Pease porridge hot,
Pease porridge cold,
Pease porridge in the pot
Nine days old.
Making pease porridge takes precision and focus,” Baxter said, hoisting a cauldron onto a worktable and then using a long spoon to stir the thin layer of stardust inside.
They were in a room that looked like a medieval apothecary. Cabinets full of haphazardly arranged jars and bottles lined the walls. Dried herbs hung from beams that ran along the cavern ceiling. Flames flickered in the fireplace, and Baxter occasionally fanned them with a pair of old bellows.
Baxter pulled down several glass beakers from a corner cabinet, each labeled in his illegible script.
“So crude stardust needs to be refined before working magic?” Simon asked. He had his notebook out and was detailing every move Baxter made.
“Yes.” Baxter measured out a pale liquid into the bottle. “The first Fiddlers explored the magical properties of stardust, but only when it had gone through a process of refining. In its raw state, it looks like a plain old meteorite.”
Wren didn’t think there was anything plain about meteorites. “I wonder how they knew to try heating it.”
“How else does a scientist learn anything?” Jack uncorked a bottle and shook out tiny dried flowers into his palm. “Experimentation.”
Wren pinched a few of the flowers between her thumb and forefinger. They looked like snowflakes that someone had dried out and captured forever. Their minuscule geometric patterns were embossed with the iridescent dust that coated the edges.
“Random experimentation with stardust is risky.” Baxter wiped his hands on the front of his apron. “If you don’t perform the rhyme exactly as intended, you can get strange results. One time Mary ended up losing all the hair on her head, including her eyebrows, when she tried to grow her falcon a thicker layer of feathers for the winter.” Baxter winked at them. “Don’t tell her I told you.”
He continued talking as he chopped some dried herbs into bits. “There are recipe books that give detailed instructions for making pease porridge. You would do well to study them.” He nodded toward a tottering pile of books perched on top of the cabinets and then used the flat edge of his knife to expertly scoop up the remnants and slide them into the pot on the table in front of him. He sprinkled a tiny bit of refined stardust on top, grabbed a spoon, and stirred it all together.
Piping hot, smoking hot.
What I’ve got you have not.
Hot gray pease, hot, hot, hot;
Hot gray pease, hot.
While he sang, something was happening in the pot. Sparks shot up from the interior even though there was no flame and no heat source. The familiar glow of stardust filled the room, but this time a burnt smell came with it.
“Scalding hot,” Baxter said in response to Wren’s wrinkled nose. “Now we let it steep.” He turned back to the shelf, sending glass bottles tinkling together, while he rummaged around inside. He finally came up with an empty jar. “Rats. Out of astrid petals. You three wait here.” He gave them each a cutting board and a sheaf of dried herbs. “Chop these. Tiny cuts, just like this, and I’ll be back in a minute.” He bustled out of the room, leaving them alone with the bubbling cauldron.
Wren sniffed the plant in front of her. Catnip, maybe. Or spearmint. “I thought that with, well, modern scientific methods, medicine and chemistry and all the rest, Fiddlers might be beyond the herb thing.”
“Where do you think modern medicines come from?” Simon set down his notebook and unplugged one of the beakers. “Nature. Even synthetic medicines are made up of compounds of natural ingredients.” He reached for his knife and cutting board. “You’re just not used to this kind of laboratory.”
“And you are?” Wren said, looking around the room. “You do have to admit, it’s all kind of strange.”
“What isn’t strange around here?” Jack shrugged. “Think of all we’ve gotten used to already.” He cut at the pile of herbs in front of him, but for once he was not able to do something expertly.
Wren snorted. Jack had no idea what she had to get used to. She’d had another of the dreams the night before, a return to the same desolate landscape of trees and stumps. The heaviness of the place lingered in her memory. The more dreams she had, the more significant she felt they might be. Like they were messages, somehow. Or warnings. She tried to push away the thought that they were most certainly connected to Boggen. That those who called her Dreamer might somehow be part of Boggen’s world or possibly even be Boggen himself. Was she seeing things that had already happened or were her dreams giving her a glimpse into wherever Boggen and the Magicians had gone?
Wren finished chopping her pile of herbs and meandered over to the stack of rhyme books, pulling them down, blinking against the cloud of dust that accompanied them. Their thick covers were warped with age and the pages wrinkly from spills and stains. None of the books had titles. They seemed to be more observation logs than actual books, but each had a Fiddler name etched into the front cover. Wren flipped through the first volume, skipping over the parts stained with unidentifiable blotches, and moved on to the second. It seemed that a hundred years ago a team of Fiddlers had worked together to come up with a new rhyme that helped speed recovery from the measles. Notes had been written in several hands. Together, they had used stardust to create something that probably saved many lives and was the forerunner of the modern vaccination.
Wren ran a hand over the various Fiddlers’ notes. Perhaps part of her problem was that she was trying to solve the mystery of the dreams alone. She wondered what would happen if she told Baxter everything. Would he help her? Or would he hand her right over to Cole and the Fiddler Council? No, telling Baxter and the other grown-ups was out of the question. But what about Jack and Simon? Would they laugh and call her crazy? Would they accuse her of being the one who was contacting Boggen? She watched Simon’s messed-up hair bouncing as he chopped the diminishing pile of leaves in front of him. Not Simon. Simon wouldn’t think she was crazy.
Wren took a deep breath. “There’s something I need to tell you guys,” she said in a quiet voice. “About these weird dreams I’ve been having.”
“Dreams?” Simon’s gaze fixed on her like a hawk’s. “What do you mean, dreams?”
“Dreams,” Wren said, hardly knowing how to begin. “Or maybe messages.” In that moment, her idea of the dreams being something more seemed silly, the result of an overactive imagination. And as she told the boys about them—first the woman and the man who were so frightened about something, then the old man and the shepherdess, then the boat on the Opal Sea, and the bizarre crow in the desolate wasteland—it all seemed even sillier.
“Do you think they could be important? I mean, what if they’re messages or something?” She picked at her thumbnail. “From the Magicians,” she finished weakly.
“I don’t know.” Simon’s eyebrows knitted together thoughtfully. “Weird dreams could just be a side effect of using stardust. Or being a Weather Changer.” He chewed on his pencil eraser. “But you say they talked to you. And the one with the window—you’re sure he was surprised to see you?”
Wren thought back on her different dreams. “I’m sure. They all kept calling me ‘Dreamer,’ like they recognized me or something.”
“But what did you say to him? The scary man who marked your neck.” Jack separated out a few stalks of the herbs. His voice sounded oddly intent until Wren realized he was about to make another joke. “Did he hop over a candlestick, perhaps? Or maybe he lived in a shoe. Or, wait, I bet he’s really a merry old soul.” He gave Wren a crooked half smile. “I told you before, Wren. Your subconscious is probably just connecting what you know from old rhymes with what’s actually happening here. Weird dreams aren’t anything to worry about.”
“We’ve got to know more.” Simon shut his notebook and tucked it into his pocket. “Next time, Wren, don’t run in the dream. Don’t try to hide. Talk to them and see what they want.”
Wren licked her lips. That was easy for Simon to say. He’d never felt the heart-pounding terror of it. The horror of not being able to speak. “Okay,” she said, but she didn’t feel okay. Not because Simon’s idea wasn’t a good one, but because of the hidden assumptions in it: They were messages, and there was going to be a next time.
“Oh, good,” Baxter said, bustling back into the room. “You’re still here.” He moved over to the cauldron and gave it a quick stir.
“Don’t. Tell. Him,” Wren mouthed to the others. Jack shrugged and Simon gave her a sharp nod. Wren hoped she hadn’t made a mistake trusting them.
“I ran into some other Fiddlers in the garden. Charles is out of crude stardust,” Baxter said. “And so is Hester. I need you to run over and gather some fresh.”
“Fresh stardust?” Wren said.
“Well, relatively fresh. Only a million years old or so,” Baxter said as he puffed the billows to fan the flames of the fire. He laughed at their astonished faces. “Off the meteorite. What better place to gather it than from a fallen shooting star? Come now, there’s lots to learn, and no time like the present.” He stooped to pull some tools out of a low cupboard. “Simply chip it off with this.” Baxter gave each of them a small pickax and what appeared to be a paintbrush. “I can’t go with you, because the porridge is getting to the tricky part. Needs constant stirring.” He dumped a handful of the leaves Simon had crushed into the cauldron. “Grab some of the buckets near the doorway. Off you go, now.”