“Cousin!” hollered Kex.

“Calm yer pepper!” squawked Pup.

“Magpie, the cake recipe,” Poppy whispered quickly, unfurling her wings to fly. “Do you think we could make it?”

“I don’t know where it came from! It could be a trick.”

“Meet me in the morning at old Father Linden.”

Magpie nodded. “Sure.”

“Good!” Poppy curtsied to Snoshti and the crows and said, “I’d best go, then. Lady Vesper awaits. I can’t wait to see this!” And with a wink she flew up to meet her cousin.

“She seems a fine lass,” Calypso said, watching her go. “Could be mad handy, talking to trees.”

“Aye,” Magpie agreed. “She hears things. And one thing she heard? That the creatures have this story, right, about a faerie who’s supposed to bring back the Dawn Days.” She chuffed a laugh. “You haven’t heard that, have you?”

Calypso scratched his head with one talon. “Eh? Maybe, sure,” he said vaguely. “Creatures got nursery stories, same as faeries got.”

“Aye,” agreed Bertram. “Like that one about how a rain shower on a sunny day means a fox’s wedding?”

“Ach,” said Snoshti. “That one’s true. Ye never been to a fox’s wedding? They do make a fuss.”

In the Ring, tunes shivered across fiddle strings and Magpie turned to look. Faeries were dancing in air, jewel-bright and shimmering in their gowns and frock coats. She glanced up at the palace. The queen was gone from the window. To the crows she said, “Where to, birds?”

“Come on,” Snoshti said. “There’s a green near my village. My kin would be pleased to host ye.”

Leaving the stage props in disarray inside, the birds slipped into their harnesses and towed the caravans out of the city.

TWELVE

Daylight twinkled into twilight as the last slanting rays of sunset withdrew from the treetops. Darkness came, and the forest’s moontime citizens awoke, glittery-eyed and hungry. Wolves slunk to the edge of the river and dipped their pink tongues in. Foxes jackknifed on scurrying voles. The hag Black Annis crouched naked on a high branch and shot her tongue at bats who flew too near.

In the southern reaches of the great wood, Magpie and the crows sat around a fire with a clan of hedge imps, trading wind songs for scamper ballads and sipping spiced wine.

Far across Dreamdark in the tiny hamlet of West Mirth, a certain darkness was gliding down the white road out of town. It was a formless thing, unfixed, the edges of it bleeding into the night like watercolors on wet paper. There was no one to feel the desolation it left in its wake. The sentry tower was empty, and in front of its dying fire a rocking chair was slowing to a halt as if someone had stood and stretched and gone to bed. But all the beds in all the cottages were empty. The coverlets were drawn up as if tucked beneath the chins of sleepers, but sleepers there were none. Nothing had been disturbed. The dray pigeons snoozed in their stables and beetles dreamed in their pens, but the faeries were gone. Every one. Even the cradles were empty.