A Sliver of Stardust

by Marissa Burt

  Jack must have been feeling something similar. He looked like a scolded puppy, his head bowed and gaze locked on the floor.

  “Truly, it is odd, this new way of interrupting one’s betters,” Cole said, “but perhaps you are being too severe, Elsa.” He frowned, his fingers tugging on the falcon’s tail. “He knows nothing of Boggen’s atrocities. Or of what this means. Indeed, we have much to learn ourselves.” He pointed to the now-silent cluster of onlookers. “Gather the rest of the Fiddlers. Begin the summoning.” At his words, the relative stillness of the cave was split with a loud gonging noise, as though there was a clock tower somewhere underground that was marking time.

  “The summoning has begun.” Elsa looked down her very long nose at Mary and her apprentices. “Full Fiddlers only, I’m afraid, which means I’ll have to deal with your children later.” The way she said children made it sound like a dirty word.

  Footfalls sounded on the bridge behind them, as the people they’d seen earlier entered the amphitheater. The men in their old-fashioned clothes quickly found seats. The man with the goggles, too, was hurrying past. And the woman with all the books.

  “My apprentices, Elsa,” Mary said, without looking at them. “I found them in the wild.”

  More people were appearing from behind the green doors, spilling into the center area and moving past Wren, the sound of their voices echoing off the smooth walls. Some had obviously been woken from sleep. She saw flannel pajamas, old-fashioned nightgowns complete with hats, and even long underwear as the Fiddlers filed into the amphitheater seats.

  “So you said. From the wild.” Elsa stared at them as though the wild equaled a garbage dump.

  Wren stared right back, fixated on her thick eyebrows that blended into one above her remarkable nose.

  “I’ll foster them,” Elsa said in a greedy voice. “I can always use an extra pair of hands.” She came over and pinched one of Wren’s between two fingers as though she meant to snatch it off her body, leaving two stardust thumbprints that looked like bruises.

  “Don’t touch me,” Wren said, and Mary gave her a warning look. Wren crossed her arms and glared at Elsa. Fiddler or not, she wasn’t going to answer respectfully to this witch.

  “Perhaps you are right, Elsa,” Mary said. “They are of no further use to me now.”

  “They do need training,” Elsa said. “A good flogging will make her more pliable. Double lashes for the boys. That one looks like he might not be right in the head,” she said with barely a glance at Simon.

  Wren brushed Elsa’s stardust off, sending little glimmers in the air around her hands. She took in Jack’s downcast eyes and the look of shame Simon wore, his shoulders slumping. Her veins pulsed with emotion. Embarrassment for Jack. Outrage at Elsa’s cruel words for Simon. Shock at Mary’s casual dismissal. Frustration that none of what they had just witnessed made any sense and that no one had bothered to explain anything, let alone treat them like actual human beings. Fury that she had not asked any questions, that she had followed Mary’s stupid orders exactly. Her heartbeat quickened, matching the throbbing pain in her head, and her cheeks burned hot. It’s happening again, just like it did back with the falcons. She looked down at the stardust prints on her arms. Too late, Wren realized that she had touched stardust. The emotions boiled within her, anger and fear and shame blistering up to the surface beyond her control.

  “Who do you think you are?” Wren’s voice was rising so that she was nearly shouting, but she couldn’t hold it back. “Calling me an it. Talking about who we belong to? And how dare you say such things about Simon? That’s his name—Simon. Not it. Not apprentice. Simon.” She was yelling now, beyond the possibility of moderation, her volume matching the pounding in her skull. “And what exactly do you mean by a good flogging? A flogging? Are you insane?”

  Mary placed both hands on Wren’s shoulders, as if to calm her, and Wren shoved them off. “And you? You would sell us to that witch?” A low rumble of thunder cracked the sky outside, and the cool scent of rain gusted through the arch on the far side of the room. A moment later, lightning cut through the clouds, flashing through the darkness of the cave.

  The room was utterly silent after Wren’s outburst, and in the intervening seconds she felt all her emotions, even her anger at Elsa, slip away. Everything except embarrassment. What is wrong with me?

  “Um. I mean. We should talk about this.” She could feel the eyes of all the gathering Fiddlers on her. She started backpedaling, talking about legal ramifications and child protective services, but Wren could see from Mary’s expression that her damage control was only making it worse. Simon was staring at his hands. Jack’s mouth hung open, like he was a surprised cartoon character. Elsa’s gaze was cool, as though she was considering what might be worse than a flogging. White-Beard was dictating something excitedly to the woman with the record book, and, from the looks he kept giving Wren, it had something to do with her. And Cole was studying Boggen’s stone, a little smile playing about his mouth, but his falcon had locked its piercing gaze on Wren.

  Wren’s forced laugh sounded more like a gasp for air. “I’m not myself right now.”

  “Falcon travel can have odd side effects, you know that. It was Wren’s first time today.” Mary’s usually unruffled voice sounded uneasy. “And sometimes I find that apprentices have surprising reactions to the northern climate.” She grabbed Wren by both shoulders and spun her around. “Perhaps I should take them somewhere to rest.” They had taken two steps back toward the bridge when Cole’s voice rang out.

  “A Weather Changer, Mary?” he said. “Did you plan to hide this from us? Especially now?”

  Mary closed her eyes, wincing. “So close,” she muttered, turning back around.

  All four Council members were staring at them. At Wren, actually. The Weather Changer.

  “There hasn’t been a Weather Changer since the Magicians left,” Cole said, and Wren shifted under the heaviness of his magnified gaze. “Odd that one should appear now.” He tapped his fingers against his chin, no smile this time.

  “And such a powerful Weather Changer.” The man with the white beard rubbed his hands together in a way that made the hairs on the back of Wren’s neck stand up. “She must be studied.”

  “Well,” Mary said in a strained voice that showed this was not the outcome she wanted. “What will be will be.” She changed her tone. “But such conduct is unacceptable from my apprentices. Permit me a moment to reprimand her myself.”

  Elsa raised her unibrow at Mary. “You flog them in public?”

  “Ah,” Mary said. “Too simple. Won’t you excuse us?”

  She piloted Simon, Jack, and Wren over toward the wall.

  “I told you to leave it to me,” she hissed. “What were you thinking, Wren?”

  “I don’t know! It’s like something came over me. I couldn’t help myself, and, oh, that woman is awful.”

  “Who is she?” Simon asked in a dull voice. His face looked as though someone had wiped all the life out of it.

  “She is the one who will make you miserable if you can’t keep your mouth shut,” Mary snapped. “Elsa is only interested in you because I am. If she thought I was indifferent to you, she wouldn’t have bothered, but now there’s no way any of them will let a Weather Changer slip out of their greedy little hands. Did you listen to anything I said about the politics of this place? Nothing is as it seems. And now they’ll have you locked up in their apprentice quarters for months, if not years.”

  “Years?” Wren’s eyes felt like they were going to pop out of her head.

  Mary ignored her. “When we rejoin the others, you must look properly chastened, as though I’ve threatened the worst punishment you can think of,” she said with stern eyes. “And I’m not so certain I don’t want to. For the life of all that you hold dear, Wren, say nothing else. I wasn’t sure when I felt the wind after your first outburst with the falcon, but now there’s no doubting it. You are a Weather Changer, that is clear enou
gh to everyone, but let’s not remind them of that again, okay?” She gave Wren an encouraging look. “I will have to remain here for the summoning, and you will be sent to the apprentice quarters. Stay out of trouble, do as you’re told, and everything should be fine.” Her voice was back to being cool and collected, as though she wasn’t informing them that she was abandoning them in this crazy place.

  “And Elsa’s flogging?” Wren could see Elsa pacing beyond them, and the girl Wren had noticed by the bridge was hovering nearby.

  “She won’t dare touch my apprentices,” Mary said. “Another thing you should know. In the Crooked House apprentices belong to their training Fiddler. They’re kind of like”—she smiled apologetically even as she said it—“servants that the Fiddlers own.”

  “Belong to them? Like slaves?” Simon said. “That’s crazy!”

  The amphitheater was full now, and the buzz of talking Fiddlers filled the room. Some, probably the ones who had witnessed Wren’s outburst, stared at the group in the corner, but most had their attention fixed on the four stone chairs, where Cole was preparing to speak.

  Elsa moved toward them then, rubbing her hands together eagerly, as though she was enjoying the thought of Mary’s apprentices getting punished.

  Mary glanced back over her shoulder and then turned to them with a stern expression on her face. “And I won’t have my apprentices ever doing that again,” she said, loud enough for Elsa to hear, before dropping her voice back to a whisper. “Stay out of her way. I’ll come find you as soon as I can.”

  “What are you going to be doing?” Jack asked.

  “Oh, only the same thing I’ve been trying to do for the past hundred years.” Mary blew out a breath. “Prove that I’m innocent.”

  Before she could say more, Elsa dragged the girl Wren had spotted earlier by the ear and shoved her in their direction. The girl’s curly hair frizzed out over her ears, and wide brown eyes stared at Wren with a perfectly emotionless expression.

  “Take them to the apprentice quarters, Jill,” Elsa commanded.

  “Go with Jill. I’ll find you later.” Mary gave Wren’s hands a quick squeeze. “Wish me luck. We’re all going to need it.”

  TWELVE

  Little Bo Peep has lost her sheep

  And doesn’t know where to find them.

  Leave them alone, and they’ll come home,

  Bringing their tails behind them.

  Jill took Wren, Simon, and Jack to the kitchens, which were filled with bustling apprentices. Jill served them bowls of hot soup and then disappeared without a word.

  “Well, that wasn’t very nice.” Jack spread a thick layer of butter on his bread. “No ‘Welcome to the Crooked House. We’re so pleased to meet you.’” He licked the crumbs off his fingers. “But, nothing ventured, nothing gained. We’re here now, and I bet we’ll find out all kinds of cool things.”

  Wren shook her head. “You amaze me, Jack. You’re still excited to be here after what we went through up there?”

  Jack slurped a spoonful of soup. “Gotta stay positive.”

  “I bet it’s hard for Mary to stay positive,” Simon said in an even voice, but he stayed focused on his food. “Seems like she’s in a lot of trouble.”

  Jack set his bread down. “Maybe. But she can hold her own. And what do you think about that message?” He looked at Wren. “And the weather-changing thing! That was awesome!”

  “You mean the thing that was the same thing the horrible Magicians did?” Wren let her spoon fall back against the bowl. “It was the opposite of awesome, Jack. It was awful. I don’t even know what I did. It just happened.” Simon and Jack must have read her mood, because they focused on their food and didn’t ask any more questions.

  Wren took a sip of the hot sweet drink the apprentice-cook had brought her and looked around at all the activity. The kitchen was similar to the rooms she’d already seen in the Crooked House. Rough walls hewn from carved stone surrounded a workspace covered with wooden tables. In every corner, thick, wax-covered candelabra sconces lit the room. There was an arched doorway that led out to one of the falcon ledges, where Wren could see the clear night sky. The aurora they had flown through was fading now, and only a thin stream of pale blue was visible along the horizon.

  Inside, there was a constant flow of apprentices coming and going. Kids their age were filling dinner plates. Some older ones prepared trays for delivery. A couple of boys were scrubbing huge pots on one side of the room, and opposite them other apprentices scraped leftovers into a bucket. Unlike the serious-faced Fiddlers they had passed on their way down, most of the apprentices were laughing and talking. Apparently, they hadn’t yet heard about Boggen, or if they had, they didn’t care. Wren felt herself relaxing. Away from that horrible amphitheater and all the Fiddlers who now probably thought Wren was an evil Magician come again or something, the Crooked House didn’t seem that bad.

  When they were finished eating, Jill reappeared to escort them to a different level of the Crooked House. “This is the apprentice wing,” she said as they wove between a pair of whispering girls who seemed to size them up as they passed. Most of the apprentices appeared to be in their teens or twenties. Some of them looked completely grown up, though they still wore the telltale black-and-gray apprentice cloak.

  The apprentice quarters were somewhere between the lower-level kitchen and the amphitheater. The boys’ rooms came first, and Wren told them good-night a little wistfully. She wished she could somehow bunk with them. Being alone in the Crooked House felt awfully intimidating.

  The room Jill showed her to wasn’t much bigger than her walk-in closet at home. A single twin bed took up most of the space, with a simple table holding a pitcher of water and a shallow bowl situated to the left of it. A few pegs on the wall behind the door where she could hang her cloak and a hard wooden chair made up the rest of the furnishings.

  “Thanks! This is great,” Wren said, mostly because she couldn’t really think of a non-complaining adjective to describe the sparse accommodations. Besides that, no matter how Wren phrased what she said, Jill only responded with monosyllabic replies. Wren had learned nothing. Not where Jill was from. Nor when she became an apprentice. Nothing.

  Jill’s head bob was barely discernable over the blankets she’d been carrying.

  “So, maybe I’ll see you around?” Wren tried again, but Jill only dropped the blankets on the bed and turned to go. Wren smiled in what she hoped was a friendly way. “Thanks again.”

  “Now is when you should sleep,” Jill said before she shut the door, which Wren took as her way of saying good-night.

  Wren stared at her cell phone for a long time after she had climbed into bed. She had been surprised to easily get a signal, and now her mom’s latest text blinked at her: Miss you already. Love you so much! xoxo Mom. Wren should send a reply—she wanted to, in fact—but anything she thought of sounded stupid, not to mention vastly incomplete. It felt like a whole year—no, a whole lifetime—had passed since she had last been in her old home. She finally settled on a brief reply: Turning in for the night. Love you, too!

  There was a small skylight cut into the rock ceiling, and Wren looked out to see a smattering of constellations glimmering like a sea of jewels flung across the sky. Wren thought of the night before, when her mom had dropped her off at Pippen Hill, and wondered if things could get any crazier. If the past twenty-four hours were any indication, she was betting they could.

  When Wren woke, the sun was full-on blazing through the window. Her room was hot but not uncomfortably so. She sat up and poured some water from her pitcher into the bowl, slurping a sip to quench her dry throat. In the harsh daylight, she noticed what she must have overlooked the night before: a rounded door tucked in the far corner of the room. She put on her cloak and her shoes and made her way outside.

  The world was bathed in a bright light that set her head pounding and cast everything in a palette of grainy gray and white and black. She wasn’t two steps outside whe
n she heard the door slam behind her. When she turned back, the door was gone, replaced by the jagged exterior wall of the Crooked House.

  Heart pounding, she ran her hands along the place where it should have been, feeling for some kind of latch, but there was nothing. She would have to go forward. She set off on the path in front of her that wound down an exterior stairway toward an outbuilding planted in the middle of the valley floor. She shaded her eyes against the light, but she couldn’t see if anyone was there.

  Up close, the shed was weathered gray, with strips of paint curling up in disrepair. The twin doors hung ajar, flanked on either side by intertwined cogs and gears that were rusted from disuse. The stillness of the morning let Wren know the building was empty, and she didn’t think there had been anyone there in a long time. She took a few steps into the dark interior to make sure, and as she moved back outside, she caught a familiar metallic smell. She tried to place it—something like chemicals and lab experiments and—she froze in the doorway as recognition crashed into her mind. Blood. Just beyond the barn, there was a black tree, barren of leaves and made out of some kind of metal. Below it shone a puddle of dark liquid. The blood was fresh, not yet congealed, and she could see drops falling from the things hanging over the empty branches, spaced every foot or so.

  Wren moved closer, burying her nose in the crook of her elbow to hide the smell. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked like animal pelts had been set out to dry. Wren had seen taxidermy exhibits before, but even so, her empty stomach turned. She moved closer, noting that there wasn’t a whole animal hanging, only a woolen mass. Now she was near enough to see that each one was nailed to the tree. Tails of some kind. Sheep, perhaps? She scoured the ground for a stick and poked at the furry blob closest to her. Wisps of black wool clung to the stick. Then, as she watched in horror, the wool began to change and grow, creeping up toward her hand. She threw the stick down, but there was no releasing it. She watched powerlessly as her skin was drenched with the bright red liquid, the only color in a world framed with shadows of black, white, and gray.