Текст книги "The Spider Ring"

Автор книги: Andrew Harwell

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 8 страниц)

Maria was exhausted when she got home that evening.

Even ignoring the close call with the spider, cleaning Grandma Esme’s house had been draining, physically and emotionally. Every single object had been just so heavy with history. But the funeral, which was happening first thing the next morning, promised to be more draining still. Maria wasn’t sure she had it in her to put on a brave face in front of strangers.

On the bright side, Maria’s mom had heard from Derek’s parents that his whole family would be there, and that knowledge gave Maria courage.

Maria avoided her room for as long as she could that night. She reread a book that she’d left in the living room. She asked her mom five times who was going to be at the church in the morning. She even offered to help her mom do the dishes from dinner, which was the exact moment when her mom guessed she was afraid to be alone.

But that wasn’t the issue, or at least not all of it.

When Maria finally dragged her feet back to her bedroom, her eyes went straight for the box on her nightstand. She approached it slowly, as if she needed to sneak up on it.

Someone else knew about the ring’s mysterious powers, and that someone may have killed her grandmother trying to get them. Maria herself still didn’t know what those powers were, exactly. She had wanted her glasses, and the spiders had brought them. Did that mean the spiders could read her mind? Could she command the spiders, or just ask them politely for things? Were these regular spiders or magical ones?

Maria had read a book once about a groundskeeper who kept a very large spider as a pet, until it escaped into the woods and tried to eat people. If magical spider rings existed, maybe giant people-eating spiders did, too. Maybe Maria had control over them.

Her imagination was getting away from her again.

Derek was right. It probably hadn’t been magic, but a magic trick. And not even the fun kind of trick – the kind that ended with abracadabra, voilà, or ta-da. This was the kind of trick like Claire McCormick’s smile, the kind that made you confused about something important. This kind of trick preyed on people who wanted desperately to believe something, like the fact that magic and stories were real. What had Derek said? Grandma Esme was “confused”? Maybe Grandma Esme had believed too much in a magic trick, too.

Maria pulled the spider ring out of the box once more. She slipped it delicately on her finger. It really was a beautiful ring when you looked at it. The level of detail on the spider was so fine, down to its sharp pincers and tiny leg joints, it was as if it wasn’t a carved stone at all, but a real spider that had calcified and been placed on a band. But it couldn’t be a real spider. For one thing, this spider had six eyes, when Maria was almost positive that all spiders had eight.

Now that Maria looked at it, she thought she saw something on the underside of the spider’s abdomen. A tiny clasp, if she wasn’t mistaken. She tried to pry it open with her fingernails, and finally, the mechanism clicked, revealing a small container. It was hardly big enough to hold anything, and it was empty now, though Maria thought she saw the residue of a fine powder along the edges.

There was a name for rings like this that hid little containers. “Poison rings,” Derek’s dad had called them once. The idea was that old knights and kings would keep real poison in them, either for their enemies or else, if they were captured, for themselves. But more often, poison rings held medicine or mementos. A locket of hair or a whiff of perfume. Poison rings sometimes had another name, for that very reason. “Funeral rings,” for the mourners left behind.

In spite of that name, Maria smiled.

Leave it to Grandma Esme to have a ring with a secret compartment.

“Are you okay, sweetie?” Mom said, appearing suddenly in her doorway. Maria realized she must have looked odd, sitting here admiring her ring.

“Yeah, just missing her,” she said.

“I miss her, too,” her mom said. She stared into the middle distance, as if she could see Grandma Esme there in the room with them. She shivered. “She was a real one-of-a-kind lady, your grandmother.”

“Two-of-a-kind,” Maria replied.

“Is that right?” Her mother’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Well, it’s true you got her imagination. Your father had it, too.”

“Really?”

“Does that surprise you?”

“Well, you just always say that Dad didn’t like stories that much.”

Maria’s mother sat down on the edge of her bed.

“Oh, I said he wasn’t a reader like you are, but he always liked stories. He used to say he was going to buy us one of those fishing boats in the gulf, and that we would all go on an adventure, to Japan and Australia and everywhere.”

Maria liked the sound of a boat trip around the world. It was too bad her father wasn’t here to make it come true.

“Who knows, maybe after we sell Grandma Esme’s house, we can finally buy that boat after all. I’ve been thinking we could use a little more family adventure around here.”

Maria wasn’t sure if she did need any more adventure. It seemed to be finding her well enough already. Her feelings must have shown crystal clear on her face, because her mother backtracked and changed the subject.

“Do you have your clothes picked out for tomorrow? We need to leave around eight thirty so we can get to the church a little early.”

“I’ll put my clothes out,” Maria said. She already knew she didn’t have anything special to wear. She had one black dress and one green dress, which she alternated between for church and special occasions. The black dress might have been stylish once. The green dress looked like it had been a fir tree in a past life.

“All right, then. If you’re sure you’re okay …”

“I’m sure.”

“Good night, sweetie.”

“Good night, Mom.”

Her mother leaned in for a hug, and then got up to go back to her room. Maria stopped her in the doorway.

“Mom?” she said.

“Yes, mija-oh-my-a?”

“Do you think Dad and Grandma Esme are together again?”

“Of course they are. And since I don’t believe in stories, you know it’s true.”

This was exactly the right response.

When Maria turned out her light to go to sleep, she kept the spider ring on, deciding that this was a fitting way to keep Grandma Esme close tonight. Her black dress lay draped over her chair like she’d promised, its little quarter sleeves threatening to make Maria look like a Victorian baby doll the next day, when she wanted to appear sophisticated and somber. If only she’d thought to grab one of Grandma Esme’s shawls. Then she would have looked like Esmerelda the Magnificent’s granddaughter.

She closed her eyes and imagined the kind of dress she would buy if she had unlimited money. A sleek dress, elegant and mysterious. A dress that said, Here is a girl who is not to be trifled with.

As Maria lay there picturing her dress, the ring on her finger began to grow warm. Faster than she could think, she scrambled to slide the ring off her finger, removing it so forcefully that it flew and landed somewhere at her feet. The best thing to do was put it back in the box, she decided. Then she’d put the box back in her sock drawer, and then maybe push her dresser out into the hall.

When Maria turned on her light and picked up the ring box, she opened it wrong-side up and found the note from Grandma Esme staring her in the face.

The spiders are your friends. Do not abuse their friendship.

Were they her friends, or were they out to get her? Could they be both at once? Perhaps her grandmother really had been crazy after all.

Finally, Maria decided that if the spiders had wanted to get her, they easily could have done so while she was asleep last night. Boldly – or was it recklessly? – Maria put the ring back on her finger and said in a small voice, “I wish I had a beautiful dress to wear to Grandma Esme’s funeral.”

This time, she hardly flinched when she felt the ring heat up. And when the line of brown spiders came trickling in through the crack under her door, she greeted them with what she hoped was a convincing smile.

The spiders got to work at once. They swarmed and surrounded Maria’s baby-doll dress, until she could hardly see the fabric underneath the cloud of moving legs.

“Be careful,” Maria couldn’t help saying, hoping that this wouldn’t offend them. She could just imagine explaining to her mom why one of her two dresses was ruined. The problem with being a park ranger who didn’t believe in stories was that sometimes even the truth was unbelievable.

The spiders didn’t seem to be offended, though. If anything, they worked faster, some of them swinging from the chair on strands of cottony spider silk. Maria could even swear she heard the buzz of voices. But as soon as the word voices formed in her mind, the buzzing she thought she heard was gone.

At last the army of spiders began to break ranks, scurrying to leave in separate waves. When the final few stragglers completed their work and left, Maria felt the ring go cold.

From where she sat in her bed, she could already see that her dress had changed. She put one foot on the floor and then the other, crossing her room as fast as she could on her tiptoes.

When she got to the dress, she gasped.

Each shoulder strap of this old-but-new creation was formed from three strands of black fabric woven into a braid. When Maria touched it, the fabric felt different than it had before, like expensive silk, only softer, if that was possible. The body of the dress was made of the same rich fabric. Around the waistline, rows of shimmery sequin-like orbs crisscrossed until they met at a spiral in the back.

When Maria lifted the dress and looked at the chair beneath, she discovered the best detail of all: two sheer black gloves, each long enough to stretch past her elbow, with interlocking webs to match the pattern on the dress.

Maria could hardly believe her good fortune. She decided to try on the dress now, just in case this was a dream. She’d hate to wake up in the morning and realize she’d missed her chance to see how it looked on her.

She slipped her arms through the straps and put the gloves on second. She stood in front of her mirror and struck a commanding pose.

Dream or reality, Maria would cherish this sight forever. She looked strong. She looked beautiful. In the darkness, in this dress, she was Maria the Magnificent.

“Maria, wake up. It’s after eight already.”

Maria rubbed her eyes and sat up in bed. She’d been in the middle of the most wonderful dream, but now she couldn’t remember a single detail except the feeling of happiness. She reached for her glasses and felt the surprising weight of the spider ring on her finger. She must have left it on all night.

Not entirely knowing why, Maria shuddered.

She got out of bed, meaning to head straight for the bathroom and the shower. But the black dress on her chair stopped her cold.

The elegant straps, the black, webbed gloves – they were really here. She hadn’t imagined it.

Maria was so caught up in the wonder of the moment, a moment just like her dream, the feeling of pure happiness, that it wasn’t until her mother called, “Maria, are you up?” that she came to her senses and understood what had happened.

She had wished for a dress, and now here it was. And it hadn’t been chipmunks or bluebirds that had made it for her, either. It was spiders. It was like Maria was in some kind of fairy tale, only she wasn’t the princess who fell asleep for centuries to be awoken by a prince. She was the shadow queen.

“Yes, Mom, I’m up,” she said, before her mother could come in and find her like this. What was she supposed to do now? Her own black dress was missing, but she couldn’t very well wear this brand-new gown – a gown that hadn’t been made by humans – and expect her mother not to realize something was going on.

What had Grandma Esme always said when Maria asked her about her clothes? “I got this in Europe.” Either that, or, just like the ring, “It was a gift from a friend.”

The spiders are your friends.

So that was it, then. Grandma Esme’s clothes had been made by spiders.

Maria set the dress and the gloves down and went through the motions of getting ready. Brushing her teeth, combing her hair. She was glad to have something so routine to do after discovering something so utterly strange. It helped her to pretend that this was just another day.

But it wasn’t just another day, not by a long shot.

Grandma Esme was dead, and magic was real.

These were just two facts Maria would have to get used to.

Maria hadn’t been to Grandma Esme’s church in a long, long time. As far as she could tell, there wasn’t any particular reason why Grandma Esme had gone to one church while Maria, Rafi, and Mom had always gone to another. Mom had once explained that the churches were “different denominations,” but when Maria had asked what that meant, exactly, Mom had said, “It means your father was raised one way, and I was raised another.”

Maria had let the subject drop.

Grandma Esme’s church looked a little bit like Maria’s school, with brown brick walls that stretched out instead of up, except for one tall steeple that stretched up quite a ways. The church had a lower level with long tunnels and passages – you could go down in the kitchen and come up behind the sanctuary, and if you weren’t careful, you could hit your head on the loading doors that led into the parking lot. Maria sometimes wondered if the basement was the reason Grandma Esme had picked this church.

“Are we the first ones here?” Rafi said, pressing his nose against the car window as they pulled into the parking lot.

“No, look. I think that’s the preacher’s car.” Mom nodded at a little white sedan parked all the way in the back.

They got out of the car and walked around to the front doors of the church. Maria still felt a bit self-conscious in her beautiful dress. It almost seemed too pretty to wear to a funeral, especially next to her mom’s gray pantsuit and her brother’s wrinkly blazer.

Her mother looked back at her and seemed to agree.

“I can’t believe your grandmother had that sitting in her closet. It’s a perfect fit.”

“I know, right? I think maybe she bought it for my birthday or something,” Maria lied.

“Right. Your birthday,” her mom said skeptically. She tried the doors, and, finding them locked, knocked loudly three times.

After a moment, the doors swung inward, and a short, white-haired man who looked entirely too cheerful stood waiting to greet them.

“Ah, look at you,” he said brightly, clapping his hands together. “Maria, I haven’t seen you since you were this high. And, Rafael, you were just a baby.”

“I go by Rafi now,” Rafi mumbled.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Mom said, sticking out her hand for a handshake.

“You’re right, of course,” the man said, taking Mom’s hand warmly in both of his. “I’m Winston Yarmuth, the pastor here. And you’re Sofia Lopez. I’ve just heard so many wonderful things from Esmerelda, I feel like I already know all of you.”

Mom smiled. “How can we help you set up, Mr. Yarmuth?”

“Help me? Oh, no, Ms. Lopez, everything is finished. Esmerelda had so many friends here. They all stayed late to help set up last night.”

They followed Pastor Yarmuth into the sanctuary and saw immediately what he meant. There were flowers everywhere. On the pews, on the front podium, even in the windows. There had been a brief moment on the drive over when Maria wondered what would happen if no one came to the funeral but Derek’s family and them. Grandma Esme always seemed to live such a solitary existence, and rarely talked to Maria about what she did when Maria wasn’t there, unless it was to tell her stories about the past.

With nothing left to do but wait, Mom, Rafi, and Maria sat in the very front pew. Rafi borrowed Mom’s phone and played a game that involved lining up pieces of fruit on a checkerboard. Maria pulled out a hymnal and turned to the back, where the stories behind many of the songs could be found.

Finally, around nine fifteen, people started to trickle in. Some people came as families, others by themselves, but all of them seemed to know one another. And all of them came first to Pastor Yarmuth, and then, after he pointed them out, to Maria’s family. Mom made Rafi put the phone away and stand up, and the three of them had to give hugs to one person after another, all of whom said they had heard so many wonderful things from Esmerelda.

“Wow. I guess she was pretty popular, huh?” Rafi said, when at last the church looked to be filled to capacity. Maria had to agree.

With five minutes until the service began, Derek’s family came hurrying through the doors. Derek’s dad spotted them right away and headed up to say hello, though there weren’t any more seats left in the front pew.

“Sorry we’re late,” Mr. Overton said. “Derek couldn’t find his tie this morning, and then I took a wrong turn by the bypass.”

Maria caught Derek’s eye and raised her eyebrows. She was eager to tell him what had happened last night with the ring and the dress. But he only offered her a weak smile in return, as if the morning had been even more hectic than his dad was letting on.

Then Maria noticed the woman standing next to Derek. Tall, slender, and stunningly pretty, this had to be his great-aunt Luellen. She wore a black hat with a brim that swept diagonally across her forehead, all but covering the right side of her face. Her posture made her look sharp but casual at the same time, like a cursive S. She looked the way Maria imagined all women in New York did.

“You must be Maria,” she said in a rich, smoky voice. She took Maria’s hands in hers and squeezed. “I was so sorry to hear about your loss.”

“Nice to meet you,” Maria said, pulling her hands back to her sides. She understood now why Derek’s mom had said Luellen was a little scary. But Derek’s parents were still talking to Mom, and Rafi was listening in, clearly bored. Derek stared off into space. Maria couldn’t decide whether or not he was avoiding her eyes. Well, fine, then, she thought.

“That’s a beautiful dress you’re wearing,” Luellen said.

“Thank you. It was my grandmother’s.”

Luellen pinched the fabric of Maria’s shoulder strap between her fingers. After an uncomfortably long moment, she leaned in and said, “You know, I actually saw your grandmother once, a long time ago. Did you know she used to travel with a famous circus?”

Maria didn’t know what to say. Derek came out of whatever trance he’d been in, equally surprised. That was a relief, at least.

“You saw my grandma Esme do a show?”

“Oh, yes. Many years ago now, in a charming little village in Switzerland. I was there on business, and I was intrigued by an advertisement for the Amazing Arturo and Esmerelda the Magnificent. They were the headliners of the whole circus, you see. Your grandmother was the only lion tamer at that time – or since, as far as I know – who could control her beast with nothing but a whistle. Arturo, meanwhile, would do the most unbelievable things with just a handkerchief and a mirror. Their grand finale was to make the lion disappear. They really were quite extraordinary together. I’ll never forget it.”

Maria started to ask whether there had been any other animals involved in the act, but Pastor Yarmuth called the service to order then, and the Overtons had to make their way to the only pew still open, the very last one in the back.

Maria struggled to focus on Pastor Yarmuth’s speech. With each new warm story he told, she only missed her grandmother more.

She stared up into the tall ceiling of the sanctuary. She could see past the wood beams to the place where all the walls of the church came together in a point, the inside of the steeple. She was surprised – and then not so surprised – to see that a swarm of spiders had gathered in the rafters, their webs like thick clouds from the sky beyond.

These weren’t the black spiders with red hourglasses that meant your time was up. These were the brown spiders that had made Maria’s dress. These were the spiders that had been Grandma Esme’s friends. These were the spiders that had come to say good-bye.

Maria wished that she had worn her ring. She wanted to tell the spiders thank you.

The service itself was done in no time. It was the walk back to the car, and then the drive to the cemetery, that took forever.

The crowd at the gravesite was smaller than it had been at the church. Derek’s family had taken him on to school, and many of the church members had gone their separate ways. But a smaller crowd still meant a lot of people.

Almost everyone here was crying. Mom wept quietly, her back held straight and her hands bunched in a knot. Even Rafi had tears in his eyes.

Maria didn’t cry. She kept her composure. A shadow queen is still a queen, she thought.

Then, from behind a tree across the way, a moving shape caught Maria’s eye. The shape was black and seemed human at first, but the more Maria watched it, the less human it seemed. One moment it looked like a distant grave; the next it just looked like the thin shadow of the tree. Maria squinted her eyes and stared, and for a second she was sure that yes, it was a person – a man in a black suit who was very tall and very thin – but as soon as she’d seen him, he’d disappeared again.

And then Maria was being ushered forward by her mother. She was supposed to throw a handful of dirt on Grandma Esme’s grave. Maria hesitated. This felt like saying she agreed with the burial – that she wanted it to happen, or allowed it somehow. But she knew she’d start a fight if she refused to do it, so she picked up her handful of dirt and threw it in.

By the time she looked up, the man or the shadow was nowhere in sight.