Page 118 of By the Orchid and the Owl
I stumbled back into the ferns.
And the boar—stopped, as if it had been caught in the same sculpture that seemed to suffocate me nowadays. Every part of its body froze, except for its auburn eyes, which blinked at me furiously.
Just then, my hips and fingertips and hair felt atug, and that’s when I knew.
Sasha and Sylvie had saved me. I didn’t know how or why, but I’d recognize their style of Summoning anywhere. It was their magic that had immobilized the boar and tugged on me now, urging me toward them.
I just barely saw Emelle’s eyes flaring open before I was yanked backward down the slope.
On and on, I followed those tugs, trying to keep up lest they start actually dragging me. Before long, the shadows of the jungle nestled into my skin again, and I found their two lithe forms crouching in the widespread roots of a fig tree.
“Rayna! So glad to see you.”
Sylvie jumped up to throw her slender arms around my neck. I hugged her back, but didn’t hesitate to say into her hair, “Are you alright? What’s wrong?”
Ishealright,I couldn’t ask through the lump in my throat.
“Oh, we’re fine.” Sasha waved a free hand—her other one, I noticed suddenly, was levitating a… aspider, keeping it trapped in her own web of sticky magic.
And I recognized the eight green-tinted eyes.
“What are you doing with that? Let it go!”
I untangled myself from Sylvie and lunged, but Sasha backed away.
“We can’t let it loose, Rayna! It’s been snooping around your house for days, and it was following you through the jungle just now before we tracked it. We thought you might want to interrogate it before we make a paste of it, see what it wants with you.”
I swung my gaze from Sasha to Sylvie, and back to Sasha. Understanding slammed into me, just as I heard the spider cry out, “Oh, let me see the top of the world before I die! Please!”
“It’smyspy,” I said as gently as I could, touching Sasha’s wrist. Reluctantly, she let go of her hold on it, and the spider dropped onto my upturned palm. “I told it to spy on Fergus and Jenia because I overheard them talking strangely to their friend Dazmine.” I wanted to start asking the spider questions, but first I had a pair of twins to deal with. “Now, are you going to tell me why you two are following me, or do I need to set a spider onyouboth as well?”
They glanced at each other. Sylvie wrung her fingers together.
“Well…”
“He’s making you guard me, isn’t he?” I asked, disbelief welling in my throat where that lump had been. “He’s making you track my every movement.”
“Not exactly,” Sasha said unashamedly. “He asked us if we could look out for any threats directed at you, and we thought we found one.” She nodded at the spider, who was… trembling. The poor thing was trembling. I hadn’t known spiders could do such a thing before now.
I wasn’t sure what to say to Sasha or Sylvie. Thank you? Back off? I miss you?
Instead, I settled my eyes on the spider and whispered, “What did you find?” The twins wouldn’t be able to understand anything it said anyway.
“The one girl, Dazmine, and the other girl, Jenia, are in an argument,” the spider rattled out.“Jenia and the boy Fergus were trying to get her to join them in something. Something big. They’ve only alluded to it, never mentioned it out loud. I cannot figure out how they are communicating unless through written messages.”
The spider’s eyes were snaking back and forth between the twins and me, clearly suspicious of the former two and clearly regretting its commitment to me.
“After many urgings, the girl, Dazmine, put her foot down and refused to join them. Jenia is hateful, but Fergus is murderous, and threatened to, I quote, ‘fill her lungs with rot’ if she didn’t cooperate.”
The spider paused, and I had the strangest feeling it was trying to word its next finding in a way that made it all seem more important than petty drama.
“But Jenia the Hateful stepped in, told Dazmine the Dissenter to leave, and neither has spoken to each other since.”
I slumped back, making sure to keep my palm steady even when the rest of my body started to shake. Now that I thought about it, Dazminehadbeen standing off to the side during class today, away from Jenia and Fergus. But what had she refused to join?
And why did the spider’s findings only make me feel more confused than before?
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