A Sliver of Stardust (20 page)

An enormous table filled most of the space inside the room. A solitary individual bent over its surface,
gnawing back and forth at the carcass of a giant bird. It wasn't a sawing sound that Wren had been hearing. It was crunching. With every bite, the crunching grew louder.

A pile of bones lay underneath the table, and half the surface was crowded high with more birds. Dozens of them, Wren guessed. And all of them as black as night.

“Don't linger in doorways, Jack,” Boggen said, not even looking up from his horrifying meal. “It's very rude.”

“I'm not Jack,” Wren said, and her mouth grew dry as she realized what it meant.

Jack.
She stumbled backward. Boggen was expecting Jack. She felt behind her for the door. If she could just get away, escape onto the balcony, return to the tunnel, she could sort this all out.

“Wake up, Wren,” she told herself. “Wake up before it's too late.”

But it already was too late.

Boggen looked at her, causing the mark on her neck to flare, and Wren's stomach twisted, forcing her to swallow hard not to be sick.

Boggen's mouth was smeared red with blood. His forehead glistened with sweat. And his eyes. Ice-cold
blue eyes looked at Wren with a piercing glare, her own surprise mirrored in his gaze.

“The Weather Changer.” He dropped the bird carcass. “I must thank you for your assistance, however unwittingly given. Without you, that idiot boy would never have found the key to the gateway. Or the rhyme.” He picked at his bloodstained teeth with a bone. “I am nearly ready to fly. I will thank you in person.”

Wren staggered to the doorway, shaking her head back and forth, willing all of this to go away. Jack couldn't be helping Boggen. That would mean he'd been lying to all of them.

She rushed past the workroom, not bothering to hide herself, and she heard cries of alarm and surprise.

“A Dreamer!” someone shouted, and the whirring sound of the assembly line stopped.

“She was in with Boggen!” another cried.

“Quick!” A man's voice this time. “Catch her!”

But they were too slow. Wren hurried into her passageway, hoping that every footstep took her closer to waking up. She heard the commotion behind her, and she was running, running as fast as she could, the wooden floor pounding against her feet.

She heard the voices behind her, screaming for the Dreamer, and the noise of the crowd, growing louder into a nightmarish chant. “Get her! A Dreamer! Get the Dreamer!”

Their voices became drumbeats for Wren's strange flight. She had to get back. She had to warn the others. Figure out a way to stop Jack. The desperation grew inside, until she felt like she might explode. She must have outpaced them, or the dream was changing again, because soon all she could hear was the pounding of her own heart. She kept running anyway, wondering how long the dream could possibly last, when the tunnel abruptly ended, shooting her out into a valley.

Her breathing slowed, and her heart regained its normal rhythm. The valley was calm and nearly silent. Every rustle of wind against the grass felt loud to her ears. She half expected some woodland animal to arrive and start chiding her for being a Dreamer when she heard the humming again, the wings that called to her like no other. She retraced the way she'd come, but no glow lit her way, no familiar etching of wings.

She whirled in a great circle, waiting for a sign, any sign, to tell her which way to go.

“What now?” she screamed into the glorious blue
sky. “What am I supposed to do now?”

But Wren's voice only echoed with the harmony of the beating wings, and she was falling, falling down to the ground, down to the wet grass beneath her palms, falling into sleep, falling awake.

She shot up from where she'd been slouched on the cold floor of the theater. Her clothes clung damply with sweat, and her throat was so dry it hurt. She tried to force down a swallow, pinching herself to make sure she was really awake. No strange voices came from the room beyond. No odd symbols hummed at her. No vision. She was out of the dream.

Instead, she saw Simon right where she'd left him, his head thrown back and mouth open, snoring softly. Jill was dozing next to him, but Jack was nowhere to be seen.

From the stage area, Wren could hear that the play had started. The sound of projected voices built until the actors and actresses were chanting a rhythmic rendition of “Little Boy Blue
.
”

“Simon!” Wren crawled over to him, shaking him roughly on the shoulder. “Simon, wake up!”

“Wha—” He made little smacking sounds with his mouth, his eyelids fluttering open.

“It's Jack, Simon.” Wren shook him harder. “It's been Jack all along. He's the one who's been helping Boggen. We've got to stop him! He's been lying to us. About everything.”

“What?” Simon was wide awake now.

“Boggen's coming.” Wren's thoughts were racing faster than she could get the words out as she told him what she had seen in the dream world. “He said he was getting ready to fly. We've got to stop Jack from opening the gateway before it's too late.”

“You dreamed about Boggen?” Jill pushed up to a seated position. “I don't understand.”

Wren told her what she'd seen, how her dreams somehow took her to Nod. “He was expecting Jack, because Jack's been visiting him through his dreams.” Wren felt jittery inside. Like she would jump out of her skin if they sat there wasting more time talking. “I don't know if Nod is in trouble because of what Jack's doing or for some other reason, but everything's about to get a whole lot worse. Jack's got the rhyme now. And Boggen said that Jack had already found the key.” She left out the part where Boggen had credited her for helping him.

“And once he opens the gateway . . .” Jill sprang up.

Wren yanked Simon to his feet. “That's what I've been trying to tell you. Come on! Jack can't have gone far.”

From the stage, Wren could hear someone reciting a very different, very angry version of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

Suddenly, the rhythm of the actors' lines was cut off by a too-authentic scream and the unmistakable sound of a falcon's screech.

Wren tore through the curtain in time to see Jack in the final step of growing his falcon. Jack hadn't bothered to hide his bird, and the backstage workers were all in a fright. One had passed out cold, another stood gaping openmouthed, and the rest cowered, trying to avoid the set pieces that crashed down as Jack's bird hopped and jolted, trying to get room to maneuver. There was yelling and shoving and the stage manager was in the middle of it all, shouting into her headset. “We need to stop the rehearsal. I repeat. Stop the rehearsal.”

“Jack!” Wren screamed. “Don't do this!”

“Too late, Wren. You picked your side, and I picked mine. I'm on the right one,” Jack said, pulling himself up onto his bird. “Nice knowing you, but I'm off to
Nod.” He gave Wren a cold smile. “And don't worry about your pesky falcon. I'll take care of her.” His bird backed up, knocking a rack of clothes into Little Miss Muffet's spider, and then Jack was aloft, soaring out of sight.

The actors on the other side of the curtain let out a collective gasp, and then a wild cheer as if Jack's flight was somehow part of the show.

The few backstage workers still on their feet gaped at Wren, Simon, and Jill as though they were aliens from another planet.

“Sorry,” Wren mumbled. From the other side of the curtain, her mom's voice bellowed, “What in the world was that? What is going on back there?”

“Run!” Wren said, tearing toward the exit. It was as she passed her mom's office that she saw it, a slim blue book that she had seen once before.

“Jack's notes! He left them!” Wren scooped up the tattered log, dodging and ducking her way through the backstage chaos until finally they were at the door, through it, and back outside. It wasn't until they were at the edge of the park, hidden under the cover of a thicket of trees, that she told the others to stop.

“I saw Jack with this,” she panted. “That day we
were cleaning the repository.” Simon made a starlamp so they could see, and Jill crowded close as Wren flipped through it. Long lists of equations, followed by notes that proved he had been hunting for the rhyme all along. Pages torn from a book with detailed information about the capabilities of Weather Changers. A drawing of Boggen's lab they had found underneath the waterfall. Tables where Jack had calculated the amount of stardust required for interplanetary flight, where he'd scribbled rhymes about scraping cobwebs from the moon and riding the paths of the stars. The last part had drawings of instruments Wren had seen in the old Crooked House observatory and, below them, a rhyme:

Sing a song of Fiddlers,

A pocket full of pow'r;

Four-and-twenty blackbirds

Eaten in the tower.

The skies your voice will open

The stars begin to sing.

Light the darkest candle

Through the heavens you will wing.

Wren's stomach flip-flopped. What had Jack meant when he said he would take care of her falcon? An image of Boggen feasting on the birds flashed through her mind. What exactly had he said? That he was almost ready to fly. “Come on!” Wren shouted as she sprinted toward Pippen Hill. “We've got to save the falcons.”

A little cock-sparrow sat on a green tree,

And he chirruped, he chirruped, so merry was he;

A naughty boy came with his wee bow and arrow

Determined to shoot this little cock-sparrow.

T
he falcon mews at Pippen Hill echoed Wren's dream of Boggen eating blackbirds. They had run there as fast as they could, but Jack, flying on his falcon, was much faster. By the time they arrived, Jack had done his damage. The forest clearing was littered with clumps of matted feathers, and the iron smell of blood filled the air. As Wren, Simon, and Jill reached the door, a cluster of flies buzzed up and off a pile of something dark. Wren couldn't bring herself to look any closer.

“We're too late,” Simon said, his voice grave. “Jack's already gone.”

“How could he have done this?” Wren's throat clenched, and she gagged. “He killed them all.”

“He didn't just kill them.” Jill's mouth twisted down into an ugly, hard shape. “He consumed them.” Her face was very pale, with two little spots of color in her cheeks. “This is forbidden magic. The kind the Magicians used to do. Consuming the energy from another living thing.” She covered her mouth with both hands and ran toward the nearest tree. “I'm going to be sick.”

Simon was silently making his way around the clearing. He paused by each clump, nudging the pile of feathers with the toe of his shoe and peering at it as if it was an observation for a science experiment. Wren wondered if he had found his bird yet.

Every time the thought of her own bird crept in, Wren shoved it out of her mind. She wouldn't wish Jack's awful magic on any living creature. The air felt heavy around her, as though its humidity was pressing in on her like a suffocating blanket. She moved over to the door of the outbuilding, averting her eyes from the red smear on the exterior. What had Boggen done to Jack? How had he convinced him to do this?

Her tears burned hot, and Wren couldn't hold them in anymore. She scrubbed a fist across her eyes. It wasn't
as if she even
liked
her falcon. She was so stubborn. And, well,
mean.
Wren tried to steady her breathing, but it was coming out in strange, ragged sobs. She hadn't wanted her falcon to be killed.

“Wren?” Simon's voice sounded distracted. “Are you okay?”

Wren wanted to laugh at him. To tell him that no one is okay when they've seen slaughter. She wanted to ask him why the fact that their friend had murdered their animals wasn't driving him crazy. She wanted to yell and stomp and howl. But she looked into Simon's calm brown eyes, which swam with tears, and she knew that all those things wouldn't change what had happened. It wouldn't bring the falcons back, and it wouldn't stop Jack.

A wet wind began to blow, the kind that happens right before a storm, sending the twisted branches of the nearest bush rattling. One of the shadows reminded Wren of her falcon, how she would roost there, pretending to be asleep. How she would make Wren climb through that stupid bramble bush, as though she had to pass some ridiculous test just to be able to talk to her bird.

“Stubborn thing,” Wren said with a half laugh, half
sob. She wondered if her falcon had fought Jack at the end, if her contrariness could have somehow made things easier for her. “Rest in peace.” Wren whispered it like a benediction, as though she could make up for the horror of Jack's betrayal.

“Jack's made sure none of us could follow him,” Wren said, purposely working to relax her jaw. “Why didn't we see this coming?” She turned and kicked the fencepost closest to her. “I
told
him what I saw in my dreams. I even found the star map for him. And then I just handed him the rhyme. How could I have been so stupid?”

“You're not stupid, Wren,” Simon said, coming up next to her. “You are the smartest person I know.” He said it so bluntly, as if it was a provable fact. At another time, his words would have been sweet. Now they simply added to the guilt.

“I should've seen it coming.” Wren's chest tightened as she thought of Jack's slimy grin, how he had tricked them all. She wanted to scream and throw things. She reached over and grabbed the nearest branch with both hands and shook hard. A chill whistled through the wind, stirring up dust and a flurry of old feathers.

“Wren,” Simon said, and his voiced sounded like it
was coming from far away. “Wren, you've got to focus. The weather. It's changing.”

Wren knew he was right, but she didn't care. She wanted to lose control. She wanted to rip the bush out by its roots. She wondered if she could make a wind strong enough to do that. Or maybe she could change the weather enough to make it impossible for Jack to fly. Her hair whipped around her face, the ends of it stinging her cheeks. She could hunt Jack down and throw the bush at his sneaky, grinning face.

The next moment, Wren was gasping. Something freezing cold splashed down her shoulders, and her breath came in short choked spurts. Simon stood in front of her holding the now-empty trough of water in both hands. Wren was too surprised to be furious. She spluttered, her shirt cold and wet against her shoulders.

“I'm tired of controlling it,” she spit out. “Breathing carefully and relaxing. Not getting worked up. I can't do it anymore.” She rubbed her palms over her face. “I didn't ask for this, you know.” She realized she was shouting, and that it made no sense to be shouting at Simon. She hadn't even known she felt this way, but as she spoke the words she knew it was true. Some of the strain in her chest eased. The wind itself had
disappeared, along with the heavy humidity, leaving behind an ordinary night sky, starlight winking out from behind the puffy clouds.

“I didn't say to control it,” Simon said. “I said you have to focus. Save it for Jack.”

“I think I know where's Jack's gone.” Jill came up to them, wiping a shaking hand across her very pale forehead. “Those instruments were still in the observatory when we left the Crooked House.” She grabbed Jack's blue book from Wren, flipped to the final pages, and pointed to the sketches. “If he needs them to unlock the gateway, he'll have to go back for them.”

“You're right,” Wren said. “We just have to figure out how to get to the Crooked House ourselves.” She looked up at the calm sky. “If I get angry again, I could make another wind. Or maybe even a tornado.” The ideas were coming so fast she knew she wasn't being coherent. “Jack can't fly if there's a hurricane or whatever, and if it could somehow reach him and stop him, that would buy us some time. We can find some new birds and catch up to him.” Wren knew even as she said it that it was impossible. Where were they going to find falcons? And Jack was probably already miles away. But she continued on anyway. “Surely Mary will
come back soon, and then we can—”

“We don't need Mary,” Simon cut her off. “Or new falcons.” He pointed beyond the girls to the twisted old bush. There, perched in the spot where the two uppermost branches made a
Y
, was Wren's falcon.

“You're alive!” Wren raced over to the bush, and the falcon gave her a familiar warning screech. Wren didn't care. “I should've known you'd be too clever for Jack!” She beckoned to the bird with her palm, but nothing happened. The falcon only watched the humans with her unblinking depthless eyes. Wren knew it was ridiculous to expect that the falcon would have a celebratory welcome for her, but she had at least expected a lessening of hostility. She was wrong.

The bird still made Wren climb through the thornbush. She still glared down at her with one judgmental eye. She still hissed and ruffled her feathers when Wren used the stardust to make her grow. But the falcon didn't recoil from Wren's touch. Instead, she bent her neck the way Wren had seen Simon's falcon do and offered Wren her back. Whether this was because Wren had finally made peace with her falcon or because her falcon was furious with Jack, Wren couldn't be sure.

“Good bird,” Wren said, happy tears filling her eyes.

“But will she carry all three of us?” Simon sounded doubtful.

“Only one way to find out. Quick, before we can give her time to fly off.” Wren hoisted herself up onto her falcon's bare back, steadying the bird as Jill climbed up after. The falcon danced under her, unfurling her long wings. “Simon,” Wren called, “I can't stop her!” just as Jill squealed, “She's going to fly!” The falcon ran forward a few paces, the same jerky steps that always preceded takeoff, and then Wren saw something at her side. It was Simon, loping alongside the bird. In one easy movement, he swung himself up onto the falcon behind Jill. Wren's blood coursed with the thought that she'd finally done it; she had worked with her bird. She didn't pause to savor the moment, though. Jack was somewhere up ahead. And they had to stop him. She kicked hard into the falcon's flanks and leaned low over her neck. “Hold on!” she yelled to the others, tugging on the lead feathers as her falcon took to the sky.