“So, ’Pie,” said Calypso, “when are we for the Magruwen, eh? First thing? Or ye going to make that cake?”

Magpie took the recipe out of her pocket and chewed her lip. She’d have been certain the writing belonged to Bellatrix but for the one thing that made it impossible: the paper wasn’t ancient; it could have been written yesterday. “What if it’s a trick?” she asked.

“A trick? Ye mean, like, if it’s not really his favorite cake?” puzzled Pup.

Magpie smiled. It seemed such a silly notion in itself, that the great Djinn had a favorite cake at all. She looked at the ingredients. Oats, honey, the usual things, and what else? Tears, wind, lightning . . . Magpie cocked her head to one side and took a swig of her coffee, thinking. Tears, wind, and lightning. Water, air, and fire—that was three of the four elements.

She thought of what she and Poppy had talked of, how the Djinn had dreamed a world he couldn’t even touch. He couldn’t wade in a stream and feel the rush of water without boiling it, couldn’t sleep beneath a tree without burning it, or ride a bird, or feel the wind, or lay his cheek on a sun-warmed stone. It began to seem like just the kind of cake that would be his favorite.

And what of the thousand years of undreamed life? What was a life not yet begun? A cocoon, sure. But no butterfly or moth lived a thousand days, let alone years. And Magpie had an idea that this last ingredient would somehow represent the fourth element: earth. Rich earth, steady, solid earth, the element that anchored all the rest, like roots in soil.

Suddenly she had it. She clapped her hands. “An acorn!”

“Eh, ’Pie?” Calypso asked.

“A tree lives a thousand years!” she said, and the idea settled in her mind with the snick of a puzzle piece fitting into place. What was an acorn if not the perfect expression of life, a millennium of it and more, curled up tight and just waiting for the proper encouragement to begin?

She would make the cake. Wherever it had come from, whoever had written it out, it was made of such things as could have only good in them. “I’m going to meet Poppy,” she told the crows.

She went back down into the imp village to borrow a half walnut shell from Snoshti, then she set out.

Fringed by a circle of willows, Lilyvein Pond was the largest of a string of spring-fed ponds on the outskirts of Never Nigh. Faerie weddings were often held here in the spring when white narcissus bloomed round it thick as snowbanks, and in winter it was the favorite spot for ice-skating. Magpie flew quietly over the glassy water and, hovering just above the surface, began to sing. Poppy watched and listened from the air.

The strange words, sung low in a language not often heard above the waves, rippled over the water, and sleek shapes began to gather beneath.