Lexi looked up at her, her golden eyes bright and filled with hope.
Wynn thought hard to remember, to pull the right thoughts forward. “I made him clean.”
“Dex is already clean,” Lexi interrupted.
Wynn was used to people not waiting for all of her thoughts. She ignored Lexi’s interruption but she had to find the words in her mind again, and that was frustrating. “I put honey on his bleeding.”
“What is honey?” Lexi asked. Her nose scrunched up. “Is it magic?”
Wynn shook her head.
Lexi huffed and looked frustrated. “That won’t do any good, either. Codex isn’t bleeding anywhere.” She ran a hand over her smooth head. “I need something magical.”
“And I sang,” Wynn said, finally finishing her thought.
Lexi stared at her, her long ears twitching. “What is sang?”
Wynn wasn’t sure she understood the question. “Music.”
Lexi looked very confused. “I have never heard of this thing. Is it magic?”
Wynn remembered what the Fairy Queen had said in her room of secret things. She nodded. “It is magic. It helped lead me here. It opened the Silver Gate. The queen said it was strong magic.”
Lexi’s eyes went wide. She reached forward and gripped Wynn on her forearm. “You have to teach me. Please. I’ll do whatever it takes.” Something clattered in a different room. Lexi jumped to her feet. “Only not here. We have to go back. If Father catches me with you, he’ll feed me to the pigs.”
That would be a terrible thing for him to do. Wynn understood about angry fathers, so she jumped up and followed Lexi out of the room. She paused at the door to give one last look at Codex, then slowly shut him in the darkness. Together they crept down the stairs. “You need windows,” Wynn said. She didn’t like the dark.
“Windows let in stinging bugs and creatures the Grendel uses to torment us. The closed rooms keep us safe,” Lexi whispered as they wove through the old crates and sacks. “In the old city we had glass windows, but we don’t have the right sands to make glass here. We can’t risk traveling to the crystal desert anymore. Give me your foot. I’ll hold on to you as you go up, so you don’t fall again.”
Wynn stepped up on Lexi’s machine, and felt the other girl’s hands on her ankles. Before she knew it, she rose up through the hole. She flopped her upper body onto the planks, and dragged her feet up after her. The room was completely dark. It didn’t feel safe. In Wynn’s opinion, all of the woods needed more light.
Lexi rode up on the machine until she appeared through the hole. The light from her lantern filled the room. Mildred looked like a black ball of fluff on the corner of the bed, and the world didn’t seem so scary anymore. Lexi crossed her legs under her robes and leaned forward. “So how do you make this sang?”
Wynn laughed. That didn’t sound right. “You sing,” she said. “Like this.” She quietly began to sing the song of the Silver Gate as best she could. She didn’t want Lexi to be in trouble. Lexi listened without moving. Her amber eyes glowed as she listened. Wynn finished a verse and said, “You try.”
“How do you make your voice do that?” Lexi said.
“You do it,” Wynn said. “You sing.” She patted Lexi on the knee several times, because she was excited and couldn’t help herself.
Lexi tried. She let out a rough sound, then another just like it. “That’s not right,” she said. “Elves can’t do this. We don’t have magic.”
“You can do this.” Wynn knew she could. She patted her friend on the knee again. “You try.”
Lexi let out a sound. It was much better. It didn’t sound so much like a frog. Wynn clapped. “Go up.” She sang a higher note to demonstrate. Lexi followed, and Wynn clapped again. “Now go down.” Again Lexi followed. It wasn’t exactly right, but it was different than the first sound, and that was all that mattered. Wynn clapped harder. “You’re doing it!”
Lexi stopped. “How do you know when to go up, and when to go down? What words do you sing?” she asked. “Do you have to get the spell exactly right for it to work?”
Wynn thought about it. It was a hard thing to think about. She didn’t know how she knew what to do. She just sang. Lexi waited patiently for her to answer this time. “You know. You find the right things. Those are the best songs.”
Wynn listened to what was in her heart and sang.
“Lexi is my friend.
She brought me my hen.
And she has a light
When it is the night.”
Lexi clapped her hands over her mouth and giggled. She tapped Wynn on the knee this time. “Let me try.”
“I like my friend Wynn.
She has a pretty grin.
And a shiny dress
That is such a mess.”
Lexi smiled the biggest, most beautiful smile. The light in the lantern glowed brighter. “How was that?”
“That was amazing.” Wynn threw her body forward and hugged her new friend. “I knew you could do it.”
The two girls sang into the deep of night. Wynn taught her all the songs she knew and together they made up more of their own. Finally Lexi had to leave. She picked up Mildred to take her back to her cage, promising Wynn she would take very good care of her. Wynn hugged the elf, and waved good-bye before helping Lexi place the planks back down in the floor.
Wynn cuddled by herself on the bed. This time she wasn’t frightened. She sang the tune she had made with Lexi under her breath, and the room didn’t seem so dark anymore.
CHAPTER TWENTYElric
ELRIC HAD A HARD TIME falling asleep in spite of his exhaustion, then woke early when a gust of wind shook the branch beneath him. He watched the clouds on the horizon as they billowed upward into enormous thunderheads
