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“You can put a pig in a pond, but you can’t make him swim.”
I tried reassembling the sequence of images in my head and still came up with nothing.
“You can bake a pie with four and twenty blackbirds, or only one. When you open it, they’ll sing.”
“Blackbirds? Do you know where Blackbird and Fergus are?”
“You have the answers,” he insisted. “You must only remember.” He made a great show of digging in his pocket and pulling out an invisible watch. Making a comical face, he exclaimed, “Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!” And he dashed off, dropping through the opening to the stairs as if it were a rabbit hole.
“That’s another story entirely!” I called after him, torn between amusement and aggravation. In the ticking moments after he left, the frustration won out. “Always with the riddles,” I muttered to myself and went to the grimoire to write down what he’d said. Clues to something. Had Blackbird and Fergus somehow gotten through to my old world? It would explain their absence. There’d been no word, and Starling grew more frayed by the day. Rogue flat refused to give the scepter to me or Walter and had buried the knowledge of where he’d put it so deep even I couldn’t get at it.
Of course, I hadn’treallytried to dig it out of him, unwilling to upset our current harmony. I respected his reasons for not wanting either of us to have it.
But he also didn’t care so much about the fate of Blackbird and Fergus. He’d been focused on me. Which I appreciated on one level, but he’d hardly let me out of his sight. In fact, I hadn’t been alone like this in days and days. I maybe didn’t need the scepter—the dome might be enough. Something I’d never quite mentioned to Rogue.
I moved to the center of the dome to do a light test, my thoughts carefully shrouded just in case Rogue returned unexpectedly. The cat stirred in me with interest as I gathered power and focused it. She seemed fairly docile lately, as sedated by copious food and long naps as I’d been. Like an egg, myself, I’d become simply a shell for gestation. If only my shell had similar flexibility.
Easing into the mind web, I virtually tiptoed in, using the vast curvature of the crystal dome to diffuse my impact. As always, the network sang with life, an energetic reflection of a tropical jungle night, dense with the chorus of insects, amphibians, birds, reptiles and the occasional predator slinking through the shadows, leaving hush in her wake.
I steered clear of those, skimming the surface, staying well clear of Titania’s icy supernova. What I sought wouldn’t be central to this network of beings, but rather at the perimeter. So I went away from Titania, farther from the vivid stars of the noble fae, with their complex tumbling surfaces, off to the edges. It felt almost like those graphics of leaving the solar system, the planets falling behind and the brightness of the center fading to a pinprick as I plunged into depthless space.
Had I expected to hit a wall? Perhaps so. The way the fae spoke of the division between my old world and Faerie implied a barrier. The old tales mentioned the Veil, and when it might be thinner or more penetrable. Gateways, such as standing stones or darkly magical places like Devils Tower, also suggested a passage through a wall. But when Rogue had shown me my old world on another occasion, we hadn’t traveled any sense of distance.
In fact, if the Castle of the Dark Gods truly did mirror Devils Tower, then physical distance meant nothing. I lived on top of the gateway.
Not out, but in.
Chapter 26
In Which I Halfheartedly Attempt a Resurrection
‡
“You can put a pig in a pond, but you can’t make him swim.” I have no idea what thismeans.
~Big Book of Fairyland, “Notes for FurtherResearch”
Iopened myeyes with a snap, the world outside sharp and bright. I really needed to get over this idea of distance. No traveling vast distances through a solar system of life-forms. It took no time to be back in my body because I’d never truly left it.
Moving to the curved transparent wall, I surveyed the countryside. Any of those green rolling hills—more vividly emerald than ever in the wake of the melting snow—could be the one I had landed on. Didthatsort of physical location matter? Perhaps Blackbird and Fergus, on their way to the castle had somehow found the gate I’d used. The temptation for both of them to take the opportunity to search for Baby Brody would have been too great to resist.
Or maybe it had been more deliberate. Blackbird had discovered something on her journeys—the very answers Rogue and I planned to seek on the sea voyage she undertook instead. If only I’d paid more attention when I glimpsed them through the scepter and discerned more than that they were headed my way. The scepter might let me reach through the Veil to find them, if I could figure out what Rogue had done with it.
Rogue’s hand fell on my shoulder and I emitted a startled squeak, full of guilty surprise as much as anything. “Deep in thought?” he asked, blue eyes as dark as the throat of one of his lilies.
“Yes.” I stood on tiptoe to slide my hands behind his neck. He returned my kiss with interest but brushed through my mind at the same time. “How did it go?”
“We have retrieved the corpse,” he replied, a lingering shadow of distaste in his words, like the scent of rot. He ran his hands down my sides and snugged me against him as best he could with the iron beach ball of my belly between us. “I wish to extract a promise from you.”
Uh-oh.“I thought we were done with bargains. Fully in sync, one with each other, what’s mine is yours and so forth.”
“I think you know full well what I’m asking. Seeing that human woman…” He looked over my head, out to the meadow of Stargazers.
“The whole mortality thing got to you, huh?”
His gaze shot back to me. “Will you mock even this?”
“Death? Yes. Humankind has a rich and varied history of mocking death because we have no other choice. It’s the one guarantee we have, that we all die. I tried to make the point previously that you were in denial over this.”
