Worldweavers: Spellspam

by Alma Alexander

  “Thanks a lot,” Thea said.

  “My uncle will make sure of it,” Tess said morosely.

  “Knock, knock,” said Humphrey May from the door. “Okay if I come in? Your uncle will make sure of what, Tess?”

  Tess had looked up, startled, and her look quickly passed from surprise to wariness. “I’m just saying,” she said, with a touch of defensiveness in her voice, “Thea is toast. After this. What with the Bureau…”

  Humphrey raised a hand, palm out, in a gesture of oath-taking. “I will not let anyone toast Thea,” he said solemnly. “That’s a promise. Glad you’re finally awake. Are you feeling better now?”

  “A little,” Thea said. It was hard to believe, after having slept for so long, but now that she was safe and fed and warm, she was beginning to feel drowsy again.

  Humphrey saw her eyelids fluttering, and smiled.

  “I do want to talk to you—no toasting involved—but it can wait until tomorrow. I am going to strongly suggest to Mrs. Chen that you spend tonight here before going back to the residence hall. And I’ll keep Luana away from you, at least until you’re well enough to run and hide by yourself.”

  “Is everything…all right?” Thea asked carefully.

  “Everything is under control,” Humphrey said. “Sleep it off. We’ll talk in the morning—there’s plenty of time for everything.”

  As it turned out, he was wrong—but Thea happily snuggled back down into her pillow until late the next morning, when she finally woke up feeling much more like herself—ready for yet another day that threatened to dissolve into crisis.

  It was a Saturday, and Tess and Magpie both came to spring Thea from the infirmary, walking on either side of her like a pair of human book-ends. The three of them ran into Ben and Terry on the steps of the infirmary.

  “They’re at our heels,” Ben said, “and I don’t know if I should tell you to stand your ground or turn around and flee back to bed, Thea.”

  “It’s probably just as well you’re near the infirmary,” Terry said. “Back to bed might not be a bad idea.”

  “Talk sense!” Tess said. “What are you going on about?”

  “Her,” said Thea with an economical toss of her head in the direction of Luana Lilley, who was striding toward them with a sense of doom-filled purpose, closely followed by Mrs. Chen and a couple of other people who might have been the principal and Keir Adama.

  “Where’s Humphrey?” Tess hissed. “He said he would be here to protect you….”

  “He’s on his way,” Terry said. “I swear, I don’t ever want to get that guy angry at me. He sent us here, and he was mad.”

  “At whom?” Thea said, just as Luana and Mrs. Chen both arrived at the foot of the steps, flushed and breathless.

  “All right, you’re awake,” Luana snapped. “And I want some answers, now.”

  “I don’t care who you are, I will not have you terrorizing a student in this manner,” Mrs. Chen snapped back. “The principal is on his way, and you can be sure that I will make a report directly to Washington if I have to….”

  “You don’t. I’ve already done so,” said a familiar voice from behind Thea.

  Humphrey May, who had just rounded the corner of the infirmary, was coldly and fiercely angry, his blue eyes chips of diamond-edged ice. “She knew better, as always,” Humphrey said, and his voice, too, was low and cold. “What were you hoping Thea could tell you, Luana? That she could lead you to Signe?”

  “What happened to Signe?” Thea asked. She liked her Environmental Studies teacher, aside from being honestly intrigued by her exotic Faele origins.

  “Thea Winthrop should come to Washington with us right now, Humphrey—you know that,” Luana said, lifting her chin defiantly. “You have to admit she’s been close to every one of these spellspams when they happened. She was in the library when the first one hit the school. She was there when the long-word spellspam became an aural spell and started spreading by the spoken word. She was close by when we were all hit by the language spell at the Nexus—”

  “And she was still practically unconscious when you opened the one that sent Signe away,” Humphrey said. “You’re reaching, Luana.”

  “Thea and Terry both,” Luana said obstinately, keeping the focus off Signe and what had happened to her. “We should take them both back with us. I think we all agree that they know more than they are saying. They can help us figure it all out.”

  “They are kids, Luana,” Humphrey said. “Your entire case rests on two kids from the Last Ditch School for the Incurably Incompetent?”

  They all winced at the deliberate use of those words. It was a name Thea herself had used once, but that seemed a very long time ago. Mrs. Chen looked honestly appalled that the phrase had been uttered out loud, right in the heart of the Academy, within hearing of its students.

  But it had not been Humphrey who had used those words first. It was obvious that it had been Luana’s snide dismissal of the place, not his own.

  “Well,” Humphrey said, ignoring everyone else’s reaction, “you’ve learned better, haven’t you? We will discuss later, in much more detail, whose competence is in question here.”

  “What happened…?” whispered Thea.

  “There was another,” Terry said. “Another of those messages.”

  Humphrey made a chopping motion with his hand. “Not out here,” he said. “Terry is right. Another of those spellspam messages slipped through. Luana didn’t go through your gateway, Terry, she used an outside network—from my laptop—and one got through. And it was just Signe’s bad luck that she happened to be the one to see it first. And Signe’s gone. I don’t know how or where yet. But you”—he turned back to Luana, the ice back in his eyes and voice—“you are going straight back to Washington, and I will make an earnest recommendation that you be held fully responsible for all of this. You’ve always wanted responsibility—I will make sure you get it, in spades. Keir,” he said, addressing their recently arrived colleague, “make sure she doesn’t get into any more trouble before the helicopter gets here.”

  “What are you going to do?” Keir asked in a low voice.

  “I’ll stay here. I have to find her. Fast.”

  “The branch,” Magpie said, suddenly understanding. “Her branch. Her tree. If she was taken without it, and stays without it for too long…”

  “What?” Thea whispered, her eyes full of tears.

  “She could die,” Magpie said.

  Humphrey turned a bleak look on her, and then turned away.

  Keir had shepherded Luana away, and the principal, after a few whispered words to Mrs. Chen and a quick nod to Thea, had followed them.

  “Phone your parents from my office, Thea,” Mrs. Chen said as she gathered the others and turned toward the residence hall. “I have been keeping them apprised, and Humphrey talked to your father, but I think you should reassure them that you are all right.”

  A passing teacher hailed Mrs. Chen with a question, and she broke step to answer; while her attention was elsewhere, Thea turned and clutched at Terry’s sleeve. “What got through?” she hissed, and then rolled her eyes. “You probably can’t even say it. Tess, do you know?”

  “No,” Tess said, glancing at her brother, who gave the briefest of nods. “But he knows. He can write it down for me. Why do you ask?”

  “I need to know what happened,” Thea said. “I just want to…”

  “I’ll find out later,” Tess whispered, just as Mrs. Chen turned back.

  “I need to fetch some notes from Terry, Mrs. Chen,” Tess said. “I missed one class when I was sitting with Thea. Can I go do that now?”

  “All right,” Mrs. Chen said.

  Ben stuck his hands into his pockets, looking suddenly awkward. “I’ll see you later, then,” Ben said, without quite meeting Thea’s eyes, and then loped off after Terry and Tess, who had peeled off already and were discussing something in low voices.

  “I’ll keep you company,” Magpie said.
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  2.

  AUNT ZOË ANSWERED THE phone at Thea’s house. “Your father had to go out, and I persuaded your mother to get some sleep,” Zoë said, explaining her presence. “I’ll get her to give you a call when she wakes up—she really needs to hear you’re okay. And your father wants to know what happened. I think they should both just move up there so they can keep tabs on you. Anyway…are you sure you’re all right?…Do you know what happened?”

  “Not yet, but when I do you will be the first to know,” Thea said with a hollow little laugh. “You can tell Dad that his friends from Washington are really awful, all of them except Humphrey May, and there’s more trouble….”

  “What?” Zoë said sharply as Thea’s voice died away. “Please stay out of it for once. Go and lock yourself in your room and don’t stir until you’ve talked to your father. If you go flitting off on some adventure again, I will send Anthony over there with instructions not to let you out of his sight,” Zoë said, her voice heavy with warning.

  “I believe you,” Thea replied. “Tell Mom I’m fine. I’ll call again later, or she can.”

  Magpie was in their room when Thea went upstairs, laying out a game of patience. She looked up as Thea came in, and gathered the cards up into an untidy pile.

  “So,” she said, “tell me. I’m completely weirded out by the whole thing, and I don’t really understand this spellspam stuff at all—and what’s going on with Signe?”

  “I have no idea,” Thea said. “I know as little as you do about the latest crisis. Probably less. At least you were awake for it—I slept through everything.”

  “Spellspam,” Magpie prompted. “I know the basics—how it started with LaTasha—but please explain.”

  “It’s junk e-mail. With embedded spells. That cause real damage, apparently,” Thea said. She described what she could remember from the scene in the Nexus room and the babbling in foreign languages; Magpie began by having the giggles, but then, thinking it all through, quickly sobered up.

  “And Signe? Humphrey said that she’s gone…gone where?”

  “It sounds like another spellspam,” Thea said. “But the others were more or less practical jokes—if Signe is really gone, disappeared, because she glanced at a piece of e-mail on-screen, then we have a bigger problem than we thought. I should have asked Aunt Zoë if anyone else out there has disappeared. Tess said she’d find out from Terry what the real story was.”

  “But where could she have gone?” Magpie said, frowning. “Is this anything at all like the sort of thing that you do? You know, slip off into a pocket universe of your own?”

  Thea sat up. “It’s like Tess said,” she whispered. “They think it’s me—I’m the only one they’ve seen do anything like this. Even Humphrey has his suspicions. Luana will tell everyone back in Washington that the only person she’s seen do magic stuff with computers is me. But there is someone else out there. Someone like me.”

  Magpie’s eyes were wide. “Someone else who can do computer magic?” she echoed.

  “These spellspams have to come from somewhere,” Thea said.

  “So now you think it isn’t a Double Seventh thing after all?” Magpie asked carefully.

  “I think this gift might be something new. It’s not a Double Seventh talent. It could be anybody—and we have no way of knowing who this other person is, the one who is doing all this.”

  “Thea, where do you think Signe might be?” Magpie murmured. “If she’s been taken too far away from even a scrap of her spirit tree, the last connection to her life force…I don’t know how long she has, but the clock is definitely ticking. Humphrey may not know enough to know where—or even how—to look for her.”

  Thea turned to her, startled, but anything she might have said was forestalled by a light knock on the door. Tess poked her head into the room.

  “Hey,” she said. “Terry got a copy of the spellspam.” She held out a piece of folded paper.

  “Is it okay to read this, just like that?” Thea asked, hesitating.

  “Terry says it’s okay. He rewrote it. The original spell was in the computer version.”

  “What does it say?” Magpie said impatiently.

  Thea opened up the note. “A magical mystery ride as you explore all the places you’ve only heard of—imagine what you might find in these distant and dramatic destinations! Come travel with us and see the things you never believed possible!” she said, reading out loud.

  “Thea,” Magpie gasped, “it is the same thing…”

  “No,” Thea said slowly, staring at the message. “I need to have a clear picture in my own head of where I want to go. This…it’s different. It has a different feel to it altogether. I knew I should have asked Aunt Zoë if anyone else—”

  Tess interrupted. “If you wanted to ask if anyone else outside the school has disappeared in this way lately, the answer is yes. Apparently people have been plucked right out of their chairs and found as far away as China and Polynesia. This one’s real trouble, Thea.”

  “Can Terry try and follow them in any way?” Thea asked.

  “He looked at the headers, through the Nexus,” Tess said. “It’s a dead end, like always.”

  “But Humphrey thinks he can find Signe…?” Magpie said in a small voice.

  There was something about the wording of the spellspam that made Thea very uneasy. “This is very vague and broad,” she said, staring at the paper in her hand. “If this is all he’s got to go on, they’re likely to end up in the opposite corners of the known universe…”

  They didn’t see much of Terry over the next two days, and they saw Humphrey only once, looking drawn and haggard.

  “He’s driving himself too hard,” Thea had said.

  “Signe is running out of time,” Magpie said quietly.

  It was only a few hours later when Thea looked up with a sense of déjà vu as Tess flung open the door to Thea and Magpie’s room.

  “Humphrey’s gone, too,” she said. “Terry said that he was last seen heading toward his quarters bearing a green-leaf branch in his hand—and then nothing, and he wasn’t in his room or anywhere else…”

  “Signe’s branch,” Magpie gasped. “Thea, who knows where he is now—do you think that the e-mail might have taken him, too? He might have thought, if he allowed himself to be voluntarily taken by the same spellspam…”

  “Tess…those other people that were missing…how long did it take to find them?” Magpie asked.

  “Terry didn’t say,” Tess said slowly. “Why?”

  “Signe doesn’t have time to wait and be found,” Thea said, looking up. “Not without that branch. She could die, in whatever way Woodlings die. She could just…wither away. Disappear. And it’s been—what—nearly four days now?”

  “Thea,” Magpie said, “could you… ?”

  “I can’t go places I haven’t been!” Thea said violently, crossing the room to stand at the window and stare out at the cedars. “I don’t know how! And I wouldn’t know where to start looking!”

  “That isn’t exactly true,” Tess said slowly.

  Thea turned her head to look at her friend, her eyes sparkling with tears. “Yes, it is,” she said. “What do you mean?”

  “When we went to hunt the Nothing,” Tess said, “was that ocean a place you’ve been before?”

  “Not really,” Thea said. “It was something I made up…not a real place, just a place that was right for what we needed…and besides…” Grandmother Spider had helped her cross into that world, but the world had been her own, had sparkled in a miniature vision in one of Grandmother Spider’s dreamcatchers before anything else had happened. It was her own world, a place she had never been before.

  A true weaver.

  “Thea,” Magpie said, “what are you going to do?”

  “I need a computer,” Thea whispered. “Can you get me Terry’s laptop?”

  “If Mrs. Chen saw me coming in here with a computer, she’d blow a gasket,” Tess said.

 
“Please,” Thea said. “It’ll be safest from right here. You two can keep an eye on things. You know how to bring me back…if it all goes wrong.”

  “Thea…,” Tess began.

  “I’ll get it,” Magpie said quietly. “Mrs. Chen would not even think about suspecting me. Are you sure, Thea…?”

  “What are you going to do?” Tess asked.

  “If I knew,” Thea said, “I would tell you.”

  A few minutes later, Magpie slipped back into the room with the contraband laptop. Thea sat down cross-legged on her bed with it on her lap, hands poised over the keyboard. And then, suddenly, Cheveyo’s voice was in her head again.

  The Road goes to where it needs to take you. Where do you choose to let the Road take you now?

  “The Barefoot Road,” she murmured.

  “Huh?” Tess said, leaning closer.

  Thea twisted slightly to rummage briefly in a drawer of her bureau, coming back out with a length of leather thong wrapped around her knuckles. Three feathers dangled from between the fingers of one hand as she hunched her shoulders and began to type.

  “No, wait,” Magpie said. “Leave her alone. She needs…”

  A rush of white noise whipped the words away from the fringes of Thea’s hearing, and her surroundings—her room, her friends’ anxious faces—shimmered briefly and were gone.

  3.

  THEA REACHED UP SLOWLY to draw the thong necklace over her head and smoothed the three feathers down as they came to rest on her chest. The clear light of the high desert surrounded her, red mesas rising around her, and a wide, straight road unfolding from where she stood upon it with her feet bare to the earth before it vanished beyond the horizon.

  “Well done,” said a familiar voice, and Thea turned her head slightly, already smiling. Cheveyo stood just a step away from the Road, but not on it.