A Sliver of Stardust (17 page)

Wren told her about her discovery in Boggen's lab. “We think whoever made this wasn't simply identifying stars but was navigating a route through them.” She took a deep breath. “We think they might have made a gateway.”

Jill flipped back and forth between the pages. “Wren, this is unbelievable.” She peered closer, gathering her bushy hair to one shoulder so she could see the paper unhindered. She paused at the same spot that Wren had deliberated over in Boggen's lab. “Travel at the speed of light?”

“Yup.” Wren could barely keep the grin off her face.
This was big. Bigger than finding out she was a Fiddler. Bigger than flying through an aurora on a falcon. Bigger than the biggest thing she had seen stardust do. Fiddlers didn't just fly through the night sky. They flew through the universe.

“What if the Magicians are out there right now?” Jack walked over and looked out the large glass window at the front of the room. “What if there are Magicians looking at us from a galaxy far, far away?”

It was a clear night, and the Milky Way had never appeared more beautiful to Wren. “What do you think about that theory, Jill? Do you know anything about gateways? Or the Magicians?”

“I don't know anything about the Ms,” Jill said too quickly, and Wren exchanged glances with Simon. Perhaps he had been right about Jill's family.

“You mean the Magicians?” Simon asked with a frown.

“Stop saying the
M
-word,” Jill said, glancing over her shoulder like she expected one to pop out and flog her right then.

“Call them something else, then,” Wren pressed. “But tell us what you know.”

“So much of Fiddler lore was lost after the Civil
War,” Jill continued. “The worst part of the Ms leaving is that we've lost all their knowledge.” She kept her gaze fixed on the map. “Or most of it. Elsa's studied it some, and when she's asleep, I sometimes read her notes. The odd thing is, lately she's been researching stuff about gateways, too.” She gave a little gasp of discovery. “That's why she sent me hunting for candles, so she could see the star map.” It came out like a whisper, and then she looked up at Wren, blinking, as though she'd just remembered the others were there too. “I mean, space travel—” She cut off midsentence. “Amazing.”

Wren exchanged a glance with Simon.

“
Elsa's
studied the Magicians?” he said just as Wren said, “You need candles to see a star map?” The one she had found in Boggen's lab now felt heavy in her pocket.

Jill glanced over her shoulder as though a spy might spring from the forgotten observatory cupboards. “I shouldn't have said anything.”

Wren laid a hand on Jill's arm. “We're on your side, Jill. But we need to know what sort of things she's studied.” She squeezed Jill's arm. “Anything about Boggen?”

“I've seen his name,” Jill said slowly. “It's mostly just history. How Boggen was killing people and animals to make living stardust.” She fidgeted with her shirt collar. “I got nightmares the night I read that bit.” She gave Wren a guilty look. “I mean, it's not forbidden to learn about Boggen. Or the Ms. It doesn't mean I care about them.” Her cheeks were very red. “Or that I even want to know anything about them.” She peered at both Simon's and Wren's faces. “That's what you think, isn't it? That Elsa and I are somehow connected to the M—” She stumbled over the word. “Magicians? That we've been doing dark magic?”

“Mary told us the Council thinks someone's been in contact with the Magicians. That they might even be trying to help Boggen,” Wren said, hurrying on when she saw Jill was about to protest. “I don't think it's you, Jill. But could it be Elsa?”

“Whoa.” Jill's eyes grew wide. “That
is
big news. Is that what that summoning was about when you first arrived? No wonder the Council has been in secret meetings ever since.” She shook her head. “But I think you're wrong. I don't think even Elsa would do that.”

“Why not?” Wren pressed, and then gave a little laugh. “She seems pretty interested in sucking the life
out of apprentices to me.”

“Don't joke, Wren,” Jill said. “Elsa's family died in the Civil War.” She stood and folded her arms across her chest. “All of them. Why else do you think she hates Mary?”

“Oh,” Wren said as pieces of the puzzle fell into place. “Because Mary was Boggen's mentor, and he's the one who turned on everyone.”

“Are you going on about your dreams again, Wren?” Jack poked his head out from behind the gyroscope. “Come
on
you guys, history is b-o-r-i-n-g. Have a look at the stars instead.”

“Do you know why all the Magicians followed Boggen?” Wren asked, ignoring Jack.

“Well, he was part of the Council, I know that,” Jill said, screwing her face up as though she was trying to remember. “I think the other Ms thought that Fiddlers should run the world, that it was stupid the Fiddlers were trying to help ordinary people who kept messing everything up. In apprentice lessons, they always tell us the Alchemists would've won for sure, but I suppose we'll never know, because the Ms all just disappeared.”

“Through the gateway,” Simon finished for her.

Jill leaned in close. “If what you say is true, I bet I
know why Elsa's studying all this stuff. She wouldn't be communicating with the Ms to help them, but to get her revenge.”

Wren leaned back against a stool. No wonder Elsa hated her. If she couldn't get revenge on the Magicians, would Elsa settle for taking it out on Wren, the infamous Weather Changer who everyone was sure was connected with Boggen? She felt sick to her stomach. And the funny thing was, she wouldn't blame Elsa a bit. Everything pointed to Wren being Boggen's pawn. The strange dreams with their messages. The way the wings had led her to his old lab. Even the fact that she knew how to read a star map.

“What would it take to have a look at Elsa's notes?” Simon was asking Jill as Jack came over to join them.

“Are they still going on about this?” Jack pushed himself up to sit on the table. “Magicians. Alchemists. Who cares about the difference? We can use stardust to
travel through space
!” He waved his hands wildly around the room. “Look. You can see Jupiter through that telescope. If we can figure out what those Magicians knew, maybe we could see Jupiter
up close
.”

“If we could figure out what the Magicians knew, we could do a lot of things,” Wren said.

Jill had flipped through Simon's notebook, and now they both were bent over the sketch of the mysterious evaporating fungi, debating its healing properties.

“Well,” Jack said, “we know some of what they knew. Maybe we should go back and search Boggen's lab again. See if there's something we missed. Get a closer look at that star map. This is what stardust is all about! New discoveries! New adventures!” He leaned in close, his eyes shining with excitement. “Space travel, Wren.”

Jack's energy was contagious. The worry she'd been feeling about what the Council would say paled in comparison to the significance of their discovery. She got to her feet, feeling a bit reckless. Jack's talk about the room they had found had given her an idea. Before she told the Council and they locked her up forever, or whatever it was Fiddlers did to punish apprentices they thought were traitors, she wanted to see it for herself.

“I did find something else down there.” Wren pulled out one of the candles from her pocket. “Jill said the candles have something to do with the star map.”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “There's a rooftop balcony.” He pointed to a door in the corner. “I saw it from outside. Let's light it there.”

Wren set the midnight purple candle on the widest area of the balcony, sending crumbles of wax down into an ashy circle.

Jack bent, and the starlamp he'd made flared with energy the closer it got to the candle. “All set?”

Wren felt like it was the Fourth of July, with Jack lighting the first firework. “Get ready to run,” she said, pressing back a few steps.

But when Jack lit the candle, there was no explosion. No sudden shooting off of sparks. No burst of light. Instead, a thin trickle of stardust smoke trailed up and out into the twilit sky. The evening's first constellations were visible, and soon the wisps of stardust dissipated in the midst of them.

“It smells nice,” Jack said, noting the incense-y aroma coming from the candle. “Maybe Fiddlers used it like perfume.”

“More like deodorant. People back then stunk,” Wren said with a bitter smile. She didn't know what she expected the candle to do, but
absolutely nothing
was a huge disappointment. Maybe they needed to light it back in Boggen's lab.

“Looking at the stars is like looking back in time.”
Jack leaned back on his palms, tilting his head to take in the expanse of the heavens. “Didn't Einstein or somebody say that?”

Wren joined him, letting her gaze soak up the myriad stars. Because the Crooked House was out in the middle of nowhere, no neon lights muddied the view. She felt her face relax, and the knot of nerves in her chest loosened a tiny bit. She'd been so busy learning about stardust and fighting off dreams and worrying about what the Council thought about her that she'd forgotten how lovely it was to just be. How calming it was to see the infinite expanse of outer space and realize that she was spinning along in the middle of it, part of a whole that was more complex than she could possibly imagine.

One distant star pulsed, outshining its neighbors, and Wren watched it for a while. Perhaps it was worth taking a closer look. When would she get another chance to use an ancient telescope? She rose, deciding that it was probably best to blow out the candle, which was now nearly melted into a flat puddle of purple, but she froze halfway to her feet. Because she'd been looking in the opposite direction, she'd nearly missed it. The steady stream of stardust smoke hadn't dissipated after
all. Either that or she was seeing things. She squinted her eyes, and it was clearer now: a spiraling web of the darkest stardust radiating up and out from the candle like a silver pathway in the purpling sky.

One star near the end of the pathway shone blindingly bright, blurring her vision, and the next moment she was back in the black-and-white dream world. She stood on the edge of a quarry, with hundreds of small shapes bent low to chip away at the earth. Mostly young children, it seemed, though some appeared to be closer to Wren's age, or even teenagers.

One after another they raised their faces, a chorus of oohs and ahhs as they pointed beyond Wren to the night sky above. Wren looked up and saw a tumultuous funnel, spinning out in a Milky Way–like swirl that took on a diamond shape. A loud cheer erupted from the children in front of her, their hands raised high, ragged clothes fluttering in the wind.

A little girl near the front spied Wren. “Look at her!” she exclaimed, eyes wide. A taller form drew near—the younger girl's sister, perhaps?—and placed a protective arm around her shoulder. The second girl looked up at Wren, and despite her dirt-smudged face, Wren recognized her.
The shepherdess from the first vision.

“Dreamer!” the shepherdess shouted, but her voice was soon lost in the cheers of the others, who one by one were staring up at the strange phenomenon in the stars. “Dreamer! Tell them to find the out—” Her words were cut off. The scene flared blindingly white and then Wren was back on the astronomy rooftop with Jill, who was yanking hard on Wren's shirt sleeve.

“Do you want us to leave you behind?” Jill pulled Wren back into the observatory. “Now you
have
to leave, and you
have
to take me with you.” Jill sprang across the room, Wren stumbling after, the hope on the shepherdess's face flashing through her mind. What was it the girl was saying? Something about finding something outside, maybe? Something Wren should tell someone. But what? And to whom?

Simon was waiting for them at the bottom of the stairwell.

“Not through the Crooked House,” Jill gasped, herding them over to the cliff face. “All those questions about Elsa and the Ms, like you didn't know.” She gave Wren a wild-eyed look. “And then you go and write their name across the sky?”

“What?” Wren tried to get Jill to stop, so that she could make sense of what she was saying, but Jill
scrambled over the precarious-looking ladder hidden in the bushes. “What are you talking about? And where's Jack?”

Just then, Jack came puffing up, his cloak bunched up in his arms. “Almost forgot this in the tower.” He scuttled past Wren and down the ladder after Jill.

Wren turned to Simon. “What's going on?”

“Nothing good,” Simon said, preparing to back down the ladder. “Jack told us you lit one of Boggen's candles. That pathway it made? Look at it now.”

Wren didn't have to search long. The silvery web arched across the sky, and there at the top of it, where the pulsing star used to be, was the glowing, unmistakable mark of the Magicians.

Wren had little energy for further conversation as she slipped and slid her way down the cliff face. Whenever they passed close to the green doors, she could hear the sound of the summoning gong, the reminder that she hadn't just said the
M
-word, she'd written it across the sky. She wondered fleetingly what would happen to Mary now or where Liza and Baxter were, but it took all her concentration not to fall off the mountainside. She would have to figure out how to find them later.

They raced past the door they had first exited what felt like ages before and sprinted down the narrow path. It was in worse repair here, and the places where it was in good condition, where a stone stairway curved down, were soon outnumbered by spots that had been left untended, some so badly crumbling that Jack began muttering that he thought they should brave the inside of the Crooked House.