Maria led Esme to the living room couch, guiding her around a few stray books and records along the way. Esme sat down and took a deep breath. This seemed to help.
“I’m so sorry, dear,” Esme said. “I don’t know where my head is. I suppose I must have lost track of the time.”
“That’s okay, Grandma. It’s been a very long week.”
“You too, huh? Is everything okay at school?”
“Yeah, it’s fine,” Maria said. She wasn’t about to trouble her grandmother with Claire McCormick’s nonsense.
“And where is our friend Derek today?”
“He had to help his mom clean. He said to tell you hello.”
“Well, hello, Derek,” Grandma Esme said, which made Maria smile.
“So what do you want to do today, Grandma? Do you want me to read to you?”
“A story would be nice,” Grandma Esme said. “Nothing too scary, though. Not with the day I’m having.”
Maria looked at the pile on the floor behind her, scanning the books that had been scattered about, hoping there might be one she hadn’t read before.
A piece of yellowed paper caught her eye, buried beneath a glass flower vase that had been etched with spiderwebs. Maria carefully moved the vase and picked up the paper. It looked like an old movie poster, with a painting of a man in a billowy black cape and a woman in a star-speckled shawl, her hand disappearing into the mane of a lion that was as big as a horse. The lion was smiling, and its smile revealed four very sharp teeth. Big, blocky letters proclaimed THE AMAZING ARTURO AND ESMERELDA THE MAGNIFICENT: A DAZZLING DOUBLE ACT OF MAGIC AND DARING! So Grandma Esme’s stories were true after all.
“Grandma, was this really you?” Maria asked, handing her grandmother the poster and pointing.
Esme adjusted her glasses and squinted, and it was like her eyes finally came into focus. Maria knew that look. The memories were back. “Ah, yes, Maria, that was really me. Arturo and I were childhood friends, you know, connected at the hip. A bit like you and Derek, though perhaps not as well-behaved. Of the three of us, Arturo was the true performer. Cocoa and I were just along for the ride.”
“Cocoa?” Maria laughed. “Was that the lion’s name?”
“It was. I gave him the choice of a few names, and that was his favorite.”
Esme was smiling, but she looked wistful, too. Maria knew a little about her grandmother’s childhood from her mom — that she’d been born in Europe, and had traveled the world after being forced to leave her family — but even her mom didn’t know that much. Maria’s dad had never talked about it back when he was alive.
Maria read the small print at the bottom of the poster. It looked like her grandmother’s double act had been part of the Rimbaud Brothers traveling circus. A circus, the poster said, that had toured Europe seventy years ago. That couldn’t be right … could it? There was no way her grandmother was that old. Her hair hadn’t even begun to turn gray, for one thing.
“Arturo gave me this ring, you know,” Esme said. “I wear it in his memory.”
“What happened to him?” Maria asked.
Esme’s eyes grew wide and wild. She worried the silver whistle in her hand, as if she were trying to polish it with her fingers.
“The other spiders,” she whispered. “The other spiders got him. And they are after me, too, Maria. They are after my ring.”
Maria’s throat squeezed shut, like it had during her oral report that afternoon. It wasn’t uncommon for Grandma Esme to sound paranoid. She’d often warned Maria about “lurking enemies” and the best ways to stay hidden, and Maria had always assumed these warnings were leftover relics from her mysterious childhood. Maybe Esme’s own parents had used those same words when Esme had been forced to leave them. But Grandma Esme had never gone so far as to suggest that the lurking enemies were spiders. In fact, she’d always told Maria that the spiders were her friends.
“Grandma, I think maybe we’d better take an afternoon nap —”
“No, listen to me, Maria. I am not tired, I am not joking, and I most certainly am not confused.” She held out the whistle in her hand and shook it. “Do you see this? Do you? There is a reason I used this whistle to speak with Cocoa, when other lion tamers spoke with their whips. You cannot truly command a lion, Maria. You can give, and you can ask, and you can earn his respect. The lion tamer who uses a whip may find it easier to make an obedient animal, but he will never make a friend. And only a friend will help you in the end.”
“I don’t understand, Grandma. Are we talking about Derek?”
“The spiders, Maria! We are talking about the spiders. People with gifts like ours must always choose between doing what is right and what is easy. You must promise me that will you do what is right.”
Maria wanted to ask, “What gifts do I have?”
But Esme had said “promise me” in a voice so commanding it was scary. So Maria said, “I promise,” and left it at that.
Esme nodded, her mouth a resolute line.
“Good.” She slipped the whistle into her pocket and took another deep breath. Then she smiled. “Now, if you could just help me find my kettle in all this rubble, we can have a cup of tea and enjoy that story.”
Maria left to walk home at half past four, allowing herself more time than she needed before it got dark. The rest of her visit had been calm enough, with no more strange warnings and Grandma Esme in good humor. They’d picked mint leaves from Esme’s garden for the tea, and then Maria had read aloud from a book of fairy tales — a story about a princess who, with the help of woodland creatures, defeats an evil shadow queen. Finally, they’d listened to old records on Esme’s gramophone.
But through it all, Maria couldn’t shake the image of her grandmother’s haunted eyes as she claimed that the spiders were out to get her, warning Maria of the choice that lay ahead.
For the first time in Maria’s life, believing in stories felt like a dangerous thing.
The weekend went by as weekends normally did, with Rafi outside collecting rocks and insects from the creek, and Maria inside, tucked into her window seat with a book.
Her mother used to beg her to spend more time out in the sun, but she finally stopped after Maria pointed out that she never tried to make Rafi come in and read.
Maria spent Saturday night sewing the purple star patch onto her paisley shirt. It didn’t look as good as new, but then, it hadn’t been new when Maria had bought it. Grandma Esme always said that Maria’s personal touches made her clothes better than new, but she was the only one who seemed to think so.
On Sunday, while she was cleaning her room as part of her weekly chores, Maria was alarmed to find a large cobweb blooming in the back of her closet. There didn’t appear to be any spiders left on it, so she didn’t hesitate to grab a broom and swat it down. She checked to make sure it hadn’t gotten onto any of her clothes. The last thing she needed was for Claire to find something else on her shirt the next day.
The cobweb also reminded Maria of her afternoon with her grandmother. She hoped that had been a one-time incident, but decided she had better tell her mother about it, just in case. At dinner, she said, “Mom, Grandma Esme was acting kind of strange on Friday.”
“Stranger than usual?” Rafi said, and Maria glared at him.
“Strange how?” Mom asked.
“I don’t know. She just seemed … scared. Like she really thought something was out to get her.” Maria didn’t specify that Esme had said spiders were out to get her. That felt like telling on her grandmother, somehow. And she hated to give Mom and Rafi one more reason to think Grandma Esme was crazy.