Nightshade had known that Holiday would send his daughter away when Rydall made his threat against their family. She had known exactly what Holiday would do. The sylph’s premonition—the one Nightshade had dispatched to her in her sleep, as black and terrifying as the witch could make it—had planted the seed for the idea. Rydall’s appearance had brought the seed to flower. Whatever else might happen, Holiday and the sylph would take no chances with their beloved daughter. Nightshade hadn’t known where the girl would be sent, although the lake country and the once-fairy had been her first guess, but in truth it didn’t matter. Wherever Mistaya might have gone, Nightshade would have been waiting.
And now it was time.
Using not just vision but instinct as well, the red eyes made a final sweep of the clearing and the woods surrounding it, a final search of the shadows and the dark where something might hide. Nothing revealed itself. The red eyes gleamed. Nightshade smiled inwardly. The sleeping men and the girl belonged to her now.
The crow took wing, lifting away from the branch on which it had kept watch, soaring momentarily skyward, circling the clearing, then dropping down again in a slow spiral. They were in the last few hours of the waning night, the ones leading into the new day, the ones during which sleep is deepest and dreams hold sway. Darkness and silence cloaked the men and the girl and their animals, and none sensed the presence of the descending crow. It passed over their heads unseen and unheard. It swept across them twice to make certain, but even the sentries, watchful once more now that the girl had returned and the Earth Mother’s vision spell had been lifted, saw nothing.
The crow banked slowly left across Mistaya, then flew back again, its shadow passing over the small, still form like the comforting touch of a mother’s hand. On each pass a strange green dust that winked and spun in the moonlight was released from the crow’s dark wings like pollen from a flower and floated earthward to settle over the sleeping girl. Four passes the crow made, and on each the greenish dust fell like a mossy veil. Mistaya breathed it in as she slept, smiled at its fragrance, and pulled her blanket tighter for comfort. Slowly her sleep deepened, and she drifted farther from consciousness. Dreams claimed her, a conjuring of her most vivid imaginings, and she was carried swiftly away into their light.
The crow rose skyward again and circled back into the shelter of the trees. Now the girl would sleep until Nightshade was ready for her to wake. She would sleep and be no part of what was to happen next.
Descending by hops from branch to branch, the crow passed downward through the concealing limbs until it was only a few feet above the ground. Then it transformed into Nightshade, the witch rising out of feathers and wings in a swirl of dark robes to stand again on the earth in the night shadows. Tall and regal, her beauty as dazzling and cold as newly fallen snow, her black hair with its single white streak swept back from her aquiline face, her smile as hard as stone, she gathered her magic about her and stepped out from the trees and into the moonlit clearing.
In her dreams Mistaya was a bird with snow-white feathers flying across a land of bright colors. There were forests of emerald green, fields of butter yellow and spring mint, mountains of licorice and chocolate, hills of crimson and violet, lakes of azure, and rivers of silver and gold. Everywhere wildflowers bloomed, sprinkled across the land like fairy dust.
A bird with black feathers flew next to her, leading the way, showing her the miracle that lay below. The other bird said nothing; it had no need for words. Its thoughts and feelings buoyed Mistaya’s small feathered body. She was borne as if on a wind, sailing down their currents, riding atop their gusts, stretching out to soar along their slides. It was wondrous, and it gave her an intoxicating sense of having the entire world at her wing tips.