Blackbringer

“Already dead . . .” He nodded and moaned. “Mannies killed ’em, not me! I just want to fly away. . . .”

“You didn’t really think dead wings would fly you, now, did you?”

The great slubbering imp sat in the sad debris of spent wings and sobbed. Talon came headfirst down the edge of the cabinet like a lizard and stood next to Magpie, and they both listened as the imp moaned about how the magic had worn off his flying surrey as he made his great escape.

“Can’t really blame a wretch for wishing to fly,” Talon said under his breath.

“Neh, perhaps, so long as he’s given up on maiming faeries. But you know what I can blame him for?” She knelt down in front of Batch and forced him to look her straight in the eyes as she said, “For not telling me about his master’s tongue.”

The life seemed to drain from Batch, so that he drooped into a miserable, quivering mass. “The tongue . . .” He fumbled for the tip of his tail with shaking hands and shoved it into his mouth, commencing to suckle it with loud, wet sounds, and his eyes squeezed tight shut.

“Imp, listen up!” Magpie said harshly, in no mood for pity. “You left out some details before, neh? And because of it I lost some friends to your master! Now you’ll tell me something else. You said your master sent you to the Magruwen for a turnip. Well, that’s blither! What’s he really after?”

With a long snuffling sigh Batch answered her. Speaking around the tail in his mouth, he said something sounding like, “Mommamammid.”

“Eh?”

“Mommamammid!” He repeated the slobbering mumble until Magpie reached out and yanked his tail. “Pomegranate!” Batch said as it whipped out of his mouth, flinging a spray of warm spittle.

Wiping her hands and grimacing, Magpie repeated, “Pomegranate?”

Batch nodded.

“Well, that doesn’t make much more sense than a turnip! What’s he want it for?”

“Flotched if I know!” retorted the imp. His tail groped for a large and particularly lovely monarch wing, and he held it to his face and honked his nose into it repeatedly before crumpling it and tossing it back onto the heap. Particles of orange wing clung to his quivering nostrils.

“A pomegranate,” Magpie said to Talon. “What the skiffle?”

Batch caught sight of Talon’s face then and did a double take. “Munch! Ye’re one of them shouty faeries,” he declared, drawing back.

“Aye,” said Talon. “You want to tell me what happened to the others you saw?”

The imp sniffed and snuffed, wiped at his eyes and nose with the backs of his hands, pulling himself together. “Master happened,” he told him with a shiver that worked itself all the way down his tail and set his rings to rattling.

Talon noticed the brass handles on the cabinets were rattling too and realized it wasn’t Batch’s shiver that was doing it. He nudged Magpie and said, “Mannies,” and they both turned to the door.

“Quick,” Magpie said. “Put on your skin. And you, imp, you’re coming with us.”

As Talon pulled his falcon skin out of his pocket Magpie visioned the glyph for floating and Batch rose right up out of his mound of butterfly wings with a squeal. Magpie stepped hastily into her bird glamour and grabbed his tail.

By the time the crowd of white-frocked lasses thundered into the room for class, all they glimpsed were the shadows of a falcon and a small brown bird darting out the open window, dragging a squealing rodent through the air behind them.

“Hoy! There’s the lad in his skin!” Magpie heard Swig’s voice. “Jacksmoke, Ming, there’s the imp!”

Still in their disguises, Magpie and Talon flew up to the roof of the school as Swig and Mingus came sweeping toward them, cawing out the squawk that would alert the others to come. “Ye seen Mags, lad?” demanded Swig. He gave the little brown bird a curious look as it deposited the imp on the broad stone ledge of the roof, and just then it shivered and turned into Magpie.

Swig and Mingus gasped.

A hint of dizziness came over Magpie, and she teetered slightly on the edge of the roof before Talon reached out fast and grabbed her wrist. “Steady!” he said.

“Eh, Mags, y’all right, pet?” the birds fussed, but their voices were cut off by the noisy arrival of Pup and Pigeon, followed shortly by Calypso and Bertram.

“Ye don’t go off without telling us, ye hear?”

“Gave us a fright!”

“No more disappearing!”

Magpie let them carry on for a moment, but when their scolds showed no sign of slowing, she cut in loudly, “Ach, birds! Stop spathering! We found the imp, neh? And I found out what the Blackbringer was after.”

“Eh, what?”

“A pomegranate!”

“For true?” They all cast skeptical glances at Batch. Pigeon asked, “Ye sure he en’t lying?”

“I don’t know,” said Magpie. “You lying, imp?”

But Batch wasn’t paying attention. He was watching with a queer gleam in his eye as Talon folded up his falcon skin and put it in his pocket.

“Where’d that bird come from before, Mags?” Mingus asked.

“You mean this bird?” she said dramatically, conjuring the glamour and stepping into it. All the birds exclaimed and puffed up their feathers.

“How’d ye do that?” demanded Pup.

Magpie told them about Strag and they made her show them the bird again and again, and though she was smiling and laughing, the dizziness suddenly overcame her again. This time it was Calypso who steadied her.

“What’s that, ‘Pie?” he demanded.

“Nothing.” She tried to shake it off. “Look, it’s time we get down the well, neh? I’m keen to know what this pomegranate is all about.”

Calypso was studying her closely. He said, “Ye’re in no shape for it, little missy. Look at ye, swaying on yer feet. Sure ye’re not fit to match wits with the Djinn King! Ye need to rest, pet, like I been saying.”

“There’s no time for that, Calypso!” she protested, but even she could hear the feebleness in her voice as she said it. Her arms and legs felt leaden and slow, and her eyelids heavy. Stubbornly she claimed, “You don’t just sleep at times like this. Anywhich, it’s nightfall, and the Blackbringer will be going on the hunt anytime now.”

“And what do ye think ye’ll do if ye see him? Fight him, in this state? That’d serve the world poorly, I ken, getting yerself killed!”