A Sliver of Stardust (15 page)

Pease porridge hot,

Pease porridge cold,

Pease porridge in the pot

Nine days old.

M
aking pease porridge takes precision and focus,” Baxter said, hoisting a cauldron onto a worktable and then using a long spoon to stir the thin layer of stardust inside.

They were in a room that looked like a medieval apothecary. Cabinets full of haphazardly arranged jars and bottles lined the walls. Dried herbs hung from beams that ran along the cavern ceiling. Flames flickered in the fireplace, and Baxter occasionally fanned them with a pair of old bellows.

Baxter pulled down several glass beakers from a
corner cabinet, each labeled in his illegible script.

“So crude stardust needs to be refined before working magic?” Simon asked. He had his notebook out and was detailing every move Baxter made.

“Yes.” Baxter measured out a pale liquid into the bottle. “The first Fiddlers explored the magical properties of stardust, but only when it had gone through a process of refining. In its raw state, it looks like a plain old meteorite.”

Wren didn't think there was anything plain about meteorites. “I wonder how they knew to try heating it.”

“How else does a scientist learn anything?” Jack uncorked a bottle and shook out tiny dried flowers into his palm. “Experimentation.”

Wren pinched a few of the flowers between her thumb and forefinger. They looked like snowflakes that someone had dried out and captured forever. Their minuscule geometric patterns were embossed with the iridescent dust that coated the edges.

“Random experimentation with stardust is risky.” Baxter wiped his hands on the front of his apron. “If you don't perform the rhyme exactly as intended, you can get strange results. One time Mary ended up losing
all the hair on her head, including her eyebrows, when she tried to grow her falcon a thicker layer of feathers for the winter.” Baxter winked at them. “Don't tell her I told you.”

He continued talking as he chopped some dried herbs into bits. “There are recipe books that give detailed instructions for making pease porridge. You would do well to study them.” He nodded toward a tottering pile of books perched on top of the cabinets and then used the flat edge of his knife to expertly scoop up the remnants and slide them into the pot on the table in front of him. He sprinkled a tiny bit of refined stardust on top, grabbed a spoon, and stirred it all together.

Piping hot, smoking hot.

What I've got you have not.

Hot gray pease, hot, hot, hot;

Hot gray pease, hot.

While he sang, something was happening in the pot. Sparks shot up from the interior even though there was no flame and no heat source. The familiar glow of stardust filled the room, but this time a burnt smell came with it.

“Scalding hot,” Baxter said in response to Wren's wrinkled nose. “Now we let it steep.” He turned back to the shelf, sending glass bottles tinkling together, while he rummaged around inside. He finally came up with an empty jar. “Rats. Out of astrid petals. You three wait here.” He gave them each a cutting board and a sheaf of dried herbs. “Chop these. Tiny cuts, just like this, and I'll be back in a minute.” He bustled out of the room, leaving them alone with the bubbling cauldron.

Wren sniffed the plant in front of her. Catnip, maybe. Or spearmint. “I thought that with, well, modern scientific methods, medicine and chemistry and all the rest, Fiddlers might be beyond the herb thing.”

“Where do you think modern medicines come from?” Simon set down his notebook and unplugged one of the beakers. “Nature. Even synthetic medicines are made up of compounds of natural ingredients.” He reached for his knife and cutting board. “You're just not used to this kind of laboratory.”

“And you are?” Wren said, looking around the room. “You do have to admit, it's all kind of strange.”

“What isn't strange around here?” Jack shrugged. “Think of all we've gotten used to already.” He cut at
the pile of herbs in front of him, but for once he was not able to do something expertly.

Wren snorted. Jack had no idea what she had to get used to. She'd had another of the dreams the night before, a return to the same desolate landscape of trees and stumps. The heaviness of the place lingered in her memory. The more dreams she had, the more significant she felt they might be. Like they were messages, somehow. Or warnings. She tried to push away the thought that they were most certainly connected to Boggen. That those who called her Dreamer might somehow be part of Boggen's world or possibly even be Boggen himself. Was she seeing things that had already happened or were her dreams giving her a glimpse into wherever Boggen and the Magicians had gone?

Wren finished chopping her pile of herbs and meandered over to the stack of rhyme books, pulling them down, blinking against the cloud of dust that accompanied them. Their thick covers were warped with age and the pages wrinkly from spills and stains. None of the books had titles. They seemed to be more observation logs than actual books, but each had a Fiddler name etched into the front cover. Wren flipped through the first volume, skipping over the parts stained with
unidentifiable blotches, and moved on to the second. It seemed that a hundred years ago a team of Fiddlers had worked together to come up with a new rhyme that helped speed recovery from the measles. Notes had been written in several hands. Together, they had used stardust to create something that probably saved many lives and was the forerunner of the modern vaccination.

Wren ran a hand over the various Fiddlers' notes. Perhaps part of her problem was that she was trying to solve the mystery of the dreams alone. She wondered what would happen if she told Baxter everything. Would he help her? Or would he hand her right over to Cole and the Fiddler Council? No, telling Baxter and the other grown-ups was out of the question. But what about Jack and Simon? Would they laugh and call her crazy? Would they accuse her of being the one who was contacting Boggen? She watched Simon's messed-up hair bouncing as he chopped the diminishing pile of leaves in front of him. Not Simon. Simon wouldn't think she was crazy.

Wren took a deep breath. “There's something I need to tell you guys,” she said in a quiet voice. “About these weird dreams I've been having.”

“Dreams?” Simon's gaze fixed on her like a hawk's.
“What do you mean,
dreams
?”

“Dreams,” Wren said, hardly knowing how to begin. “Or maybe messages.” In that moment, her idea of the dreams being something more seemed silly, the result of an overactive imagination. And as she told the boys about them—first the woman and the man who were so frightened about something, then the old man and the shepherdess, then the boat on the Opal Sea, and the bizarre crow in the desolate wasteland—it all seemed even sillier.

“Do you think they could be important? I mean, what if they're messages or something?” She picked at her thumbnail. “From the Magicians,” she finished weakly.

“I don't know.” Simon's eyebrows knitted together thoughtfully. “Weird dreams could just be a side effect of using stardust. Or being a Weather Changer.” He chewed on his pencil eraser. “But you say they talked to you. And the one with the window—you're sure he was surprised to see you?”

Wren thought back on her different dreams. “I'm sure. They all kept calling me ‘Dreamer,' like they recognized me or something.”

“But what did you say to him? The scary man who
marked your neck.” Jack separated out a few stalks of the herbs. His voice sounded oddly intent until Wren realized he was about to make another joke. “Did he hop over a candlestick, perhaps? Or maybe he lived in a shoe. Or, wait, I bet he's really a merry old soul.” He gave Wren a crooked half smile. “I told you before, Wren. Your subconscious is probably just connecting what you know from old rhymes with what's actually happening here. Weird dreams aren't anything to worry about.”

“We've got to know more.” Simon shut his notebook and tucked it into his pocket. “Next time, Wren, don't run in the dream. Don't try to hide. Talk to them and see what they want.”

Wren licked her lips. That was easy for Simon to say. He'd never felt the heart-pounding terror of it. The horror of not being able to speak. “Okay,” she said, but she didn't feel okay. Not because Simon's idea wasn't a good one, but because of the hidden assumptions in it: They were messages, and there was going to be a next time.

“Oh, good,” Baxter said, bustling back into the room. “You're still here.” He moved over to the cauldron and gave it a quick stir.

“Don't. Tell. Him,” Wren mouthed to the others. Jack shrugged and Simon gave her a sharp nod. Wren hoped she hadn't made a mistake trusting them.

“I ran into some other Fiddlers in the garden. Charles is out of crude stardust,” Baxter said. “And so is Hester. I need you to run over and gather some fresh.”

“
Fresh
stardust?” Wren said.

“Well, relatively fresh. Only a million years old or so,” Baxter said as he puffed the billows to fan the flames of the fire. He laughed at their astonished faces. “Off the meteorite. What better place to gather it than from a fallen shooting star? Come now, there's lots to learn, and no time like the present.” He stooped to pull some tools out of a low cupboard. “Simply chip it off with this.” Baxter gave each of them a small pickax and what appeared to be a paintbrush. “I can't go with you, because the porridge is getting to the tricky part. Needs constant stirring.” He dumped a handful of the leaves Simon had crushed into the cauldron. “Grab some of the buckets near the doorway. Off you go, now.”

“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.”

B
axter said to go through the green door right past the bridge,” Jack said as they made their way across the glowing opal water.

“I wonder what a meteorite looks like up close,” Simon mused. “Examining the source of stardust should be illuminating. Pun intended.”

Two Fiddlers approached, but if they were Elsa's or Cole's spies, they were more subtle than the usual ones. Neither spared Wren and the boys a glance.

Wren eyed the opal stream as they crossed the bridge,
the vivid memory of her dreams fresh in her mind. What would happen if she jumped into that liquid?

“Just a second,” she said to the boys, making sure no one else was in sight. Then she leaned down and stretched out a finger. Ice-cold liquid.
Definitely water.
Nothing like the warm stardust of her dreams.

She got to her feet, and there, coming toward the end of the bridge, was an unwelcome but familiar shape. Elsa's tall form moved in their direction, her cape billowing out behind her. Wren didn't think she'd spotted them yet. She was too busy shouting orders to poor Jill, who skulked at her side.

“We've got to get out of sight,” Wren hissed, grabbing Simon and Jack by their elbows and shoving them toward the end of the bridge. It wouldn't matter that Baxter had sent them on an errand. Elsa didn't care that Baxter and Liza were helping to teach Mary's apprentices; in fact, it only made her more quick to accuse them of doing something wrong.

Wren hurried off the bridge toward the right, dashing through the green door. Elsa was still engrossed in berating Jill.

“Just in time,” Jack said, bending over to catch his breath.

“Poor Jill,” Wren said with a sigh. She wished they could somehow snatch her away from Elsa's grasp.

“Interesting.” Simon wasn't even winded. He was examining the mosslike substance that covered one wall. “This resembles an aquatic moss, yet we find it here in the mountain.” He whipped out his notebook and began scribbling. “Very interesting.” With a flourish he dotted the paper with his pencil. “If sea life actually exists here, perhaps your dream isn't so outlandish, Wren. Maybe we really could dive underneath the sea.”

The dreams.
Wren hurried over and looked at the moss, which seemed to her like every other kind of moss she'd ever seen. “This came from the sea?”

“Seriously, Simon? Dreams are dreams.” Jack laughed, but he sounded a little annoyed.

“Obviously, dreams are dreams,” Simon said stiffly. “But that doesn't mean they can't be messages as well.”

Jack only harrumphed at this, but Wren thought about Simon's theory as they walked along. What if the dreams were symbolic? What were they trying to tell her? And, more important, who was the one trying to tell her something? The tunnel was worn smooth with use, and they followed it for some time until the blue
ceiling sloped down, and ice and dirt crystalized to form iridescent columns.

“Hmm,” Simon said, examining the base of the arch. “I wonder if these are man-made or natural.”

“Fiddler-made, more like,” Wren muttered as she pushed past him to the crossroads, where jagged archways stretched off into the distance in three different directions.

The first smelled earthy and the walls fairly glowed with a thick coating of luminescent vegetation. The second was pitch-black, with only the slightest light reflecting from the white of the columns, and the third lay directly in front of them, painted a pinkish red with the colors of a brilliant sunset.

They followed the directions Baxter had given them and chose the third, and Wren was pleased to find the air grew fresher the farther they went, hinting at an external opening somewhere nearby. Soon, the path connected to a wide cavern, and way up overhead, Wren could see the promise of blue sky. The ground dipped down into a shallow bowl where the cave walls had long ago been pushed aside by a powerful force. Chunks of rock lay scattered across the floor around what at first appeared to be a wall of the cavern. It took Wren a moment to
register what she was looking at. “A meteorite,” she breathed. “A piece of living astronomy, buried down here.” She moved over to what wasn't a wall at all and ran her hand over the massive side of the meteorite.

“This rock was actually once in outer space,” she said to the boys, but they were staring up at the crack of daylight. “Think of it,” Wren went on. “Thousands, maybe millions of years ago, it barreled its way through Earth's atmosphere and changed things forever.” Wren didn't know how long she stood there, tracing the pockmarked surface with her palms.

“Look. You can see how it's been mined for stardust.” Simon had come up behind her and now used the paintbrush tool to poke at the dull aqua color shimmering in a crack.

The surface appeared to be an ordinary Earth rock, except for the ashy substance that hid in the craters. Empty crevices showed places where stardust had already been excavated. Wren took her pick and painstakingly dug at what seemed to be a particularly rich lode and then brushed out the stardust, which fell dully into her pail. “It doesn't glow at all,” she said.

“Of course not,” Simon said. “It hasn't been refined.” He examined some lichen growing on the rock formation next to them. “Hey, this plant is covered with
stardust as well.” His voice was full of excitement. “Fungi, perhaps.” Simon paused to pull out a specimen bag, but as he tried to collect the substance, it evaporated like steam off a hot drink.

“Very strange,” he said, after trying another time. “Definitely not plant matter.”

“Maybe it's a chemical reaction,” Wren said as together they examined the substance. “Something in the atmosphere producing a gaseous response.”

“Or maybe it's just a plant.” Jack sounded bored from where he sat on a crumbling remnant of meteorite. “C'mon, you guys, we shouldn't be wasting time in this place. Let's harvest the stardust and go.”

“Just another minute.” Wren moved back toward the meteorite and, in her haste, she stumbled on the uneven path, falling onto her hands and knees. She rubbed her scraped palms on her pants and took a deep breath.

“Are you okay?” Simon was at her side, but she didn't answer him. From her position on the floor she saw something she hadn't noticed before. There, carved on one corner of the reddish wall, was an unmistakable pair of wings.

She crawled forward, ignoring the burning on her hands, and began brushing at the wall.

“Wren? What's wrong?” Jack stood with his hands on his hips, looking at Wren like she'd gone mad.

“The wings,” she said. “The wings from the dream.”

“You've got to be kidding me,” Jack said, moving closer, and then his voice grew tense as he saw the etchings. “Are you sure?”

Wren scrambled to her feet, scouring the wall for clues. More wings appeared, leading them up and over the side of the meteorite. She jogged forward, brushing the small stones out of her cut palms, and then braced herself to climb up. Wedging one foot on a small outcropping, she was able to hoist her body over the top, scraping her stomach as she went. And then she was on the other side, following the trail of wings into what seemed a maze of rock formations. She squeezed between lichen-covered towers and scrambled over flat ones, slid through slim openings and balanced on narrow ledges, hunting for the wings all the while. If she hadn't been following them, she would have never found the way. But after she crawled through another gap and dropped down to the other side, she knew the wings had led her to the right spot. Ahead, a narrow sliver of stardust covered an opening that seemed to be cut between two giant stones. Delicate webs of
gossamer floated around the edges, glistening white against the black of the crack.

“I found something!” she yelled over her shoulder to the sound of the boys' labored breathing and scraping shoes. They'd had no trouble climbing over the formations but were having a harder time with the slender passageways.

Something drew Wren forward, closer and closer, until she stood before the opening. She knew all the way through her bones that it was important that she continue on, that she follow the way of the wings. She hesitated for barely a moment, but the driving impulse pushed away her uncertainty. She couldn't wait any longer. “I'm going on!” Wren shouted to the boys. “Stay here if you want. I'll be right back.”

She slid sideways, edging her body through the narrow space, holding her breath as she eased forward into darkness. Then, with a sigh of relief, she found that the gap widened as she continued on. Real cobwebs mingled with the shreds of stardust. Certainly no one had come this way in a long time.

There was a flare of light from somewhere behind her. Wren paused, watching it grow brighter, and then Simon was next to her, a perfectly made starlamp
hovering over his palm. Jack soon joined them, mumbling something about tight spaces.

“Look,” Wren gasped. Simon's starlamp illuminated the walls to reveal that the same silver mineral that pocked the meteorite was worked into a pattern here, the repeated imprint of hundreds of wings. Wren moved forward, the boys close behind, and as she went, the wing marks grew thicker, pressing in on top of one another as though they were passing through a whole flock of birds in flight.

And then the wind came. First it was the faintest hint of a breeze. Despite the dampness of the passageway, the current was warm. Wren smelled something like cinnamon, and more scents she didn't recognize, but the whole effect was of the delicious rich spicy smells of autumn and winter baking. She took another step, and the wind blew harder, pressing her clothes against her and tossing her hair about her eyes. It reminded Wren of that first wild ride on the falcon—the warm breath of stardust filling her completely. She laughed out loud and stretched her hands to either side, welcoming the wind.

“Whoa,” Jack said. “This is weird.”

“An updraft,” Wren said. “Warm air blown up from the Earth's hot crust. Isn't it amazing?”

Jack grunted in reply as the wind accompanied them, carrying Wren on toward the sound of running water. The tunnel bent round to one side and then spilled out into a glorious cave, bright with the late-afternoon sun. Wren stood at the tunnel mouth, blinking at the light streaming in from a high opening at the far end of the cave. Stairs had been cut into the rock, leading the way up and out, where Wren could see green foliage covering the entrance.

But it wasn't the outside that left Wren standing speechless. Nor the glistening rainbow of blues and purples that covered the cavern walls. It was the waterfall, spilling down from a rocky ledge near the cavern's roof, falling into a pool that steamed with the opal mist of the Crooked House and rushed merrily out of sight. The path they were on led to a stairway that curved behind the waterfall, where Wren could see the faint outline of an opening, a shape that looked remarkably like the doorways so pervasive in the Crooked House.

She left Simon trying to convince Jack that the plant that coated the walls here was the same as the lichen-like substance near the meteorite and made her way carefully over the slippery stone, the words of the dream rhyme echoing through her head.
You'll find the wings that you seek down beneath the sea.
She slipped
under the waterfall, the icy spray cold against her skin after the warm wind. There was no weathered green paint on this door. Instead, it was charred black with the remnants of a carefully lettered sign that had two lines of text. Wren worked hard to make out a
c
and an
a, n
and then some barely legible scratches before the archaic English letter that looked like a cursive
f
. “Cana? Candi?” she murmured. The sign said Can-something or other. The word on the first line was hard to decipher, but there was no doubt about the second line. Wren read the clear unmistakable letters out loud: “
Boggen
.”

She took a deep breath and stepped through the rough doorway. Scraps of what must have once been rugs covered the stony floor, and other clues to human existence dotted the room: a few pieces of splintered wood, some tottering chairs and empty barrels.

Near one wall, a tarnished pan hung above the remains of long-cold ashes, and next to it, some rusted pots that must have once held coal. Wren poked through them, surprised to find a large intact piece amid the dusty remnants. It was difficult to see anything in the fading daylight that filtered through the open door behind her. She pinched some stardust and
wove a wobbly starlamp that revealed a stash of fat squatty candles.
Candles!
That must be what the sign had said. Wren held one up, squinting. It seemed to be made of a dark purple wax that had withstood the wear of time and elements.

Wren took one and tucked it into her pocket. Maybe it was nothing, but if this was in fact a room Boggen had used, she guessed Mary would want to see it. She raised her head and scanned the room. A sheen of stardust caught her eye and she went over to what appeared to be a workspace carved into the stone walls with a mural painted above it. She moved closer. It wasn't a piece of artwork at all. It was a star map.

Wren stood breathless before it, the familiar horizon lines crisscrossing over constellations and galaxies she had never seen before. Between each point, someone had drawn what looked like a giant web, tracing a pathway through the atmosphere.

“What's that?” Simon's voice cut through her thoughts as he entered the room, his starlamp sending shadows scurrying over the map.

“It's what Mary's been looking for. Give me your notebook,” Wren demanded, rummaging around the candle in her cloak pocket for a pencil. “A star map,
remember? This has got to be one of Boggen's labs, and I'd bet anything Mary hasn't seen it yet,” she said as she copied down the markings, taking care to write exactly what she saw.