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Everything looked the same. She was beginning to lose her bearings and her sense of time when she caught sight of something glowing from underneath the ground up ahead. There was a hole there—a pit about twelve feet in diameter. When she dared to venture closer, she saw layers of gauzy spider silk covering the opening. The glow came from something deep inside. It was faintly blue, the light very soft.
Loren nudged closer, toeing the edge of the pit, endless dark swirling around her. Tiny stars brushed against her arms and clung to her skin like static electricity.
Carefully, she crouched down and peered through the webs, but they were too thick to see what lay beyond. Among the webs was a latticework of black tree roots. Her hair was floating, and those tiny stars clung to every part of her now, like a coat of light.
She was about to stand back up, using her hands to push off her knees, when her foot slipped off the edge, and she fell on her ass, gravity yanking her down feet-first and straight into the pit. Her stomach plummeted through her feet as she was sucked down and down and down, tree roots lashing her cheeks and neck, spiderwebs and long-dead insects adhering to her skin and catching in her hair.
The plunge was over before she had a chance to scream. Water broke her fall, but it was so shallow it did little to cushion the impact. She could feel bruises forming in her flesh as her limbs connected with ground that did not yield.
Mortifer appeared beside her with a puff of smoke, a look of concern on his face. But the moment he glanced around, he shrank behind her, tiny hand grasping the back of her shirt.
Once Loren had gathered her bearings, she pushed herself up in an elbow-high pool, coughing out a mouthful of rancid water. The taste of it made her retch, but she was soon forgetting all about it as her surroundings spread before her.
There was a stone wishing fountain several feet away. Coated in moss and grime, it was smack dab in the middle of the room, the walls of that room curved and windowless. Skulls, bones, and opaque sheets of shimmering webs surrounded her, the latter covering nearly everything in sight. On the other side of the fountain, tucked into a narrow alcove, was a tall shadow. A shadow that seemed deeply perturbed, the tension in her eight long and slender legs screaming that she was more than a little annoyed by the interruption.
“It’s not every day I’m lucky enough to be startled out of a dead sleep,” said the giant spider. She shifted, pebbles clacking down from her resting space. They plunked into the water, one after another, the sound reverberating from all sides. The ghostly light in the room—the faint glow that didn’t seem to have a source—reflected faintly in the Widow’s many eyes as she recognized the human who’d stumbled into her home. “Why, if it isn’t Liliana Sophronia. How did a delicious little human like you get in here without offering blood?”
Loren pushed to her feet, ignoring the slimy texture of the floor beneath her palms. A soup of moss, sludge, excrement, and probably blood. “Pardon the interruption,” Loren said, clothes dripping. “I don’t really know how I got in here.”
The Widow shifted again. This time, Loren sensed the creature’s movements had less to do with annoyance and more to do with her curiosity being piqued.
“You must tell me,” the spider urged. “For thousands of years, I have lived here. From the moment I was birthed from shadow, fire, and blood, I have dwelled in this fountain, and not once have I had a visitor that did not have to knock before entering. Did you cut your palm, child? Had you thrown the bucket into the fountain, I surely would have heard.”
Loren shook her head. “No, I…I didn’t do either of those things. I was walking through darkness and then I…I sort of fell.”
There was a moment of silence as the spider watched her with many eyes. “This darkness—what was it like?”
Loren chewed her lip, trying to find a way to answer the Widow’s question that wouldn’t be hindered by the spell. “Shimmery in appearance and silky in feel. Almost like a…a curtain.”
“A veil.” The Widow gave the closest resemblance to a nod that a spider could manage. “You have your mother’s gift, child.”
A chill prickled on the back of her neck. “My mother?” The question rippled far and wide. “Who was she? Did you know her?”
The Widow tsked. “I cannot speak of such things, Liliana Sophronia. And calling me by my name will not change my answer.”
“Is there anything you can tell me? I know it isn’t your fault that your knowledge cannot always be shared, but I am tired of metaphors and riddles.” They were exhausting. She wanted answers, and she felt like she was going in circles. What bothered her the most was knowing there was an answer for everything—an explanation for all things that existed, and had ever existed. She just didn’t know how to get them.
“I can tell you of the Veil,” the spider offered. “The Divide.”
Loren straightened. Any answers, no matter what they were concerning, she would be more than grateful to receive. She had to figure out how to find the Well, how to move through the many Veils on her own, how to bring Darien into Spirit Terra to show him what was going on. But without being able to word her questions, those answers wouldn’t come easily.
When the Widow spoke, Loren clung to every word. “It is the curtain between your world and the spirit world. It is a stitching—a seam, if you will. Along the seam, there are weak spots, like the holes between buttons sewn onto a shirt, or the tiny pinprick of a needle puncturing fabric. Places where it is easier to slip through. Places where the dead may cross to the land of the living, or the living to the dead, if they are foolish enough to dare.”
Loren’s mind flashed back to that day in history class, when she hadn’t paid attention to Professor Griffith’s lesson. On the chalkboard, she had drawn three circles with an oval cutting across all three.
Was the oval supposed to be the Veil?
As she pictured it, she realized she’d seen a similar symbol before.
The logo of Lucent Enterprises.
“You said I have my mother’s gift,” Loren began. “What is the gift?”
“The ability to move within and through the Veil. To cross over. You can move as if you are a part of both sides of one coin. You belong neither here nor there, just as she had no real place in the universe, no true home, one foot in life and the other in death. She was the key, the turning of metal that split two worlds, and she has passed that responsibility onto you. You are the only child born directly from the prima materia in its purest form, therefore the universe and all things in it recognize you as belonging to them. You are the prima materia, therefore you can manipulate it, become it, make it anything you want. You can melt through walls or ground or mountains—”
“Melt through walls?”
“Again,” the Widow said with patience. “You are made from the Well. You are a part of the universe and everything in it.”
