by Marissa Burt
Simon had fallen behind, where he stood examining some kind of fungus growing on the rock wall and making vigorous notations in his book.
“Keep your wits about you, and don’t you dare ask questions, even to satisfy your curiosity,” Mary continued with a pointed look. “Draw no unnecessary attention to yourselves.”
They followed Mary onto a bridge that appeared to be floating on a cloudy pool of turquoise water. On the other side, soft waves lapped the edges. A man with his nose buried in a book shuffled past, bumping into Simon and somehow navigating the bridge without looking up. He seemed to be the only one who hadn’t noticed their entrance. Everyone else trailed behind at a safe distance until Wren had the eerie feeling that they were foremost in a bizarre parade.
Wren looked across the water to see a girl a little older than she wearing an apprentice cloak. When the girl saw Wren noticing her, she ducked her head and hurried onward, moving from green door to green door, depositing something in front of each. Soon, she disappeared from view, making her way into the farther reaches of the cavern.
After the bridge came a large circular room that had once opened to the outside. Now, the opening was covered with glass, letting in a panoramic view of the bejeweled night sky and the distant waves below. On either side, the sloped cavern walls rose gently, stretching up into a natural amphitheater with rows of seating.
Opposite the window, four figures sat on throne-like seats carved into the rock wall. As Mary led them onward, one figure rose, holding out a hand.
“Of course it would have to be her,” Mary said with a formal little bow for the woman who beckoned to them. She turned to Wren and the others as they crossed the amphitheater. “Say nothing.”
“We got it. No questions. No talking. Blah, blah, blah,” Jack said, with a half grin for Wren.
“Well, remember it,” Mary snapped. “Keep your head bowed and eyes on the floor.” And then they were standing before the group of important-looking Fiddlers.
“Mary,” the woman said. “You are not welcome here.”
ELEVEN
Rain, rain go away.
Come again another day,
When the Fiddler dares to play.
Wren had no difficulty following Mary’s advice. From the moment they had entered the Council Chamber, she could tell that Mary hadn’t exaggerated. The Crooked House indeed seemed to be a tricky place, and the woman who had first unwelcomed them seemed to have a special antipathy for Mary, taking the past quarter of an hour to complain about Mary’s character and demanding that the other members of the Council throw them all out. The Fiddlers who had followed them in hovered on the fringes, providing an audience for a most unpleasant performance.
“Mary gave up her place on the Council long ago,” the hostile woman was saying, “and I am Mistress of Apprentices now.” Her profile was all points—from the tip of her nose to the jutting chin and bony arms folded across her front. Next to her a woman in a white lab coat, who looked like she could be in a commercial for a prescription drug, took notes in a thick book.
“And yet you have found no new apprentices in the wild, Elsa,” a tall man with white hair said, running his too-long and very pale fingers through his matching beard. “Whereas Mary here brings us three.”
The last Fiddler on the Council sat silently wrapped up in a rumpled knit sweater, his dark hair an uncombed mass on the top of his head. He hunched in his seat as though the thick black frames on his glasses weighed his whole head down. A falcon perched on his right shoulder, swiveling its gray-spackled head to glare at Mary and her apprentices in turn.
“Mary.” Elsa’s voice echoed in the space. She wore a long hooded cape that billowed as she moved toward Mary, raising an incriminating pointing finger. “You found the Fiddler who betrayed us all. Boggen was your apprentice”—Wren could feel Mary stiffen next to her—“and yet you still gather other apprentices. You would dare to train them despite Cole’s express command?” She flung a hand back at the man with the falcon. “You overreach yourself.”
Wren’s eyes widened. He was Cole? She looked questioningly at Simon, who must have been thinking the same thing, because he gave her the slightest shrug. Simon was standing with his hands clenched in fists, probably to keep from scribbling in his notebook. Jack for once was dumbstruck, the smile gone from his face, as though the awe of being in the presence of so many Fiddlers finally made him speechless.
“Girl, are you deaf? Answer me,” Elsa was saying, and it took Wren a minute to realize that Elsa was actually speaking to her. Wren pointed a thumb to her chest and gaped.
“Yes, you. Apprentice. Has Fiddler Mary been teaching you?” The way she asked the question made it sound like Wren had committed a crime.
Wren licked her lips. “Um,” Wren began, and then remembered Mary’s warning. “I just met Fiddler Mary yesterday, Fiddler.” Wren sketched a bow and then immediately felt stupid. The Fiddler Council might seem to be royalty sitting on stone thrones, but they didn’t act like it.
“Is it all right?” the man with the white beard asked, peering at Wren, as if she were a fascinating kind of insect. “Is it convulsing? I hope you didn’t bring a faulty apprentice to us, Mary. We have no time for extra work.”
“Wild apprentices or not,” the woman with the book said, and the words didn’t sound pleasant, “I’d never thought to see Mary in the Council Chamber again.”
“I have not come to fan into flame old feuds,” Mary said, her face stoic. “Nor have I come to beg pardon”—she looked directly at Cole then—“from any of you. I can assure you that I am here with good reason.”
“We have heard your reasons before,” Elsa snorted, as if she had made a big joke. “And lived with the results for hundreds of years. You were nothing more than Boggen’s pawn.” She cackled. “Don’t tell me you’ve come with more stories about how brilliant that traitor’s research was. Or is it simply to bribe your way back on to the Council with three apprentices?” She sneered at Jack. “That one looks sickly. So pale and skinny.” Her eyes skimmed over Wren and then on to Simon. “Hmph. Too cheap a payment by far.”
Wren glanced at Mary, whose gaze was fixed straight ahead as though she no more noticed Wren and the others than the stone beneath her feet.
“I’ve come with the apprentices, yes, but also with an urgent need to seek audience with the Council.” Mary’s face held an indifferent, almost bored expression. “Though much has changed since Cole and I began it, the Council still governs the Fiddlers, does it not?” Her pointed reminder seemed directed at Elsa, who pursed her lips into a thin line.
“You may approach,” Cole finally spoke. His voice was low and deep and commanding. “No Fiddler who seeks an audience with the Council will be denied.”
The woman in the lab coat marked something down on the paper in front of her. “Let the Council note that Fiddler Mary has returned to the Crooked House, and her presence before the Council is in immediate conflict with her forced exile from the Council in 1871, tendered at the trial to investigate Boggen’s forbidden use of stardust during the Fiddler Civil War of 1869.”
“I remember the trial well,” said Mary in short, clipped tones. “Perhaps it will please the Council to also remember how I was the first to bring the truth of Boggen’s transgressions into the light.” She put up a hand to forestall what was obviously going to be an objection by Elsa. “I have never contested the wrongness of Boggen’s forbidden rhymework. Using the stardust to consume life is and always has been a horrible evil. But that does not make all his discoveries evil. Boggen was a brilliant Fiddler”—she looked pointedly at Elsa—“which is something I cannot say for all of my former apprentices.”
Elsa shifted slightly under Mary’s gaze but still held her head high enough to look down her nose. “My how the mighty have fallen. Are you sure it’s wise to remind us of your glory days, Mary? I remember very well what happened then—how the heroic Mistress of Apprentices flaunted Boggen as the most promising Fiddler i
n centuries.” She slapped her forehead as though recalling an important fact. “Oh, but I forgot, that was before he gathered his army of Magicians bent on consuming all life on Earth.”
Wren gulped and looked over at Jack and Simon, who were eyeing Mary warily. She wondered if Jack still felt excited at all they could learn at the Crooked House. Wren was beginning to think they would have been better off never leaving Pippen Hill.
Elsa moved sideways between the other Council members and Mary, as though she were a lawyer presenting her case. “Who was it, Mary, who said that living stardust could cure anything, even the gravest of illnesses? Boggen? Or was that you?” She furrowed her forehead dramatically. “It’s so hard to separate the two of you.” Her words grew sharp. “But then it really doesn’t matter. Once Boggen and his Magicians died in their final catastrophe, only you were left to pick up the pieces. How convenient.” She waved a hand to dismiss Mary. “Oh, you can call it restoring order if you like, but it’s been a century and a half and the Fiddlers are still reeling from the fallout. You’re fooling yourself if you think anyone here is interested in anything you have to say.”
Wren glanced up at Mary, whose face had lost all its color, but from the look in her eyes, it was from anger, not fear. “And is this the opinion of the entire Crooked House? Or just of Elsa?”
The woman with the clipboard didn’t look up from her notes, and Old White-Beard merely spread out one hand, as if to ward off Mary’s questions.
“You come in difficult times, Mary.” Cole stood. His falcon spread its wings and then resettled onto the leather strap that covered Cole’s shoulder. “Tempers are high. Patience is in short supply. And there have been strange doings.” He looked at the apprentices then, and Wren felt that his eyes were remarkably like the depthless gaze of his falcon. “Stranger even than the arrival of three wild apprentices.”
“And you think I disagree?” Mary moved forward, covering the space to the Council chairs, and Wren took the opportunity to slink closer to Jack and Simon. “The grains in my hourglass are nearly empty. The end of the age nears, and all we have to show for it is wasted time.” Her voice sounded brittle, like it might snap. “You should have let me continue researching alternate sources of stardust.”
The Council members all began talking at once: Elsa with pointed fingers and accusations; Cole, whose falcon somehow remained unflappable; and even White-Beard, whose face looked angry. The woman with the record book was writing furiously, trying to capture what they were all saying, though how she kept it straight, Wren couldn’t imagine.
The Council members were so occupied, Wren felt it might be safe to risk a whispered question.
“What do you know about Mary’s research?” she asked Jack.
He shrugged. “As much as you, I’d guess. She’s never told me about any of this stuff.”
“They said Boggen used living stardust,” Simon mused. “I wonder what that means.”
“All living things are made up of stardust,” Wren said absently. “You and me, even. We’re made from it, too.” It was one of the first things that had fascinated her about astronomy. That all life actually originated in the stars. She looked over at Simon, whose hand was twitching by his side. He reached for his pencil.
“Shh,” Jack hushed them. “Something’s happening.”
“Whatever you thought back then,” Mary was saying, “you will have to change your conclusions now.” She pulled the stone Jack had found from beneath her cloak. “It contains a message from Boggen. You can decide for yourselves whether an ally of his would bring it to you.”
Elsa gasped. The lab coat woman dropped her pencil. And White-Beard fell back into his chair. Only Cole stayed unmoved, his magnified unblinking eyes studying the table from behind his glasses.
“You’ve brought something that once belonged to Boggen?” Cole’s voice was dangerously quiet.
“Nearly a hundred and fifty years have passed,” Mary said, as though it were a fact of little interest, but Wren could see how taut her fingers were around the stone. “And still you stand as you did so long ago. Frightened. And close-minded.” She lifted her palm, as if to offer the Council the stone. “Whether you believe that I supported Boggen or not, you must study what is surely one of his last messages.” The strange flame-like etching at the bottom seemed to flare with light at her words. “See his mark? Whatever message is inside, it comes from Boggen himself.”
“Boggen is nothing to us.” Elsa had found her voice. “A power-hungry fool who deserved death. And the Magicians with him.”
“We lost half our strength with Boggen and much of our knowledge. Have you forgotten that the Magicians excelled in making new rhymes?” Mary scowled at Elsa. “And what of the Alchemists who died trying to stop Boggen?” She shook her hand for emphasis. “This can tell us what they died for.”
Elsa’s laugh was shrill. “Don’t pretend to care about the fallen. You brought this to us for one reason only: to prove your innocence.” She grinned in a satisfied way as Mary flinched at her words. “You’re a fool, Mary. Whatever Boggen’s message is—if it is, in fact, authentic and not some fake you’ve concocted—it won’t change the fact that you are a traitor.”
“I agree with Mary,” Cole said. “Difficult times lie ahead, and we cannot afford the luxury of arguing.”
“Of course you would agree with her,” Elsa hissed. “Cole, you are a fool. How can you let a broken heart rule your mind?”
The room fell silent. Wren didn’t dare say anything to Simon or Jack. The air around them was fraught with tension. Mary’s cheeks were flushed, but Cole seemed unruffled by Elsa’s accusation. “That stone was marked by Boggen’s hand, and no one can fabricate his spell-writing. It is his message.” He ran one hand lightly over his falcon’s back. “Put the stone in the oracle-wall, Mary. I will open it.”
Elsa looked like she might choke as Mary ascended the few steps. Between the middle two throne-like chairs a space was carved in the wall, and she placed the stone into it.
Cole threw some stardust into the air and began to play it. Already, Wren had become accustomed to the sight of the magic, and her mind filed away the patterns Cole used. His movements were quick and sure, very different from Mary’s graceful motions. He manipulated the stardust as though he were in a swordfight, his deep voice singing a rhyme that was hard for Wren to make out. Some of the words were English—she caught fire and pyre, foretell and once more—but the rest were unfamiliar, filled with thees and thous and the archaic sound of a forgotten dialect. The gray of the stone flared with colors. Beneath his ministrations, the stardust sparkled like jewels, the air glowing in a mysterious light.
Cole bent forward, reading the magical words of the message. It was unlike any language Wren had ever heard. Hard guttural sounds danced with the smooth slurred vowels that were more familiar. She watched as the stardust grew more agitated with the cadence of his words. Then there was a resounding crack that split the stone open like an egg. A funnel of cloudy ash spun up to the ceiling, and Wren saw it forming images she could recognize. Lines of writing on a page, glimmering in moonlight. A figure flying on a giant bird and holding aloft something that glowed golden. Dark creatures with shimmering wings. The shadow of a huge mountain, shot through with a dart of lightning. A blue pendulum swinging in a luminescent arc. And a web stretching through the sky up to a flame made of stars.
The images played over and over again as Cole read, imprinting themselves on Wren’s memory. After a time, he stopped speaking, and the stardust pictures faded into a swirl of unrecognizable flickers. Soon, everyone was left in silence.
“It is difficult to see what it means,” White-Beard finally said. “A lost rhyme, obviously. And a key and a map. But the gateway and the pendulum? What can that signify?”
“A gateway,” Mary said, and her eyes looked like burnt-out hollows in her pale face. She turned to Cole. “I didn’t know.”
“I did,” Cole said. “I’ve known for some time.
I feel his oily touch in my nightmares.” He stood, studying the now-still stone for what seemed like a long time, and the air grew heavy with expectation. Then, he spoke to the others. “Boggen didn’t die.” He held up a hand to stop Elsa’s cry of alarm. “His last spell didn’t kill him and his Magicians. He created a gateway!” He pointed to the windowed wall that revealed the starry night sky. “A gateway leading somewhere out there.” The Fiddlers all began talking at once: Elsa firing angry accusations at Mary, the white-bearded man interrogating Cole, and the woman with the clipboard recording it all.
“But that’s good, isn’t it?” Jack asked Wren. “Not dead is better than dead, right?” But he wasn’t quiet enough, and, despite their arguing, the Council noticed.
“It speaks,” White-Beard said, frowning at Jack. “The apprentice dares to interrupt Council business.”
Elsa seemed all too eager to replace worry about the unknown threat of the Magicians’ existence with railing at Jack’s breach of protocol, and discussion about Boggen ceased immediately. “You train your apprentices ill, Mary,” Elsa gloated. “And you insist on breaking every rule we have.”
“Not every rule,” Mary said, shooting Jack a death glare. “I see I will have to discipline them more thoroughly.”
“I am the Mistress of Apprentices now, not you, Mary,” Elsa said, drawing herself up to her full height. “I will see to his discipline.” She wrapped her cloak around her and folded her arms over her chest. “And he will never speak out of turn again.”
Wren felt a chill run through her—not at Elsa’s dramatic words, but at the cold glint in her eye that made Wren think she was exactly what she appeared to be: a medieval witch contemplating medieval punishments.