren and Simon had asked questions at breakfast. All she would say was that it was essential that they go there today, that the discovery of the stone changed everything, and visiting the Crooked House would be good for their apprentice training.
“It’s like Fiddler research central,” Jack said. “Fiddlers live all over the world, I guess, but most of them report back in at the Crooked House. Some of them even have laboratories there.” He turned to look back at her wide-eyed. “Just think about what we could discover about stardust by being there!”
“But Baxter said . . .” Wren began, thinking about how Baxter had flipped out about Jack wanting to go to the Crooked House.
“Baxter is suspicious of telephones.” Jack rolled his eyes. “You’ll see. Once we get to the Crooked House, it’s going to be amazing.”
They emerged from the trees to find a field dotted with wooden poles in front of a long barnlike building. On the three foremost poles perched foreboding falcon silhouettes. Wren took a deep breath. There was no way she could ignore them now.
Mary directed each of the apprentices to one of the falcons. Wren stood, arms folded across her apprentice cloak, looking up at the falcon whose fathomless black gaze was locked on her face.
Mary handed her a cloth bundle. Wren unwrapped it to reveal something that looked like a glove made all of leather, with buckles on one side.
“It’s a falconry gauntlet,” Mary said, demonstrating how to strap one on her forearm. “To protect you from their talons.” She moved over to Wren’s left to help Jack.
Wren fumbled with the straps. First the gauntlet hung loosely; then she fastened it too tight. She pressed her wrist up against her thigh to try to stabilize it.
“Awesome,” Simon said from Wren’s left. He buckled the gauntlet on as though he’d been doing it his whole life and began to edge forward on silent feet.
Wren pulled on a strap but lost her grip as one of the birds gave off an earsplitting screech.
“Stop it, Wren,” Simon said. “Don’t startle them.”
“I’m not doing anything.” Wren glared at the bird. “That thing doesn’t like me.”
The tips of the falcon’s tail feathers were bright red, the only spot of color in an otherwise brown coat. Just like me. Brown hair, brown skin, brown everything.
Simon stood in the middle of the grassy lawn, his forearm extended. In one soundless swoop, his falcon alit on his arm. On Wren’s other side, Jack was whistling at his falcon, which wasn’t moving, but still looked much friendlier than the creature glaring down at her.
“All right, bird,” Wren said, eyeing the thing. It looked lean and hard, like what it was: a predator. She wondered if falcons were like horses and could sense a person’s fear. “I’m not afraid of you,” she lied, just in case.
Wren knew the bird couldn’t perceive what she was thinking, but she felt certain it was watching her disapprovingly, ready to screech again at her first move.
“Go on then, Wren. Call your bird like Simon has done.” Mary gestured at Wren’s falcon as though she couldn’t see it. “These particular falcons travel the auroras all over the world.”
“The auroras?” Wren thought of the breathtaking greens and blues of the aurora borealis. No matter how much she read about it, she was still captivated by the aurora borealis, by the way stargazers had to hunt for the display of colors and yet, once found, it was painted across the sky for everyone to see. “Falcons can fly through an aurora?”
“Falcons can do many amazing things. They are a Fiddler’s secret weapon,” Mary said. “So it’s crucial that you develop a good bond with your bird right from the start. Your falcon will become fiercely loyal.” Mary made a gentle clicking noise at Wren’s bird. “After all your hours of training, they won’t tolerate another human companion.”
Simon looked like he was already best friends with his falcon. It roosted on his arm as though it belonged there.
Wren scowled at him. What a show-off.
Jack reached out to his bird and, fast as a viper, the falcon attacked his hand with its beak.
Any reassurance Wren felt at the fact that hers wasn’t the only hostile falcon faded when she saw that the bird had actually taken a chunk out of the flesh between Jack’s thumb and forefinger. Mary noticed, too, and the next minute she was beside him, stirring up a cloud of stardust like it was the simplest thing in the world. She found some spongy moss, mixed it in with the stardust, and wove a floating spiral of green and gray. She traced an X through the stardust, chanting:
Cross patch, draw the latch
Sit by the fire and spin.
The stardust swirled around her fingers, circling the moss. Mary made a little bowl with her palms, letting the element fall.
Take a cup and stir it up
Then smear it on the skin.
“Stardust enha
nces what is already there,” Mary explained. “My mixture merely magnifies the healing property of this herb.” She rubbed the newly made ointment onto Jack’s wound. In a few heartbeats, the flesh had mended, skin knitting together, blood drying up the way an old cut does after a few hours. With only a small puff of smoke to indicate that there had ever been anything amiss, Jack was healed.
“Liza could probably do a better job.” Mary brushed her palms together matter-of-factly. “She is skilled in the healing arts.” Her gaze fixed on Jack. “Jack, too, has shown some strength in that area.”
Jack stared at his cured hand, eyes wide. “If it means I get to learn how to do that, then I hope you’re right. I wonder if stardust can do even more than that,” he said, his voice alight with possibility. “Think what this kind of medicine means! No pain. No suffering. No disease. No dying.”
“No one can escape death.” Mary wiped the remaining stardust off on her skirt. “Not even the oldest of Fiddlers.”
“And when exactly were you born?” Jack demanded.
“Enough.” Mary’s smile evaporated into a stern look. “It’s always the same. Apprentices are fixated on the length of Fiddler life for their first century or two. It will pass. And there are plenty of books you can read to satisfy your curiosity.” She pointed at the falcon behind her. “But you’ll have a much harder time learning how to ride the aurora from books. So hold your questions and open your ears.”
Wren scrubbed the toe of her shoe through the moss while Mary explained how to tend the birds and how to care for their feathers. Her brain was only half listening. The other part was replaying everything she’d learned. What would it be like to live for a “century or two”? What had Mary seen in her years? Wren didn’t know whether she was more astonished to think of Fiddlers living through the Black Plague and the discovery of America and the world wars or the implication that she could live just as long.