Read Online A Sliver of Stardust by Marissa Burt - Free Book Online Page B

do even more than that,” he said, his voice alight with possibility. “Think what this kind of medicine means! No pain.No suffering. No disease. No dying.”
    â€œNo one can escape death.” Mary wiped the remaining stardust off on her skirt. “Not even the oldest of Fiddlers.”
    â€œAnd when exactly were you born?” Jack demanded.
    â€œEnough.” Mary’s smile evaporated into a stern look. “It’s always the same. Apprentices are fixated on the length of Fiddler life for their first century or two. It will pass. And there are plenty of books you can read to satisfy your curiosity.” She pointed at the falcon behind her. “But you’ll have a much harder time learning how to ride the aurora from books. So hold your questions and open your ears.”
    Wren scrubbed the toe of her shoe through the moss while Mary explained how to tend the birds and how to care for their feathers. Her brain was only half listening. The other part was replaying everything she’d learned. What would it be like to live for a “century or two”? What had Mary seen in her years? Wren didn’t know whether she was more astonished to think of Fiddlers living through the Black Plague and the discovery of America and the world wars or the implication that she could live just as long.
    â€œOnce grown, your falcon will naturally adapt tothe environment of the aurora, enabling you to travel long distances in a short amount of time,” Mary was saying, gesturing toward her white falcon as it flew to join the others.
    Wren snapped out of her distraction. Once grown? She felt an odd sinking sensation in her stomach. It sounded like Mary meant for them to ride the falcons.
    â€œIf you want to take a short trip through the ordinary sky when the aurora is absent,” Mary continued, “you’ll need to use the stardust.” She handed each of them a small leather pouch and then opened her own and dumped some stardust into her palm. “The stardust must touch the falcon for the rhyme to work.” She arranged her feet so that her back foot was planted perpendicular to her front one and began to swirl the stardust in the air, cutting an infinity symbol through it with her fingers. As the light of the stardust built, she chanted:
    See, see! What shall I see!
    My bird grown tall as it should be.
    Even if Simon didn’t have a smile plastered on his face, Wren would’ve been able to tell that he was enjoying this. It was the happiest she’d ever seen him.He shifted his forearm experimentally, and the falcon obediently flew back over to its original perch.
    â€œHow are you doing that?” Wren whispered at him. It was as though Simon had read a secret How to Train a Falcon manual.
    Mary paused her lesson and encouraged them to follow her example. Wren sighed and dumped the contents of the pouch into her palm. She could see tiny flickering embers in the mound of ashes. “Here goes nothing,” she said, blowing a poof of stardust into the twilight sky. It sparked and shot up in dazzling blue-green swirls, then fell like snowflakes, eventually wrapping gently down around her falcon. She shifted her leg back, mimicking Mary, and traced the pattern in the air. She worked her fingers in a circular movement, saying the rhyme. At first, it seemed a trick of the fading light, as though her eyes were failing her, but then she was sure of it. Her falcon was growing.
    Wren stood frozen to the spot. A screeching bird was bad enough. A screeching monster bird, ten times worse. Her falcon stood staring evenly at her with its liquid eyes. Wren couldn’t speak. She felt shaky inside, like she might need to sit down that very moment. She tried to breathe slowly, but she barely managed to count to three.
    â€œExcellent,” Mary said. “Now wait here while I go into the falcon mews and get the saddles.” She disappeared into the building beyond