“Eenie meenie minie ming,” Batch sang. “Catch a faerie by the wing . . . If she hollers, let her sing, the lovely song of a faerie scream!”

TEN

“How did you know where to find me?” Magpie asked Poppy, looking around. The thick foliage of the linden enclosed her completely, like a little room.

“I heard from some ivy,” Poppy answered, “and from a beech sapling just yonder.”

Magpie cocked her head and studied her. “For true?” she asked. Poppy nodded. “You can speak with plants and things? That’s sharp! What do they sound like? What do they say?”

“Oh, they’ve all kinds of voices, and they say all kinds of things. Herbs sort of sing, and flowers gossip like biddies.”

“And trees?” Magpie asked, laying her hand on the bark of the old linden.

“Ah, trees, well, you know trees are earth elementals,” she said. “Some tell tales, but they tell far less than they know.”

“Sure they know a lot.”

“Aye. The ancient ones like old Father Linden here have drunk the dew of the Dawn Days. Think of it, they’ve been alive in the world for all the lifetimes of faeries stretched end to end, all the way to the beginning! But they keep their secrets close. I rarely hear them speak at all.”

“Oh, aye? Pity. I wonder if he remembers me,” she mused, glancing at the place where the red door had been swallowed by a skin of bark.

“I’m sure he does! Others do. They told me you’d returned.” Poppy paused and grew serious. “I missed you so when you left. Why did you? Why did you go?”

Magpie frowned. “My mother . . . It’s the wind blood, I ken. She’s never gotten used to being in one spot. They only stayed till I was big enough to travel, and we never stayed anyplace half so long again.”

“But what is it you do . . . beyond?” Poppy asked. To the faeries of Dreamdark, leaving the forest was like leaping off the edge of the world.

“Well . . . ,” Magpie mused, wondering where to start. Not with devils, sure, or chasing witches, or hanging upside down in a monkey king’s dungeon. “We go find faerie clans and we try to learn their magic. Papa writes it down in books so it won’t die out with the old folks. Right now they’re with a clan on Anang Paranga that still practices shape-shifting.”

“Shape-shifting?” Poppy marveled. “And your parents will learn how to do it?”

“Aye. We also search for clues of what happened to the Djinn and try to keep magic relics out of the hands of monkeys and mannies, who’re always messing about where they oughtn’t.”

“You’ve seen humans?”

“Piff. Thousands. Mannies are nothing special.”

“But aren’t they giant-big?”

Magpie shrugged. “Not so big. About like a stack of raccoons. There’s plenty of bigger things. You should see elephants. Whales!”

“And dragons?” asked Poppy.

“Dragons?” Magpie frowned at her. “There aren’t any dragons left.”