The Spider's Curse

by H. K. Varian

  Prologue

  Darren Smith scrolled through websites about South African tribal mythology on his laptop, trying not to worry about his friend Makoto “Mack” Kimura. But worried thoughts kept creeping in anyway.

  Up until their first day of seventh grade at Willow Cove Middle School, Mack and Darren had barely been acquaintances. They nodded to each other in the halls, sure, but they hung out with different crowds.

  Then everything changed on the first day of seventh grade when Darren learned that he and Mack, along with fellow classmates Fiona Murphy and Gabriella Rivera, were members of a small and very secret group of people with magical powers—magical shape-shifting powers.

  The four kids were part of a line of magical beings called Changers. Changers had the power to transform into creatures the human world believed were mythological. Darren and the others had learned that those mythological creatures were, in fact, very, very real.

  Darren discovered that he was an impundulu, a fearsome bird that could shoot lightning bolts from its razor-sharp talons and create violent storms. Gabriella was a nahual, a powerful jaguar with yellow eyes, sleek jet-black fur, and the ability to spirit-walk in other people’s minds. Fiona was the daughter of the selkie queen, a seal that ruled the oceans. With her selkie cloak Fiona could transform into a seal herself, and the selkie songs she learned from her mother contained potent magic. And Mack was a kitsune, a powerful white fox with paws that blazed with fire, just like his grandfather.

  The four young Changers trained together every day at school and formed a close bond. Darren’s new friends were the people who got Darren through those confusing early days when he was coming into his powers. Learning about his abilities and finding out that his parents were getting a divorce at the same time had almost been too much to bear. He couldn’t tell his family about his secret powers, but his big brother, Ray, knew all about what it was like to be different. He and Darren were among just a few African American kids in Willow Cove.

  I wish I could tell Ray just how different I am, Darren thought, not for the first time. He could help me make sense out of all this.

  He would have loved to talk to Ray about his new abilities, but Darren had been warned against it. Changers once lived openly alongside humans. In fact, Changers did their best to protect humans from dark forces. But a long time ago humans came to believe that Changers wanted to destroy them. Changer magic frightened them, and that fear made them act in desperate, dangerous ways. The Changers had been forced to create a hidden world. They were still devoted to protecting humans from evil, but now they did it in secret and from a distance.

  The First Four, leaders of all Changer-kind, had begun training Darren and the other three Willow Cove Changers. Mack’s grandfather, Akira Kimura, and his friends steered them in the discovery and control of their new powers. Dorina Therian, a werewolf, was the kids’ primary coach. Yara Moreno, an encantado, or dolphin Changer, and Sefu Badawi, a bultungin, or hyena Changer, stepped in to help when they were needed. And it seemed they were very much needed, because lately, dark magic had ensured that they were constantly in touch.

  Things got even more confusing when Darren and his friends learned that an ancient prophecy had foretold that they would become the next First Four. One day they would take over leadership of the Changer world from Mr. Kimura and the others. That also meant they had targets on their backs.

  Not all of the magic community was as protective of humans as the First Four. The young Changers, or younglings as the Changer-world called them, had been forced to come together to battle and defeat a powerful warlock named Auden Ironbound. They had just accomplished that when a new dark force began to target them—an evil kitsune named Sakura, also known as the Shadow Fox.

  The Shadow Fox was a memory eater. She could consume whatever memories she wanted, and in doing so, she could also absorb that Changer’s powers. A former student of Mr. Kimura’s, she had left him to delve into dark magic and then turned on him when that went very, very wrong. She had long been underground, watching and waiting for the right moment to take her revenge.

  Recently, she had come out of hiding. Sakura was determined to wage a war with those who supported the First Four—a war for control of magical and nonmagical beings. To do that, she needed followers—followers who came willingly as well as followers who were forced to do so.

  Her first target was Mack. Sakura poisoned Mack’s mind with dark magic. She lured him away from the group with promises of evil power. She turned his happiness and hope into anger and despair. Mack was helpless while under her control, and so, he had joined her dark forces.

  It had been over a month since Mack disappeared with Sakura and a week since school let out for the summer. To avoid questions, the First Four had blocked memories of Mack from the minds of everyone in Willow Cove.

  Darren understood why the First Four had to do that. They couldn’t exactly tell the world that Mack had been kidnapped by an evil Changer. But erasing him from the memories of the nonmagical people who knew him still didn’t feel right.

  Mack isn’t someone who can be erased, Darren thought. Even if the rest of our classmates don’t remember him, they have to feel the hole he left behind. I know I do.

  Mack’s best friend, Joel Hastings, reinforced that belief. Every time Darren passed Joel in the hallways at school, the poor guy looked superlonely. Magic might have blocked Joel’s memories of Mack, but part of him knew that something was missing. Darren could tell. That last day at school, during lunch period, Darren had tried to talk to him.

  “Joel!” he’d called out as he sat down across from him in the caf.

  “Huh?” Joel had said, his expression blank. “Oh—hey, Darren. What’s up?”

  “Not much—how’d the art fair go last week?”

  “Fine, but it’s so weird,” Joel had said with a shake of his head. “A few weeks before the deadline, I realized I only had half of the project done. I thought I was right on schedule, but it’s like half of the comic I was working on just—”

  “Disappeared,” Darren blurted out. Joel’s words hit Darren like a punch in the gut. Mack had told him about the comic book he was illustrating with Joel for the fair. It was a project Mack hadn’t been able to see through to the end.

  But there was no time for crying about Mack. No time for Darren to pretend he was a normal kid planning a normal summer vacation of video games, hanging out at the community pool, or meeting his buddies for lunch at the Willow Cove Café. Instead, Darren devoted all of his time to helping the First Four in their war against Sakura.

  When Mack first disappeared, they searched for him nonstop. They raided Changer base after Changer base. But every time they found one, Sakura and her forces had just abandoned it. The Shadow Fox seemed to be always one step ahead of them.

  The First Four suspected that she was planning to try to get her claws into Darren next. Fiona had learned the magical selkie Queen’s Song, and that would keep her safe from any attempts at mind control, including memory eating. Gabriella had an ancient Aztec artifact, the Ring of Tezcatlipoca, which did the same thing. But Darren had no such protection, and that left him vulnerable to Sakura’s magic.

  So, finally, Mr. Kimura assigned another team to the hunt for Mack while the First Four focused on finding protection for Darren. Protection from Sakura’s memory eating.

  Darren knew finding protection was important, but at the same time the search felt like a frustrating waste of time. Each day spent hunting for a talisman for Darren was another day that wasn’t devoted to finding Mack.

  What if we run out of time? Darren wondered.

  Every time a kitsune mastered a rare power or accomplished a heroic deed, he or she earned a new tail. Mack had two ta
ils before Sakura got her claws into him. After their encounter, he gained a shadowy third tail. They guessed that Sakura was putting her new apprentice through intense training to earn a fourth. If Mack earned one more tail using dark magic, it would be impossible to reverse the hold Sakura had on him. He’d be a villain forever, just like Sakura.

  We’re wasting time searching for protection for me, Darren thought. Finding Mack is more important. Maybe I should offer to go into hiding so that the others can concentrate on Mack instead of worrying about me. I’m nothing more than a burden to them right now.

  Darren was so lost in thought that he didn’t hear Ray, who was home from college for the summer, knock on his bedroom door. He jumped when Ray patted him on the shoulder.

  “You left your phone downstairs,” Ray said, handing Darren his cell. “A Professor Zwane from Wyndemere Academy called.”

  Darren tried to keep his face neutral as he took the phone. “Thanks, bro.”

  “So now that you might be going to a fancy boarding school, are you going to make me answer all your calls?” Ray teased. “Do you need a secretary?”

  Darren laughed. “If I manage to get into a fancy boarding school, I’ll probably need a tutor,” he said. “But unfortunately, I’m not related to anyone smart enough. Except Mom, I guess.”

  Ray summoned a look of mock outrage and managed to squeak out, “Doth mine ears deceive me? You’ll be lucky if I don’t school you on endothermic reactions just to embarrass you in front of the boarding school girls.”

  “Well, now after you’ve said that, you’re definitely not hired,” Darren said with a grin. “Embarrassment is cause for an immediate ‘you’re fired.’ Now let me call this guy back, or they’ll change their minds about me before I even go for a tour.”

  “Of course, grand pooh-bah.” Ray laughed and bowed before leaving the room.

  As soon as he did, Darren returned Professor Zwane’s call. Professor Zwane was a Changer and a teacher at the only high school in America just for Changers. If he was calling, there had to be news.

  Chapter 1

  Return to Wyndemere

  Professor Zwane picked up after the first ring. “Darren,” he said, “I think I found something.”

  Darren was stunned. They’d been searching for weeks for a talisman and had come up with nothing.

  If I have protection against Sakura, we can go back to doing what we should be doing anyway: searching for Mack and getting him away from the Shadow Fox before he earns another tail.

  “Darren,” Professor Zwane said, snapping him back into the present. “Are you still there?”

  “Yeah—s-sorry,” Darren stammered. “You found something that will protect me from the Shadow Fox?”

  “I’ve found something that I think will work.”

  “What is it?” Darren asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about it over the phone—you’re no doubt being watched. I’m sending Margaery Haruyama to bring you here. She’s already on her way.”

  “I’ll be ready,” Darren said.

  Darren knew Margaery. She was a tengu, a Japanese bird Changer. Unlike impundulus, who had the power to control lightning, tengus had power over the wind. They could use that power to transport anyone anywhere in the blink of an eye.

  “One other thing,” Darren began, a bit unsteady. “Is there any chance this spell could also—”

  “I’m afraid it won’t break the curse,” the professor answered.

  Darren had been so consumed with worries about Mack that he had nearly forgotten the startling news he had learned from Professor Zwane when he first visited Wyndemere Academy in the spring. He and his friends wouldn’t be able to attend Wyndemere until the ninth grade, but Darren and the others had visited the campus.

  Being on a campus full of people like him was the first time Darren didn’t feel like a total freak since he found out he was an impundulu. Exploring Wyndemere along with Fiona, Gabriella, and Mack had been a bright spot in a long and confusing school year.

  Then two things happened to dull that light: Sakura appeared and attacked Mack, and Darren found out his family was cursed.

  Darren had sat in on a lecture by Professor Zwane on West and South African mythology. He hoped to learn something about his own history and get a taste of high school classes at the same time. He was totally unprepared for what the professor told him after class.

  “From the minute you walked into my classroom, I could sense that your power too is bound by the Spider’s Curse,” Professor Zwane had told him.

  Darren was so shocked by the news that he could hardly form questions, but the professor, an impundulu himself, shared what he knew.

  In ancient times, before the Changer nation was established to prevent such things, there were sometimes wars between different magical factions. Usually, they had to do with establishing power over a particular area that was valuable for its resources or strategic for defense. A bitter conflict broke out between the spider Changers—sometimes called anansis after the West African trickster god—and the impundulus.

  The professor explained that during the conflict, the anansis cursed many impundulus with a powerful poison contained in their bite. The anansis’ poison can curse more than the individual impundulu they’ve bitten. The curse courses through the whole bloodline, passing down from generation to generation.

  There had been no clear winner before a truce was finally reached between the two factions, but many of the strongest impundulu bloodlines were cursed. The curse suppressed the Changer gift in younglings so that generations passed without anyone in that family ever presenting Changer powers . . . without ever knowing that they themselves might be Changers if the curse weren’t in place.

  Feelings were high on both sides after the truce. Most anansis had refused to lift the curse, so it continued to modern times, and the only way a person could get the curse lifted now was to find the descendant of the original anansi who’d cursed him or her and have the curse broken.

  Professor Zwane told him that Darren had descended from a once-cursed bloodline. For some reason, Darren’s magic was powerful enough to develop, despite the anansi curse.

  Things with Mack got out of control so fast, Darren thought. I never even told Gabriella and Fiona about the Spider’s Curse.

  Even so, the knowledge of the curse was always hovering in the back of Darren’s mind, like homework he’d put off until the last minute or a test he’d forgotten to study for. At first he hoped that if he found a way to break the curse, he might discover that someone else in his family was an impundulu. After all, Mack had his grandfather, Fiona had her mother, and even Gabriella’s aunt and grandmother were Changers. Darren longed for a family member to share his experience with.

  But today his first thought wasn’t about the possibility of Ray or his mother becoming an impundulu. His first thought was about Mack.

  Darren had just ended the call when he saw a movement, like a flicker, in the air. With a whoosh that ruffled the papers on his desk, Margaery landed in Darren’s room along with Gabriella and Fiona.

  “Darren!” Fiona cried. “Can you believe it? Margaery said one of the professors at Wyndemere found a protection spell for you!”

  “I know,” Darren said with a smile. “We can finally get back on Mack’s trail.”

  Behind Fiona, Darren saw Gabriella flinch slightly.

  “Ready to go?” Margaery asked him, breaking the silence.

  “Can you wait for me outside?” Darren answered. “I have to tell my mom I’m going out.”

  The group disappeared as quickly as they had arrived, and Darren bounded down the stairs. He found his mother in the kitchen.

  “Hey, Mom,” he called. His mom turned around from the pizza slice she was microwaving. “I just got a text from Gabriella—mind if I head over to her house? We’re going to work on summer book reports.”

  His mother smiled at him. “You usually put that kind of thing off until the end of the summer,” s
he said.

  Darren chuckled nervously. “What can I say? Fiona and Gabriella have been a good influence on me.”

  “Hey,” she said, throwing up her hands in defense. “Don’t let my surprise stop you from doing your homework early.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t,” Darren said. He felt a bit guilty about the lie, but he couldn’t exactly tell his mother the truth.

  Bye, Mom. I’m going to travel by wind to a magical school for shape-shifters and learn how to protect myself from a crazed villain who wants to control my mind. Oh, and maybe I’ll even find out how to lift the curse our family has been living under for a thousand years.

  He made a mental note to get started for real on his summer book report as soon as he had the time.

  “I’ll pick you up around dinnertime?” his mother added.

  “Sounds good,” Darren answered with a nod. He headed outside and found the group in the backyard, under the tree that held his old tree house.

  “Ready?” Margaery asked.

  Darren nodded. He put a hand on Margaery’s arm. Fiona and Gabriella did the same.

  There was another whoosh, and for a moment all Darren felt was stillness. Then the world flew by for two or three head-spinning seconds. They landed gently in the middle of the Wyndemere Academy campus.

  Darren blinked in the sunlight, then turned to the Gothic castle that served as the school’s academic building. Unlike the last time they were here, the grounds were empty and quiet—almost eerie, even in the brightness of the summer sun.

  Professor Zwane waited for them at the door of his office. Darren was surprised to see Sefu standing behind him. He was even more surprised to see the rest of the First Four inside. Each one of them was holding something.

  “What’s going on?” Darren asked.

  “I met with a very old impundulu from Pretoria last week,” Professor Zwane said. “He told me about an ancient warrior protection spell that predates the written language. No wonder I didn’t find it in any of my books. It may be just what you need.”

  Fiona walked over to the papers on the professor’s desk. “What language is this?” she asked.