Fire in the Star

by Kamilla Benko

  “Who lives here?” Claire asked. She looked wildly about the room, half expecting Mira Fray to appear from the shadows. Fray was one of the Royalists who had captured Claire and Sophie in the Drowning Fortress two weeks ago. The Royalists were members of a secret society, one that was often laughed at for their belief that the stone monoliths on the Sorrowful Plains had truly been the living forms of the last queen and the last unicorn. They had worked for years to try to free the queen from the stone she’d been transformed into, believing she’d bring about a better day for Arden. Now they’d succeeded and were her most loyal followers, aside from the wraiths.

  Sophie shook her head. “Nobody, as far as I can tell. A Spinner probably lived here once, but look.” She pointed to a corner of the ceiling, where Claire could just make out a colony of cobwebs. “I think it’s been a while.”

  Claire shuddered slightly. She was still worried about the Spydens. Though she had intentionally set out to find one, she knew they had to be wary—Spydens were known to be tricky. They could easily weave you into a dangerous web of half-truths if you weren’t careful.

  But Sophie didn’t seem concerned about any Spydens bursting through the door and claiming this musty old house. And she didn’t even seem, come to think of it, all that surprised that Claire had found her. Or that she had found Claire.

  Claire looked around at the modest home. “Did Nett mention this place to you?” she asked. “Did he come with you?”

  Sophie shrugged and walked over to the stove to stir a pot that bubbled on top. From behind, with her face turned away, she looked kind of like a fairy-tale witch. “Nett?” Sophie spoke his name like a question.

  Claire felt a sigh well up inside her but pushed it down. Even here, miles and worlds away from home, Sophie liked to tease her. Well, two could play at that game.

  “You remember Nettle Green—my height, black hair, know-it-all? The foster brother of Sena Steele, the tall redhead who likes to stab things.”

  “He didn’t want to come with me,” Sophie said. “Neither did Sena,” she added.

  “Really? They stayed in Woven Root?” Claire guessed it made sense, but still, she was disappointed. She thought they would have wanted to come, after all they’d been through together. But she supposed the knowledge that Sena’s parents weren’t dead had changed the Forger girl’s goals. The second-to-last time Claire had seen her (the last, last time, she’d been asleep in a hammock hung next to Sophie’s), Sena had been poring over her parents’ notes and journals, trying to figure out their experiments at the seams of the world, with an eager Nett practically standing on his chair with excitement.

  “You need to change out of those wet clothes,” Sophie said, always in her role as bossy big sister. “Maybe put on that cloak.”

  Claire let out a strangled yelp. No way was she going to put on something that strongly resembled a Royalist cloak!

  Sophie, oddly, didn’t seem bothered by it. Even though it was the Royalists who had almost succeeded in killing her.

  “Or,” Sophie continued, “there are some dresses in there.” She pointed to a freestanding wardrobe in an adjoining bedroom.

  “What is up with you?” Claire asked as she shuffled over to the wardrobe, then opened it to reveal five or six black gowns, all identical to Sophie’s, along with matching pointy hats. At least now it was clear where Sophie had gotten her strange outfit. Typical Sophie. She would play dress-up, even in this unusual situation.

  “Nothing,” Sophie said from the main room. “Why?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, it’s just—you’re acting like you own this place, like you’ve been here for ages, like you’ve been expecting me, even though you couldn’t have been exactly sure of where I’d gone.”

  “I guess I just know you better than you think, Claire,” she said. But not Clairina, like she usually called her. Something was off with Sophie, and it was making Claire feel itchy and frustrated, but it was hard to put her finger on what was wrong, especially as she was still dripping wet and exhausted from her journey.

  After peeling off her wet tunic, Claire pulled on a dress. It was way too big for her and pooled around her feet like melted wax around a candle. But it was dry, at least. And warm.

  Next, she took the pencil out and squeezed the salt water from her damp braid, making a face at the strange texture of her hair. Next to Mom and Dad, Claire missed her shampoo and detangling spray above all else. She debated undoing the french braid she had coaxed Sena into doing before she snuck away, but she was too tired to deal with the snarls that would come as a result. Maybe she would just— Wait, what was that?

  Claire stopped squeezing the end of her braid and gripped her pencil as though it were a staff from Gemmer practice. She thought she’d heard someone say something, a word, maybe, or a sniffle, low and mournful. A quick glance over her shoulder told her Sophie was still in the kitchen.

  Then it came again, quiet, almost like a hush. “Help.”

  A chill moved through her.

  Someone else was in the house.

  CHAPTER

  4

  Tentatively, Claire walked over and untied the gauzy white curtain that covered a small square window. Peering out, all she could see was the darkness of the night sky and the even more velvety darkness that was the sea. So close to the water, it almost sounded like the sea itself was breathing as it inhaled and exhaled its way onto the shore.

  Understanding broke with sudden clarity. She wasn’t hearing someone crying at all—it was just the sound of the waves sighing against the rocks.

  There was a flutter out of the corner of her eye. The curtain swayed, even though there was no hint of a breeze. Odd.

  Claire trailed the long drop of gauze to the top of the window, where the fabric was heavily draped to resemble linked crescent moons. It was a grand style, one that would have been a better fit at the opera house Mom had once taken her to rather than this bare little cottage.

  “Soup’s ready!” Sophie called. Tucking the pencil back into her braid, Claire left the strange bedroom just in time to see Sophie ladling broth into a clay bowl with unexpected ease. Though perhaps it shouldn’t have been unexpected, as Sophie had, after all, spent weeks at Stonehaven working in the Citadel’s kitchens while Claire had been taking magic lessons.

  “Sophie, are you sure you haven’t seen anyone else around? Or heard anything?” Maybe she was being paranoid; maybe it was just the whisper of the sea, but … “I swear I heard someone calling for help a minute ago.”

  Sophie laughed, a distant, forced laugh that sounded more like a noise a tired Mom would make at the end of a day teaching her college courses. Not like a real Sophie laugh, wild and free. “Oh, Claire,” was all she said.

  Sitting down at the table, Claire kept her eyes on her sister, looking for a sign that Sophie was becoming a unicorn. But as far as Claire could tell, there wasn’t any change at all. In fact, the opposite seemed to have happened.

  She stared at Sophie’s hair, currently out of its signature ponytail in order to fit beneath the cone hat. There was no streak of white in it like the last time Claire had seen Sophie. Perhaps it had grown out …?

  As she watched, Sophie sprinkled something into the small bowl. There was still that strange smell that lingered in the air, as if something was rotten. Fish, probably, as they were so close to the sea. She hoped it wasn’t Sophie’s soup.

  Smiling proudly, Sophie walked over and set the bowl in front of Claire. Claire fought to keep her features neutral. The bowlful in front of her looked more like damp green yarn than anything that could be called food.

  “Seaweed goulash,” Sophie said. “Eat up. You need to be well fed when we go to the Spyden’s Lair tomorrow.”

  “If we can even get up into those caves and find it,” Claire muttered as she hesitantly accepted the spoon Sophie handed her. “It’s really high up. I’m not even sure what we should do when we find it.”

  “What was your plan?”

  �
��I have a snippet of Spyden silk in the pack,” Claire said. “Supposedly it’s really rare, and I had the feeling from Cotton,” she said, referencing the teenage Tiller in Woven Root who had helped her and Sophie, “that it was stolen. I thought maybe the Spyden might want it back in exchange for some solutions. But maybe it won’t be special enough.” Claire paused. She hadn’t really thought it out beyond that.

  Sophie blinked at her, her brown eyes looking black in the red glow of the stove. “What do you know about Spydens?” she asked.

  “Not much,” Claire admitted. “And you?”

  “I know that they are very old and that there are very few left. I know that they are skilled in the same way spiders are and that they can weave anything: maps, castles, and even different forms. And that they like to follow the rules.”

  “Rules?” Claire repeated. “But I don’t know about any rules.”

  “Manners,” Sophie clarified. “But don’t worry. Go on, eat. It’ll make you feel better. And you’ll hurt my feelings if you don’t at least try.”

  Claire stared at her sister again. “It’ll hurt your feelings?”

  “Yes!”

  “You are being. So. Weird. I don’t like it.”

  “You’ll like starving less—I can guarantee that,” Sophie said, but she didn’t break out in the usual grin she’d make when teasing Claire.

  Something was definitely wrong, and unease moved through Claire. She didn’t like this feeling. She didn’t like it at all.

  Reluctantly, Claire pulled the bowl closer to her. She’d tried liver pâté before—how bad could this be? Taking a deep breath, she twirled her spoon, wrapping some seaweed around it. Before she could rethink it, she gulped it down.

  The texture was like noodles boiled a little too long, but the taste was similar to crushed walnuts. In fact, if she could ignore what she was eating, Claire would have said it was pretty good. Or maybe it was good only because she was so hungry.

  Which was why it took Claire a few minutes to notice that even though Sophie had sat down, she hadn’t put a bowl in front of herself. Instead, she’d pulled out a pair of knitting needles from somewhere and had begun to knit.

  Click-clack. Click-clack.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” Claire asked.

  “Later,” Sophie said, not even bothering to look down at her hands while her fingers flew across the yarn, tightening soft loops.

  “I didn’t know you knew how to knit,” Claire said.

  “Really, Claire, I’m a Spinner—how do you keep forgetting?” Click-clack. Click-clack. “Now, tell me, how did you get here? And what question are you going to request of the Spyden?”

  Request of the Spyden? First there was the cooking and the knitting and now this fancy vocabulary? Claire felt her frown deepen, but still, she answered her sister’s question. “I’m going to ask what happened to the unicorn of Unicorn Rock. And if he can put you back to normal.”

  Sophie tilted her head. “But that doesn’t sound like the question you actually want to ask.”

  Claire crossed her arms. She was exhausted and anxious and didn’t have any patience left to deal with Sophie’s airs of fake mystery. “Yes it is.”

  Click-clack. Click-clack. Sophie’s knitting needles tapped faster, a beautiful, shimmering blanket slowly billowing from beneath them. Claire couldn’t believe how rapidly Sophie had learned her magic skill.

  “No,” Sophie said, “it sounds like a question hiding a question. What do you really want to know, Claire Elaina Martinson?”

  It was like Sophie’s question was a hook, and Claire’s answer was the slippery secret that had gotten caught. Because without wanting to, without really thinking about it, she blurted, “How do I make sure everything stays the same?” Question after question tumbled out, piling on top of one another so quickly, Claire felt like they might crush her. “What’s it going to be like when we go home? Will it ever be the same again? And not just before Arden but before before, when you weren’t sick at all. When we could just—”

  Her voice cracked. She didn’t even know what she was about to say—just what? Just be sisters? Just be kids? Just not be a princess and unicorn of Arden? The number and power of her questions overwhelmed Claire.

  It’s all too much.

  She buried her face in her hands. And again, she tasted salt at the corner of her mouth as tears trailed down.

  “Hey, now,” Sophie said softly. She patted Claire’s shoulder, her long black sleeve brushing against her cheek. “It’s going to be fine. I’ve taken care of it.”

  Claire looked up, startled. “What?” she demanded. “How?”

  “Nothing, I just meant, tomorrow we’ll find the Spyden. It’ll be an Expedition!”

  “Experience,” Claire said, but her voice felt jumbled in her throat. In fact, all her thoughts were becoming soft and tangled, like yarn.

  “What was that?” Sophie’s face appeared above hers, and again, Claire thought it was funny how black her eyes looked, when they were typically a vibrant brown. Something was off; something didn’t feel right. It was as though her sister wasn’t actually her sister.

  Claire knew she should be alarmed at the thoughts plodding through her mind, but … she was so tired.

  “You don’t call them ‘Expeditions,’ ” Claire mumbled. “You call them ‘Experiences.’ ”

  The click-clack of the needles stopped.

  “You’re falling asleep,” Sophie said. Something as soft as the underside of a cloud drifted across Claire and settled over her. It was warm and silky, conforming to her shape. Was Sophie tucking her in with the blanket she’d just knitted?

  Her eyelids drooped lower, but she could see Sophie standing over her. For some reason, her head was so heavy now, she could barely lift it.

  The transparent veil on Sophie’s hat dipped and floated down, covering Claire’s face. It was hard to breathe under it. She thought about tugging it off her face, but her arms felt heavy, as though they’d been filled with warm water. She was scared, but her fear was fuzzy like the edges of dreams. Or nightmares. This was not normal. Sophie was not normal.

  And then the strangest thought: the person in front of her was not Sophie at all.

  As soon as Claire thought it, she saw a dark shadow cross over Sophie’s face. And as she watched, it grew … and grew …

  The shadow wasn’t crossing—it was splitting Sophie’s face.

  Two long and hairy spider legs burst from Sophie’s head, the conical hat falling on either side of her neck like a banana peel.

  Claire screamed—or tried to, but her throat wasn’t working!

  With a horrible rip, Sophie’s black gown burst open, revealing more legs wrapped around rows upon rows of glittering eyes. The legs hit the floor, and the newly appeared spider lurched forward, pulling itself out of Sophie’s black gown.

  But Sophie wasn’t Sophie.

  And the blanket wrapped around Claire was no blanket at all.

  It was a web woven just for her.

  CHAPTER

  5

  The giant spider’s legs click-clacked like knitting needles as they scuttled toward Claire. She tried to scream, but the seaweed seemed to have strangled her vocal cords. Like a black wave, the spider loomed above her, a wall of fur and eyes and legs—then plunged.

  For the second time that day, Claire felt the world around her sway. This time, though, it wasn’t the rocking of the sea’s waves; it was the spider wrapping her up the same way Mom wrapped up lunchtime sandwiches.

  She told her legs to kick! But the blanket stuck, keeping her stiff and still.

  “Stay calm, Claire,” the spider said, no longer speaking in Sophie’s voice but in a voice that rasped and clicked. “You don’t want the silk to be too loose, or else you won’t be fresh for later. Stay still, and all will be well.” There was a pause, and then the spider added, “Maybe not well for you but definitely for me. I haven’t had Gemmer in ages.”

  Gemmer. The word cut thr
ough Claire’s tangled panic like a pair of scissors. Yes—she was a Gemmer. She was not helpless! She just needed a plan. She needed to think. But being rolled across the floor by a giant spider—her back, sides, and stomach thumping hard against the floor with each turn—was scrambling all her thoughts.

  Her fear grew sharper as the blanket wrapped tighter and tighter. Pain rumbled through her. She was going to be one giant bruise … if she even managed to survive being treated like a washrag across the flagstone floor.

  Wait. An idea whirled past her, and Claire grasped at it. Flagstone floor.

  The silk wrapping around her was nothing like the smooth polishing rags Claire had used in Starscrape Citadel to call forth light from gems. But it wasn’t light she needed. She needed heat.

  She stopped straining and let herself and the silk be rolled. And as the world turned and her body connected with the floor again and again, Claire thought of Mom lighting the coals under the grill. Of blistering summer sand under her bare feet. Of rock striking rock, releasing a shower of embers.

  And as she rolled, she felt a hum. It trickled through her bones, and she felt the rock’s answering song. Though she was exhausted—exhausted from running, exhausted from almost drowning, exhausted from worrying—the rock was not. Magic was always in the material, and stone did not tire and it did not forget. It remembered heat at its beginning, when the world’s weight formed it.

  Claire smelled singed hair, and a second later, a high-pitched screech filled the cottage as the room finally stopped spinning.

  “You foul Gemmer!” the spider spat, but Claire could barely hear its angry clack over the sound of its eight feet stamping the floor as it tried to avoid the stones that were now as hot as summer sand.

  Flinging herself in the opposite direction, Claire unrolled as fast as she could. The silk blanket clung to her, resisting, but at last, she was free! Lurching to her feet, she glanced around the room just quickly enough to see that the spider had sprawled onto the ground, its eight legs akimbo beneath it … but for how long? Claire sprinted for the door.