A Sliver of Stardust

by Marissa Burt

  Wren’s falcon had settled down into a comfortable and well-deserved roost. Simon went over to her and let her know that they were going inside, and he politely asked if she’d mind waiting out here alone. Instead of standing to the side, Wren tried her own version of respect.

  “Thank you, falcon,” Wren said, and she meant it. “You really saved our lives out there.”

  Wren’s falcon stared back at her with her mysterious eyes, but Wren thought she detected a slight loosening of her stiff neck muscles, as though the bird was deigning to acknowledge Wren’s existence. It was a start.

  Wren and Simon were halfway to the cave entrance when Wren heard the rushing of wings on the windless air. And not just a pair of wings but a whole host of them. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. Wren whirled around to see a horde of blackbirds, normal-sized ones, hovering together near the cliff’s edge. The sound grew louder, almost deafening as the birds climbed higher, flapping in formation, never deviating more than a few inches to each side. Wren instinctively drew close to Simon as the mass of birds grew until its shape was recognizable. There, beating the air viciously with a myriad of feathery wings, was a giant bird shape made up of thousands of individual birds, and hovering over the back was a very angry-looking Jack.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Away, birds, away!

  Take a little and leave a little,

  And do not come again;

  For if you do, I will shoot you through,

  And there will be an end of you.

  Wren grabbed Simon’s hand. “Inside the cave! Maybe we can outrun him.” Her knees still shook, and the arrival of Jack chased the last bits of anger out of her, leaving only clammy terror behind.

  Simon didn’t move an inch. “Give me some stardust.” A weird smirk crept across his face, and Wren wondered if he had bumped his head or something.

  “Huh?” She tugged on his sleeve, but Simon’s feet stayed firmly planted. He was stronger than he appeared. Wren’s head grew dizzy, and she felt like she needed to sit down. “Simon. We’ve got to go.”

  “Stardust. Now, Wren.” He tossed his notebook down at his feet, arms out in front in Fiddler posture.

  “What are you talking about?’ Wren screamed, the terror pressing hard against her heart. “Jack probably knows a hundred evil Magician rhymes that could kill you.”

  Across the way, Jack whipped the birds into a frenzy, his voice echoing on the mountain air. “Heigh-ho, the carrion crow,” Jack chanted, casting webs of stardust over the bird horde. Their wings began to thrum in unison, as if flying to a sinister drumbeat.

  With the sound, Wren’s dread tripled. “Simon.” She hooked her arm in his and yanked, pulling him backward a few steps. “There’s no way we can beat Jack. We’ve got to run.” She turned and bumped into her falcon, who was behind them, wings stretched out to make her appear twice her size, an all-too-familiar hostile look on her face.

  “You, too?” Wren frowned. “Look. We can’t defeat him.”

  “Clear your head, Wren.” Simon shook free from her grasp. “The terror. The discouragement. It’s all part of Jack’s rhyme. He’s using the stardust to manipulate the way you feel.”

  Wren dropped her hands. Could Simon be right? Was everything she was feeling—the animal-like need to run, the heady alertness—was it all a part of Jack’s scheme? She grabbed the pouch from around her neck, cupping the comforting weight of stardust in her palm. She looked back at Jack’s flock, beaks pointed in their direction as though they were a sheaf of arrows set to fly straight at them. Manipulation or not, it was terrifying.

  Simon grabbed her wrist and pinched some stardust from the pouch, tossing it high. He blew a puff of air in the middle, sending little fireflies of magic swirling about his face.

  Right then, Jack’s voice rose in a triumphant crescendo, and the first of the birds came straight at them. It was like a scene out of an old black-and-white horror movie. A battalion of vicious, violent birds, headed straight for Wren and Simon, the only two humans on the lone treeless ledge.

  “Start moving this way!” Wren said, diving to the ground and inching backward toward the blackness of the opening. “You can fiddle whatever you want from in there.”

  But Simon wasn’t listening. It seemed as though he was frozen in the middle of a storm of stardust, and all Wren could see was a Simon-ish shape shrouded with incandescent pricks of light that he was throwing toward the oncoming threat. That, and the birds headed straight for him, beaks poised to gouge. And then Wren’s falcon was there, leaping in front of Simon with a deathly squawk. The first volley of birds launched straight into her outstretched pinions.

  “No!” Wren gasped as the falcon’s body flipped backward with the weight of the attack. Wren crawled forward, knowing that for once her bird wouldn’t be able to scare her off, but this time it was Simon who was lugging her toward the blackness.

  “Get in there!” he shouted at Wren. “I’ll take care of the birds.”

  “I can’t just leave her to die.” Wren pushed his hands off and moved toward the nearly motionless body of her falcon. A new host of birds was launching toward them, their shrill cries escalating as they attacked. Wren wracked her brain. What was the healing rhyme they had learned at the Crooked House? Wren began to sing, “Intery, mintery—”

  “Go to her, and we all die.” Simon pointed a sooty finger to Wren’s left. “Jack’s almost inside.”

  While Wren and Simon had been distracted by her falcon and the blackbird attack, Jack had made a run for it. Wren turned just in time to see Jack’s figure disappearing into the cave’s interior.

  “Get ready to move,” Simon said, his hands spinning faster than his words, stretching a thin veil of stardust around both of them. The blackbirds were stuck fast on the other side, unable to penetrate his shield. “When they retreat, that’s when you go.”

  “And then what?” Wren asked. There were thousands of birds. Even if Simon could manage to hold off a few hundred, what would he do then? What about when he ran out of stardust?

  But Simon didn’t answer Wren. He turned back to face the cliff’s edge and began to chant. His voice started out low, and Wren was surprised at how deep it sounded.

  “Away, birds, away!” Simon chanted. “Take no more and leave at once, and do not come again.”

  The birds stopped their frantic pecking, hovering just out of reach of the shield.

  Simon’s voice grew louder. “Away, birds, away!” As he sang, the stardust swirled into little tendrils that reached out toward the birds, pushing them away and shaping a foggy tunnel that led straight toward the cave entrance.

  There was no time to argue more. Simon was right. Their only chance now was for her to try to stop Jack. She grabbed a handful of stardust for herself and thrust the nearly empty pouch into Simon’s hand. Maybe it would be enough to outlast the blackbirds.

  Wren raced toward the dark opening, her muscles straining. Jack hadn’t seen the last of her yet. She felt some of the clammy terror feeling lift, and then the mouth of the cave loomed up in front of her, and she was running inside, the thick darkness embracing her like cold water.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Hush-a-bye, baby, on the treetop!

  When the wind blows the cradle will rock;

  When the bough breaks the cradle will fall;

  Down will come baby, cradle and all.

  Even though Wren’s eyes told her there was nothing in front of her, she could still feel resistance. She pushed forward into the cave like she was swimming in air, and then she was through, on the other side of whatever, the sound of the birds’ flapping wings and Simon’s chanting cutting off in an instant. The absolute silence of the cave pulsed loud in her ears.

  Wren pinched the tiniest bit of stardust and blew it up into a miniature starlamp. She couldn’t afford to waste much. The embers glowed bright in the heavy darkness, and it was as though Wren had switched on a hundred-watt bulb. She saw that she was in a great cavern, one that looked v
ery much like the interior of the Crooked House, only the walls here pulsed a sickly yellowish green. Stalagmites pocked with something bronze glistened on either side of her, forming a menacing corridor. There was only one way to go: forward.

  Wren let the stardust play above her upraised palm and hurried on, her blood pumping with the knowledge that Simon was still fighting the birds outside. Soon she was in another dense passageway, this one much longer. She swam hard, pushing on the unseen barrier, and felt her throat clench with claustrophobia. What if she couldn’t make it through and was stuck forever in this invisible quicksand?

  Her muscles grew tired from beating against the unknown, her legs stumbled, and she wondered what would happen if she stopped altogether. Panic gave way to a calm exhaustion. Everything would be much simpler if she just leaned back and went to sleep. Wren’s eyelids grew heavy, and she wanted more than anything to shut them. She rested against the unseen barrier and let her hands fall to her sides. As she did, a streak of stardust caught her attention, winking at her as though it were the wet eye of her contrary falcon, and Wren’s senses jolted into awareness.

  Simon’s and her falcon’s lives depended on her. This was no time to sleep. She fought back at what must be more of Jack’s mind games, kicking hard against the unseen presence, feeling her own will strengthened as she moved forward.

  With one final push she was through, thrust out into another cavern as though reborn. This one blazed with blue light, and Wren raised her hands to shield her eyes from the sudden glare.

  “So the little bird has made her way into my nest.” Jack’s mocking tones reverberated around the room.

  Wren saw his familiar lean form on a raised platform. Behind him stood a gyroscope that was as tall as he was. Underneath it sat a book, its strange words alight with blue fire. Jack must have come here before, because an array of equipment was spread out on the round platform, paralleling the shape of the circular opening above that revealed the brilliant night sky.

  Wren recognized one of the Alchemist’s tools, the one that looked like a candelabra, stolen from the old observatory. Three of the candles were already lit, their smoky trails snaking up and out, tracing a familiar webbed path to the Magicians’ mark written across the stars.

  Wren rubbed the remainder of the stardust all over her palms. She had to be prepared for anything. Every opportunity might be her last.

  “You are a liar and a murderer.” Wren spat the words out as though they were poison. She took a Fiddler’s stance, every sense attuned to Jack, ready for any tricks he might pull.

  “Tsk, tsk, Wren,” Jack said, clicking his tongue at her like she was a small child. “It isn’t nice to call people names.” He was bending over a shallow bowl that rested on the center of the platform. “If you can’t say anything nice, better not to say anything at all.” His words were singsong, almost like he was reciting a rhyme.

  Without looking up, he waved one arm, sending a puff of stardust racing toward her, and then an invisible hand clamped hard on Wren’s jaw. Her tongue wouldn’t work properly, and she couldn’t open her mouth. She tried to scream, but all that came out was a muffled, “Mmmmmmph!”

  Jack’s laugh was low and sinister. “Now, that’s better. How can I finish my calculations with you blabbing at me?”

  Inside, Wren was yelling, but all that did was turn her silent throat hot and make her head feel like it might explode. Anger surged through her, but she couldn’t see any changes in the cloudless night sky overhead. Even if she could channel the weather again, it wasn’t like she could take Jack by surprise, or even say a rhyme. She looked down at her stardusty palms. They might as well have been covered with dirt.

  Jack continued working, silently focused on the calculations in front of him. It was as if he had forgotten Wren altogether, as though she didn’t exist. And then Wren realized that for him, she didn’t. This wasn’t like a movie, where the hero came across the bad guy at the last moment, and the villain divulged the whole secret plan. Jack didn’t have a nefarious purpose for Wren. He didn’t want to see her dead. He simply didn’t care about her at all.

  Jack pulled out a rolled piece of paper from his long apprentice cloak and held it up to the sky. Wren could see that it was a star chart, a copy of the one they’d found in Boggen’s lab behind the waterfall, but this one had a certain route highlighted with stardust. Wren stopped squirming. Whether it was because he thought she wasn’t a threat or because he was too preoccupied, Jack had made his first big mistake. He might have trapped Wren’s tongue, but he hadn’t trapped her body.

  She crouched down to the wet cavern floor. She had been a Fiddler for less than a month, and she’d fallen for it, too. The dependence on stardust. The belief that rhymes were essential to any endeavor. Sure, they were helpful, but there was also a good old-fashioned punch in the face. After all, as Jill had said, stardust wouldn’t do a Fiddler much good if he was unconscious. Wren crept toward the platform, scanning the ground in front of her for anything she could use as a weapon. There, over near the foot of it, was a stone about the size she could carry, maybe even big enough to knock Jack out.

  Jack began to chant, a crooning rhyme that matched the slow dance of his stardust. “All night long their net they threw to the stars in the twinkling foam,” he sang, the stardust trailing up from his fingers to take the shape of a giant cobwebby net. “T’was all so pretty a sail it seemed as if it could not be, and some folks thought t’was a dream they’d dreamed of sailing that beautiful sea.”

  As he sang, a single star from up above shone blindingly bright, and the wisps of the aurora began to tangle together, stretching upward toward the star.

  Jack’s voice grew louder, more frantic, as he repeated the words of his rhyme, and the round platform he was standing on began to tilt, as though it were a gigantic globe, swirling on an axis of stardust. The air around Wren grew heavy with the unseen thickness, and she had to push hard just to take a single step forward. She was almost there. Right next to the stone. She scooped it up, her muscles straining with the effort, the air a crushing weight around her, and Jack’s voice crowed over all like the dark Magician he was.

  Wren could see the platform tilting up, the stardust pulled taut as though it could launch Jack into the air to meet the single shining star, and Wren knew with a sudden insight that it was now or never. This was her chance to get on the platform.

  She dropped the stone, pushing forward with all her might, a surge of exhausted strength that propelled her one last step, and she was stumbling up against the rock face, clawing at the platform edge, even as the stardust combined with the magic of the aurora to lift it skyward. Wren’s fingers found a handhold, and she clung tight, her feet trailing along the ground, and then they were up, flying out and past the mountaintop, over the Archway to Heaven, and into the vast stretch of sky beyond. Wren swung her body, working the momentum so that her other hand could reach up, battling the numbing effect of the cold air. They were accelerating, and every second threatened to drop her into the gleaming water below.

  Wren heard Jack’s voice, echoing the same chant about sailing and nets and the foam of the stars. She felt the aurora before she saw the colors dancing around her, the bath of liquid warmth immediately dissolving the force of gravity that pulled her down. All her muscles tingled with energy, and she felt strong enough to do anything, strong enough to stop Jack once and for all. Wren flung herself up onto the platform to see that Jack, too, was lost in the sensation of the magic.

  The net he’d woven was a masterpiece, a rainbow of color that shifted gracefully in the waves of the aurora, stretching out and covering the distance between the platform and the bright star. Jack’s rhyme sounded eerily beautiful in that warm light. Wren flexed her hands. Perhaps she was strong enough to push Jack over the edge. But even as she considered it, Wren knew she couldn’t. Whatever he was now, Jack had once been her friend. Besides, the aurora throbbed with the very current of all life, and she couldn’t kill anoth
er living creature while swimming in it.

  Jack saw her then, and his mouth made a little O of surprise. He must have been hindered by the aurora as well, because though Wren saw his fists clench at his sides, he didn’t make a move toward her, nor did he begin to sing another rhyme. Instead, he returned to his navigation, adjusting something on the gyroscope dial in front of him, and looked anxiously up at the net as if to reassure himself that it was there.

  They were hurtling through the air, the aurora’s light wrapping them in a glow of strength and wind, but the atmosphere around them was changing, darkening somehow and becoming colder and more alien. Wren sat on the edge of the platform and peered over, watching as the ball that must be Earth shrank silently away below them.

  In the light of the stardust, this made Wren want to laugh. They were flying through outer space. She looked up, out past the rainbow net that was sheltering them, and saw the bright glow of stars streaming past, their lights pale in the face of the one glowing fiercely in front of them. They’d left Earth far below, a ball of shadow with slight indentations to mark the continents. The stars tore by faster now, streaks of white light whistling past the net’s glow. They spun, dancing through the stardust, deeper and deeper into the unknown.

  And then something changed. Even from within the protective stardust, Wren felt a sense of foreboding. Cold air whipped past her face, and she darted an anxious glance at Jack, who looked anything but worried. He rubbed his palms together in anticipation and reached greedy hands to adjust the newly woven net.

  The streaks of friendly starlight grew sparser, the air crowding close, so that now even the rainbow net seemed like a pale flicker of fading light.

  “What are you doing!” Wren screamed at Jack inside her head. “You’re going to kill us!” Her breaths came shallower as the stardust’s preserving glow waned. Jack must have felt it, too. His pale face had a blue tinge, especially around the mouth, but he opened his hands wide and cast his net ever onward.