Secret in the Stone

by Kamilla Benko

  “Claire!” Sophie had finally noticed Claire had fallen behind. Claire’s heart stopped as her sister turned around, and began to run back toward her. Toward the wraiths.

  Claire began to struggle again. She gripped one of the few remaining sapphires on her belt, and as her hand connected with the gem, she remembered. She might be a little sister. She might be a failed princess. But she was a Gemmer. And she could do something about this.

  “STOP!” Claire shouted at her sister. “I have an idea!”

  She brushed her skirt over the sapphire, and the glow came almost instantly. But it was a weak light, barely as bright as an old glow-in-the-dark sticker.

  She needed more light!

  She thought frantically of bright things—of crystals hung in sunny windows. Hubcaps in the school parking lot. Lights strung on an evergreen tree. Dad’s glasses glinting in the sun during an afternoon spent by the poolside. Mom’s special earrings from Venice. Her fingers tingled. Her heart hummed.

  Just as the wraiths were about to reach her, their freezing breath beginning to numb her skin, the forest erupted in a clear turquoise light.

  Claire laughed in relief as the light pulsed around her, spreading through the tree branches and up into the sky, illuminating everything.

  Illuminating the wraiths … who were still charging forward, right into the blue light, as if it didn’t bother them at all.

  “IT’S NOT SUNLIGHT!” Sophie yelled from behind her. “RUN! ”

  Too late, Claire realized her mistake. Only sunlight stopped the wraiths—and the light she’d called from sapphires was not the same as the trapped sunlight in Nett’s mossy marimo. Her light—the light of rocks melting under pressure far, far, far from the sun—was useless.

  Claire squeezed her eyes tight. She didn’t want the last thing she’d ever see to be the wraiths. Mom, Dad, I love you! she thought as the magic’s hum trickled away from her.

  Suddenly, the air filled with pounding hooves and shouts. Claire’s eyes flew open.

  Men and women on horseback galloped through the trees, each rider connected to the next by a glowing rope.

  “Help!” Claire yelled as the thunderous hooves pounded the ground all around her. “I’m right here!”

  But none of the riders seemed to look in her direction—or even acknowledge her shouts. Then she noticed why—they couldn’t hear her! They all wore earmuffs, exactly the kind Mom liked to shove onto Claire’s head on winter mornings.

  And then, suddenly, she understood why. A sound like nothing Claire had ever heard before—something like a knife scraping a glass bottle, but a thousand times louder—split the air. It knocked the wind out of her, and she swayed.

  Ropes of light crisscrossed against the night sky, then snagged on the monsters, pushing them back, pulling them down.

  The riders wove expertly through the trees, their ropes only ever tangling around wraiths. Each time a rope hit one, it’d scream and rear back. If the wraith was lucky, it fled the second rope that bound it to the spot. Some, however, were shackled to the ground, writhing inside like billows of ink.

  Letting go of her skirt, Claire threw her hands over her ears, only vaguely aware of the horses and chaos around her as she tried to beat back the inhuman screams.

  Suddenly Claire’s stomach swooped and her feet left the ground. A moment later, she was on the back of a horse, staring straight ahead at its ears.

  “Stay still,” a man’s voice ordered loudly. “Tassel doesn’t like wiggling.”

  Claire froze and the man kicked the horse into motion. Claire had never ridden a horse before, and she wished with all her heart that it had stayed that way. She didn’t know what would be worse: falling off this surging avalanche, or staying in the woods, the wraiths’ shrieks echoing and re-echoing in her ears.

  Soon, though, the dark forest became a soothing blanket, erasing the already fading shrieks, and replacing them with the hums of crickets and other nightly creatures.

  “Hey!” Claire said, finally able to hear herself. “Where are you taking me? Who are you?”

  There was no answer. She struggled to turn around, but the man’s arms kept her tightly in place. Panic swelled in her stomach, threatening to burst out. Where was Sophie? Her teeth clacked together with each stride of the horse, the forest bouncing before her.

  After several more minutes with only hooves pounding as her answer, the rider finally pulled the horse to a halt.

  The man waved his arms in front of him, as though trying to swat away flies. Then suddenly, his hand vanished completely—like it was cut right off.

  Claire shrieked, lurching back, and the horse jittered slightly beneath them, unhappy with the unexpected shift in weight.

  “Stop that,” the man snapped too loudly. “I need to concentrate!” As he leaned forward even more, the rest of his arm disappeared.

  A moment later, a slit seemed to appear in the air, and Claire was no longer standing before a vast swath of tangled trees, but was instead at the top of a hill, overlooking a valley. And below, a ring of glowing lanterns.

  The man grunted a little and pulled back, and as he did, the trees that Claire thought had been there were swept away like a curtain. No, not like. The forest was a curtain! And now that the rider was holding it back, his arm had fully reappeared on the other side.

  It was an illusion. Magic, and a powerful kind at that.

  As the man nudged the horse forward and through the opening, Claire twisted around to watch the curtain fall seamlessly back into place, looking again like a vast wilderness.

  She wasn’t sure what kind of magic she’d just witnessed. A Tiller’s vertical garden, maybe? Or an invisibility cloak? But she couldn’t imagine that even the Spinners would have been able to weave a large enough cloak to hide an entire village.

  Except, Claire saw, that was exactly what this was. Nestled in a valley below them, hidden by an illusion of wilderness:

  A secret, magic village.

  CHAPTER

  19

  With a click of his teeth, the rider urged the horse forward. As they bounced down the hillside, Claire’s teeth rattled in her skull. Drawing nearer the encampment, she saw that what she had thought were glowing lanterns were actually tents lit from the inside.

  Tiller-made? Or Spinner?

  She needed to figure out—and quickly, before they asked her which guild she belonged to. She squinted harder at her surroundings, but even as she took in the tent’s haloed edges, they seemed to blur slightly, as if they weren’t quite there. She shivered.

  “Who goes there?” a deep voice called out.

  The horse stopped, and Claire saw that a man with a braided beard and a thick whip spiraled on his hip had appeared from a tent and had grabbed the reins. The rider behind Claire quickly dismounted, yanking his earmuffs off as he jumped down.

  “It’s me, Cotton!” the rider said, shaking out his shoulder-length hair. “What did you say, Ravel?” In the dim light, Claire could see that the rider had wrapped different colored threads around sections of his hair. Her hands grew clammy. This was a group of Spinners. Mira Fray was a Spinner … was she here, too?

  Where oh where was Sophie? Chills racked Claire’s body, and the world seemed to blur again. But the two Spinners seemed completely unaware of the storm of worry raging inside her.

  “What did you find?” the bearded Ravel asked.

  “Seven wraiths—can you believe it? They’re about three miles from here. Bennu and Tulip are taking care of them.”

  Ravel nodded, sending his braided beard swinging. “And the blue light?”

  “You were right,” Cotton said. “It was a Gemglow. By her.” He jerked his head toward Claire.

  A second later, hands pulled Claire off the horse. As soon as her feet touched the ground, something invisible twisted around her wrists.

  “Hey!” she protested, too scared to be polite. “Why—”

  “Runaway Gemmer?” Ravel asked Cotton.

 
Cotton sucked in his cheeks and nodded. “I think so.”

  Claire frowned. The Spinner sounded as if he were speaking around marbles. And she was cold. So, so cold. Maybe there was ice in her ears …

  Ravel frowned down his beard at Claire. “Is she all right?”

  “Wraith-burn,” Cotton said, and he reached toward the saddlebag. “You’re right, too, about the wraiths behaving oddly. They’re starting to roam in groups.” Pulling out a bottle, he poured something into a small wooden cup, then offered it to Claire. The liquid steamed slightly, though Claire hadn’t seen him heat it.

  “Go on, then,” he told her. “It’ll help with your shivers. If wraith-burn isn’t treated, it’ll slowly spread to the rest of your senses, and you’ll feel nothing but cold ever again.”

  He undid whatever it was that had bound her wrists together, then pressed the cup into Claire’s shaking fingers, and she sipped from it. A delicious warmth raced through her, warming her toes. She took another sip, and the ice in her ears seemed to crack.

  “See?” Cotton said, smiling. And this time, his voice was as clear as a permanent marker on a white wall. He held out a small biscuit.

  “Please,” Claire said, ignoring the food. Now that she could feel again, her stomach was too full of knots to be tempted by anything. “Where is—”

  But she was cut off as something whisked by her nose. A moment later, a tiny swan alighted on Ravel’s hand. For a moment, it sat in his palm, looking exactly like the folded napkins at fancy restaurants. The swan flared its wings, and unfolded itself into a square piece of cloth with scribbles across it: a note.

  Ravel glanced at it, then ran toward a second horse tied to a nearby tree branch. “We have to go!” he snapped. “Tulip’s been hurt!”

  “But what about the girl?”

  “Put her in the infirmary!” Ravel said. “Hurry!”

  There was a sharp tug on Claire’s wrist as she was pulled into a dim tent. She blinked.

  If she hadn’t known it was a tent, she would have thought she was standing in the room of a cozy cottage, complete with wooden rafters on the ceiling. And from the rafters dangled multiple nets of knotted rope. They spun slightly in the air, like the mobiles hung over babies’ cribs. Except Claire had the sinking feeling these nets weren’t just for decoration …

  Before she could finish her thought, Cotton had snapped his fingers and Claire was swept up into the air. The world swung back and forth as a thick net scooped her up into its valley. Its loose edges wove themselves together quickly, anchoring her to the ceiling above. She was trapped in a rope cage.

  “Stay put,” Cotton said, and as he ran out, the light went with him, plunging Claire into darkness as she dangled at least seven feet over the floor.

  Where was she?

  … And what had happened to Sophie?

  Automatically, Claire’s hand drifted to her ear, but instead of feeling the comforting wood of her new pencil, she felt only the texture of her hair.

  A cry of dismay slipped out from Claire as she quickly patted the rest of her head, trying to see if the pencil had somehow gotten lost in her curls like it sometimes did. But no—it wasn’t there. She’d lost the one thing that made her feel somewhat strong. And worst of all, it had been a gift from Terra.

  Claire shifted her weight, and the net rocked. Closing her eyes, she tried to steady her thoughts despite the fact that everything around her was unstable, despite the fact that ever since the moment Anvil had left them at Stonehaven, everything had gone wrong. From her Gemmer classes to the test of the crystal flute … the crystal flute!

  Slipping her hand into her gown’s deep pocket, she pulled it out. Relief washed over her. It still shone, whole and beautiful, despite the earlier events of the night. She almost dropped it raising it to her lips, but she gave it one quick breath.

  Nothing.

  “Why won’t you play?” Claire whispered.

  “Psst!”

  Sitting up, the world lurched again, but this time, she didn’t close her eyes. Because there, scurrying in from the tent’s entrance was … “Sophie!”

  Sophie looked, as Dad would say, the worse for wear.

  Her hair was a seaweed tangle and her hands and dress—if it could still be called that—were streaked with mud. Claire clung to the ropes and pulled herself into a kneeling position. “How did you get here?”

  “Shhhh!” Sophie commanded. She tiptoed to the center of the tent and stood underneath Claire’s net, looking up. Even though Sophie was tall, the net—and Claire—still dangled a couple of feet above her head.

  “Over there,” Claire whispered, pointing behind her to where she spied a stool. Sophie hurried over and dragged it to Claire’s net. Finally eye-to-eye with her sister, Sophie grinned.

  “Thank the diamonds above,” Sophie breathed. Claire tried to smile at the Gemmer saying on her sister’s lips, but it was hard. She scrambled as far away as she could from Sophie, who pulled out the Kompass. Sophie touched the eagle’s beak that was carved into its cover. Then she pressed hard on the beak as if it were a button, and a small knife flicked out of the brass circle that Claire hadn’t even realized was there. Typical Forgers. Always adding an edge to everything.

  “How did you get here?” Claire murmured.

  Never taking her eye from the rope as she began to saw, Sophie explained, “I was caught, too, and put in another rope thing, but they never checked my pockets. Don’t wiggle! I need to get you out of here before the Tillers find us.”

  “Tillers?” Claire said, trying not to move more than just her lips. “This is a Spinner village.”

  “No it’s not,” Sophie said, her blade still sawing through the rope. “Didn’t you see what the tent is made of?”

  “Fabric—” Claire broke off, and stared harder at the orange walls. Now that the sun was starting to rise, she could see thin lines shooting through the walls like the veins on a leaf.

  And that’s exactly what the tent was, Claire realized in awe—orange leaves sewn together to wrap around the tent. She looked up at the ceiling and discovered it was actually a collection of wide autumn-ginger fronds, locking together to create a waterproof covering. It was the leaf roof that made the inside slightly orange, as any sunlight that floated through took on the color of the leaves’ thin membranes.

  “But,” Claire said, her mind flashing back to Ravel with his whip and swan handkerchief and Cotton’s thread-wrapped hair, “that doesn’t make any sense—oof!”

  The Kompass’s knife had cut through the final knot, and Claire had tumbled to the ground.

  “Sorry about that,” Sophie said, extending her hand to help Claire stand up. “But we need to leave, now.”

  Cautiously, Sophie pulled back the tent’s flap and peered from behind it. A second later, she scurried out, Claire following silently behind her.

  She blinked as she took in their surroundings. Wherever they were wasn’t like anyplace she’d ever seen before—either at home, or in Arden. Most of Arden’s villages and towns she’d seen had a permanence to them, as if they’d been there a long time. This place felt like it might get up and walk to a new spot at any moment.

  The community was cradled in a shallow valley and seemed more like a camping ground than an actual settlement. All the structures looked different. Some were tents of brightly colored silk, while other tents seemed to be woven of reeds and thin twigs like extravagant nests. But whether cloth or flora, the tops were all the same—covered with a fuzzy moss in an array of red, yellow, orange, and green. Claire could imagine what it might look like to people at the top of the valley—like an endless forest of autumn-tinged trees.

  It was a place perfectly hidden.

  As they darted between the tents, Claire thought she spotted Lieutenant Ravel—from last night. He still had a whip coiled at his hip.

  Suddenly, a shout went out. A second later, men and women rushed from behind a silk tent, heading toward the orange one they’d just escaped from.
/>   “They’ve noticed!” Sophie whispered. “Hurry, we need to hide.”

  “There,” Claire said, pointing to a long wooden building that looked like a stable. “The horses!”

  “Don’t run,” Sophie said, “it’ll make us look even more suspicious.”

  It took all of Claire’s will not to sprint, so she settled on a quick step, keeping her eyes on the ground. When they were only a few feet away they heard a voice shout, “They’re gone! Fan out around the camp!”

  She—and Sophie, too—sprinted toward the door.

  “Check the tents!”

  Claire pumped her legs harder as Sophie stretched out a hand and opened the door. Claire tumbled in after her and slammed the door shut.

  Holding her breath, Claire waited for her eyes to adjust to the dimness. She heard a soft skritch, and something skittered by her ankles. Rats? She grabbed for Sophie’s hand.

  “What’s up?” Sophie asked.

  “I thought something moved.”

  She felt Sophie tense, but when nothing happened, Claire began to feel silly. “Where are the horses?” she asked. “I don’t see anything in the stalls, do you?”

  Letting go of Sophie’s hand, Claire pulled the last sapphire from her bedraggled belt. Her fingers tingled in anticipation. Using the corner of her sleeve, she polished light from the sapphire. A gemstone’s light sparkles the same way a jewel does in the sun, and as Claire took it in, she felt momentarily soothed. It was the same color as other blue-tinged memories that sparkled: trips to the lake; the high summer skies of July; the turquoise of her favorite nail polish.

  There was a sudden intake of breath from Sophie, and immediately, the skin on the back of Claire’s neck prickled. Something was wrong.

  Looking away from the blue light spilling over her hands, Claire saw her sister standing, mouth agape, as she peered over a stable door.

  “Come, come look,” Sophie whispered faintly. Claire crept forward to see a jumble of antlers, hooves, tails, and feathers that glinted copper in the dim blue light.

  A chimera.

  “There’s one over here, too,” Sophie said, pointing at the stall next to it. She hurried a few paces to look over the door of the next one. “Here, too! Why would they collect chimera?”