Blackbringer

           strong as I ever felt it, all around me like I could
           reach my hands into it, and I’ve even fancied I
           could see it. Sure, it’s just when I’m waking so
           anyone would say it was the tail of a dream,
           but I could swear. It’s like curls of light at the
           edges of my vision that fade away when I try
           to see them, like fireworks into ghosts of smoke.
           How I wish there was someone I could talk to
           about it!

The book was her journal and almanac. It was crammed with maps so old their creases had worn white, with brittle leaves and colored feathers and twine-tied packets labeled in strange alphabets, with threads from magic carpets and beaded dreadlocks clipped from the beards of hobgoblins. She flipped to the first page and traced the slanted writing inscribed there.

           Our Magpie,

           There is a hole in the pocket of the world and the magic is slipping through it. So much has gone beyond retrieval. Memories have gone slack. Young minstrels disdain to learn the old songs and the notes pass away with the last old ears to hear them. So much has been forgotten.

           Faeries are living upon threadbare magic and they scarcely know it. It falls to us to preserve what remains in this fading age. May this book come to teem with the spells and songs you will collect in it. The first volume of many. Good luck and happy hunting!

           Your loving parents,
           Kite & Robin

When they’d written that, Magpie thought, they’d probably envisioned their little daughter jotting down the tea potions and dust magic of old faerie biddies before they passed to the Moonlit Gardens. At most maybe spying on Ifrit witch doctors and rescuing artifacts from the plunder monkeys of Serendip. And Magpie had gathered tea potions and such. In her book were no fewer than nineteen dust spells, including one that made its victims ravenously hungry for goat’s milk.

But whatever else her parents might have imagined, Magpie knew it hadn’t been their only sprout stalking devils across human-infested lands. Not that it should have come as a surprise. Ever since she was wee she’d clamored to hear the legends of Bellatrix, the huntress-princess of Dreamdark. She’d loved to play at tracking and had been surprisingly good at it. Eight years ago, when she came upon her first rooster tracks on a moon-silvered beach, it had seemed like the most natural thing in the world to follow them.

She’d caught that first devil by trapping it in sunlight with only its bottle to escape into or perish in the light. It had been thrilling and even a little easy. Snags were dumb as weevils—no match for a faerie! Not until now had she guessed there could be another sort out there, an unimaginable devil to whom, she had a grim suspicion, the magic of this fallen age would seem but sprout’s play.

Weary and worried, she lay down her head and fell asleep with her cheek upon her parents’ words. She’d thought she would dream of devils, of darkness and greedy, sucking hunger, and she did, but not right away. First she dreamed of a tapestry, once glorious but now moth-eaten and faded. She’d dreamed of it before and never remembered with waking, but in her dream she somehow knew that, threadbare though it was, it was the only thing holding the darkness at bay, the best and only thing.

Outside, Calypso perched atop a caravan, keeping the watch after the other crows had shuffled off to bed. He puffed smoke rings and turned slowly, surveying the array of shining eyes that peered out at him from the encircling woods. Imps, nightjars, weasels, dryads, toads, all staring in awed silence at the spectacle of the caravans. Calypso noticed a raven who lingered longer than most, and after glancing over his shoulders furtively, he glided down to where the larger bird stood withdrawn in shadows.

“That Algorab?” Calypso croaked in a hoarse whisper.

“Aye, blackbird. Heard ye lot were moving north and had to see for myself. Reckoned it might mean something.”

“Well, it don’t. Least, not what ye’d like to think. There’s years yet till . . . that.”

The raven grunted and scratched his head with his foot. “Are ye for Dreamdark or neh?”

Calypso nodded. “We are. Can ye carry a message ahead of us?” he asked.

“I’d be blessed to bring the news.”

“It en’t news! She comes to Dreamdark on her own business. It’s nothing to do with nothing, got it?”

“Oh, aye? And what is it to do with?”

“Ye wouldn’t believe me if I told ye.”

“Sure I would. En’t I believed since I was hatched?”

“En’t we all? We’ll see ye there, Algorab. Meantime, don’t get worked up, eh? It en’t time.”

“All right, all right. Sure, feather.”

“Blessings fly with you.”

“And with you.” The raven spread his wings and rose into the sky.

SIX

Magpie woke at dusk to a sound of creeping inside her caravan. Instantly she came awake and lay rigid, listening, but within a few seconds she relaxed. It was only Bertram. He was moving as quietly as he could—which wasn’t very. He’d been something less than stealthy ever since he lost a foot to a croucher devil’s second mouth six years back. Magpie heard the faint thunk of the ebony peg leg she’d carved for him as he snuck amid the mess of costume trunks.

He rustled around a bit and then left, and once the door closed Magpie slipped out of bed. He’d been at her trunk, she saw, and had left it open. On top of her wadded clothes was something new. She lifted it out. It was a skirt of black feathers strung together on a sapphire belt that had likely once been a human’s bracelet.

She pulled it on over her breeches and turned slowly in front of the mirror, feeling a lump form in her throat. Bertram had made it, she knew, and out of the crows’ own feathers. As she stroked it fondly she counted one from each bird.