The Starspun Web

by Sinéad O'Hart

  Tess gulped, waiting until her voice was steady before she spoke again. “What quest?”

  “To change the course of history, Tess. Not only in my own reality, but in another. Perhaps in all of them. To design and build machines that, when sent between worlds, will start and finish wars, or solve problems that have no other solution. I’ll be paid astronomical sums of money to do this work, of course, but that’s not important.” He waved his hand dismissively, as if Tess had accused him of being greedy. “There happens to be an ongoing war in a nearby world; I want to start there. The bombers I’ve built will—”

  “Bombers?” Tess couldn’t help but interrupt, thinking of the dark terror in Thomas’s voice as he’d spoken to her about cities being flattened by things called bombers. Cities whose names she couldn’t remember. Cities that were real to him.

  Mr. Cleat smiled indulgently. “Flying machines, Tess, that can destroy things on the ground. Nothing for you to be worried about. They’ll do you no harm—but of course you’ll see that for yourself. You’ll have the seat of honor at my exhibition. Indeed, the night couldn’t go ahead without you.”

  “Wh-what night?” Tess hoped her fear sounded like excitement.

  “It’s not far away now,” Mr. Cleat replied carelessly. “Oh, and by the by—do you still have that old book of mine? Or rather of yours. I seem to remember giving it to you.”

  Tess blinked, then turned to fetch The Secret Garden. She held it up. “I can’t seem to put it down,” she said. “I’m not sure why.”

  “Are you enjoying the story?” Mr. Cleat asked, a smile hovering on his lips.

  Tess looked at him apologetically. “Not really,” she admitted.

  “You and that book have something fundamental in common, you know,” Mr. Cleat said. “I’d wager my considerable fortune that it’s the reason you seem so drawn to it and it to you.”

  Tess turned the book around so that its front cover was facing her. “Something in common?” she said. “I’d never heard of it before I saw it in your library.”

  “Nobody in this world has ever heard of it,” Mr. Cleat continued, his voice low and prowling. Tess froze as she listened but remained still. “It was published by a company that doesn’t exist, written by an author who doesn’t exist—or, if she did, she became a nun or a physicist or a farmer instead, who knows.” Mr. Cleat paused, as if waiting for Tess to respond, but Tess found she couldn’t. She just kept her eyes fixed on the cover of the book and tried to take comfort from Violet’s gentle movements in her hair.

  “I really don’t know what you mean,” she said, looking back at Mr. Cleat and fixing him with the widest, emptiest stare she could muster.

  “I don’t think that’s true,” he replied. “I’ll leave you to think on it. Maybe you’ll conclude something different once you’ve considered it a little.” He stood up, pulling his waistcoat straight and settling his tie, gazing at Tess all the while. “Speaking of which, I’m away to a Society meeting. I’m sure they’ll be interested to hear how your reading’s going,” he said, nodding his goodbye.

  Tess watched him leave. She didn’t breathe again until he’d closed the door behind him and his footsteps had faded away.

  “So you see, I had to come and warn you,” Tess said. She sat in Thomas’s workroom, her knees drawn up to her chest. Moose sat on her outstretched hand, nibbling happily at a lump of cheese. Thomas stood by one of the desks, apparently lost in thought.

  “It might not be here he’s talking about,” Thomas finally said, turning to her. “Mightn’t it? There could be a war in another reality. That could be what he meant.”

  Tess shrugged. “I suppose. But are you willing to take that risk? He’s threatened to send bombers through. Right here. And if I’ve learned something about this whole business, it’s this: when you travel, you stay in the same place. By which I mean—”

  “You move from world to world, but your geographical location stays the same,” Thomas said, finishing her thought. “As in if you use the Star-spinner in your chapel, you arrive here in mine. If you used it in your version of the house, you’d arrive in my version of it.”

  Tess sat up straighter, the movement spooking Moose enough for him to scamper off her hand and onto her knee instead. She stroked him apologetically as she tried to get her thoughts into words. “And if I were to travel to the building in this reality where Ackerbee’s is in mine…” She let the sentence trail off as she looked hopefully at Thomas.

  He turned to her. “You’d arrive at your home,” he said, his eyes shining. Then his face fell. “Without Violet, of course.”

  Tess frowned. “There is that problem.”

  “But you could still send your own message,” Thomas continued. “Tomorrow night, we can do it. Meet me here. I’ll have the bike ready and we’ll speed there and back in no time.”

  Tess’s eyes shone behind her glasses. “I can write a note saying Quicksilver and where I am, and put it through the letter box,” she said. “And then in the morning it’ll be there. Miss Ackerbee will see it and she’ll know it’s from me. And then they’ll come.” She closed her eyes, imagining Miss Ackerbee and Rebecca on their battered tandem bicycle; she saw their faces as they jangled the bellpull of Roedeer Lodge, and Mrs. Thistleton’s expression as they told her they were there to take Tess home…

  “They’ll probably have a fight on their hands,” Thomas said.

  Tess sighed. “Yes. They probably will.”

  “Mr. Cleat won’t just give you up. Not if he thinks you’re useful to him, which of course you are.” He frowned, chewing thoughtfully on the inside of his cheek. “I just wish we knew exactly what he was planning.”

  “Yes. And when he’s planning it,” Tess said. “All he’d give away was that it was ‘soon,’ whatever that means.”

  “Well, he’s hardly going to hand you his entire dastardly plan, is he?” Thomas said with a grin. “Even I would give him more credit than that.”

  Tess grinned back at him, shaking her head ruefully. “I’d better be going,” she said. “It’s after two in the morning and I’m going to need some sleep if we’re going to attempt our own dastardly plan tomorrow night.”

  “Right. So we’re agreed? Operation Quicksilver is a go?”

  Tess snorted. “If you must call it that,” she said.

  Thomas rubbed his hands together. “Brilliant. I haven’t taken the bike out in ages. It’ll be great to have a midnight flit.”

  “You make it sound like we’re going on a picnic or something,” Tess said. She scooped up Moose and handed him to Thomas before hauling herself to her feet. She couldn’t wait to be back home again in Ackerbee’s, where this would all seem like a bad dream…But what about Thomas? said an inconvenient thought. If you leave Roedeer Lodge, how will you see him? She looked him in the eye, and he seemed troubled too. “Are you sure this is a good plan?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  “You need to be gone from Roedeer Lodge before Mr. Cleat does whatever he’s going to do,” Thomas replied. “Even if it makes things tricky for us for a while.”

  “But I don’t want—”

  “Let’s not worry about it now,” Thomas said. “We’ll find a way to see one another. I promise. Now go on. Get back and sleep. And I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Tess sucked on her top lip. “Right. Tomorrow. Take care, won’t you?”

  “And you,” Thomas said, giving her a hug.

  Tess made her way down the ladder and stepped through the void as easily as into the bathtub; it held no fear for her anymore, though the intensity of the journey remained. Every time she traveled, she wondered if all of her came back—sometimes, particularly when lying awake late at night trying to calm her feverish mind, it felt as though some of her particles got lost along the way with every crossing.

  Stepping into her own derelict chapel, T
ess shivered. She put the Star-spinner back inside her vest and hurried to the top pew to collect Violet. “Hello, girl,” she crooned as the spider made her careful way up her sleeve. “Let’s go, eh?”

  Tess quickly made her way over the field, across the gate and back to the kitchen door of Roedeer Lodge. She had barely locked the door behind her when she heard a tiny noise in the darkness. It seemed to come from beside the cold fireplace, against the kitchen’s back wall.

  “Psst!” it sounded again, and Tess froze, her eyes searching the shadows and her heart beginning to thud. Then a figure stepped out of a darkened corner. “Miss! It’s just me!”

  “Millie!” Tess whispered, her voice strained. She leaned against the doorframe, weak with relief. “You startled me!”

  “Sorry,” Millie answered, coming close enough to take Tess’s hands. “I needed to talk to you and I saw you weren’t in your room. Miss, there’s something I think you need to hear. Rosaleen—my cousin, remember, who works in Mr. Cleat’s club—well, she was able to tell me that Mr. Cleat has something big in the works. Something to do with his Harmonics crowd. Something that’s going to take place here—a demonstration, I think she called it. She said there was talk among the Society members that there’d be a child involved—a girl with a key, or something like that.” Millie frowned. “I can’t quite recall. But anyway, whatever sort of demonstration it is, I wanted you to know.”

  Tess felt her breath catch in her throat. Mr. Cleat’s experiment. This had to be what he’d been hinting at in the lab. My front-row seat. “Do you have any clear idea what’s going to happen? He mentioned it to me, too, but wouldn’t tell me much.”

  “Search me, miss. Rosaleen didn’t really know either. She’s too interested in who’s starring in the latest flick to really care about Mr. Cleat and what he gets up to,” Millie said impatiently.

  “How does she know about it?”

  “Mr. Cleat was looking to get some of the girls who work in the club to come up here to the Lodge for the night, as serving staff and the like. The Society members apparently aren’t too pleased—but as most of them are invited to the event, there shouldn’t be a problem with nicking the people who keep the place running.” She paused for thought. “Apparently Mr. Cleat’s not too popular with his precious Society at the moment, so this demonstration is supposed to give him back a bit of credit. That’s Rosaleen’s opinion anyway.” She sniffed dismissively. “It’s all under wraps, what he’s going to do, but he wants a full quota of staff on duty.”

  “When is it supposed to be happening? Do you know?” Tess’s heart was thundering. Whatever Mr. Cleat was planning, she was certain the ‘child’ had to be her—and she wanted no part of it.

  “This Friday, miss,” Millie said. “And it’s to run late, into the small hours of Saturday.”

  “This Friday?” Tess felt weak. The plan she and Thomas had made had to work, then, as imperfect as it was. She needed to be gone from here before Mr. Cleat could stage his demonstration. It had to work and there were only days to get her out. She hoped Miss Ackerbee could pull enough strings in that time to set her free. She doesn’t seem to have tried too hard up to now, though, the tiny doubting voice inside her mind whispered. What makes you think she’ll come through under time pressure like that?

  “Miss? Are you all right?” Millie asked.

  “Call me Tess. And yes”—Tess tried to smile—“I’m fine, Millie. Thank you so much for this. You’ve been such a help.”

  “Not a bother, Tess,” said Millie, beaming with pride. “Now we’d best get back to our beds before there’s war.” She began to walk away but Tess reached out and took her by the hand. Millie stopped short, surprised. She turned to Tess with wide eyes.

  “Whatever’s going on this Friday, you shouldn’t be here either,” Tess said. “I don’t know what it is exactly, but what Mr. Cleat has told me sounds bad. Do you have anywhere you can go?”

  Millie smiled, but it was a veneer of bravado. “My mother lives in County Carlow, miss. I mean, Tess. I can’t get there—not on a few days’ notice, at least. I have Rosaleen in town, of course, but she can’t take me in on a whim. And she’ll be here on the night anyway. So I’ll have to stay, but don’t worry about me. I’ve seen worse, I’m sure.”

  Tess’s mind filled with fire, great billowing gusts of it. “I’m not sure you have,” she murmured.

  “Don’t worry about me, miss. Nobody pays the slightest bit of attention to me, where I go or what I do. So don’t you fret.” Millie squeezed Tess’s hand companionably, then let it go. “That’s not to say I’m not grateful for your kindness, Tess.” She smiled shyly and Tess smiled back.

  “You’re my friend, Millie,” Tess said. “That’s what friends do.”

  * * *

  “Has Prossy fallen asleep?” Wilf whispered. Prissy shrugged, then nudged Prossy sharply with her toe. Prossy gave an indignant snort, then sat up, her hair askew.

  “What?” she demanded. “I was paying complete attention.”

  “To the pillow perhaps,” Wilf said, rolling her eyes. “Now. What’s next?”

  Eunice held a handwritten sheet of paper closer to their candle. “Plan: To Exit Ackerbee’s Undetected,” she read. “I have an idea for that, actually.”

  “Oh?” Wilf said, sitting forward.

  “Mrs. Stubbs keeps a skeleton key in the kitchen,” Eunice said. “I can borrow it for a while and then we can just let ourselves out of the front door.”

  “How on earth do you know what Cook keeps in the kitchen?” Prissy asked.

  Eunice shrugged. “I like to eat. And I’m nosy.”

  “Won’t she miss it?” Wilf asked, wrinkling her nose. “I should think a skeleton key is something you would miss.”

  “It’s up on a high shelf above the stove,” Eunice said. “I don’t think she even remembers it’s there.”

  “Right. Well, let’s try that then. Eunice, you can retrieve the skeleton key from Mrs. Stubbs as soon as possible.” Wilf’s voice was bright. “And as for the rest of us, let’s figure out a way to get to Fairwater Park.”

  “We could save up for the tram fare,” Prossy suggested. “I’ve got about three shillings in my sock drawer.”

  “Or we could just walk,” Prissy said. “It’d take a while, is the only thing.”

  “I think the tram’s a better option, except I don’t have any money.” Wilf rubbed her head, thinking hard.

  “We could ask the others. I mean, everyone. Surely between the whole house we’ll have enough for four tram fares.” Eunice looked at the others in turn. “We all want Tess back. Nobody will say no.”

  “Just let’s get a move on,” Wilf said. “We’ve only got until Friday to do this. If we’re to have any chance of getting into that park, it’s got to be the night of the party. I have to see Tess and find out if she’s all right. And if she wants to come home, we’re going to be the ones to help her.”

  “We will have time for a canapé or two, though, won’t we?” Prossy said, looking dreamy. “It’s not every day we get to go to a garden party. I’m quite looking forward to it.”

  Eunice sniggered, which set the others off. Very soon all four girls were laughing as quietly as they could—but it didn’t stop a thrown hairbrush, which smacked Wilf on the head. Somehow that just seemed funnier. “Will you lot shut it,” hissed someone in the corner of the dorm. “Or find a different place to have these coven meetings! I’m going to have a word with Miss Ackerbee, see if I don’t, and we’ll soon find out what she thinks of your ridiculous plan.”

  “She’ll have to pay her own tram fare, if she wants to join us,” said Prissy, wiping her eyes. “I’ll be blowed if I’m stumping up for her.”

  This set the four of them giggling again. The hairbrush thrower tutted loudly and flung herself back into her bed, stuffing her head inside her pillow until
eventually the dorm fell silent once more.

  Tess entered the chapel with her cardigan buttoned up, her sturdiest boots on and a small burlap sack she’d begged from Millie. In it, Millie had placed a flask of soup, some bread wrapped in waxed paper and a large bar of chocolate. With any luck she, Moose and Thomas would have time for a picnic when Operation Quicksilver was done.

  “Here we are, love,” she whispered to Violet as they approached their top pew. She set down her lantern and Violet dutifully crawled out onto her fingers, ready to be deposited beside it. “I know you don’t like this bit but I’ll be back as soon as I can, I promise.”

  She kissed her finger and tapped Violet gently with it, and the spider settled beside the soft light. Then Tess got to her feet and fished the Star-spinner out of her pocket. She took a deep breath and ran her thumb over the metal fronds, feeling them warm to her skin, feeling her own pulse vibrate through it, and—

  “Ah. Here you are, Miss de Sousa. Good of you to join us.” The voice cut Tess to the heart. She turned, overcome with shock, to see Mrs. Thistleton emerging from a doorway tucked behind the rotting lectern. “We were wondering when you’d make your appearance.” Behind her stumbled a sobbing Millie, her face shining with tears in the lamplight. Mrs. Thistleton held her tightly by the wrist.