Enter a Glossy Web

by McKenna Ruebush

  George put a hand out for balance, only to yank it back covered in slime.

  They entered a dark chamber, and when their eyes adjusted to the light, they saw they were in a dungeon. The air smelled of mildew, and water dripped from the shadows. Chains hung from rafters, and shelves of jars filled with teeth, hair, herbs, potions, and mystery liquid lined the walls. The center of the room was taken up by an enormous cast-iron cauldron, so tall there was a stepladder standing next to it so that the top could be reached.

  “Heavens to Betsy,” George said, stepping closer to the two boys.

  Mikal gasped in disgust as he backed into a mismatched skeleton, pinned together and dangling from the ceiling by a frayed rope. “This is not okay,” he said to himself, brushing bone dust frantically off his shoulder.

  Caleb whistled softly through his teeth as he surveyed the room’s contents.

  George cleared her throat. “Excuse me? Um, Hag?”

  “Whatsit, whatsit, whatsit?! You children and questions. Always talking! Talking! Talking! Never listening!”

  “You weren’t saying anything,” Caleb said.

  The Hag gave him a dirty look. “I was not saying anything yet. I am about to tell you things. Dark things that you don’t want to hear. But you had better listen because they are important. Unless you want to end up dead, hanging from a tree by your own entrails!” She nodded firmly as Mikal shook his head in mute denial.

  “You are not a very nice person,” George said in awe.

  “Nice? You want nice? You should have met me a week ago if you wanted nice.” She coughed wetly and spat on the floor at their feet. She stepped up to George and shoved something smooth and cool against her palm.

  George recoiled as the crone’s clammy hands cupped her own, refusing to release her.

  “You’ll be wanting this,” the Hag said with a toothless grin. She turned her back to George and started shuffling bottles on an old, rotting table.

  George opened her hand and saw a pocket watch. “How did you get this?” she asked, her voice taut with anxiety.

  The woman ignored her as she hummed off-key, occasionally singing an unfamiliar word.

  “What is it?” Caleb asked, glancing back to the door to gauge the distance.

  “It’s Uncle Constantine’s pocket watch,” George said.

  The Hag began to ramble to herself. “I have a younger sister, you know. A younger sister, a younger sister, I have a younger sister la la de da da.”

  “How do you know it’s your uncle’s watch?” Mikal asked.

  “It doesn’t have any hands,” George said. “How many watches don’t have hands?”

  “She’s been so naughty lately,” the Hag said absently, wiggling her fingers in the air.

  George swallowed hard and closed her fist around the watch. “Where did you get this?”

  “Never you mind, child. Now hush up—we have a ritual to perform.”

  George stamped her foot. “I’m not going to hush! I have to find my uncle Constantine so we can help Aunt Henrietta. Do you know where he is? Did he give you this?”

  “Oh, child, you will hush, and you’ll help me perform this ritual. Only when you’ve helped me will I answer your questions.”

  “A ritual?” Caleb asked nervously. “What kind of ritual?”

  “Just you wait. You’re an important part of it.” She laughed to herself and then lost her breath, bending over and clinging to the table as she coughed and sputtered. “Drat. This body ent what it used to be.”

  Then she skittered up beside Mikal, whose eyes grew impossibly wide as she leaned in close. “Are you afraid, boy?” the Hag asked slyly, looking at him through wisps of white hair.

  Caleb bravely stepped forward to stand between the Hag and the other children. “We’re not participating until you tell us what you’re on about.”

  “Young man, I will tell you what I’m on about.” She began speaking in a singsong voice as she ground herbs on the pockmarked table.

  “Ghostly shadows on the wall, brought to life by heathen call.

  Out of darkness beasts will come, awakened by a pagan tongue!

  Summoned to that speaking fire, awaiting orders oh so dire.

  Leagues of goblins not so small, waiting still for those who fall.

  Impatient for the loathsome spell, the hopeless gather round the fires of hell!”

  By now, Mikal was as pale as the skeleton swinging from the rope behind him.

  Caleb moved closer to George until they were positioned in a tight little knot.

  The Hag continued mercilessly.

  “But then … from the shadows of forgotten places, spirits shall be awakened!

  Over my cauldron I will bend and stir, times and events will begin to blur!”

  The Hag gestured to the ceiling and then began to twirl.

  “My chants will grow louder and louder! Into my brew I’ll toss magic powder.

  From the spongy bowels of the earth, putrid corpses of the dead will emerge!”

  With a soft sigh, Mikal collapsed, falling to the floor in a dead faint.

  The Hag cackled with glee, clapping her gnarled hands and dancing around madly.

  George was absolutely shocked as the boy landed at her feet. She shook Mikal’s shoulders, pinched his arm, and demanded that he wake up immediately.

  He did not obey.

  “Do you care to explain this, Caleb?” George asked, her voice high and alarmed.

  Caleb shrugged as he patted Mikal’s cheek. “I told you, he doesn’t like strangers. Well, he doesn’t like witches either, apparently.”

  “I ent a witch!” the Hag said.

  “Oh good grief!” George said.

  Mikal’s eyes fluttered open just as George slapped him sharply against the cheek. He yelped and looked around frantically.

  “Jeez, George,” Caleb said as he helped Mikal to a sitting position. “You didn’t have to hit the poor guy.”

  “I’m sorry. I was just trying to wake him up. Is he okay?”

  Mikal grimaced. “Did you have to wake me up so hard?” He saw the Hag grinning maniacally at him, and he buried his face in his hands. “So, not a nightmare, then.”

  “Tee-hee,” the Hag giggled.

  George jumped to her feet and advanced on the Hag. “You’re an awful, wicked old woman! He’s just a little boy!”

  “I’m eleven,” Mikal insisted pitifully. “I’m just small for my age.”

  “Oh, pish posh! I was just joshing him about the corpses. I can’t do all that anyway. Besides, I wasn’t even to the good part.” The Hag sullenly began collecting bottles and vials and little satchels of herbs.

  “Maybe she doesn’t know anything about your uncle. Maybe we should go,” Caleb said.

  “I had the watch, didn’t I?” the Hag asked.

  “She did have the watch,” George said. “I have to find out what she knows.”

  Mikal swayed a bit as George and Caleb helped him to his feet. “I think I’m going to be sick,” he said, holding his stomach.

  “Of course you’re not, Mikal. Pull yourself together. She’s just trying to scare us,” George said, glaring at the old woman.

  “You should be scared! You should be terrified!” The Hag swore as she tossed a lit match on the kindling beneath the cauldron. It erupted in smoke and flames, barely missing her as she danced backward out of its reach, surprisingly agile for her old age.

  Mikal waved his hand in front of his face as the smell of burning hair stung his nostrils.

  The Hag batted at her singed eyebrows and then began digging through her apron pocket. She pulled out a crumpled piece of parchment and shoved it at George. “Read this for me! Loudly! Come on, now, all of you, read! At once!”

  “Why should we help you?” Mikal asked faintly. “You’re horrible and mean.”

  “Because, child, if you don’t help me, I shall go against my orders and keep you all as ingredients for my potions!” She waved a hand in the direction of the r
usty cages lining the wall.

  George swallowed hard. “I think you’d probably prefer that.”

  The old woman nodded her head vigorously with a toothless grin and tottered up the stepladder, carrying an apronful of bottles and vials.

  George narrowed her green eyes at the woman. “You promise you’ll answer my questions if we read for you?”

  “Yes! Together, now!”

  “I can’t read that,” Mikal said. “It could be a curse to kill us all. Don’t do it, George!”

  Even Caleb shook his head at the idea.

  George hesitated a moment and then held up the parchment. “I have to.” She cleared her throat and began to speak.

  “The eyelid of an eagle, and the tongue of a liar.

  The spit of a fool in a circle of fire.”

  As she said the words, the Hag tossed matching ingredients into the cauldron.

  “I need your help, guys. Please be brave, Mikal,” George said.

  Mikal gave her an odd look, and he stood undecided, but then he began to whisper along, his voice wavering.

  “The kiss of a comet, the dark of the moon,

  Blood of innocence from a silver spoon.”

  The old woman gave up trying to pour congealed blood from a vial onto a silver spoon and just shoved the spoon into the vial, throwing them both in the fiery cauldron. “Louder! You must speak louder!” Her voice, though she shouted, was faint under the noise of the fire roaring and the sizzle of the ingredients landing on the hot iron.

  Caleb, who had remained silent, looked at George and Mikal as if he was afraid they had gone insane. After a moment of indecision, he grabbed the paper and bravely started yelling the words to the spell.

  “A hair of newt, four hen’s teeth,

  Seven eggs of a sparrow, twelve butterfly wings!”

  The children began to shout together.

  “The hiss of a viper on a small pebble stone,

  Three tears of a widow, and a knife carved from bone!

  The petals of a rose and two small fleas,

  Two wings of a raven stir the sweat of a priest!”

  Mikal clenched his fists tightly against his sides.

  “A tail and a half of two separate mice, one pint of glowing fireflies.

  The breath of a snail, the scab of a wound,

  A handful of straw from an old witch’s broom!”

  “I’ll take it from here!” the Hag shrieked.

  “Sands from an hourglass let fall to the floor,

  The time comes near with this mixture I pour!

  Rhythmic chants to all four winds,

  Good is born, and all good ends!

  One glossy web and a dove set free,

  Completes at last our recipe!”

  The room fell into a silence so thick it felt as if it could crush bone.

  The Hag thrust herself over the boiling cauldron, stretching up on her tiptoes to reach a tiny blue drop that flew out of the concoction. She caught it safely in a glass vial and swayed, off balance, at the top of the ladder.

  The children gasped, thinking she would fall in and be boiled alive, but she caught herself and straightened.

  She wobbled slowly back down to solid ground.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Hag looked weary and as dog-eared as an old book as she handed the vial to Caleb. Her face was sunken, and her hair was falling off her scalp, landing on her humped shoulders. “This will help you,” she said, her voice weak.

  Caleb reluctantly took the vial, holding it between his thumb and forefinger. The blue drop was transforming into a shimmering pink vapor before their eyes. “That’s … it?” he asked.

  George shook her head in disbelief. “All that harebrained hoopla for common fog you could find in a graveyard? We just came from a graveyard!”

  “Shh. You’ll make her mad,” Mikal said desperately.

  “What’s she going to do, turn us into fog?” George asked.

  “It’s for later. It’ll help you later,” the Hag said, waving her hand to silence them. “Now, hush. I must tell you things. Things which you will not like, but things which will help you. I must first have tea. Rituals always take the strength from my bones.” She hobbled over to a kettle sitting on a cookstove in the corner of the room.

  She poured steaming gray liquid into a chipped china cup that cracked a little more as the heat touched it. “Would you like some?”

  “No, thank you,” they said in unison.

  “I must apologize for my earlier behavior,” the Hag said. “It comes and goes these days.” She settled into a wicker chair and pulled a ratty afghan over her lap. “Come. Sit with me.”

  They didn’t budge.

  She waited, and they edged nearer to her, being careful to maintain a safe distance.

  The Hag nodded, satisfied. “Let’s see, where should I begin?”

  “You could start by telling me where my uncle Constantine is. You said you would if we helped you. I need to find him because my aunt Henrietta is in trouble.”

  “Yes, yes, I know all about it. Poor Henrietta, abducted by that awful man.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “It was only to be expected that the Judge would retaliate when he found out what your uncle was up to.”

  George blinked twice. “Wait, what did you say?”

  “The Judge, child. Or rather, let’s call him Nero. He is no longer the Judge. He is now only Nero. Didn’t Constantine tell you about him?”

  “He told me some bedtime stories about the Council of Seven, but I don’t see how … Are you saying the Judge is real?”

  “Call him Nero. Yes, he’s real. Henrietta and Constantine are real too.”

  George just stared at the Hag.

  Mikal nudged her with an elbow. “I think the Hag is saying that your aunt and uncle are the Innocent and the Timekeeper.”

  “No,” George said slowly. “I don’t think she is saying that. Because the Innocent and the Timekeeper are characters in a story, not a sweet old lady who keeps pet ducks and a funny-looking man who makes up words and has a handlebar mustache the size of a banana and a watch with no hands!”

  “Think about it, child. Isn’t that exactly the kind of people they would be?” the Hag asked.

  George gnawed on her bottom lip. “Okay, so let’s say the Timekeeper is Uncle Constantine and Aunt Henrietta is the Innocent. Does that mean the story about the meteor showers and the Council of Seven is true too?”

  “Well, obviously,” the Hag said, looking at George as if she wasn’t all there.

  “And you think it was the Judge—I mean, Nero—who kidnapped her?” George asked.

  “Most certainly.”

  “But Uncle Constantine said Nero died in an explosion! And the Timekeeper—I mean, Uncle Constantine—searched and searched but couldn’t find anything to prove it wasn’t true. Aunt Henrietta didn’t even look surprised to see him. So you must be wrong, and it wasn’t the Judge after all.”

  “I’m rarely wrong. There’s new evidence that Nero is alive and that he is responsible for taking your aunt, and more besides.”

  Caleb whistled softly through his teeth. “So he faked his own death?”

  “Indeed,” the Hag said. “There’s a certain freedom involved in everyone believing you’re no longer a threat.”

  “But why go through that trouble only to come back? And why kidnap Aunt Henrietta? She’s good and kind, and I don’t understand why anyone would want to hurt her!” George said.

  “Because your uncle, the Timekeeper, is up to something, and Nero doesn’t like it. By taking your aunt, Nero has gained some control of the situation. I assume Constantine told you about the destruction of the original Council of Seven? How the Judge—Nero, that is—went mad and murdered all of the members except for the Timekeeper and the Innocent? Well, ever since the Council of Seven broke, the Timekeeper and the Innocent have been trying to find people qualified to take the places of the fallen members. Do you know why?�
��

  “Uh, I might know why,” Mikal said, and cleared his throat. “In the story it was the creation of the Council of Seven that kept the worlds from being destroyed. Uncle Constantine told George that as soon as the members were elected, the meteor showers stopped. Every hundred and eleven years the Council would meet at the same place, at the same time, where they had originally been brought together, because that would renew the magic that kept the Flyrrey safe.”

  The Hag nodded and gestured for him to continue.

  “If this is the first time the Selyrdorian meteor showers have come back since the Council broke, then the Timekeeper and the Innocent must be trying to rebuild the Council in time to renew the magic that keeps the falling stars from drowning the worlds and killing everybody.”

  “Is it the first time since the Council was broken?” Caleb asked.

  “Uncle Constantine said it was,” George said. “Is that what his business trip was about? Rebuilding the Council in time?”

  “Yes. Constantine and Henrietta had found five very special individuals who they believed were worthy of filling the positions of new Engineer, Recorder, Guide, Unlikely, and Judge. You remember, of course, that Nero murdered the original members of the Council of Seven because he was mad with ambition. He thought that by killing them he would gain power, but he was proven wrong. With the destruction of the Council of Seven, the Judge lost power rather than gained it. I believe that the reason he is interfering now is not to prevent the re-forming of the Council, but rather to prevent it from being done without him.”

  “Without him? You mean he wants to be the Judge again?”

  “Yes. He has discovered how lonely the worlds are without companions and how little he can do without great influence. He wants the Council rebuilt as much as we do. And that is why Nero has kidnapped Henrietta.”

  George shook her head back and forth in denial and gripped the ends of her scarf so tightly her fingers turned white. “This is so much worse than I thought. My aunt Henrietta is being held captive by a murderer.”

  The Hag took a sip of tea. “I don’t think he will harm Henrietta. Don’t forget, the Council cannot be rebuilt without an Innocent. He took your aunt not to hurt her but to use her as leverage against your uncle. Nero knows that Constantine will not easily allow him to reclaim his old position as Judge. With Henrietta’s safety at stake, perhaps Nero thinks Constantine will be more … cooperative. But Nero is very thorough. He also took steps to make his replacement unsuitable, and that is very dangerous for us all. That is why Constantine sent that note asking for your help, Georgina.”