But that wasn’t the issue, or at least not all of it.
When Maria finally dragged her feet back to her bedroom, her eyes went straight for the box on her nightstand. She approached it slowly, as if she needed to sneak up on it.
Someone else knew about the ring’s mysterious powers, and that someone may have killed her grandmother trying to get them. Maria herself still didn’t know what those powers were, exactly. She had wanted her glasses, and the spiders had brought them. Did that mean the spiders could read her mind? Could she command the spiders, or just ask them politely for things? Were these regular spiders or magical ones?
Maria had read a book once about a groundskeeper who kept a very large spider as a pet, until it escaped into the woods and tried to eat people. If magical spider rings existed, maybe giant people-eating spiders did, too. Maybe Maria had control over them.
Her imagination was getting away from her again.
Derek was right. It probably hadn’t been magic, but a magic trick. And not even the fun kind of trick — the kind that ended with abracadabra, voilà, or ta-da. This was the kind of trick like Claire McCormick’s smile, the kind that made you confused about something important. This kind of trick preyed on people who wanted desperately to believe something, like the fact that magic and stories were real. What had Derek said? Grandma Esme was “confused”? Maybe Grandma Esme had believed too much in a magic trick, too.
Maria pulled the spider ring out of the box once more. She slipped it delicately on her finger. It really was a beautiful ring when you looked at it. The level of detail on the spider was so fine, down to its sharp pincers and tiny leg joints, it was as if it wasn’t a carved stone at all, but a real spider that had calcified and been placed on a band. But it couldn’t be a real spider. For one thing, this spider had six eyes, when Maria was almost positive that all spiders had eight.
Now that Maria looked at it, she thought she saw something on the underside of the spider’s abdomen. A tiny clasp, if she wasn’t mistaken. She tried to pry it open with her fingernails, and finally, the mechanism clicked, revealing a small container. It was hardly big enough to hold anything, and it was empty now, though Maria thought she saw the residue of a fine powder along the edges.
There was a name for rings like this that hid little containers. “Poison rings,” Derek’s dad had called them once. The idea was that old knights and kings would keep real poison in them, either for their enemies or else, if they were captured, for themselves. But more often, poison rings held medicine or mementos. A locket of hair or a whiff of perfume. Poison rings sometimes had another name, for that very reason. “Funeral rings,” for the mourners left behind.
In spite of that name, Maria smiled.
Leave it to Grandma Esme to have a ring with a secret compartment.
“Are you okay, sweetie?” Mom said, appearing suddenly in her doorway. Maria realized she must have looked odd, sitting here admiring her ring.
“Yeah, just missing her,” she said.
“I miss her, too,” her mom said. She stared into the middle distance, as if she could see Grandma Esme there in the room with them. She shivered. “She was a real one-of-a-kind lady, your grandmother.”
“Two-of-a-kind,” Maria replied.
“Is that right?” Her mother’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Well, it’s true you got her imagination. Your father had it, too.”
“Really?”
“Does that surprise you?”
“Well, you just always say that Dad didn’t like stories that much.”
Maria’s mother sat down on the edge of her bed.
“Oh, I said he wasn’t a reader like you are, but he always liked stories. He used to say he was going to buy us one of those fishing boats in the gulf, and that we would all go on an adventure, to Japan and Australia and everywhere.”
Maria liked the sound of a boat trip around the world. It was too bad her father wasn’t here to make it come true.
“Who knows, maybe after we sell Grandma Esme’s house, we can finally buy that boat after all. I’ve been thinking we could use a little more family adventure around here.”
Maria wasn’t sure if she did need any more adventure. It seemed to be finding her well enough already. Her feelings must have shown crystal clear on her face, because her mother backtracked and changed the subject.
“Do you have your clothes picked out for tomorrow? We need to leave around eight thirty so we can get to the church a little early.”
“I’ll put my clothes out,” Maria said. She already knew she didn’t have anything special to wear. She had one black dress and one green dress, which she alternated between for church and special occasions. The black dress might have been stylish once. The green dress looked like it had been a fir tree in a past life.
“All right, then. If you’re sure you’re okay …”
“I’m sure.”
“Good night, sweetie.”
“Good night, Mom.”
Her mother leaned in for a hug, and then got up to go back to her room. Maria stopped her in the doorway.
“Mom?” she said.
“Yes, mija-oh-my-a?”
“Do you think Dad and Grandma Esme are together again?”
“Of course they are. And since I don’t believe in stories, you know it’s true.”
This was exactly the right response.
When Maria turned out her light to go to sleep, she kept the spider ring on, deciding that this was a fitting way to keep Grandma Esme close tonight. Her black dress lay draped over her chair like she’d promised, its little quarter sleeves threatening to make Maria look like a Victorian baby doll the next day, when she wanted to appear sophisticated and somber. If only she’d thought to grab one of Grandma Esme’s shawls. Then she would have looked like Esmerelda the Magnificent’s granddaughter.
She closed her eyes and imagined the kind of dress she would buy if she had unlimited money. A sleek dress, elegant and mysterious. A dress that said, Here is a girl who is not to be trifled with.
As Maria lay there picturing her dress, the ring on her finger began to grow warm. Faster than she could think, she scrambled to slide the ring off her finger, removing it so forcefully that it flew and landed somewhere at her feet. The best thing to do was put it back in the box, she decided. Then she’d put the box back in her sock drawer, and then maybe push her dresser out into the hall.
When Maria turned on her light and picked up the ring box, she opened it wrong-side up and found the note from Grandma Esme staring her in the face.
The spiders are your friends. Do not abuse their friendship.
Were they her friends, or were they out to get her? Could they be both at once? Perhaps her grandmother really had been crazy after all.
Finally, Maria decided that if the spiders had wanted to get her, they easily could have done so while she was asleep last night. Boldly — or was it recklessly? — Maria put the ring back on her finger and said in a small voice, “I wish I had a beautiful dress to wear to Grandma Esme’s funeral.”
This time, she hardly flinched when she felt the ring heat up. And when the line of brown spiders came trickling in through the crack under her door, she greeted them with what she hoped was a convincing smile.
The spiders got to work at once. They swarmed and surrounded Maria’s baby-doll dress, until she could hardly see the fabric underneath the cloud of moving legs.