She was ten feet away. Then three. One … She reached out, fingers straining for the handle.
“Helmmmmppfff meefff!”
Claire stumbled to a stop. There it was again, that same mournful cry she’d heard in the tiny bedroom. The sound that she’d decided was just the sea slapping against the shore. But now she was certain: that was an entirely human voice. And she could make out all the words: Help me.
Claire whirled around. The bedroom door was open, and she could see straight into it … but it wasn’t the same as she’d left it. The great curtains, which had hung so elegantly, were now shredded. And in the middle of the room, next to the wardrobe of black dresses, stood a ghost.
Claire gasped. No, not a ghost. Though tattered white gauze clung to the tiny figure, binding their arms and ankles, Claire could tell by the sparkle of brown eyes and flush of cheeks that the person was very much alive.
“Helpfff!” The person moaned, taking a hop forward before toppling to the ground in a nest of tattered spider silk … just as the spider finally got its first foot back from underneath it.
There was no time for a plan. Claire ran!
“I’m here!” she said, falling to her knees as she grabbed for her Hollow Pack, thankful that she’d left it in this room. She tugged open the smallest outside pocket and pulled out the bronze circle inside it: a Kompass, a Forger object crafted so that she and Sophie could always find their friend Aquila. But Forgers liked to put an edge on everything. Sliding her thumb over a hidden mechanism, Claire clicked open a small blade.
“Stay still,” she told the wild brown eyes that moved back and forth above the silk that obscured their nose and mouth. The figure looked like a strange butterfly, stuck within its cocoon. As carefully as she could, Claire sliced through the threads, making a slit in the wrappings that was big enough that she could begin to rip the web away. The feet emerged first, and then as soon as hands were free, they reached for the material wrapped around their mouth, clawing at it. “Mmmph!”
“One second,” Claire whispered, reaching for the Kompass’s blade again. “Don’t worry; you’re almost fre— Aah!”
Fire exploded across Claire’s shoulder as the spider, all its legs finally gathered beneath it, had at last lunged—and sank two fangs into her skin. Bright bursts of color erupted across Claire’s vision as the venom shrieked its way through her veins. She could no longer see what had happened to the person she’d been trying to free from the web.
She dropped to the floor as the spider released her. “Meddlesome human!” the spider sneered. “Venom always makes for a funny aftertaste. I’ll have to wait until your blood is fresh again.”
But Claire wasn’t going to wait around for any spider. She rolled to the side, trying to avoid its feet. The pain was already receding, but she wasn’t sure her legs would support her. Curling into a ball, Claire tensed—
“No!” a clear, entirely human voice yelled. “Ariadne of Silk Web Fleet, I command you: do not eat!”
Claire turned her head. A young girl, her cloak still covered in swaths of web, stood in front of the spider. So this was the person who had been trapped, who had been crying for help. In her hand, she clutched the soup ladle, even though her head barely came up to the spider’s knees. Claire squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to see the spider’s fangs sink into the girl. But no scream burst forth—no shout of pain. Instead, she heard an annoyed click-clack.
“That,” the spider said, “is an amateur’s rhyme.”
Claire’s eyes flew open just as the girl crossed her brown arms. “But it does rhyme,” the girl retorted. “And I’ve called you by your true name. So by the rules—manners—of your own kind, you must stand down, and you know it!”
A sound like chalk between teeth ground across Claire’s ears, and it took Claire a moment to realize it was the spider’s laughter. “Foolish Spinner, you know this can’t end well for you.”
“Away, great spider,” the girl countered. “Er … go stand by the fire!”
Dazed, Claire pulled herself up. And the giant spider—Spyden, Claire finally realized—stood on the far side of the room, its massive bulk almost completely hiding the stove. It clicked its pincers when it saw Claire staring at it. Claire’s stomach rolled.
“What—?”
“Shh!” The girl’s hand slapped over Claire’s mouth. “If you’re within earshot of an unmasked Spyden, don’t ask a question until you’re sure it’s the only question in the world you want answered!” The girl rattled off her words so fast that Claire could hardly keep up. “Spydens are tricky—they know the answer to almost anything! They’re able to catch story threads on the wind and spin patches that will mend any problem. But there are rules. An unmasked Spyden can be controlled by rhymes and is obligated to truthfully answer one question you ask—only one. But if you ask a second question, it’s allowed to attack, no matter the rhyming command. I hope you understand.”
Claire didn’t. She didn’t understand anything.
One second her sister was here, and then she wasn’t. Spydens weren’t helpful creatures after all but giant, hungry werespiders. And somehow this Spinner girl was here … and helping her?
Still, Claire nodded, and the girl removed her hand from Claire’s mouth. Then the girl turned her attention back to the Spyden, lifting the ladle that the fake Sophie had used only minutes ago to spoon soup into Claire’s bowl.
Slowly, Claire dragged her eyes away from the girl and to the Spyden, who had done just as the girl had asked and was standing as if frozen near the fire. Her stomach twisted at the sight of its bristly, too-long legs and eyes. So many eyes. Large ones, small ones, but all orbs of inky blackness, so it was impossible to tell where the Spyden was looking, except for the creeping feeling that skittered across Claire’s shoulders that told her it was very much watching her.
“Just to be clear,” Claire said to the girl, “I can only ask one thing.” Even though her voice was squeaky, she was careful to keep her words flat and unmarked by a question.
“Yes. But Mama says asking a Spyden is just asking for trouble.” She began to criss-cross her braids over her ears, forming makeshift earmuffs out of her thick hair. A second later, Claire knew why.
“Are you really going to believe a duplicitous-tongued Spinnerling,” the Spyden clacked at Claire, “or me, whom you have sought out? Ask all the questions you would like. I know how to make you the richest person in the world—or the most beautiful. I know the easiest way for you to go home. I know where unicorns can be found.”
Claire stayed silent, her panic-drenched brain racing, trying to keep up. One question—but which? Technically, Claire already knew where more unicorns could be found: in the moontear necklace that now hung around Queen Estelle’s neck. But would even unicorns be enough? Last time a unicorn had helped Claire and Sophie, it changed Sophie. She needed to ask a question that would fix everything.
Fix … everything. Claire tried to think. Three hundred years ago, Queen Estelle led the Gemmers into war against the other guilds, and in her quest for power, she’d called for a unicorn hunt. Arden legend said that killing a unicorn would make its slayer immortal, but that had not been true. However, unicorns were beings of pure magic, and they made all magic greater, all things possible, and while a living unicorn was the most powerful of all, a hair, a hide, or a horn of a unicorn worked just as well … and could be controlled.
The only useful unicorn is a dead unicorn, Estelle had sneered at Claire. Estelle wanted the last unicorn. And while there was a chance a second unicorn might still be out there, roaming the fields and mountains of Arden, there was definitely at least one unicorn—she just happened to still be a human girl. Hopefully. But as long as Queen Estelle was looking for a unicorn, Sophie would be in danger.
And it wasn’t just Sophie. Arden would be in danger—and the land was already suffering.
The great domed roof of Starscrape Citadel loomed in her mind, its sleekly polished marble distractin
g from the crumbling ramparts and the ruined village in its shadow. The once gleaming copper of chimera, now green and weathered by the elements, standing frozen in fields.
The memory of watching Forgers march in their city, training to fight because of a rumor crafted by the queen; children left orphaned by wraiths who stalked and turned Arden’s night into something to fear; a pile of charred unicorn artifacts, a sad shadow of the living creature Claire had seen only once. All of them orchestrated by Queen Estelle’s hand.
But Arden was more than what Queen Estelle had made it to be. It was more than suspicious guilds and haunting wraiths and dead unicorns.
There were fireflies that glowed in the swamps. Halls lit by diamondlight and song. Feasts beneath bright lanterns where alchemists shared both stories and talents and whispered of a better and stronger Arden, just beneath the surface.
And there was Nett.
Sena.
Aunt Nadia.
Anvil and Aquila and Zuli and Lapis and Cotton. The freckled scribe in Greenwood who scratched notes at her trial. The Forger inspector who asked for her papers. The Spinner trader who led horses down the river. And all the many people Claire had seen in her travels—and all the ones she hadn’t seen.
All of them at risk. All of them in danger.
A new question seared through her, begging to be asked. But how could Claire ask it? Because there was Sophie—a girl, a sister, a heart who wished so hard that it could contain moonlight and an infinite amount of possibility. And then there was Arden.
To save an entire world … or to save her sister.
Claire. Sophie’s voice again echoed in her mind. Ask the question.
But which—?
Claire.
“Well? Hurry up!” The girl she had rescued had lifted an earmuff braid up for a second to scold Claire, then she scooted it back in place.
Forcing herself to look directly at the Spyden’s fathomless eyes, Claire cast her words and hoped she’d chosen right. “The queen will destroy Arden; how can she be defeated?”
The pincers clicked. “Only a queen can defeat a queen.”
Claire held her breath, waiting for the Spyden to continue, for details and a plan to come spinning out, the solution to all their problems, but no more words followed.
Wait. That was it?
That was the answer that the great Spyden had spun from threads of air? Claire’s blood heated.
“That’s not an answer!” she exploded, frustration pushing away any nausea she felt looking at the hairy forest of legs. “You’re supposed to give answers! You’re supposed to tell how. How do I—?”
There was a clatter, and Claire looked at the floor to see the ladle had been thrown between them. “Stop talking!” the other girl shouted frantically. “We need to get out of here. And, um …” She scrunched up her face, then quickly spun a new rhyme. “Spyden, your feet shall stay on the floor. You will not follow us out the door!”
Claire hurried to where she’d left her Hollow Pack, then raced toward the exit.
“Faster!” the girl called from the cottage’s stoop. “Come on!”
“Free me,” the Spyden sighed, its rasp threaded with melancholy. “I know so many things, and I have no one to share it all with. I know how to spin miniature worlds, weave stone, hide your deepest secret so it can never be found. So many things, but no one ever asks …”
Claire almost felt bad for the giant spider. Almost. But strands of spiderweb still stuck to her boots. “Maybe if you didn’t go around wrapping people up for dinner, they would ask a question,” she said, trying to scoot around the Spyden’s bulk. There was not enough room to pass by without brushing against the spider’s bristles. The creepy-crawly sensation that had been limited to her shoulders burst across her arms, but now she was only a step away from the threshold.
“If only someone asked,” the Spyden continued, as though it hadn’t heard her at all, “I could tell the person how to stop change. How to prevent a transformation of a girl into a unicorn so that she could be by your side forever. I have seen many a great transformation in my time …”
Claire hesitated. “I don’t believe you,” she said faintly.
The Spyden swelled. “I was there when the guilds and unicorns first forged the Crown of Arden and made Anders king! I was there when—”
But Claire had stopped listening.
Forged a crown … and made Anders king.
Only a queen can defeat a queen … That’s what the Spyden had said.
Could Claire make a queen? Crown someone new, someone who could defeat Estelle?
The image of a woman with white fluffy hair and kind eyes herding chimera ahead of her through Woven Root’s camp flashed through Claire’s mind: Aunt Diana. Known there as Mayor Nadia.
Claire was a Gemmer princess, but her aunt was the eldest Martinson in Arden, which meant that by those rules, she was next in line to the throne.
What if Claire helped her aunt become the new queen? Would she save Arden and defeat Estelle?
But if she was wrong …
Claire paused a moment, wondering how to shape her question so it wasn’t a question. She pulled the pencil from her hair once more and gripped it like some sort of royal scepter, then carefully stated: “Queens are made. They are crowned. I can defeat the queen by creating a new queen of Arden who can defeat her.”
All the Spyden’s eyes opened at once. “You tricked me!”
It was just the confirmation she needed. Triumph surged through Claire. She gripped the straps of her Hollow Pack tighter and strode out onto the stoop. “You wanted to eat me.”
“Miserable human,” the Spyden spat. “You stand no chance! The queen of wraiths will rule you all!”
Her stomach clenched. What would Sophie do?
“Have a nice night,” Claire said and slammed the door shut.
CHAPTER
6
Claire half stepped, half tumbled down the slippery wooden steps and crunched onto the beach outside the Spyden’s home. Night had descended around them; the ocean roiled darkly in the distance. She breathed in sharply. Everything hurt. Not the sharp pain of a kick but the ache of the stomach flu all over her body, as though elbows and knees could throw up, too.
“Come on!” the girl said, tugging on Claire’s overlong sleeve. She had let her hair unwind, and it was no longer forming earmuffs around her ears. “I don’t know how long the Spyden has to listen to commands. We need to move!”
Claire couldn’t agree more.
They ran.
Pebbles sprayed up, stinging her ankles, as they darted across the beach. She gasped for breath. The air, thick with damp and salt, didn’t seem to hold enough oxygen for her lungs. In the dark, there was no way to tell the land from the sea, and so it wasn’t until she heard the slap of her boots hitting water and felt cold seep into her socks that Claire knew she’d reached the end of the curved beach.
Her stride faltered, and at last, she stopped. They were as far away from the Spyden’s cottage and its sticky words as they could be without swimming into open water or scaling up the rocky mountainside. Neither of which was an option. Not in the dark, anyway.
Letting her pack slip off her shoulder, Claire sank onto the beach after it. The storm had blown away the clouds, and brilliant stars outlined the jagged peaks of the Needles. The sharp peaks reminded her of teeth, and the bite in her shoulder began to smart. She put her head between her knees and inhaled deeply. What she’d just seen—what had just happened—was too terrible to think about head-on. She could only just glance at it, in quick snatches.
Claire heard the scrape of pebbles, and she looked up just in time to see the younger girl flop onto the beach next to her.
“Threads’ end,” the girl said with feeling and lay back flat on the beach. Tattered strips of cobwebs still clung to her, and the white silk fluttered in the dark with each great gulp of air. She looked like a strange sea creature that had been rejected from the water.
> Claire’s heart still raced, but her thoughts ran quicker. Could the girl actually be some sort of sea monster? In Arden, the world had a tendency to shift and change. Friends turned into enemies. Rocks became evil queens. And a sister could stand in front of her one moment and be replaced by a giant, human-eating spider the next. Taking a deep breath, she tried to pull herself together. After all, sudden changes could also happen in the world of Windemere Manor, too. One moment, Sophie had been fine and healthy, just like any other seventh grader, and the next … she wasn’t.
As her eyes adjusted to the night, Claire could begin to make out the features of her partner in escape. She was shorter than Claire, though her hair was twice as long. It fell almost to her tailbone in a curtain of braids, loops, and twists. And even in the dark, Claire could see pops of canary yellow and bright pink where thread had been woven into her hair.
There could be no doubt about it: the girl was a Spinner.
Worry squeezed Claire. She wasn’t sure what to do next. On the one hand, she should leave now, before this little Spinner got a good look at her and realized Claire did not belong. That she was a Gemmer. But on the other hand … Claire couldn’t just leave. Especially when the girl appeared so young.
“Hey,” Claire whispered, keeping her voice low and soothing as she scooted a couple of inches closer. “What’s your name? Are you all right?”
The girl sat up and gazed at Claire with wide eyes. For a second, Claire was scared the girl would burst into tears, but in the next second, she let out a whoop of what could only be called delight.
“All right?” The girl flung her hands out wide, as though to embrace Claire, the beach, the entire world. “This has been the best night ever! Kay is never going to believe what we did! Needle’s eye, I barely believe what we did! Can you believe what we did?”
It was what Mom would have called a rhetorical question, because the girl didn’t wait for Claire to answer. “We escaped an unmasked Spyden! And look!” She thrust her hand under Claire’s nose. A swath of silk clung to her palm. “There’s so much of it!” She glanced at Claire, and her eyes widened even more. “And there’s so much on you! Do you mind?”
Fire in the Star Page 4
