BEFORE SHE KNEW WHAT she was doing, Allory scrambled over Chenixipi’s shoulder. Throwing herself forward, she made her own body the bridge as she reached Garobixi’s thumb and gripped it in her hands. For a second, the psychosis of fractured memories played all about her, stunning in their immensity, in the agony they conveyed. Her body stretched as the warrior Librarian fell backward, powerless against the might of the dust roused to this unholy, lethal frenzy.

How did she not tear apart?

That was when, impossibly, she heard a new melody enter the frenzy.

Where did it come from?

Her toes curled around Chenixipi’s fingers, gripping by some miracle. Though her digits barely trembled against Garobixi’s, skin brushing against skin, the force that linked them together was like magnetism on an order of magnitude she had never imagined. Fused together in such a manner, no force in Spheris could have parted them. Infused by song – an Allory song rising from a well of remembered agony within herself, she realised, astounded – articulated as the sweetest, most ineffable sound, which pierced the frenzy like the clarion laughter of a child, the destruction of his being first slowed and then began to reverse.

Inspired by the shining love written in the eyes before her and the yearning of the soul behind, she found herself imagining a new song with a new ending. One where love won the day. Shutting her eyes, the Scintillant Fae raised a novel narrative of hope, a melody where the hero did not sacrifice his life that the heroine might live. She vocalised a paean of healing for the memories of a tortured mind which had somehow been interred in this dust pool for generations according to some malign purpose.

This was wrong. She could not let it dwell here in unending torment.

Every soul deserved their rest – aye, but was it time for this Pixie’s soul to rest? What if a malevolent force interrupted what was natural and right?

By a feather’s touch, she drew Garobixi back from the brink. Pink, green and white dust sifted out of the morass, sinking back into the pool, streaming into his person and reforming it before her stunned eyes. Full rewind leading to wholeness? What madness was this?

Anything must be possible. Anything at all!

A new voice roared from behind the entire group, “Dusterous confusterous, musterous subsidusterous!”

The power unleashed slapped fairly much everyone flat. Her Eminence!

Garobixi surged out of the abruptly quiescent pool and sprawled atop Chenixipi. He gave a shy, disbelieving giggle, “Sorry – oh dear! Most forward of me, I appreciate –”

She grabbed his ears and gave him a passionate, fierce and lingering kiss.

Allory clapped her hands in delight.

“Well, I say, I daresay …” Garobixi spluttered when indeed he finally managed to breathe again. “That was quite dusterrific – ooh!”

Straight back to the kissing. Mutual kissing.

Much restored, indeed!

When the couple finished dusting one another off and surfaced for a much-needed breath of air, Chenixipi bopped his nose playfully. “Is that so? What say you, my beloved scholar and love of my every quivering particle?”

“I say, kiss me thrice to seal this love that shivers the dust of my eternal regard for thee, thou paragon of beauty,” he gasped, reaching for her ears.

Squished between their bodies by this next round of passion, when all she had intended was to see if he had recovered adequately, Allory allowed herself a tiny smile. Apparently, ear-pulling was a sign of Pixie adoration. Who would have thought?

“Ah, the tiny Faerie?” Chenixipi gasped.

Garobixi drew back slightly. “Shoo, you miraculous pest. We’re busy here.”

She allowed herself to be ejected by a pudgy Pixie hand. Things were getting a little steamy. Or dusty? Whatever worked for Pixies. Besides, the Felidragon prowled toward her with a certain implacable smirk pasted on his lips, an expression that did not suit the Dragon in the slightest, she felt. Inixipi the Healer Sage gazed down at the young couple with a somewhat bemused expression, but when her eyes shifted to Allory, it was with a rather sterner mien.

“So, my little troublefae?”

She began to shrink, to quail, to stammer an apology.

The ancient Healer’s face creased up in various directions. “Merely dusting off the path of true love, were we?”

Allory brushed off her clothing, counted her wings and decided that life was not too awful. Even if her wound was leaking again. Her antics must have torn something. “I am sorry – dreadfully sorry about all this. You see, I sneaked off, Healer Sage –”

“You had better be sorry!”

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“– and sort of borrowed Garobixi in order to learn about the Sentinel Trees –”

“And what did we learn today, dear?”

“Were you looking for me?”

“Looking? One could say that, you churlish wretch!” Yaarah growled.

The Sage quelled him with a gesture. “Allory Fae, we dusted out fairly much the entirety of Healers’ Reach searching for you.”

The alarm had been for her?

“I’m so sorry … about the fuss, and all the mess in here.” She examined her toes dutifully. Her left big toe made a regretful circle in the now peaceful layer of dark purple dust on the floor. “Not … not so very sorry about dusting off true love, in all honesty, Your Eminence … if I were to be perfectly truthful, I did learn a great deal today. Mostly, I’m horrified that I put Garobixi’s life in danger. Am I really in a lot of trouble?”

“Dreadful trouble, dear.”

Allory’s lips quirked upward at her tone. Despite that, she did not dare to glance up until, unable to withhold at last, the venerable Healer Sage burst into peals of laughter. “You! You are irresistible. About Garobixi and my great-granddaughter – well, suffice it to say that I have suspected a tingling of dust in the airs for quite some time, Allory Fae, but the difference in their respective stations in Pixie culture does make this a most unusual liaison. Not forbidden, oh no. But the young Pixie never declared his love before –”

“Didn’t you see him, Eminent – aha,” she spluttered. “You did?”

“I did.” The green eyes rested kindly upon her. “I am sure you meant it for the best. How routine research on Sentinel Trees should turn to this … this travesty of mnemonic dust recall, quite fails me. Had you asked, I would indeed have advised you avail yourself of the knowledge in our Library. Is all your dust shaken together properly, dear?”

“I’m … alright, but what about Garobixi?”

Every eye turned to the couple pulling enthusiastically on one another’s ears over by a collection of pink, puce and green dust buckets. Those Pixie ears appeared able to take a startling degree of punishment. Plus, lip-smacking noises and whispered endearments were in plentiful supply. So was obliviousness to anything else in Spheris.

“He appears wholly reenergised, not a speck out of place,” she chortled dryly. “Allory Fae, you are our guest here. This makes us responsible for your protection.”

“Not if I run away.” Her toe made another stroke of its own accord.

“True. How did you – I don’t even have a word for it. Reconstitute his dust? I saw …”

The elderly Pixie’s voice cracked. For the first time, the Faerie girl understood what it meant, what she had done, and her own limbs and wings shook as she gazed down at the sign she had drawn in the dust. For the longest time, she stared at it in utter incomprehension.

“What’s that you’ve drawn there, dear?”

“I … well, I think it’s meant to be Middlesun, but it looks a whole lot like a flower,” she wondered aloud. “A star-ish flower. I – that’s not important right now. Inixipi, I think someone evil must have booby-trapped this dust pool in the hope of destroying any creature who came close to inquiring about this important knowledge about Sentinel Trees or perhaps the ariavana itself – I can repeat it for you, if it’s important? We should make sure it’s not lost. I guess there must have been a Pixie traitor at some point? Or someone who used the Library, who knew enough evil magic to torture a person or creature and trap the essence of their insanity here … that is what I felt, see? That’s what tried to murder Garobixi and me.”

So still was the chamber now, she feared the silence must surely shatter into a million pieces.

Her thoughts seemed to have imploded in a cloud of dust. Half a picture, half a sense that she must have learned an important truth, yet it made no sense – not alone. Allory wondered at first if her friends had been able to make sense of her muddled musings, but realised from their aghast expressions that the opposite must be true. Perhaps these fears, jumbled and erratic as they were, conveyed all too much truth?

In an even smaller voice, she added, “In the middle of it all – the shrieking disintegration of that dust storm – I heard the music, Inixipi, the same music that infernal dust record called primitive and superstitious –”

“Dusted into storage by some arrogant fool,” Garobixi found breath to sniff indelicately. Chenixipi hushed him.

“– and that’s what brought you back, Garobixi.”

She hugged herself, sombre and elated all at once. Allory glanced around at all the Pixies crowded in amongst the chaos of the Library chamber. Everyone stared back at her.

Music. Melody. Is that why I always loved to dance before … before everything?

Chenixipi whispered something over in the corner.

Summoning his pixels apparently with a thought, Garobixi swept up off the ground and tumbled over toward the startled Scintillant. By the time, he arrived he was sitting cross-legged and upright on his little personal puddle of lime-green pixels, but like any self-respecting flying creature, his behaviour displayed no issues with moving sideways, heels over antennae or even upside down, for that matter.

He thrust out his arms. Hug! Well, more a mini-hug in her case, but absolutely massive in terms of emotion. A dint of mutual eye-rubbing and soft chuckling ensued.

After a long, precious cuddle, he breathed, “Bust my dust, this makes you my heroine, Allory.”

She gulped, “I feel so, so wretched for making you risk your life like that, Garobixi.”

“It’s alright. To think you had us all convinced that true scintillance was a matter of legend,” he sniffled, drawing her into a gentle hand hug against his chest. “By my dust, what was that then?”

“Blind panic?”

“I think we both know otherwise,” said he, touching her check with a fingertip. “Even your teardrops glisten with a noticeable inner radiance. I can’t wait to learn what this gift means, Allory Fae, but I thank you with every particle of my dust for coming to my rescue when it mattered most – and for, unwittingly I suppose, opening the way with Chenixipi. I would never have had the courage in myself, but for your intervention.”

Despite her trembling now in reaction, Allory kissed Garobixi upon the cheek, never more grateful that a creature lived.

Unsteadily, she said, “Thank you for coming to our rescue – all of you. Having seen this, I am desperately afraid of what my people’s powers might be exploited to achieve. Inixipi, I’ve learned that there might be a threat darker and more malign than anything we’ve feared so far.”

The Healer Sage said, “This too, we will overcome.”

Allory desperately wanted to stay brave, but she began to shake in reaction instead as it all caught up with her in a rush. The horror of what she had seen. Garobixi’s sweet round face had disintegrated before her eyes. Her bumbling, foolish, little adventure had narrowly avoided costing the lives of all of her new friends, even Yaarah. Dreadful. Too much. Especially after they had given so unstintingly to heal her. On a more selfish note, she had never sought out power of any kind for the reasons that sickened her now. With power, with real magic, would come expectations and demands that this tiny weakling could never hope to satisfy. Failure, disappointment and disaster – just look at this day – were assured.

She was Allory Fae, the accursed boneyard girl. All she wanted to do was to curl up and hide her scintillance from the world forever.

Yet the harder she tried to deny it, the more it seemed destined to emerge.