Magpie looked at it all, wide-eyed. “Skive,” she murmured. “I’ve never seen the like!”

Poppy pulled a bowl down from a shelf and emptied the tears into it.

“Songbird tisane.” Magpie read a tiny label on an earthen jar. “Lover’s posy. Cure for hiccups and nightmares. Moonlight mist . . . What’s that do?”

“That helps you remember your dreams.”

“Sharp! Does it work?”

“Aye, sure. Here.” She poured some of the blue cordial into a little metal flask and screwed the cap on tight. “For later. Just a sip before bedtime.” She handed it to Magpie.

“Thanks!” The flask had a ring on its cap that Magpie threaded through her belt. “How’d you make it?”

“You’ve got to collect full-moonlight all night long in a mirror, set out someplace no shadows will fall over it from dusk to dawn, and at first light tip it and pour the moonlight through a sieve of mist into a jug with a sprig of lavender and then distill it for a moon’s time.”

“There’s one for my book!” Magpie said. “How’d you think that up?”

“Sometimes,” Poppy said with a bashful glance at Magpie, “I just sort of . . . feel what to do, like the magic’s already there, all around, and I just have to sort of let my mind open—like a flower—and then . . . I don’t know, I . . . find it.”

Magpie stared at her and Poppy blushed, looking back down at the bowl in her hands as she said quickly, “It’s just a fancy, really.”

“Neh,” said Magpie, a push of her wings carrying her half across the room. “Poppy,” she said earnestly, “is it like . . . a pulse?”

Poppy looked up sharply and said, “Aye . . .”

“Like . . . ,” Magpie went on, “like invisible blood pulsing through the veins of the air?”

Poppy nodded eagerly. “Like if you could feel the roots of things alive under the ground, twisting and living and growing, even though you can’t see them, but it’s not just underground, it’s everywhere, all around, and it’s faster than roots growing and bigger, bigger than anything—”

“And it’s warm and alive and—”

They spoke the next words in unison—“and it carries you along with it”—and stood staring at each other.

Tears suddenly sprang to Poppy’s eyes. “Magpie, I’ve never . . . no one else has ever understood. . . .”

“I know,” said Magpie. “Me too!”

“Have you always—?” Poppy started to ask, but just then a crow poked his head through the window.

“Mags,” he croaked. “C’mere a secky, darlin’.” It was Swig. He had a hunched, serious look about him that Magpie knew could mean nothing good. She went to the window at once. Beyond, she could see Maniac and Mingus close in conversation with a raven so large he made the crows look like hatchlings.

“Who’s that feather?” she asked.

“Algorab’s his name,” said Swig. “Dreamdark bird. He’s heard something, Mags.”