“I don’t know, ’Pie,” the crow whispered back. She heard fear in his voice and struggled to sit up, tried to blink her vision into focus.

“Faerie,” hissed the Magruwen’s voice. “Who are you?”

“Magpie Windwitch, Lord,” she said in a wisp of a voice. She began to see shapes in the whiteness.

“Windwitch? Elemental?”

“I am granddaughter of the West Wind.”

To himself the Magruwen muttered, “That explains nothing.”

“Lord Magruwen,” Magpie said, “I’m sorry I offended you. And I’m sorry faeries have forsaken you. But I beg you, don’t forsake us back. Give us a chance to deserve the world, to become what we can still become.”

“This is not an age of becoming,” he told her. “It is the age of unweaving.”

“Unweaving again! What does it mean?”

“It means the darkness will rush in like a tide and sweep everything back into the endless ocean.”

“But sure we can stop it! With your help.” Her vision was returning and she squinted to look at him.

“It is already too late,” said the Djinn.

Magpie clenched her fists in frustration. “Neh!” she said forcefully, getting to her feet and leaning heavily on Calypso.

As she did so, a gleam caught the Magruwen’s gaze and drew it to her knife hilt. He hissed, “Skuldraig . . .”

“What?” Magpie asked with a sharp intake of breath. She remembered the name. The old faerie who had guarded the Vritra had said it. Skuldraig had killed all those faeries. “Who’s Skuldraig?” she asked.

“Let me see that dagger.”

Puzzled, Magpie unsheathed it and held it out, remembering now the runes she’d noticed on its blade while holding it to the falcon’s—the lad’s—throat. She hadn’t had a moment to look more closely at them since.

The Magruwen studied the knife for a long moment before saying, “This blade was lost, and well lost. Where did you find it?”

“In the Vritra’s dreaming place,” she said. “It was planted in a skeleton’s—”

“Spine,” he finished for her.

“Aye. How did you know?”

“Skuldraig means ‘backbiter.’ That is its way.”

“But who is he?” Magpie asked. “Sure it can’t be the devil—those skeletons were long dead, and besides, this devil, he leaves nothing behind!”

“Devil? Foolish faerie, Skuldraig is the blade itself! It is cursed to slay any who wield it but the one for whom it was forged.”

“B-but . . . ,” Magpie stammered, “I have wielded it!”

The Djinn’s flame eyelids drew together in a vertical blink. “Have you indeed?” he breathed. Magpie nodded. He asked, “And pray, what happened when you did?”

“It . . . it sang.”

The Magruwen guttered like a wind-licked candle. “It sang for you?” Again he demanded, “Who are you, faerie?”

“Magpie Wind—”

“Nay, but who are you? Who made you?”

“What do you mean, Lord?” Magpie asked, pushing away from him on her wings as he flared bright and hot once more.

“You weave the Tapestry, and you wield the champion’s blade and it sings for you when it should slay you? Faerie, you too should be a skeleton with a knife in its back. Why do you live?”