The Starspun Web

by Sinéad O'Hart

  “Do you hear sirens,” Tess asked hoarsely after a while, “or is it just my ears ringing?”

  Thomas propped himself up on one elbow. “Definitely sirens,” he said, sitting up fully. “The fire service attending the damage from the bombs, maybe.” He paused, looking mournful. “I hope someone heard my warning.”

  Tess looked at him. “Me too,” she whispered.

  “So what do we do now?” Thomas said, pulling his knees up to his chest. “You did something incredible tonight, Tess. So incredible and we can’t even tell anyone.” He turned to her with a half grin. “Who’d believe us? Heck, who’d understand?”

  She returned the grin briefly but the weight of grief and tiredness soon drained her. “My dad,” she finally said, realization settling on her shoulders. “My dad would’ve understood.”

  Thomas’s grin faded and he blinked thoughtfully. “Mine too, I suppose.” He cleared his throat and looked at his feet, and when he spoke again, his voice was quiet. “Shame he’ll never know.”

  Tess fought hard against the wave of sorrow that flooded through her, but her chin began to wobble. Soon, to her disgust, she felt her eyes fill with tears.

  “Hey!” Thomas said, sliding across the floor to put an arm round her shoulders. “No need for that. What’s the matter?”

  “My dad will never know either,” she said, yanking off her glasses and wiping furiously at her eyes. She swallowed a hiccup. “All I wanted was to find out what happened to him and now I never can. I’ll never be able to find him. And I’ll never be able to go home.” She closed her eyes, feeling them burn.

  “Whyever not?” Thomas said, frowning.

  Tess wiped her top lip dry and slipped her glasses back on and then peered at Thomas. “You saw the Star-spinner, didn’t you? And we have no way to fix it now. But even if it was working perfectly, I have no Violet. She’s gone and with her goes my anchor,” she said miserably. “I can’t go anywhere else, not without her. So I’m stuck here, for better or for worse.”

  Thomas let out an incredulous snort. “But of course you’re not stuck here,” he said, staring at her. “You’re Tess de Sousa. You’re a legend. Look what you’ve just done!” He gestured to the sky with his free hand and squeezed Tess gently around the shoulders with the other. “And even if Violet’s dead, your memory of her isn’t. Right? The love you have for her is as bright as it ever was. That’s all you need, I’ll bet.”

  “Well…,” Tess began, but stopped when she found she had nothing to add.

  “Exactly my point,” Thomas said, getting to his feet. “Think beyond the possible, Tess. Tonight you literally did just that. And now you’re doubting yourself because of some half-garbled hearsay?” He reached down to drag Tess to her feet. “Get that machine out of your pocket. Come on.”

  Tess stood beside him, her knees feeling watery. She sniffed, then dug around in her pocket for the Star-spinner. It sat in her palm like a stone. The cracks across the starglass void looked like eyelashes on a pallid gray cheek. “We can do this,” she murmured, staring at it. “This is going to work.”

  “Yes, it is,” Thomas assured her, his tone confident. “After what I’ve just seen you do, there’s nothing standing in your way.” He clapped her on the shoulder, making her wince. “Right, then, get on with it. We haven’t got all night.”

  Tess looked at him, her eyes brimming with new enthusiasm. “I can’t wait for everyone to meet you,” she said. “You’ll love Miss Ackerbee and Rebecca. And Wilf—”

  “Hold your horses,” Thomas interrupted. “Everyone is going to meet me?”

  Tess’s optimism popped like a pierced bubble. “Well, yes,” she said, her smile dying. “When you come with me. You are coming, aren’t you?” Moose scampered up Thomas’s sleeve, perching on his shoulder to peer at Tess. “You and Moose both, I mean?”

  Thomas looked at the floor. “I— Well, is that a good idea?” He didn’t give Tess time to answer. “I mean, we don’t know if there’s power enough to bring you back, let alone me too. And this fella.” He lifted a hand to Moose, who clambered on, then looked up at Tess with sad eyes. “We don’t know whether the Star-spinner can bring more than one person even when it’s working at full capacity and it’s not worth the risk of trying. You should go alone, I think.”

  Tess’s mouth fell open. “But I don’t want to leave you,” she finally managed to reply, her words swallowed by the sudden surge of sadness that swept up through her chest.

  “Yes, well, I was pretty fond of you and all,” Thomas said, looking away. “But let’s not dwell on it, shall we? Needs must and all that.”

  “But I came here to find my family,” Tess said, the ache inside growing more painful with every breath. She paused, chewing hard on the inside of her mouth. “I can’t leave you behind.”

  Thomas looked back at her. The shine on his glasses from the starlight outside made it hard to see his eyes, but Tess recognized his forced grin. “It’s not really your choice to make, though, is it? It’s mine.” His smile flattened. “I won’t be going anywhere. And you’ll always know where I am. Come and visit when you can.”

  “But you can’t stay here,” Tess said, looking around the observatory. “You don’t even have a house.”

  Thomas’s reply was upbeat. “I’ve got everything I need,” he said. “I have Moose. And you’ve seen my cushy setup here. We’ll be fine.” The mouse sat on top of his head, sniffing contentedly at the air, and Thomas smiled, though his eyes stayed sad. “I want you to go, Tess. I—I mean, I don’t want you to go but you’d better. While you still can.”

  “Well then, I’ll stay,” Tess said, her voice strained with desperation. “I’ll stay and we can figure things out together. We can find a way to get the Star-spinner working again and we can test it and find out what it can do, how many people it can take at once and—”

  “Look, it’s just been me and Moose here for a long time,” Thomas said, his voice low. “It’s sort of how I want things, you know? We know what we’re about, Moose and me.” He cleared his throat and shot her an apologetic look. “I don’t want anyone else, Tess.”

  Tess stared at him. She searched his face but he refused to look at her properly. “I—I can’t believe this,” she said after a painful minute, squeezing her fingers hard around the Star-spinner. She suddenly found it difficult to breathe, like something was sitting on her chest. “Well, if that’s how it is, then that’s how it is. I’ll miss you, even if you won’t miss me. It’s harder to live without your family once you know you’ve got one.” She stared down into the Star-spinner’s heart and let her mind fill up with thoughts of Violet, picturing her sitting on the rim of the void, ready for her next adventure. Tess felt something in her heart lifting, like a tether being released.

  Then she looked up at Thomas, their dark brown eyes mirror copies of one another, and just as the last anchor to his reality lifted away and the Star-spinner sucked her back to her own world, Tess made a decision. She reached out and grabbed his hand.

  * * *

  The sky above Roedeer Lodge righted itself so suddenly that for a moment it felt like the stars were going to rain down from it like hail. Some people greeted the closure of the rift with joy; others cried out in terror or disappointment. Mr. Cleat watched from the ground, his hand clutched to his wound and his eyes burning with rage, as all around him the members of his Society started to shout questions and accusations and call for his arrest.

  Wilf wasn’t looking at the sky but instead at the place where her friend had vanished. “Where’s Tess?” she said, but nobody knew how to answer her, not even the spider on her shoulder, who was trembling with shock and fear. Wilf held up a finger and Violet clung to it. If you survived, Wilf thought, glancing at her, so can she.

  Prossy chanced a look up, and the second her eyes left Mrs. Thistleton’s face, the woman pounced. She k
nocked Hortense to one side, bashing Prossy on the kneecap with the stick, and ran straight for Eunice, who’d happened to take the dagger from Prissy a few moments before. Eunice squeaked in fright and brandished the dagger, but Mrs. Thistleton soon disarmed her. The girl fell to the ground with a gash across her palm as Mrs. Thistleton took to her heels, tucking the dagger back into her coat as she ran.

  “Stop her!” Prissy yelled, but in a moment she was gone, vanished into the darkness of the park.

  “Dratted woman!” Prossy shouted, nursing her injured leg. Prissy ran to her side and helped her friend to her feet and Millie grabbed some napkins from a nearby table to come to Eunice’s aid.

  Wilf strode across the grass to Mr. Cleat and dropped to her knees beside him. “Where is she?” Wilf asked, her voice quivering with rage and grief. “Tell me!”

  Mr. Cleat laughed quietly, staring at Wilf with bloodshot eyes. “You’ll never see her again. That’s all I can tell you.” He grimaced, trying to move. Wilf offered no help, boring through him with a glare instead. “At least you’ve got her vermin to keep you company,” he said. “I should think you’ll hardly be able to tell the difference.”

  Wilf drew breath to shout a retort, but the words were stolen out of her mouth by the sound of something that all the Ackerbee’s girls recognized instantly—a sharp whistle, louder than a foghorn and clearer than a bell. Prossy and Prissy turned toward it, their faces twin pictures of hope, and Eunice started to laugh. Mr. Cleat simply frowned.

  Wilf looked down at him, a satisfied look on her face. “If you think I’m angry, just wait until Miss Ackerbee gets here.”

  Tess and Thomas landed heavily on the floor of the deserted chapel, their breath painfully knocked out of their chests. Tess recovered first, sitting up to nurse a bashed elbow as she stared down at Thomas’s wide-eyed, gasping face. He was focused on the ceiling above their heads, and Tess looked up. The hole in the rotten floorboards was gaping down at them—they must have fallen through. Despite everything, Tess felt a smile bubble up from inside her. We made it. We’re back! Underneath that was the realization she’d been right. And my theory, she thought. It’s proven. The next heartbeat brought a judder of terror as she thought about what it meant, but she tried to ignore it.

  Thomas groaned as he started to push himself up on one elbow. He straightened his glasses and looked around. “What happened? Did a bomb hit?”

  “No. This is just how the chapel looks here,” Tess said quietly. It took a moment for him to register what she meant.

  “Hang on a minute,” Thomas said, turning to her with a frown. “You don’t mean to tell me you brought me back with you? Despite what I said?”

  Tess chewed her lip nervously for a second and then found the courage to answer him. “It was an experiment of mine,” she began. “I was testing a hypothesis.”

  Thomas looked exasperated. “What?” he said, shaking his head. “What experiment?”

  “Remember when we first met?” she prompted him. “In the chapel back on your earth. And we wondered whether we were related. Do you remember that?”

  “Of course,” Thomas said, rubbing at his head. “Ow,” he added.

  “Well, it’s like this. I don’t think you’re my brother. Not even my twin. I—I think you’re me.” Tess trembled as she said this, wondering how Thomas would take the idea. “Another version of me, I mean. Like an alternate self. I’m you and you’re me.”

  Thomas blinked. He stared at her. His mouth fell open. “I—er,” he managed.

  “Think about it,” Tess urged. “We look like one another. We live in the same place. We’re each our parents’ only child. So many things about us are the same, only we live in different realities. Or, well, we lived in different realities.” She gulped, suddenly feeling nervous. “Don’t you think it’s possible that we’re, you know, copies of one another?”

  “Versions of the same person, existing in different realities,” Thomas said, straightening his glasses. “It makes sense.”

  “So when I held your hand, the Star-spinner brought you back too because you and me—we’re the same,” Tess said. Moose popped his head out of Thomas’s top pocket, taking the air. His tiny dark eyes regarded his surroundings with great solemnity. “It brought all three of us back, I should say,” Tess corrected herself, reaching out to stroke him between the ears.

  “And you didn’t know this would happen? Me coming with you, I mean?”

  “No,” Tess admitted, dropping her hand from Moose’s head. “But I hoped it would.”

  Thomas slumped, reaching up into his jumper and pulling something out, and Tess gazed at it in surprise. It was one of his mother’s notebooks. “Everything I need I’ve got right here,” he said, and Tess wasn’t sure if he meant her, or the book, or both.

  Tess’s stomach clenched into a knot. “I didn’t want to leave you,” she said, feeling bruised inside with guilt. “I hope you don’t hate me.”

  “I didn’t want to leave you, either, you clod,” Thomas replied, looking up at her with wet eyes and a fond grin. “I wanted you to come back here so you’d be safe. That’s all. I didn’t want you taking risks for me. But you did it anyway.” He flicked the notebook at her, making her laugh. “And I could never hate you.”

  “I think we’ll be safest together from now on,” Tess said. “And I have friends here. A place to live that’s safe and lovely and not mostly burned down. Miss Ackerbee and Rebecca will look after you, too, I’m sure of it. And we can figure out what to do next once we’ve had a chance to think.” She put her hand into her pocket to feel the Star-spinner there, the weight she had grown so accustomed to. “But if it’s really what you want, I can try to bring you home again.”

  Thomas’s smile faded as he looked at his mother’s handwriting on the cover of her book. “I don’t know what I want,” he answered.

  Before Tess could respond, a faint whistle pierced the night. Thomas’s face blanched and he cast about for somewhere to hide. Just as he was about to throw himself beneath a half-rotted pew, Tess grabbed his sleeve.

  “It’s all right!” she said. “It’s not a bomb. I know that noise. I’ve heard it often enough during fire drills. I would recognize it anywhere.” She laughed, turning to the half-open chapel door and peering into the night beyond. Distantly she thought she could make out the huge faradic lights that had illuminated Mr. Cleat’s planes still shining into the night. Then the whistle sounded again, louder this time, and Tess’s heart lifted. Miss Ackerbee, she thought. She’s come for me.

  “What is it?” Thomas asked, hauling himself off the floor. He straightened his glasses again.

  “Come on. You’ll see.” Tess made for the door, crashing through the undergrowth outside. She waited for him and they ran hand in hand through the long grass, helped one another over the old garden gate and crunched down the gravel path to the front of Roedeer Lodge.

  It was Mr. Cleat who saw her first. He greeted Tess’s arrival by spitting on the ground, which made Wilf turn to see what he was staring at with such hatred—and she could hardly believe her eyes when Tess came through the gate with a boy in tow.

  Tess slipped her hand from Thomas’s and ran to her friend. They collided in a jumble, and when they broke apart, Wilf took Violet gently down from the top of her head, holding her out for Tess to take.

  “She made it,” Tess said, blinking back tears.

  “Of course she did,” Wilf said. “She’s an Ackerbee’s girl.”

  Tess laughed as the others crowded around and Thomas found himself swallowed by a cloud of excited, joyful explanations. Introductions were made and Thomas instantly forgot everyone’s name but nobody seemed to mind.

  Then the knot of girls opened and Tess made her way toward Mr. Cleat. He struggled to push himself up on one elbow and Tess knelt to peer down at him. His eyes had lost their manic intensity and
were now just watery blobs, exhausted and red.

  “I fixed it,” she told him. “The mess you made. And it will never happen again.”

  Mr. Cleat snorted. “I wouldn’t be so sure. And in any case, you wanted it as much as I did,” he told her in a low twisted hiss. “You couldn’t have done it otherwise. I’d be willing to bet you’ll find a way to make that thing work again. Mark my words.”

  Tess recoiled. “I never wanted a single piece of anything you did,” she said.

  Mr. Cleat laughed, his teeth stained with blood. “That’s a lie, girl. You can keep telling yourself that as long as you want but it will never be true.” He spat on the ground again, right by Tess’s hand, but she refused to flinch. “You’re just like your dear old dad, always looking out for number one. You’re no better than me! If you thought it would turn you a profit, you’d have that thing back up and running in no time.”

  Tess braced herself and thrust her arm beneath Mr. Cleat’s, yanking him to his feet. He cried out in pain, but Tess forced him toward a nearby chair. “You think you’re so special,” he growled into her ear as she dropped him into the seat. “You’re not special. You were just lucky. All those years with the key to the universe in your hand and you never even knew it!” He paused to draw breath. “I could have chosen any one of you de Sousas, on any one of half a dozen worlds. This is all your fault!”

  Tess met his eye. “I just wanted you to know,” she said, holding his gaze, “that all the theories you worked so hard on are wrong. You can tell your Society that, from me.” At these words Mr. Cleat finally slumped, making no reply.

  A strong hand clamped down on his shoulder and Tess looked up to see Cornelius Henderson, the journalist, standing over Mr. Cleat. He tried to shrug off Mr. Henderson’s grip, but it held. Mr. Henderson and Tess shared a nod. Then she gave Mr. Cleat one last cold stare and turned to walk away.