Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
When Jill came to find her the next morning, Wren had been sitting on her bed for what felt like a long time. She couldn’t shake the memory of her dream, but she tried to hide her unease from Jill.
Jill brought a note from Mary saying they were to begin their apprentice studies and “stay out of trouble.”
Jill waited until Wren read the note, then said, “The library is two floors up—cross the bridge over the Opal Sea. You can’t miss it.” She prepared to leave.
“Wait.” Wren grabbed her apprentice cloak off its peg. “We can go together.”
“Today isn’t a group lesson,” Jill said, explaining that apprentices spent most days with their mentoring Fiddler. A few times a week, they gathered to study as a group. Her face fell flat. “I belong to Elsa, so I need to go find her.”
Wren pounded on Jack and Simon’s door, eager to get to the library and finally ask Mary some questions. The boys were ready and waiting, and soon they were following the same route they had taken the night before, up the spiraling stone steps and out through the cavern with the turquoise pool of water.
As they moved farther into the cave, Wren saw signs of Fiddler life. A grated fire pit with wooden benches situated around it. A wagon laden with glass jars and beakers. Several deserted kiosks looked like they belonged at old-fashioned county fairs but were each fitted with electrical outlets. Wren made a mental note to return there when she needed to charge her phone. Green doors dotted the wall nearest them, most flanked by signs with faded letters.
Wren hurried past the amphitheater. If she didn’t look at it, maybe she could avoid the embarrassing memory of how she had lost control and become labeled a Weather Changer. She had a lot of questions for Mary.
Soon they were in what seemed to be a more inhabited part of the Crooked House. They began to see other people who looked as if they actually belonged in the present century, even if their skin was a bit sallow looking. A man in a dirty white lab coat nudged a woman with her hair pulled back in a smooth bun, and both stared at them as they walked by. A cluster of men, who looked like they went shopping at vintage thrift stores, were leaning around one of the green kiosks, sipping coffee. Wren could feel their gazes trailing her. A boy a little older than them and wearing an apprentice cloak was pushing a cart loaded with baked goods, selling them to hungry Fiddlers. He stopped and gawked at them outright.
“Does everyone know?” Wren tried to slink down into her cloak.
“Hmm?” Simon said in an absent voice. He had been covering the distance in fits and starts, stopping to look for evidence of subterranean animal life at every turn.
“Haven’t you noticed?” Jack said with a laugh. “Wren’s famous.” He nudged her with an elbow. “A Weather Changer. You should have told us.”
“Stop it.” Wren wasn’t in the mood for Jack’s teasing. “It’s not funny. I wish I’d never said anything to the Council. I wish I’d never come here. I wish—” Wren broke off what she had been about to say, because it wasn’t true. She didn’t really wish she’d never even heard of the Fiddlers.
“You’re not the only weirdo here,” Jack said in what Wren guessed was a consoling voice. “Most of the Fiddlers look like they are the ones in their rhymes. That must be Jack Sprat himself,” he said, pointing to a rail-thin man who towered over his companion, a stout woman who overflowed her corseted dress. “Or maybe Peter the Pumpkin Eater.”
“Don’t be mean,” Wren said, choking back a giggle that became a laugh when he started reciting “Little Miss Muffet” as they passed an old woman sitting by herself and scowling at everyone.
Soon they arrived at a gothic-looking double door. Even if Wren hadn’t seen the neatly painted sign marked LIBRARY, there was a shingle hanging above it with a picture of a stack of books.
If any two spaces were the opposite of each other, it would be the Crooked House and the library. Instead of the soaring blue ice-cathedral, they were in a small round room that looked like it belonged back at Pippen Hill. Wood-framed bookcases attached to the rocky walls were lined with tomes that could have been centuries old. There was no table, though. Instead, a large flat stone about waist-high took up most of the floor space. Perfect for standing at while flipping through books. They roamed about the room, but only for a moment, because the door behind them opened and Liza poked her perfectly coiffed head in.
“Hello, darlings,” she said. “Surprised to see me?”
“Liza!” Wren gave her a hug, while Liza air-kissed both of her cheeks. She turned to greet Jack and Simon, and when she moved, Wren spotted Baxter waiting beyond.
“You came! What happened to you never visiting the Crooked House again?” Wren ran over to give Baxter a hug. “Not that we aren’t glad to see you.” She felt a rush of relief at the sight of friends.
Baxter clasped arms with Simon and Jack. “Even we couldn’t ignore the summoning. It required all Fiddlers—even estranged ones—to return to the Crooked House immediately. We came right away, and I’m sure others will be trickling in for weeks. The Crooked House won’t know where to put us all.” He smiled but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “And we arrive to find you all at the heart of it.”
“Mary told us what the stone revealed. How Boggen isn’t dead.” Liza rubbed her hands together and avoided looking at Wren. “But that’s no reason your apprentice lessons should stop. Mary is busy with the Council, and if we don’t step in, the Mistress of Apprentices will.”
Wren couldn’t tell if they had heard about the Weather Changer thing. She would’ve thought not, except for the occasional moments where Liza’s glance lingered on her a second too long, or when Baxter’s eyes looked sad. She tried to stop guessing what that might mean and focus on her first official Fiddler lesson.
Liza rummaged in her handbag and pulled out a pair of chic glasses. She put them on and began to jot something down in a little jeweled notebook. “Now, let’s find you some basic Fiddler texts. The Mother Goose codex, I think—all the volumes, please, Baxter, and The Legends of Nod. Those will give them a good start.”
“Excellent choices, mi amor.” Baxter splayed his palm along the shelves nearest Wren. “You apprentices can choose from any of these. I’ll give you a few minutes to make your selections, and then we’ll begin the practical lesson.”
Wren crowded closer with Jack and Simon. It was almost humorous to see the dark, faded leather of the spell books labeled Mother Goose at the top. Simon wasted no time and grabbed two that had subtitles having to do with animals. Wren skimmed over the faded spines until she came across one titled Fiddler Talents through the Ages. She slipped it out, pulling another one at random, leaving Jack still hunting.
She set her choices on the stone table with a thunk, opening the first to carefully lettered words, some using such an archaic spelling that Wren could barely make them out. Embellished pictures in the margins showed figures in motion, some accompanied by animals or detailed drawings of plants. It seemed to be arranged alphabetically, and Wren flipped the pages until she came to the Ws.
And there it was. A whole chapter on Weather Changers. There was a rhyme demonstrating how a Fiddler who also had a talent for gardening could pair the two and increase a harvest. And another having to do with turning a sprinkle into a downpour. She skimmed more rhymes, which seemed mostly to center around plants and agriculture. Apparently, Weather Changers were quite useful in times of drought and famine.
She stopped at the part that detailed historical uses of weather-changing, which was topped with a definition of sorts. An inherent strength at manipulating the weather can have other collateral effects. She ran her forefinger down the words, skimming the list of symptoms. Sleep disturbances, geological changes, foretelling visions, climate control, and emotional manipulation of others. Great care must be taken for these Fiddlers to learn to identify and accept their response to the stardust in order to avoid unintended consequences.
Wren read the paragraph again. She’d already bought the reality that there was magic in the world, and that she, Simon, and Jack were some of the few who could play it. Accepting that her abilities might have other bizarre consequences didn’t seem like that much of a leap. At least, that’s what her head told her. Inside, she was terrified.
She read the rest of the page, but most of it had to do with recorded instances of geological phenomena attributed to Weather Changers. A big earthquake back in the 1500s. And a flood shortly thereafter. Wren only read that bit through once. It was hard enough to deal with this new reality without worrying about what horrible thing she might accidentally do. But no matter how many instances of disastrous weather she could ignore, she couldn’t wipe out of her mind that one nagging phrase: sleep disturbances.
The nightmarish dreams that she’d been somewhat successful in pushing to the edges of her mind came crashing back in. She skimmed faster. Were the dreams connected to being a Weather Changer? She found a rhyme about the phases of the moon and how that might increase the dream cycle in nighttime sleep. And how a Fiddler could induce a dreamless sleep by lighting a certain herb or cause someone to have extra-vivid dreams with another. She bent closer, hunting for clues, and then saw that someone had ripped out several pages from that section. The book went from talking about sleep disturbed by something called dreamopathy to how the cycle of the moon could help a woman give birth to a baby. Wren glanced through the rest of the pages, but they all felt irrelevant, information to help people who’d lived hundreds of years ago. She sighed. No doubt the answers she was looking for were somewhere in the missing pages, and judging from the weathered appearance of the book, those pages were long gone.
“If that one’s boring,” Jack said, misinterpreting her sigh, “try this one. It’s all about love potions.” He snickered.
“That’s nothing.” Simon barely looked up from his books. “This volume catalogs other species besides falcons that have adapted to a regular use of stardust.” His ever-present notebook lay flat next to the spell books, and he was carefully copying down what he read.
“Not boring.” Wren leaned back and rubbed her eyes. “Just confusing. I mean, were Fiddlers like witch doctors or something? Good harvests. Medicine. That’s what we have irrigation and vaccinations for. What’s the use of some of this stuff?”
She picked a rhyme at random and read it out loud:
As soft as silk, as white as milk
As bitter as gall, a strong wall,
And a green coat covers me all.
“What does that even mean?”
“It’s your job to find out,” Baxter said, bringing over an armload of books to set in front of them. “You didn’t think Fiddlers from the Dark Ages would be writing about cellular biology, did you? They were medieval people, and so their science reads more, well, medievally.”
“Like alchemists,” Jack said.
Simon leaned close to read over Wren’s shoulder. “I wonder if it was cow’s milk.”
“Alchemists,” Wren said, ignoring Simon. “Or Magicians.”
“Exactly,” Baxter said. “But don’t say the M-word around the Crooked House if you know what’s good for you.” He pretended to wipe at some nonexistent dust on his sweater.
“What do you mean?” Wren asked. “You’ve been telling us that stardust is magic since the beginning.”
Baxter and Liza exchanged glances.
“We said that so you would understand,” Liza said. “But if you talk like that here, they’ll think you’re talking about Boggen and his Magicians.”
“The Magicians,” Wren said as evenly as she could manage, looking at Liza. Cole had said there hadn’t been a Weather Changer since the Magicians. “I thought you all were Magicians.”
“We are in the sense that we all can work stardust. But a long time ago, two groups formed among the Fiddlers: the Alchemists and the Magicians.” Liza grabbed a piece of paper and began to sketch. “It might help to think of what Fiddlers do as two equal and yet codependent forces: alchemy and magic. Alchemy, like science”—she drew a diamond shape—“enables us to understand and, in certain ways, manipulate the properties of all living things. Magic”—she drew something that resembled a flame—“does the same thing on a metaphysical level. You know, the unseen realm of thoughts and emotions.” She circled both markings. “As Fiddlers, we work together to unite the two forces. Those of us who were stronger in what you might call the scientific part became Alchemists. This is our mark.” Her pencil point touched the diamond. “Those who were stronger in, well, the rest of it, became Magicians.” She let her fingers rest on the flame.
“That’s the same symbol that was on Boggen’s stone,” Wren said.
“That’s right.” Baxter sighed. “The problems started when the ordinary world began to suspect and despise us. The Alchemists and the Magicians disagreed on how to respond.”
“Disagreed!” Liza snorted. “A civil war is more than a disagreement.”
Baxter continued. “The Magicians wanted to take over, to rule the ordinary world. They increased their power by consuming the lives of others.”
“Living stardust.” Simon’s voice was agitated. He flipped back several pages in his notebook. “That’s what the Council called it yesterday. Living stardust.”
“You’re right.” Baxter’s voice cracked. “It was disgusting. They thought that stealing life from another would somehow enrich their own. But they were wrong. Death begets death.” He shook his head. “Sad as we were at their demise, we were glad when the Magicians failed. Their dying brought an end to the civil war.”
“I don’t understand,” Wren said, her words spilling faster at the thought of what she’d overheard the day before. “The Council was talking about the Magicians. About how they weren’t dead after all.”
“So we heard,” Liza said, taking off her glasses and folding them up. “They told us at the summoning, but I still can’t believe it. Not dead? What can it mean?”
“We will find out. All the Fiddlers have been summoned, and with this new development, the Council will certainly give Mary access to the rest of Boggen’s research.” Baxter squeezed Wren’s shoulder and looked at the rest of them in turn. “The important thing to remember is that there are centuries of conflicts and alliances that you know next to nothing about. Better not to speak to any full Fiddler in the Crooked House. Best of all not to mention magic or Magicians or Boggen’s name. Understood? Now, back to our lesson. We must begin the practical portion. The starlamp first, I think.”
Baxter and Liza led them through one of the library doors and into a space three times its size and completely empty. Wren soon saw why. “Put one foot behind the other, here.” Baxter pressed on Simon’s chest. “And lean your torso back like this. Good form. Now, say the rhyme, and I’ll show you what to do with your hands.” Baxter pinched some stardust and tossed it into the air, stirring up a cloud of silvery blue around Simon. Baxter chanted the lines and then instructed Simon to repeat after him:
Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder what you are.
“Cup one palm like this,” Baxter said, letting some of the dust settle. “And use the fingers of the other hand to cut this pattern in the remaining dust as it falls.”
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
Simon’s fingers traced a diamond through the stardust.
“Now, raise your hand up here,” Baxter said, “toward the ceiling. And sing the rest of the rhyme.”
There your bright and tiny spark
Lights the traveler in the dark.
As Simon chanted, the stardust began to come together, the different strands of blue light tightening up and coalescing into a pulsing mass.
How I wonder what you are,
Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
By the time Simon was finished, a ball of light hovered above his palm.
“Excellent!” Liza said with enthusiasm. “You’re a natural.”
Simon was staring at the ball of stardust light, his face aglow with the wonder of it. “This feels amazing. Wren, you’ve got to try it.”
“Useful, no?” Baxter said. “Especially in dark places. Your turn, Wren.”
Wren stood, grateful that Simon went first and that at least she knew the opening part of the rhyme. She copied Baxter’s movements, leaning back like she’d been blown by a gust of wind, raising her arms to play the stardust. And then the magic was there, the warmth and energy swirling around her in a shower of aqua light. She reached out to touch it, but it slipped out of her grasp. She cupped her hands as Baxter showed her, but the stardust fell flat.
“Keep practicing,” Baxter said with an encouraging smile, and moved on to Jack.
Simon came up on the other side of her. “Don’t worry, Wren. It can take a while to get the hang of it.”
Wren knew he was trying to be nice, but she still had a hard time returning his smile. “You seemed to get it right away,” she said pleasantly. She shut out the sight of Simon creating and snuffing starlamps as if it were as easy as turning a light switch on and off, and tried again.
Baxter had finished instructing Jack how to begin the rhyme. If Simon made it look easy, Jack made it look like he’d been working stardust forever. On his first try, a glowing ball of light flared in his palm.
“Very good,” Baxter said, running his thumb over his stubbly jaw. “Very good indeed.”
Wren tried again. Jack might have had an extra few months to work with stardust, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t catch up with him. When she started to sing the final verse, the strands of stardust quivered, as though they might come together in a ball, but then collapsed into a pile of glimmering dust, the glow of the magic winking out.
Wren clenched her jaw. Her skin prickled with irritation, and she felt like throwing her whole pouch of stardust in Jack’s and Simon’s faces. Instead, she tossed up another pinch of dust, but this time no sparkling strands appeared. The room around her disappeared in a fog. She felt a jagged surface at her back, pushing her forward to the edge of a rocky cliff.
“Simon?” she called. “Liza?” But there was no answer. She was alone on a ledge with nothing but a perilous drop at her feet. The cave in front of her was all shadows, black and gray, and Wren recognized that she was somehow back in the world of her dreams. A waking dream this time. The stone at her feet crumbled, a few bits breaking off and plummeting into the murky water below. She looked to either side of her, frantic to find another ledge. A bridge. A path. Anything.
“Help!” she screamed, but no sound came out of her mouth. She tried again, fighting hard to say something, to say anything, when the wall behind her gave another massive push, and she was tumbling, falling, hands flailing in desperation before her body hit the water, her scream cut off before it even began.
She braced herself for icy cold liquid, muscles tensed and prepared to fight her way to the surface. But instead, she found herself cocooned in a wooden boat, her panic at falling overcome by a whispered chorus of music. Voices that sounded like flutes and strings and the wind through the pines swirled around her as her boat was swept along the waterway.
“Dreamer,” the lovely voices sang. “Dreamer, you must find the way.”
“What do you mean?” Wren could actually speak this time, and the sense of terror was gone. Instead, she felt at peace. Like she belonged there with the voices. “Find the way to what?”
But the voices didn’t answer. Instead they kept singing:
Winken, Blinken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe
Sailed off on a river of crystal light,
Into a sea of dew.
“The wings mark the way to find what you wish,”
The old moon told the three.
“Leave your nets and leave your fish,
And dive down beneath the sea, the sea.
You will find the wings that you seek, down beneath the sea.”
“What wings? The way to where?” Wren asked. “What am I to find?” But the voices only repeated the same chorus in different harmonies as her little vessel rocked its way gently down the stream. Wren looked over the edge, where one of the boat’s many propellers whirred below the surface. The water shone like an opal, covered with a thin layer of fog. She reached out a finger and trailed it through the mist, astonished to find that it wasn’t liquid at all. Instead, glimmering pinpricks of stardust were carrying her along.
The music around her changed, quickened with urgency. The rhyme came faster now, one verse upon another, so that it was soon hard to distinguish the lyrics, a rising cacophony of sounds that all stopped on one word: wings.
“Wren?” Liza’s voice cut through the chorus of wings, and with the sound came clarity. The foggy scene evaporated in an instant, and Wren was back in the lesson room, crouched on the floor.
“Wren, is something the matter?” Liza stooped down, putting her glasses on so she could peer into Wren’s eyes. “Are you reacting to the stardust?”
“I’m okay,” Wren said, conscious of Simon and Jack watching her from across the room. “Really. Just a bit queasy, that’s all.”
Liza waved away Baxter’s concern. “I’ll work with Wren. You continue with the boys.”
While the others returned to their rhymework, Liza sat Wren down on the floor and produced a bottle of water from her bag. “Drink this.”
She watched as Wren drank the cool liquid, her face full of concern. “Self-discipline is important for anyone using stardust, of course,” Liza finally said. “But it will be especially crucial to your ability to mature as a Fiddler, Wren. I know you didn’t intend to cause trouble yesterday, but that’s just the problem. You have got to stay in control. Otherwise the stardust—or your emotions—will get the best of you.”
“Control myself?” Wren echoed, thinking of how powerless she had felt when the cauldron of emotions overtook her the day before, of how she had no ability to do anything in the dream world, especially now that it could draw her in even when she was awake. “How am I supposed to do that?”
“Think of the present moment. Let the stardust wash over you like waves from the ocean,” Liza said. “You can try breathing slowly. At least, that’s what Boggen used to do.”
Wren felt a sudden chill, and she didn’t think it was from the water. “Boggen?”
“He was the last Weather Changer we have record of, and he was very private about it. I remember him being extraordinarily focused. Deep breaths in and out when he worked the stardust.” Her eyes grew wide at Wren’s expression. “You didn’t know, did you? That Boggen was a Weather Changer?”
“No,” Wren said, and sat in the silence that followed. Boggen was the last Weather Changer?
Liza sighed. “One way or another, you’re going to have to control it, Wren. More outbursts like the one from yesterday will get you in serious trouble in the Crooked House.”
And will remind everyone that I’m like Boggen. Wren filled in the missing pieces. No wonder all the Fiddlers had reacted that way in the Council meeting. No wonder even Mary had been surprised. What would Liza say if Wren told her it was worse than just outbursts? That she’d been having strange dreams, too? She opened her mouth to admit the truth when something bright whizzed by her ear.
Liza turned in a flash, stardust spinning in front of her as though she was going to throw it at someone.
“Sorry about that!” Simon said, giving her a sheepish smile. “I didn’t know you could throw a starlamp.”
“Nice shot.” Jack elbowed Simon in the ribs and began to ball up another starlamp. “I wonder if I could hit Wren.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Liza said, marching over to them and cuffing Baxter on the shoulder. “What are you teaching them, anyway? Basic rhymework, Baxter. That’s what we need to focus on.”
“Fine. I’ll teach them the proper way to throw things with stardust.” Baxter smirked at Liza and began demonstrating the next rhyme. “As round as an apple,” he said, curving his palms like a bowl. “As deep as a cup. Work the stardust”—he jerked his hands back suddenly—“to pull it up.” The room filled with glowing light. Wren watched Jack execute the rhyme perfectly, sending the book on the floor in front of him spinning through the air.
Was it only a few minutes before that she had cared that Jack and Simon were better than her at using the stardust? It felt like longer than that. Simon sent his book flying across the room, and Wren managed a weak smile, but her heart wasn’t in it. All she could think about was what she had just learned. Why was she having those dreams? The fact that she was awake for this one hinted that the dreams were more than just her subconscious popping up in weird ways, but she didn’t want the dreams to mean something. She pushed them out of her mind in the same way she did the significance of being a Weather Changer, as if by not thinking about it she could erase the fact that all the Fiddlers now suspected she was somehow connected to the Magicians. And Boggen.