I needed to get King in on my idea.
Only he was all the way across the long room, and between us was a forest filled with spiders. I could get through this, I told myself.
With the mass of bamboo between us, there was no way that King could see me, so I let myself use some more of the magic that he would have to arrest me for.
Touching the air in front of me, I felt it begin to spin, wanting to whip back into a windstorm. After a moment of coaxing, it settled, and I began weaving the light.
Luckily for me, between the bamboo and the hour, there wasn’t much light left. The chandelier had been casting long shadows, but when King had started working on it, the bulbs had begun flickering. I coaxed the light until it surrounded me, making me invisible to a glance.
It wasn’t even close to my best work, as that would take more time than I was comfortable spending. But when I opened my eyes, and glanced at myself in the reflection on one of the bar bottles, I was invisible.
Slowly, I crept through the forest.
The spiders moved with unnatural dexterity, given that they were each the size of my hand. I tried not to make a sound, but it was a close thing when I watched one drop on top of another, tearing apart its sibling with sociopathic speed.
Slow and steady, Ferro, I reminded myself. There was no sense in surviving this so far only to get bitten by one of these creatures.
I found myself face-to-face with one of the massive spiders, spread out in the center of its web. Slowly, I breathed in and out, although all I wanted to do was let out one of those primal screams that you could probably build a whole tent around at Burning Man.
The spider turned, searching, as though it could sense me. But I was invisible in every spectrum of light. After a moment it moved to the side of its web, waiting for its prey. Ducking low, I crawled underneath, slithering on my stomach on the smooth wooden floor. The bamboo hadn’t been alive long enough to drop any leaves or overgrowth, so at least I wasn’t crawling through splinters in the making.
I felt something land on my back and begin to crawl across, eight pointed legs that felt like the world’s most hesitant masseuse. Eventually, it completed its trek, and when I was sure I felt the last leg leave my back I let myself release a muffled gasp into my arm.
Then I was moving again, low enough that I was under most of the webbing. Occasionally I did have to reroute when a particularly industrious spider had thrown a web so wide and so tall that it could’ve downed an elephant. Finally, finally I was on the other side.
I hadn’t even noticed I was passing by the massive mama spider until I was suddenly right next to it. It was trying to move through the bamboo, but its feet were too big, the bamboo too thick to let it through. Attempting to climb the entryway wall, it kept slipping down, missing its three legs. I wanted to feel sorry for it, but I knew the instant it saw me it would try to eat me, so I let the unhappy swirl of guilt go.
Eight black eyes swung to me. Even though I knew it couldn’t see me, I was pretty sure if I got any closer, I would get torn apart like the spiders making war in the forest. On tiptoe, I inched away until the spider couldn’t see me.
I released the glamour, and left the shadows like a fish darting from beneath a coral reef. King was covered in sweat, his white shirt damp and his mouth moving as he drew some large alchemist circle on the ground.
I wasn’t familiar enough with the practice to even try and guess what he was doing, just that would help us in the long run.
When he paused for breath, I said, “I have an idea.”
“Burn down the forest you just grew?” King said.
“Got it in one,” I said. “Crush mama spider, and then we burn her babies.”
“Already working on it,” King said. “How did you grow a forest?”
I looked out at it from his perspective. What did he know about witchcraft? Did he have any witch friends? Was he one of those progressive alchemists who said at parties,Some of my closest friends are witches? No, not an alchemist like King.
He might know witches socially, but I bet that he didn’t talk magic with them, because he didn’t like getting in arguments with people in public.
“I had some seeds in my bag. I’m a kitchen witch, so —”
I didn’t even need to finish the sentence, King was already nodding. Kitchen witches, with their reputations for hasty and creative spellwork, would get me out of a lot of problems.
“The bamboo is flammable?” King asked.
“Crush mama spider first,” I said.
King shook his head, “No, I want to burn down the forest first, get her —”
“— distracted,” I finished, nodding. “That’s a good idea.”
The whole time we had been talking, King had been drawing. I glanced down at his work, but my understanding of alchemy circles was limited to kindergarten-level spells.
