A Sliver of Stardust by Marissa Burt Page A

rush.
    â€œSorry. I didn’t mean to startle you,” Jack said with an apologetic smile. “I thought you saw me come in.” He pointed to a door tucked under the corner staircase. He reached into a cupboard and pulled out a plate of cookies.
    â€œYeah, I couldn’t sleep,” Wren said. She took the cookie he handed her. “Though now I’m kind of glad.”
    â€œWhen I visit my grandfather out in the countryand can’t sleep, I go outside and stargaze,” Jack said, and Wren knew they were going to be friends for sure. “And other nights I don’t want to sleep.” Jack bit off the edge of a chocolate chip cookie. “Mary says the stardust can affect our dreams. I had the hardest time my first month after touching it. Crazy nightmares. Sleepwalking. You’ll get used to it.”
    â€œThat’s a relief.” Wren breathed out a sigh and tried to make it into a joke. “I was beginning to think I might be going crazy. I’ve never had such intense dreams.”
    â€œâ€˜All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.’ Didn’t Edgar Allen Poe or somebody say that?” Jack pulled up the collar of his sweater against the early morning chill. “It’s no surprise, really. Especially with all that you just learned about Fiddlers. Let me guess, you dreamed about magicians or blackbird pies or golden eggs or something.”
    â€œA golden key, actually.” Wren grinned, sliding onto one of the chairs next to the big kitchen worktable. Now that she was awake she knew where she had heard the name in the dream. “And the Fiddler that Mary and Baxter were talking about—Boggen?—was hunting for it. I guess all the stuff I heard about the Fiddlers got jumbled up in my brain.”
    â€œAny clue as to where the key was?” Jack joked. “Maybe we can beat Boggen to it.” He winked at her. “Welcome to the Fiddler nuttiness.”
    Wren supposed her dream made a strange kind of sense, what with her discovering nursery rhymes were tied to magic and stardust and all the talk about the Crooked House. “I think I’m having a little trouble making sense of everything.”
    â€œOnly a little?” Jack grinned at her. “When I found out that magic was real, my mind was blown for a month. But soon you’ll be in what I call magical mode. The impossible won’t seem strange anymore.”
    â€œHow long have you known?” Wren stood and pulled on the sideways chrome handle to open the fridge. Talking to Jack had awakened a whole flood of questions. “When did you become an apprentice? How did Mary find you?” She grabbed the milk and poured them each a glass.
    â€œThanks.” Jack took a big gulp. “Actually, I found Mary about six months ago. My grandpa’s kind of a conspiracy theorist. He thinks everyone is working together to pull off some big lie.” Jack tipped his chair back so it was balancing on two legs. “He’s always thought magic was real, and that the rich and powerfulpeople are hogging it all for themselves. Trying to learn about magic got him all obsessed with alchemists—you know, those old scientists who thought you could use elements to turn rocks into gold and stuff?”
    Wren nodded impatiently. She knew that some of the earliest astronomers had been alchemists and had theorized that atomic particles might have had magical properties. “So? What did your grandpa find out?”
    â€œNothing.” Jack smirked at Wren’s expression. “ I’m the one who did the finding. Grandpa had all these faded newspaper clippings and journals full of notes about alchemy clubs. Most of it meant nothing, but one woman’s face kept popping up in the newspapers. She was this botanist who exhibited at the world’s fair. But she was also a friend of Marie Curie. And then I found copies of her scientific papers and essays on