A Sliver of Stardust (11 page)

“I don't understand,” Wren said, her words spilling faster at the thought of what she'd overheard the day before. “The Council was talking about the Magicians. About how they weren't dead after all.”

“So we heard,” Liza said, taking off her glasses and folding them up. “They told us at the summoning, but I still can't believe it. Not dead? What can it mean?”

“We will find out. All the Fiddlers have been summoned, and with this new development, the Council will certainly give Mary access to the rest of Boggen's research.” Baxter squeezed Wren's shoulder and looked at the rest of them in turn. “The important thing to remember is that there are centuries of conflicts and alliances that you know next to nothing about. Better not to speak to any full Fiddler in the Crooked House. Best of all not to mention magic or Magicians or Boggen's name. Understood? Now, back to our lesson. We
must begin the practical portion. The starlamp first, I think.”

Baxter and Liza led them through one of the library doors and into a space three times its size and completely empty. Wren soon saw why. “Put one foot behind the other, here.” Baxter pressed on Simon's chest. “And lean your torso back like this. Good form. Now, say the rhyme, and I'll show you what to do with your hands.” Baxter pinched some stardust and tossed it into the air, stirring up a cloud of silvery blue around Simon. Baxter chanted the lines and then instructed Simon to repeat after him:

Twinkle, twinkle, little star

How I wonder what you are.

“Cup one palm like this,” Baxter said, letting some of the dust settle. “And use the fingers of the other hand to cut this pattern in the remaining dust as it falls.”

Up above the world so high,

Like a diamond in the sky.

Simon's fingers traced a diamond through the stardust.

“Now, raise your hand up here,” Baxter said, “toward the ceiling. And sing the rest of the rhyme.”

There your bright and tiny spark

Lights the traveler in the dark.

As Simon chanted, the stardust began to come together, the different strands of blue light tightening up and coalescing into a pulsing mass.

How I wonder what you are,

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

By the time Simon was finished, a ball of light hovered above his palm.

“Excellent!” Liza said with enthusiasm. “You're a natural.”

Simon was staring at the ball of stardust light, his face aglow with the wonder of it. “This feels amazing. Wren, you've got to try it.”

“Useful, no?” Baxter said. “Especially in dark places. Your turn, Wren.”

Wren stood, grateful that Simon went first and that at least she knew the opening part of the rhyme. She
copied Baxter's movements, leaning back like she'd been blown by a gust of wind, raising her arms to play the stardust. And then the magic was there, the warmth and energy swirling around her in a shower of aqua light. She reached out to touch it, but it slipped out of her grasp. She cupped her hands as Baxter showed her, but the stardust fell flat.

“Keep practicing,” Baxter said with an encouraging smile, and moved on to Jack.

Simon came up on the other side of her. “Don't worry, Wren. It can take a while to get the hang of it.”

Wren knew he was trying to be nice, but she still had a hard time returning his smile. “You seemed to get it right away,” she said pleasantly. She shut out the sight of Simon creating and snuffing starlamps as if it were as easy as turning a light switch on and off, and tried again.

Baxter had finished instructing Jack how to begin the rhyme. If Simon made it look easy, Jack made it look like he'd been working stardust forever. On his first try, a glowing ball of light flared in his palm.

“Very good,” Baxter said, running his thumb over his stubbly jaw. “Very good indeed.”

Wren tried again. Jack might have had an extra few
months to work with stardust, but that didn't mean she couldn't catch up with him. When she started to sing the final verse, the strands of stardust quivered, as though they might come together in a ball, but then collapsed into a pile of glimmering dust, the glow of the magic winking out.

Wren clenched her jaw. Her skin prickled with irritation, and she felt like throwing her whole pouch of stardust in Jack's and Simon's faces. Instead, she tossed up another pinch of dust, but this time no sparkling strands appeared. The room around her disappeared in a fog. She felt a jagged surface at her back, pushing her forward to the edge of a rocky cliff.

“Simon?” she called. “Liza?” But there was no answer. She was alone on a ledge with nothing but a perilous drop at her feet. The cave in front of her was all shadows, black and gray, and Wren recognized that she was somehow back in the world of her dreams. A waking dream this time. The stone at her feet crumbled, a few bits breaking off and plummeting into the murky water below. She looked to either side of her, frantic to find another ledge. A bridge. A path. Anything.

“Help!” she screamed, but no sound came out of her mouth. She tried again, fighting hard to say something,
to say anything, when the wall behind her gave another massive push, and she was tumbling, falling, hands flailing in desperation before her body hit the water, her scream cut off before it even began.

She braced herself for icy cold liquid, muscles tensed and prepared to fight her way to the surface. But instead, she found herself cocooned in a wooden boat, her panic at falling overcome by a whispered chorus of music. Voices that sounded like flutes and strings and the wind through the pines swirled around her as her boat was swept along the waterway.

“Dreamer,” the lovely voices sang. “Dreamer, you must find the way.”

“What do you mean?” Wren could actually speak this time, and the sense of terror was gone. Instead, she felt at peace. Like she belonged there with the voices. “Find the way to what?”

But the voices didn't answer. Instead they kept singing:

Winken, Blinken, and Nod one night

Sailed off in a wooden shoe

Sailed off on a river of crystal light,

Into a sea of dew.

“The wings mark the way to find what you wish,”

The old moon told the three.

“Leave your nets and leave your fish,

And dive down beneath the sea, the sea.

You will find the wings that you seek, down beneath the sea.”

“What wings? The way to where?” Wren asked. “What am I to find?” But the voices only repeated the same chorus in different harmonies as her little vessel rocked its way gently down the stream. Wren looked over the edge, where one of the boat's many propellers whirred below the surface. The water shone like an opal, covered with a thin layer of fog. She reached out a finger and trailed it through the mist, astonished to find that it wasn't liquid at all. Instead, glimmering pinpricks of stardust were carrying her along.

The music around her changed, quickened with urgency. The rhyme came faster now, one verse upon another, so that it was soon hard to distinguish the lyrics, a rising cacophony of sounds that all stopped on one word:
wings.

“Wren?” Liza's voice cut through the chorus of wings, and with the sound came clarity. The foggy scene
evaporated in an instant, and Wren was back in the lesson room, crouched on the floor.

“Wren, is something the matter?” Liza stooped down, putting her glasses on so she could peer into Wren's eyes. “Are you reacting to the stardust?”

“I'm okay,” Wren said, conscious of Simon and Jack watching her from across the room. “Really. Just a bit queasy, that's all.”

Liza waved away Baxter's concern. “I'll work with Wren. You continue with the boys.”

While the others returned to their rhymework, Liza sat Wren down on the floor and produced a bottle of water from her bag. “Drink this.”

She watched as Wren drank the cool liquid, her face full of concern. “Self-discipline is important for anyone using stardust, of course,” Liza finally said. “But it will be especially crucial to your ability to mature as a Fiddler, Wren. I know you didn't intend to cause trouble yesterday, but that's just the problem. You have got to stay in control. Otherwise the stardust—or your emotions—will get the best of you.”

“Control myself?” Wren echoed, thinking of how powerless she had felt when the cauldron of emotions overtook her the day before, of how she had no ability to do anything in the dream world, especially now that
it could draw her in even when she was awake. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“Think of the present moment. Let the stardust wash over you like waves from the ocean,” Liza said. “You can try breathing slowly. At least, that's what Boggen used to do.”

Wren felt a sudden chill, and she didn't think it was from the water. “Boggen?”

“He was the last Weather Changer we have record of, and he was very private about it. I remember him being extraordinarily focused. Deep breaths in and out when he worked the stardust.” Her eyes grew wide at Wren's expression. “You didn't know, did you? That Boggen was a Weather Changer?”

“No,” Wren said, and sat in the silence that followed.
Boggen
was the last Weather Changer?

Liza sighed. “One way or another, you're going to have to control it, Wren. More outbursts like the one from yesterday will get you in serious trouble in the Crooked House.”

And will remind everyone that I'm like Boggen.
Wren filled in the missing pieces. No wonder all the Fiddlers had reacted that way in the Council meeting. No wonder even Mary had been surprised. What would
Liza say if Wren told her it was worse than just outbursts? That she'd been having strange dreams, too? She opened her mouth to admit the truth when something bright whizzed by her ear.

Liza turned in a flash, stardust spinning in front of her as though she was going to throw it at someone.

“Sorry about that!” Simon said, giving her a sheepish smile. “I didn't know you could throw a starlamp.”

“Nice shot.” Jack elbowed Simon in the ribs and began to ball up another starlamp. “I wonder if I could hit Wren.”

“You'll do no such thing,” Liza said, marching over to them and cuffing Baxter on the shoulder. “What are you teaching them, anyway? Basic rhymework, Baxter. That's what we need to focus on.”

“Fine. I'll teach them the
proper
way to throw things with stardust.” Baxter smirked at Liza and began demonstrating the next rhyme. “As round as an apple,” he said, curving his palms like a bowl. “As deep as a cup. Work the stardust”—he jerked his hands back suddenly—“to pull it up.” The room filled with glowing light. Wren watched Jack execute the rhyme perfectly, sending the book on the floor in front of him spinning through the air.

Was it only a few minutes before that she had cared that Jack and Simon were better than her at using the stardust? It felt like longer than that. Simon sent his book flying across the room, and Wren managed a weak smile, but her heart wasn't in it. All she could think about was what she had just learned. Why was she having those dreams? The fact that she was awake for this one hinted that the dreams were more than just her subconscious popping up in weird ways, but she didn't want the dreams to mean something. She pushed them out of her mind in the same way she did the significance of being a Weather Changer, as if by not thinking about it she could erase the fact that all the Fiddlers now suspected she was somehow connected to the Magicians. And Boggen.

In marble walls as white as milk,

Lined with skin as soft as silk,

Mysteries manifold do appear,

For those who seek them, crystal clear.

B
etween stardust lessons with Liza and Baxter, apprentice chores in the kitchen, and exploring the Crooked House with Jack and Simon, Wren's days were busy. Every night she faithfully texted her parents something vaguely related to what she had actually done that day, and their replies gave her fleeting stabs of homesickness. It was hard for her to imagine that her old life was spinning along as usual—her mom was wrapped up in the annual Springfest play and her dad busy teaching courses at the college. How could all that stay the same when her whole world had changed?

Wren wondered what her mom and dad would say if they could see her now. She stood on a balcony that overlooked the Opal Sea and pulled the rope to one of the dumbwaiters that connected the kitchens to the rest of the Crooked House. All apprentices were given a daily job assignment, and Elsa had saddled Wren with the midmorning hot cross bun delivery. Most Fiddlers ate in their rooms or in their laboratories. Baxter had clicked his tongue over the lack of culinary interest, and Wren was beginning to see what he meant. Oatmeal for breakfast, some kind of soup for lunch, and dinner was always a variation on meat and vegetables. Hot cross buns midmorning and midafternoon, like clockwork.

Wren carefully transferred the baskets to her small handcart. Over the years Fiddlers had claimed the natural caverns that pigeonholed the walls of the Crooked House, and an impressive latticework of wooden balconies and staircases connected the labs. Wren steadied the cart with one hand as it tipped its way over the rough planks. “Don't speak to the full Fiddlers,” Elsa had commanded her that first day. Wren needn't have worried about breaking that rule. But for the sound of the one rumbling wheel, Wren was surrounded with
silence. She wondered what was behind the green doors that lined the wall. Some were marked with cryptic abbreviations and numbers. A few held only a title that seemed connected with a rhyme.

She checked her clipboard. The door marked
WILLIAM BLUE
was to receive three orders. Her cart was laden with baskets of fresh-made rolls, each expertly twisted into a neat knot and marked with an
X
on top. Wren prepared the trays and stacked them by the door. Mary had warned her to be careful near the laboratories. She said some of the Fiddlers spent weeks at a time immersed in their research, coming out into daylight surprised to find a whole season had passed. Like Mary could talk. Wren hadn't seen her for more than a few stolen moments each week, when Mary left her meetings with the Council to give them some odd task. One time it had been to find all the library books having to do with moonlight. Later, Mary had changed her mind and wanted anything referencing Jupiter's moons. And then she had wanted to speak to Simon alone about the state of the falcon mews. The last time they'd seen her she had quizzed Jack on where exactly he had found Boggen's stone. Mary was working her way through Boggen's old research logs, but she wouldn't tell them
anything more than what she needed them to do.

Wren had given up hope that she would ever be able to talk to Mary about her dreams. At first it had been because there never seemed to be time. Mary appeared and disappeared before any of them could say much at all. But the more Wren dreamed, the more she became uncertain. She strongly suspected that her dreams were somehow connected to being a Weather Changer. She was learning to control her emotional response when she worked the stardust, and sometimes she could even get through a whole lesson without freaking out. But when the deep breaths didn't work and she failed to rein things in, one of the waking dreams was usually the result. If the Council had gotten all weird about her being a Weather Changer, what would they do if she told them the rest of it?

Wren pushed the cart around the curving corner for the next delivery and then came to a sudden stop, scrambling to make sure she didn't lose her remaining baskets. The door in front of her was unlike all the others. It was wide open
.
NUMBER 3
was hand-lettered on the sign just outside, and a faint humming sound came from within. Her pulse quickened. She knew what she should do. She should unload the trays and move on,
exactly as she had been instructed.
Don't disturb the Fiddlers.
But this might be her only chance to get a peek at a real honest-to-goodness Fiddler lab. She tiptoed closer to the door, and she was almost to it—she could even see the whitewashed walls inside—when the humming sound stopped. Everything went still, and the silence of the hallway seemed almost deafening. She set the trays down noiselessly and crept back to her cart. Wren eased it forward, mentally cursing the telltale wheel, when she heard the click of what sounded like dress shoes on stone.

“Ah, an apprentice.” The voice from behind froze her into place. “And just the one I was hoping to speak with. You're one of the new ones who belongs to Mary, aren't you? The Weather Changer?”

Wren turned around to see Cole, the leader of the Council, standing in the open doorway. He was wearing the same rumpled sweater she had seen before, but this time no falcon perched on his shoulder.

“Won't you come in?” Cole said without a smile.

Everything in the Crooked House was a strange mixture of old and new. Kiosks with power outlets and Wi-Fi hubs next door to the library full of ancient
books. The kitchen where modern appliances hummed beside old-fashioned cast-iron stoves and spits turning over the fire. But nothing had prepared Wren for what she saw in Cole's lab.

Once she followed him through the door, it was as if she'd left the Crooked House behind altogether. Gleaming stainless steel tables filled the room, marking stations where white-cloaked Fiddlers bent over microscopes. The Fiddler nearest her stood in front of a huge touch screen adding data to a hovering 3D strand of DNA. The humming sound she had heard earlier came from a robotic laser that someone was using on what looked like an animal pelt. Hanging fluorescent lights replaced the sconces she had become used to. Only the stone floor below her feet reminded her that she was still inside a mountain.

“What is this place?” Wren gasped, taking it all in.

“My laboratory,” Cole said pleasantly, leading her past the maze of tables to a glassed-in cubicle that stood in the center of it all. He gestured to the metal desk with a chair on each side. “Won't you have a seat?”

Behind him, she could see a Fiddler carefully measuring a steaming liquid from an eyedropper into a glass petri dish. The Fiddler conjured some stardust, and while Wren watched, the liquid flared red and
then a bright neon green.

“What are you researching?” Wren managed as she sat down. She couldn't think what DNA and neon liquid and animal skins had to do with one another.

“Anything and everything. Surely even in your short time as an apprentice, you've thought of the potential for stardust.” Cole waved his hand to point to different stations. “Improving technology. Finding cures for terminal diseases. Unlocking the mystery of genetic sequencing. Any new scientific discoveries made in the ordinary world likely have an Alchemist behind them.” He folded his hands flat on the table, interlocking his fingers. “I've had to pause my own research, because of this new crisis—this message you've discovered from Boggen.”

“I didn't discover it,” Wren said, distracted by the sight of a stardust explosion on the far side of the room. The woman at that station was now covered in the neon liquid, rescued only by the Fiddler next to her, who wove a rhyme that somehow quenched the glowing fire. “Mary's the one you should be talking to.”

“
Fiddler
Mary, you mean? You can be sure that I've learned everything she has to tell. Odd, isn't it, that Boggen was the last Weather Changer before you?” Cole's voice was low and soothing. “And that you and your
friends arrive just after we learn he's touching our world again. In fact, we believe Boggen has been communicating with someone here at the Crooked House, and we think he meant for that someone to find his message.”

That got Wren's undivided attention. She snapped her head back around.

Cole's smile was still in place, but there was a hard look in his eyes. “Or perhaps it's that someone
here
is trying to find
him
?”

Wren's heart started to pound. Her thoughts felt muddy. What did Cole mean? Why was he asking her these questions? He was saying more now, something about suspecting that Boggen was in another dimension or on another planet and wanted someone from the Crooked House to help him. Someone Boggen had special access to. Her mind whirled at the idea. Cole was talking about space travel and other dimensions. And then things began to come into focus. He wasn't just filling her in on the latest Boggen research. He was interrogating her. Cole thought
she
knew something about Boggen.

“But my particular research interest,” Cole was saying, “is in sleep disorders and the psychology of dreams.” His thick-rimmed glasses made his eyebrows look extra sharp as they furrowed down disapprovingly.
“Boggen was a Weather Changer and a Dreamer, you know. The two often go hand in hand. Wren, how have you been sleeping lately?”

“Fine,” she lied. One part of her brain was screaming at her to tell the truth. This was proof that the dreams meant something, and Cole could probably tell her exactly what. But the other part instinctively knew that would be dangerous. Here she was, already suspect as the first Weather Changer. There was no way she was going to tell Cole, with his frowning eyebrows and incriminating gaze, that she, coincidentally, was also a Dreamer who couldn't control her dreams.

“Elsa keeps us so busy, you know?” Wren babbled. “I'm exhausted at night and conk out right away. Never slept so well as I do here.” But the claim sounded false even to Wren's own ears. Every night was the same. Repeats of the dreams she'd had before, or something very like them. Colorless scenes where strange things happened.

“Fiddler Elsa, you mean” was all Cole said in reply, his frown making two deep lines between his eyes. “Have you wandered anywhere in the Crooked House you shouldn't?”

“No,” Wren said, wondering if he thought apprentices were stupid.

He folded his hands and leaned in toward her. “Have you touched any magical object you don't know the purpose of?”

“No.”
Seriously?
Did he actually think Wren would own up to it if she had? “No, sir.” The creases between his eyes deepened. “I mean, Fiddler. No, Fiddler,” she added belatedly.

“What about Fiddler labs? Have you gone into any of them?”

Wren folded her hands to match his. So apparently he did think apprentices were stupid if he thought she would give a different answer to the same question thinly disguised. She ignored his frown. “I already told you,” Wren said evenly. “I only go where I'm told and do what I'm told.”

“And your dreams.” Cole shifted topics without warning. “Fiddler Liza reports you've had some odd moments, when you seem to be somewhere else. Could you explain?”

“I—uh—” Wren hunted for words.
Liza
had told Cole about their lessons? That was unexpected. “It's Simon, you see,” Wren said, thinking fast. “I've always been smarter than him, but here”—what had started out as a stalling tactic was becoming genuine—“here,
he's better with the stardust. And sometimes having lessons with him and Jack is”—her voice dropped—“really hard.”

Cole sat back in his chair, arms folded across his chest, a look of disappointment in his eyes. “I don't want to hear about your petty rivalries, Apprentice.” His voice was hard. “Don't waste my time.”

Wren drew herself up. Waste
his
time? He was the one interrogating her! “I'm sorry I can't be more help, Fiddler Cole,” she said in her most grown-up voice. “But I really should get back to my rounds. Fiddler Elsa”—she made sure to enunciate
Fiddler
—“will be upset if I'm not back soon.” She glanced around the lab, feeling a fleeting sadness that she couldn't learn more of what was going on here, but even that wasn't worth the risk of extending her time under Cole's hawkish gaze. “Thank you for letting me see your laboratory.”

Cole eyed her over steepled fingers. “Very well,” he said. “If you think of anything else, you know where to find me.”