Blackbringer

Surprised, Magpie could only nod and be glad Snoshti had made her wash it a few days ago. She took a gulp of tea while Bellatrix unloosed the pins that held her hair in place and fanned it out over her back, taking care not to jostle her injured wings. Snoshti brought Bellatrix a brush and she began at the ends, gently unworking the tangles.

“I couldn’t help imagining you as the child I’d have liked to have,” Bellatrix said.

“Me?” asked Magpie again, shocked that the huntress would have been imagining her. Why, indeed, had she been brought here?

“Aye, you, Magpie. Fierce, cunning, loyal, sweet.”

“Thank you, Lady,” Magpie said, growing bashful. Then, thinking of Vesper’s claims, she asked, “You didn’t . . . have any children?”

“Nay. My life . . . took a turn,” she replied quietly. Magpie wanted to ask her what had happened so long ago, but Bellatrix said, “But this isn’t my story, Magpie. It’s yours.”

A shiver went through Magpie and she looked at Bellatrix over her shoulder. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“I’m coming to it, child,” Bellatrix answered. “For thousands of years after I came here I had contact with the Magruwen. The hedge imps came and went between us, bearing messages. Those years were stretched so thin with longing and remorse, they passed very slowly for me. And the change was happening very slowly, too. If one wasn’t a . . . captive . . . of the past, one might not notice. But I was, and did. From faeries crossing the river I saw how far our folk had fallen. Their magic was paler and paler all the time. The old folk who arrived told of young faeries with no gift for their clan’s ancient ways. There was talk of a new species, humans. And the Magruwen was changing. There was a hardness and weariness in his messages. Even before the dragons began to die, it worried me. And after? After Fade was murdered there were no more messages at all. Not even a farewell. The Magruwen destroyed Issrin Ev and my imps couldn’t find him. I heard nothing more of him. It was Fade, later, who told me he slept.” She pulled the brush slowly through Magpie’s hair. “That was when the idea came, a little sparkle of an idea, wild . . . maybe impossible. But like a scavenger imp, I couldn’t get it out of my mind!”

Magpie smiled at that.

“The faeries needed a new champion, and it wouldn’t be me. Even if I could somehow go back—and I had tried—there was little I could have done. The Tapestry was falling apart and darkness was waiting on the other side, and the Djinn were sleeping through it. The faeries—the world—needed a new kind of champion. . . .” She paused. “So I imagined you.”

Magpie started, stunned. “What?” she gasped.

Bellatrix pulled the brush through her hair and went on, her voice rich with feeling. “Don’t you see? The dreams, the shared dreams of the dragon and the Djinn King. At last, their dreams brought new life into the Tapestry.”

“The Tapestry,” repeated Magpie. “The Magruwen spoke of it. What is it?”

Bellatrix shook her head sadly. “That faeries have forgotten the Tapestry; that is the greatest tragedy of all. It’s the fabric of all creation and it’s woven of dreams, the dreams of the Djinn. Dreams are real, Magpie. They’re seed and water and sun. They’re everything.” She paused, let Magpie’s hair run out of her hands. “That is what you feel, child, what faeries have lost the power to feel, and what you’ve begun to see in glimpses.”

Magpie turned to look at her. “The pulse? The light? The—the living light?” she stammered.

“Aye. Dreams spun in fire in the minds of Djinn. It’s how they shaped a world out of nothing. But the nothing is still out there. You see it through the stars, the blackness of night. The world is just a tiny thing afloat in that sea of nothing and the Tapestry is all that protects it. Now it’s falling apart, and the Djinn are letting it.”

“But why?”

Bellatrix shook her head again and said, with an edge of frustration, “I don’t know. Something happened. I believe Fade knows, but he keeps his master’s mysteries close. Whatever it was, the Magruwen had forsaken us. I had no choice but to trick him.”

“Trick the Djinn King? How?”

Bellatrix gave a short laugh. “Bedtime stories. For the past thousand years I’ve been telling Fade faerie stories and hoping . . .”

It finally dawned on Magpie. “Hoping the Magruwen would share his dreams and weave them into the Tapestry!”

Bellatrix nodded. “It took centuries of trying, and the only way to know if it worked was for the imps and creatures to watch for you in the world.”

As Magpie’s mind wrapped itself around this notion, it began to trouble her. “So . . . ,” she began, her brow furrowed, “you’re saying I was one of those stories?”

“Child, you were those stories.”

Magpie didn’t know what to think or feel. A silence stretched out between them as she waited for the words to sink in. They didn’t, quite. It seemed so absurd. “Me? Then, am I real?” she asked.

Bellatrix reached her arms out and drew Magpie to her. “As real as anyone. More real! You’re the first faerie in a long, long time who was handmade by the Djinn King! I only fed the idea of you into his mind. Left to himself he would never have dreamed of a faerie as powerful as you.”

“Powerful?”

“Oh.” Bellatrix laughed and took Magpie by the shoulders, holding her back so she could look her in the eyes. “Magpie . . . you have no idea. The world has never seen anything like you.”

Magpie stared at her, trying to take it in. Despite what Bellatrix said, she couldn’t shake the sense of unreality that began to overwhelm her. She was someone else’s dream! Well, she reminded herself, didn’t everything come from the Djinns’ dreams in some way or other? But this dream had been a trick. Her life was a trick.

“Magpie,” said Bellatrix. “Listen. I know this is hard to understand. I’d thought to wait until you were grown, but the Tapestry is failing faster than I ever imagined. I just couldn’t wait any longer.”

Magpie stared at her hands and turned them over slowly, thinking how her very skin and bones were spun from a dragon’s bedtime story.

“Just know you’re real, and you’re yourself, and no one—no one, not me and not even the Magruwen—holds any kind of puppet strings. What you do now will be your choice, but you have more choice than anyone, because you—alone of all faeries, Magpie—you can weave the Tapestry. Like the Djinn.”