A Sliver of Stardust (4 page)

There was a Crooked Man,

And he walked a crooked mile.

He found a crooked sixpence

Against a crooked stile.

He bought a crooked cat,

Which caught a crooked mouse,

And they all lived together in an ancient Crooked House.

A
nd when will Wren come train with me?” Liza sipped her coffee. She and Mary were bartering, dividing up days and skills and setting out a course for the apprentices' Fiddler training. “I think I'll take both of them at once.” She winked at Wren. “Perhaps they can stay at my villa on the Mediterranean. Young people should enjoy themselves.” She raised a hand at Mary's protest. “There are other things
besides stardust, you know.”

“And of course,” Baxter chimed in, “I must teach them to bake.”

Mary scoffed, and Baxter cut her off. “You've always undervalued the ways in which our natural skills influence our Fiddler talents.” He looked at Wren and Simon. “Capitalizing on their strengths can only enhance their training. What are you good at, Wren?”

Wren's mind froze. No one had ever asked her that. They'd just always known. “I'm pretty smart,” she finally said. She hoped they could tell she wasn't bragging. “With science and stuff.”

Baxter waved this away. “Of course you are. All Fiddlers are smart. If you weren't, you'd never have seen the stardust. Instead, you'd be all wrapped up in whatever foolish thing is popular these days. What is it now, the motorcar?”

Liza laughed at him.

“What I mean”—Baxter waved Liza's mockery away with a grin—“is what are you
good
at? What is it that it seems you alone were made to do?” He trailed a finger through the whipped cream and licked it off the tip. “Perfect.” He took another swipe and continued. “I couldn't live without baking.” He nodded toward the
women. “Liza is a healer. Like a goddess of old.”

Liza gave him a slow smile, and Wren could tell his comments pleased her.

“Mary grows things,” Baxter said. “Plants and animals, and”—he raised his eyebrows at Wren and Simon—“young people, apparently. This year, she's single-handedly found three new apprentices in the wild. That's unheard of these days.”

“I like animals,” Simon said, setting his notebook aside. His face went pink. “My dad says I have a way with them. That I'd be a good veterinarian or zookeeper.”

Wren watched him fidget with his pocket watch chain. His voice had lost the lecturing tone.

“I sensed that connection in you.” Mary looked at him fondly. “I greatly anticipate seeing how the falcons respond to you.”

“Kinship with the animals.” Liza tapped a fingertip on her lip. “Very interesting.”

Simon smiled shyly back. “Do you really think so?” Wren listened while he talked about how a species of moth was being destroyed by disease, which turned into a tutorial about dying habitats due to overpopu-lation by humans and ended with a hypothesis that
stardust might save the day for the entire moth world. Even the grown-ups' eyes looked glazed over by the time he was finished.

“And you, Wren?” Baxter jumped in, while Simon paused to search his notebook for a fact on moth recovery. “Where do your strengths lie?”

Wren didn't know how to answer. She wasn't into theater like her mom or running like her dad. She had a feeling spending time on the computer or babysitting didn't fall into the special skill category either. “Astronomy, I guess?” She said it like a question, because she doubted that someone could technically be good at stargazing. “That's kind of my thing.”

“Interesting.” Baxter pounced on it. “Perhaps you can interpret the prophecies.”

“A skill in traveling, maybe?” Mary said, peering at Wren as though seeing her for the first time.

“Astronomy,” Liza said. “After all these years.”

The room grew quiet. Mary cleared her throat. “A long time ago—two hundred years or so now—I found another Fiddler apprentice who was especially gifted in astronomy. He was so strong, in fact, that his knowledge of the stars gave him unusual insight into the properties of stardust. He is gone now, but your strength in astronomy speaks well for your potential,
Wren.” Her smile looked forced. “The Fiddler Council will be very interested in you.”

Liza snorted at this, and Mary gave her a dirty look.

“What?” Liza raised her eyebrows. “Do you expect me to let that remark go unchecked? Cole and the rest of the Council may be interested, but why send the girl off to a pack of fools?”

“Cole,” Mary said, her voice stiff, “is not the fool you make him out to be.” When Liza gave her a look, Mary cracked a tiny smile. “At least not all of the time.”

While the grown-ups talked about the Fiddler Council, Simon started to clear the plates, and Wren moved to help him.

“Two hundred years?”
Wren asked once they were out of earshot. “She found another apprentice two centuries ago?” Baxter's comments about motorcars ran through her mind. They looked like average grown-ups, but . . . “How old do you think they are, anyway?”

Simon stacked the dishes in the sink. “Three hundred? Four, tops.”

“What?” Wren nearly yelled, then dropped her voice as the conversation in the other room paused. “What do you mean?”

“Of course they're long-lived.” Simon scraped some leftover tart into the garbage. “Every legend
about magicians talks about prolonging life. Besides, some species of turtle live for two hundred years easily. And that's without stardust. It's a perfectly natural conclusion.”

Wren sniffed. Perfectly creepy, more like, but there was no way she was going to let Simon know that if he was so matter-of-fact about it all. Mary had said something earlier about stardust changing the way she perceived the world, but this was beyond anything she could have imagined. What else could be true?

Wren rearranged the silverware to make a tottering stack of plates next to the sink. “You know, some of the earliest astronomers were certain that, if you learned the secret, you could wield the Earth's elements and do magical things. Maybe they were looking for the Fiddlers all this time.” She squirted some soap on a sponge and turned on the faucet.

“Well said. Bravo, bravo, whoever you are,” a voice spoke from behind them, and Wren spun around to see a boy who was only a little taller than Simon standing in the doorway. His apprentice cloak hung open, revealing a thick cable-knit sweater that hugged his neck.

“And who are you exactly?” the boy said.

“I'm Simon,” Simon said as the boy moved to clasp his arm like they were in a secret club.

“Good to meet you, Simon.” He moved toward Wren, nodding in the direction of the dining room. “Mary and Liza in the same room and no one's yelling yet? Is it a holiday or something?” The newest arrival looked at her with his uncommonly bright blue eyes. He had closely cropped black hair, and the way it was cut made his face look all angles.

“My friends call me Jack,” he said, and his smile made Wren feel like she was going to be one of his friends, too.

“I'm Wren,” she said, holding out her hand. He clasped her arm, the same way he had done with Simon. Just then, the sound of breaking glass came from the other room.

“Let the catfights begin,” Jack said, and Wren and Simon followed him to rejoin the grown-ups. Liza stood by the fireplace, staring at the shards of glass littering the floor at her feet. Mary's eyes were ringed with red, as though she'd been crying, and Baxter was standing between them, hands raised midspeech.

“—let the past stay in the past,” he was saying.

The tension in the room evaporated as soon as the grown-ups saw Jack.

“Jack!” Mary scrubbed a hand across her eyes, giving
him a watery smile and a motherly hug. “Where have you been?”

“What uncommon timing you have, Jack,” Baxter said. He ignored Jack's secret handshake thing and patted him on the back instead. “As always, the welcome of my house is yours.”

“Thanks, Bax,” Jack said. He seemed to belong with the others, like he was a real Fiddler, too, even though he didn't look any older than Wren and Simon. Maybe it was because he talked to Baxter like he was his friend rather than a grown-up. “I would have sent you a text or something, but that would mean you'd need to have this crazy little thing we call a”—Jack held his hand up to his mouth theatrically—“phone.”

Baxter laughed. “Nonsense. It all changes too quickly for me to stay current. Keep your newfangled gadgets to yourself.”

“I will.” Jack reached into his apprentice coat. “But I've brought something very old with me tonight. In fact, it's why I was late.” He drew out a stone the size of his palm, its surface worn glossy smooth. “My grandfather found it in an antique shop that was closing down. I think it has something to do with the Fiddlers. Look.” He pointed to a symbol on the bottom that
looked like a flame dancing over a circle.

The grown-ups crowded closer. “This stone is from the old days, when there was fighting among us,” Baxter said, clearing a space on the table so Jack could set the stone on top of it. “Fiddlers hid messages in them during the war.”

Liza's eyes grew wide. “It's a dangerous thing, to travel with anything that carries this mark,” she said, her hand roving over the flame without touching it. “The Fiddler Council would punish you for less.”

“Don't be silly, Liza.” Mary's eyes were shining, and she touched the stone almost reverently. “Cole isn't vengeful. He leads the Council well.”

“I was thinking this might be something important to share with the other Fiddlers. Maybe we could all go to the Crooked House together.” Jack gave them a winsome smile. “C'mon, don't you miss seeing more Fiddlers than just one another? Mary said she hasn't been there since last year. Aren't you even a little bit homesick?” He shook his head. “Hanging out with other apprentices sounds nice to me.”

“Well, if it sounds
nice
to you”—Baxter's voice was icy cool—“then you must ignore our years of experience. You've been a Fiddler for, what, a couple of months?
Surely you are prepared for the politics of the Crooked House.” His words were thick with sarcasm.

“Mary! You went back last year?” Liza's forehead was creased with displeasure. “And you didn't tell us?”

“You don't tell me everything either, Liza.” Mary sounded offended. “I had my reasons”—she held up a forestalling hand—“which, I might add, are no one else's business.”

“Trying to appeal to the Council again, Mary?” Baxter clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “They won't rewrite history on your word alone. The Crooked House is closed to you. And I, for one, am glad to be rid of the whole lot of them.”

Mary clenched her jaw. “The Council didn't know I was there. I went only to the repository, and I slipped out unseen.” She glared at Jack. “I understand now I should have kept the whole thing to myself.”

“Did you notice the rhyme on the back of the stone?” Jack asked. “It's in a different language.”

“Where did you find this?” Baxter's voice sounded hard. “Tell us the truth, boy.”

“Grandpa bought it on his last trip to London. Said he got it in some shop that was going out of business.” Jack spread his hands wide. “That's all I know, honest.
He's always bringing junk back, but this seemed special, you know? With the Fiddler marks and all?”

“It is special,” Baxter said, looking up at Mary. “It was written by Boggen himself.” He pointed to some words that the other grown-ups seemed able to read. “It predates his demise.”

“You know what this means, don't you?” Mary knelt in front of the table and peered at the stone. “Perhaps we can finally access some of his research.” Her voice was soft. “Perhaps it isn't gone.”

Liza and Baxter exchanged weary looks. “Let's see what it says first.”

Wren leaned in toward Jack, who had come to sit between her and Simon. “What is she talking about? What's going on?”

“Pretty much every time they get together, they fight about the Fiddler Council and the guy who runs it—Cole.” Jack shrugged. “Best I can tell, Mary loved him, but for some reason he exiled her from the Crooked House a long time ago. It's the first they've said of this Boggen and his research, but fat chance I'm going to ask for more details.” He nodded toward Mary, whose face was hard, her words aimed like darts at Liza and Baxter.

“You don't believe me either, do you? I'm telling you the truth; I've always told you the truth.” Mary slapped her hands on the table and pushed herself to her feet. “I didn't know what Boggen was doing. I wasn't part of it back then, whatever the Council says, whatever false evidence against me Boggen planted for them to find.” She stepped forward, snatching the stone and holding it aloft. She was nearly yelling now. “Don't you see? This stone, forgotten for centuries, might hold the truth of Boggen's dealings. It might prove my innocence once and for all.”

“Come now, Mary.” Baxter raised both hands in a placating gesture. “We are your friends. And we were Cole's and Boggen's friends as well.” He laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “It is not we who you are angry with.”

“I tire of this same old argument.” Liza crunched some of the broken glass under her heel. “We are not the Council at the Crooked House. You don't need to constantly convince us of your innocence. What are you going to do? Take it to the Council?” She pointed at the stone, pinching her lips together as if she smelled something horrible. “And what if it confirms your guilt?”

Mary flinched at Liza's words. “Impossible.”

“Are you so sure?” Liza said. “Once the Council opens it and finds Boggen's message, there is no undoing it.” She wrapped her arms around Mary in a gentle hug. “It is ancient history now, Mary, whatever you did back then. We don't have to do anything with this stone. We don't have to go to the Crooked House.”