Spindlefish and Stars

by Christiane M. Andrews

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Christiane Andrews

  Illustrations © 2020 by Yuta Onoda

  Cover art copyright © 2020 by Yuta Onoda. Cover design by Karina Granda. Cover copyright © 2020 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  Little, Brown and Company

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  First Edition: September 2020

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Andrews, Christiane M., author.

  Title: Spindlefish and stars / Christiane M. Andrews.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2020. | Audience: Ages 8–12. | Summary: “When Clo’s father goes missing, she takes the mysterious items he left behind and journeys across the sea to find him, but is stranded on a strange island and must learn to spin fish into yarn to unravel the secret of all that has happened”— Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020012167 | ISBN 9780316496018 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316496025 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316496056 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Missing persons—Fiction. | Voyages and travels—Fiction. | Tapestry—Fiction. | Fantasy.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.A5327 Spi 2020 | DDC [Fic] —dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020012167

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-49601-8 (hardcover), 978-0-316-49602-5 (ebook)

  E3-20200811-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter the First: In Which the Boyish Girl Digs up Her Turnips

  Chapter the Second: Wherein the Pockmarked Swineherd Curls His Lip

  Chapter the Third: Pertaining to the Unwrapping of a Stinky Cheese

  Chapter the Fourth: Relating Chiefly to a Slip of Half Paffage

  Chapter the Fifth: In Which the Pebble-mouthed Man Apologizes

  Chapter the Sixth: In Which the Pebble-mouthed Man Is Sorrier Still

  Chapter the Seventh: Of a Piping and a Murmuring

  Chapter the Eighth: In Which Some Fish Slip from a Basket

  Chapter the Ninth: Revealing the Contents of a Forbidden Notebook

  Chapter the Tenth: Describing the Plipping of Stones

  Chapter the Eleventh: In Which a Beggar at the Gate Becomes an Apple-picker

  Chapter the Twelfth: Wherein the Apple-faced Woman Jabs the Despairing Girl

  Chapter the Thirteenth: Describing a Descent

  Chapter the Fourteenth: In Which a Stone Stands in Place of a Fish

  Chapter the Fifteenth: In Which There Is Some Squishing, and the Squeamish Reader Is Advised to Look Away

  Chapter the Sixteenth: Wherein Our Hero Learns Her Krow

  Chapter the Seventeenth: In Which Our Hero Remembers She Cannot Swim

  Chapter the Eighteenth: In Which Our Hero Dies

  Chapter the Nineteenth: In Which Our Hero Is a Clay Pot

  Chapter the Twentieth: Wherein Something Giggles and Something Gmmms

  Chapter the Twenty-first: In Which a Man Leads a Sweaty Ox to Market

  Chapter the Twenty-second: Wherein Three Rounded Spoonfuls of Bilberry Jam Are Soft and Trembly

  Chapter the Twenty-third: Wherein the Moon-cheeked Boy Does Not Open His Door

  Chapter the Twenty-fourth: In Which a Plan Is Hatched in a Nest

  Chapter the Twenty-fifth: In Which the Swineherd Returns

  Chapter the Twenty-sixth: In Which a Boy Examines the Silver on a Plum

  Chapter the Twenty-seventh: In Which a Boy Is Flying. Then Not Flying

  Chapter the Twenty-eighth: In Which What Is and What Was Meant to Be Are Examined

  Chapter the Twenty-ninth: Pertaining to the Recognition of Night and Day

  Chapter the Thirtieth: In Which a Story Is Told and Retold

  Chapter the Thirty-first: Relating to the Significance of a Potato

  Chapter the Thirty-second: In Which a Thread Is Unwound

  Chapter the Thirty-third: In Which a Pocket Has No Pastries

  Chapter the Thirty-fourth: Wherein No One Is Fished from the Sea

  Chapter the Last: In Which Our Tale Ends

  Epilogue: Ni Hcihw Eht Dlo Namow, Ohw Si Lla Enola, Skaeps Ot Eht Tac, Sa Si Reh Tnow

  Acknowledgments

  FOR OLIVER ROBIN

  CHAPTER THE FIRST

  IN WHICH THE BOYISH GIRL DIGS UP HER TURNIPS

  ONCE, ON THE FAR END OF THE VILLAGE IN THE LAST OF the crumbling homes, lived a girl. Perhaps a girl, the neighbors said; at any rate, she was not pretty. She kept her dark hair shorn as tight as a lamb’s in spring and wore a boy’s dirty tunic and leggings and boots, and when she was not with her father, which was often, she skulked in the shadows of the buildings or at the corner of her house, where she dug and poked in the dirt around a miserable patch of turnips and straggly weeds. She never smiled or offered a hello or bonjour or guten morgen or ahlan wa sahlan or privet or a greeting in any language, no matter how many times the neighbors showed her their own rows of yellow teeth, and when they tried to stop her to make her speak—to mind her manners—she would scuttle away, bounding out of their grasp, and disappear with a bang behind her own front door.

  A shame, one neighbor would sigh.

  The child needs a mother, another would add.

  How about you? a third would suggest.

  This always made them all laugh, great heaving, spittle-laced laughs, for as much as the motherless boyish girl set the neighbors’ tongues to flapping, the thought of anyone marrying that man, the gray and wizened, stooped and shuffling little man who called himself her father, was too much for any of them to bear.

  Oh, he has one foot already in the grave! the first would hoot.

  Just one foot? the second would sputter. I think there’s a leg and an arm in there as well!

  Ah, if he only had a fortune, the last would cry, the first gust of winter would make his widow rich! This thought, of course, silenced them for a while. But no, he could not be rich. Whatever work he did, it was daily—or, rather, nightly: he would depart each evening before the sun sank below the mountains and arrive each morning just as the town began to shape itself out of the darkness. There was no leisure. And night work… whatever it was—emptying the chamber pots or sweeping the stables or loosening the grime that clogged the gutters along the streets—was filthy work. Rank, lowly work. Work that smelled. Work best done in the dark. Work that did not fatten a man’s purse.

  But it mattered little how much the neighbors talked, or how often the girl—for she was a girl, shorn hair and short tunic and all—darted into the shadows to escape their eyes, or how often her stooped and aged father trudged past on his way
to his dark duties. For there would come a day, there always came a day, when the father would not return, and the girl, after having swept the stoop and plucked the last small turnips and the weeds from the little garden and tied them in a sack, would clamber over the village wall and disappear into the fields and then the forest, never to return. Sometimes, one of the neighbors, up at dawn and yawning at the window, would see the girl perched on the wall, ready to jump, and would ask, Now where… but the neighbor would scarcely form the question before letting herself forget all about the child and the old man. That he was too old and she too boyish was really all there was to talk about, and when they were not there, well, honestly, what was the point in calling them to mind?

  So Clo, wall-jumper, turnip-grower, corner-skulker, lived a life in the shadows. But those moments before they left the village, the ones where she perched on the wall and prepared to launch herself off into the wilderness, small bag of turnips and weeds and household things in hand, those were the moments she most treasured. The sun, just rising above the edges of the hills, would be staining the sky a faint pink; the village, just beginning to wake up, would be quiet and still, except, perhaps, for the distant noise of a cart trundling along the cobblestones; and Clo, relishing the silence and the air at the top of the wall that carried the scent of dew and pine and not the steaming, fetid odors of the town, would feel her pulse quicken at the thought of the journey that awaited. Her father would meet her at the edge of the woods, his pockets heavy with breads and pastries and cheeses he had pilfered from the kitchens and his bags strapped to an ass he had pilfered from the barns, and the two would set out, tramping for days upon days through bright fields and dark forests and glimmering mountain heights.

  These travels, thought Clo, and not the towns that interrupted them for a scattering of months at a time, made up their real life. For it was only then, walking under the thick shadows of trees or at the edges of windswept moors or even in the gloom of dank and terrible swamps, that the worry and fear that lined her father’s eyes faded, and Clo, sensing his relief, allowed her own face to relax into a smile that—had the villagers seen it—might have caused them to reconsider the word pretty. No, even then, they would not have said pretty, but pleasant, yes. They might have called her smile, at least, pleasant.

  And so it was such a smile that Clo should have worn that morning that found her again on the wall, swinging her legs and taking in her first deep breath of non-manure-scented air. Having heard the tower bells chime five and having not seen her father come through the front door—Were they meant to leave today?—she had rushed to wrap up their scant belongings and pluck the garden and sweep the stoop and clamber the wall. But once there, about to push off into the damp morning air, she felt, instead of joy, a small, uncomfortable seed of foreboding. She delayed a moment, frowning, wondering. Her father had not given her any warning. Usually, he offered her some notice that their town days were drawing to a close: Clo, I am nearly finished—a fortnight, perhaps, or Clo, the steward is, I think, suspicious; take care to heed the bells these next weeks. But this time, he had said nothing.

  No matter. They had been in this particular village for many months, as many as they had ever stayed at another. Even the grandest manors had only so many moldering baubles for her father to polish: he would certainly be finishing his work. Clo glanced back. There was their crumbling house with its freshly swept stoop, there was a neighbor staring slack-jawed through a window, there were a few faint curls of smoke rising from chimneys about the town. She narrowed her eyes at the goggling neighbor. My father does not, does not, she protested silently, have three entire limbs in the grave. And he does not, she added, glaring, frowning, sweep the night soil from the privies. She turned away, looking toward the open field. She would not miss this dreary hamlet and its gossiping inhabitants.

  Tightening her grip around the bag of turnips and things, she pushed off, landing lightly in the muck that laced the wall, and set off at a trot through the fields. She kept her eye on the forest edge; her father would have left the manor under cover of dark, and he would be waiting now—with pastry-laden pockets—for her to arrive. Or he should be. She felt again that uncomfortable seed of foreboding, now a bit larger than before. A seed perhaps splitting and beginning to sprout. She could not see her father’s silhouette or the silhouette of a stolen ass anywhere beneath the trees. She began to run, the sack bouncing against her side. The line of trees rose and fell with her gait, and though she scanned and scanned, she still could see no form of man or donkey.

  “Father!” she called when she had drawn close enough to distinguish one tree from another. Perhaps he was in the woods, resting on a bit of moss or leaning against a log. “Father!” Perhaps he had closed his eyes for a moment and fallen asleep after his long night of work. “Father!” She raced along the edge, calling into the shadows. “Father!”

  She stopped. Only silence and the gentle sweep of leaves. “Father!” she tried again and strained, listening.

  He was not there.

  Clo looked back at the town. The village gates, though open, were empty. The wagon tracks leading to them were also empty. No donkey, no man. Her father was not here, and he was not simply delayed.

  One last time: “Father!”

  Only the shush-shush-shush of the trees answered.

  Clo sat, leaning back against the rough bark of a pine. The seed of foreboding that had split and sprouted and taken root now blossomed thick and bitter.

  What to do?

  What to do?

  What to do?

  Clo, wall-jumper, turnip-picker, corner-skulker, was not a hand-wringer, but in the many many times and in the many many ways they had fled a village, never had her father failed to meet her. Always, he had made her promise, should the morning bells ring five without his return, she should leave the town. “Do not stay,” he would instruct her. “Do not tempt fate by delaying. You must not stay.” And always, he would promise in kind, he would meet her at the forest edge under the tallest pine. “Always, Clo. Always.”

  Never had he told her what to do should she find herself there alone.

  Shush-shush-shush, the trees said. Shush-shush-shush.

  “Always,” Clo whispered. She folded her hands on her lap. “Always.”

  CHAPTER THE SECOND

  WHEREIN THE POCKMARKED SWINEHERD CURLS HIS LIP

  FROM HER PERCH, CLO WATCHED THE SKY FADE FROM PINK to gray and gradually brighten into a pale, washed blue. The town, in the distance, came to life: little figures—men and oxen and sheep and horses—moved in and out of the gates, and the murmurings of the village—shouts and cries and clatterings—came now and again on the wind. With increasing agitation, Clo heard the tower bells chime six.

  Then seven.

  Then eight.

  Then nine.

  At ten, the sun had grown too strong, and she backed a little into the forest, settling herself against a mossy stump. Here, she could still see the village and the paths that wove around it, but in the shadows, she felt less desperate. So she would wait. What else was there to do but wait? He would come. Always.

  By now, thought Clo, if her father had come home, they would have already breakfasted together. She would have warmed yesterday’s cold crust over the fire, sliced the onions thin. He would have asked her how she slept—Clo, did the rats keep away?—and she would have fibbed and said they had. By now, he would already have fallen into a deep sleep on his pallet on the floor, and she, surely, by now would already be outside picking weeds from their garden. She squinted hard at the little town, imagining herself there scratching in the dirt around the tubers, yanking out rogue shepherd’s purse and goosefoot, scurrying to the well and back for water, tending to her seedlings, going about her morning as it should have happened.

  At eleven, the trees stopped saying shush, shush, shush and fell into a quieter, steadier ssssssss.

  Not much later, Clo’s stomach began its own rumbling monologue, complaining that, in
her mistaken anticipation of pastries from her father’s pockets, she had not eaten. She untied her sack and, looking over her collection of turnips, took the smallest of the little crop. She rubbed it clean on her tunic and ate it like an apple. Afterward, her mouth felt dry and puckered; she smacked her lips and swallowed and wished desperately she had something to drink, but her father was the one who always carried the skins of water. Always.

  At two, full of midday heat and the steady hum of insects, a stillness settled over the town: the little figures in the distance were resting. Clo watched an emerald beetle climb steadily up a tree trunk until it disappeared into the leafy canopy.

  By five, when the sun was beginning to dip in the sky, Clo’s little plant of foreboding had itself gone to seed. She felt within her a whole garden of dread rooting and sprouting and twisting its vines.

  Smoke was now rising from the village cooking fires. Clo thought of the suppers she usually prepared—working quietly around her father’s sleeping form—to share with him before he went to work: a simple, thin soup, a hunk of bread. She imagined herself pulling from the embers the loaf she had shaped, ladling out the steaming broth and its soft scraps of potato and turnip into their bowls, hiding from her father that she was giving him the meatiest pieces. Though she was now too full of anxiety to be hungry, she thought of the comfort of those foods with longing.

  By the time the bells tolled six and lights from the village showed against the deepening sky, Clo, who was not a hand-wringer, was, in fact, wringing her hands in earnest. She twisted her fingers and bit her lips and stood and paced and stared at the town. Should she return? Should she remain? Should she go on? What had become of her father?

  Her feet padding steadily across the carpet of needles and moss and leaves, she reconsidered his goodbye to her the evening before. Had there been anything amiss? No… not amiss. Not exactly amiss. She had been sewing by the fire while he shuffled about, wrapping his brushes, his rags, his potatoes, his pots, and placing them in his can. She had shown him her poor attempt at patchwork—I’m trying to mend your winter tunic, Father—and he had sighed, looking over her stitches—I’m afraid the cloth is too worn to hold together, lambkin. He had kissed her as he always did on the crown of her head, the pale bristle of his chin scratching her brow. If only I had stronger thread for you, my daughter, that tunic might see another winter. But all the same, you are good to try. Good to try to keep us warm as the days grow shorter. His smile had been small. He had pulled his cloak over his narrow shoulders, fastened its dark button. Good night, my lambkin, my daughter so full of care. Good night, Father, good night.