Fire in the Star Read online

  For Andrej,

  I’m glad we’re on this quest together

  Also by Kamilla Benko

  The Unicorn Quest

  Secret in the Stone

  Frozen II: Forest of Shadows

  CONTENTS

  Map

  Epigraph

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  THE TRAVELER’S SONG

  The horn may sound

  And faces may fade

  But follow the edge on the blade.

  The sails may rip

  And signs be misread

  But follow the needle in the thread.

  Lands may be lost

  And worlds may be found

  But follow the moss on the ground.

  The way may be long

  And the path may be hard

  But follow the fire in the star.

  Your feet may fail

  And your eyes grow dark

  But follow the beat of my heart.

  And I’ll meet you there,

  In the space between,

  For the unicorn

  Was always

  me.

  —S. A. M.

  CHAPTER

  1

  Claire Martinson was doing something either incredibly brave or incredibly foolish—and deep down, she suspected it was the second. Because if she were actually brave, her heart probably wouldn’t be pounding in her throat and her palms wouldn’t be slick with sweat.

  A hundred feet below her, the sea chopped at the wooden hull of the Thread Cutter, sending Claire’s world swaying. She wasn’t uncomfortable with heights necessarily, but being huddled at the highest point of the ship, with only a few wooden slabs to stop her from tumbling into the gray water, left her feeling exposed. Still, it wasn’t the height of her perch that set her pulse racing.

  Bracing herself against the mast, Claire carefully sifted through some of the contents of her traveling pack: a blanket, a bundle of seed cakes, a tiny pink marble, and a water-stained map.

  Normal enough.

  But what wasn’t normal—at least for a rising sixth grader to have—was the slender spyglass that gleamed from within the bag’s belly, nestled next to a gauzy handkerchief that shimmered like the Milky Way.

  And, of course, the arrow in her hand.

  A Lode Arrow, to be specific. One that would take her exactly where she pointed it. Exactly where she needed to be … hopefully.

  Staring down at the weapon, Claire wondered for the thousandth time if she was making the right choice. If the stone was properly attached to the arrow. If the bow she’d cobbled together would give her the spring she so desperately needed. That Arden so desperately needed. That Sophie needed.

  “Mind the rigging!”

  Claire looked up just in time to see the tail end of a rope whir upward as the crew on deck used pulleys to unpack barrels and crates from the anchored ship. From the vantage point of the crow’s nest, the ropes moved around in a hypnotic ballet of twists and spirals, some just sweeping past one another while others swung into solid knots that might never be undone … knots like the one Claire had found herself in.

  All their fates—Claire’s, Sophie’s, Arden’s—were tangled together, and Claire didn’t know the exact moment in time the knot had formed.

  Had the threads first begun to weave together when her older sister, Sophie, asked Claire to follow her up the ladder in Great-Aunt Diana’s fireplace and they clambered into Arden? Or did they have the chance, even then, to avoid becoming snarled in a legend? Maybe the binds tightened when Sophie threw herself between Claire and an arrow, almost fatally injuring herself, or the moment Claire freed the last unicorn from the rock.

  Or perhaps their lives would have always been tangled with Arden’s, no matter their choices.

  Because they hadn’t been the only Martinsons to discover Arden. The first had been Great-Aunt Diana, who had fallen so in love with it that she had decided to change her name to Nadia and stay in Arden permanently, leading everyone else to presume she was dead.

  Which had led to Dad inheriting Windemere Manor and all its contents.

  Which had led to a family summer spent cataloging the house’s more interesting collections and the discovery of double doors that opened into a gallery with a fireplace on the far end.

  But it was also possible that the threads stretched back even further than Great-Aunt Diana/Nadia. After all, Claire and Sophie and Aunt Nadia weren’t just visitors to Arden—they were protectors of Arden—princesses, specifically, as they were all the descendants of a long-ago prince who had tunneled his way to another world to escape his older sister, the unicorn-hunting queen Estelle d’Astora, nearly three hundred Arden years ago.

  Claire shivered. The garnet tunic had been warm enough when she packed it a week ago, but the wind had picked up, bringing with it the taste of cold and a distant rumble of thunder, as well as a brand-new worry: How long would she stay invisible if it started to rain?

  She was not invisible in the way grown-ups sometimes used to describe Claire and other kids like her who were good at being quiet and remaining unnoticed, but in the truest sense of the word. Because even though Claire could feel the arrow’s slight weight on her palm, it still appeared to be floating in midair. She was actually invisible—but for how much longer?

  At the beginning of her journey, she had needed to tilt her head and squint to see the outline of her body, but now, as she looked, she only needed to half squint to make out her chewed fingernails.

  The Invis-Ability dye was definitely wearing off.

  In Arden, the four guilds knew how to coax magic out from the basic building blocks of craft. Spinners knew how to spin and sew fabric in just the right way to make a cape fly, while a Forger could polish a mirror so shiny that it could reflect the future. There were also Gemmers, like Claire, who, if they were inclined, could carve entire armies from the sides of mountains. And finally, there were Tillers, those who could whisper sunlight from leaves or brew herbs into a dye that could paint something—or someone—the color of invisibility.

  And it was this that had most interested Claire as she had stood in Woven Root’s colorful market and watched a teenage Spinner and Tiller dye countless pairs of boots for the hidden village’s assembling army. She’d offered to help them clean up, but instead of dumping out the cauldron, she’d stored it away, waiting until everyone was asleep before she carefully painted herself—clothes, pack, skin, and all—with the leftover Invis-Ability. It had all gone according to plan.

  Sort of.

  Maybe it was because it wasn’t a fresh batch of dye—or because she wasn’t a Tiller who could convince the herbs in the concoction to work at their highest potential—or maybe it was because she simply wasn’t as absorbent as fabric—but the results had been mix
ed: Claire really wasn’t so much invisible as she was camouflaged. In dim light, she vanished completely away. But if she stood within reach of a lantern’s glow, she could see herself as clear as ever. So long as she kept to the shadows and away from the noon sun, she would be invisible enough—she hoped.

  And so, in the gloom of predawn, with her bottomless Hollow Pack filled with magical objects and Gemmer tools as well as a twig-looking pencil, Claire had slipped through the Camouflora and out of Woven Root.

  It had been surprisingly easy. Everyone had been so focused on what might be coming for them on the other side of the veil that no one bothered to check who might be leaving. After all, no one would be reckless enough to leave, not with all of Arden now searching for the illegal village of alchemists—those few people who believed that magic shouldn’t be separated by guild and worked to jumble talents together.

  But one person would have been reckless enough. And that’s exactly why Claire had to leave first.

  It was Claire’s turn to do the right thing—to save Sophie.

  Her sister, Sophie, was many things. She was reckless, willing to explore fireplaces and forbidden chambers. She was brave, grappling with magic and evil queens. She was Claire’s best friend.

  And she was turning into a unicorn.

  Claire had to figure out how to undo this, how to make sure Sophie remained human so that no one would hunt her sister.

  And she knew this much: the key to Sophie’s safety lay somewhere on the edge of the Sparkling Sea, in the knowledge of a magical creature known as a Spyden. Claire didn’t know too much about them (she hadn’t wanted to ask too many questions, in case it caught the attention of her friend Nett’s endless curiosity), only that they could spin answers from the air and patch any problem. And that they lived somewhere near Needle Pointe, the only permanent community of Spinners, located on the other side of Constellation Range, where the Rhona River emptied into the Sparkling Sea. In this small bay, the Spinners’ sails could catch the hint of stories on the wind and easily move their narrowboats inland.

  With the spyglass, Invis-Ability, and a little bit of luck, Claire had managed to scoot undetected onto a cargo raft of a Spinner fleet. And luckier still, the raft had contained crates of the autumn’s harvest. She’d tucked herself in under the carrots until this afternoon, when the river picked up the scent of salt and gulls shrieked overhead, and she knew: they had reached the sea.

  At first, Claire had been grateful for the heavy blanket of clouds from the brewing storm. It had made the afternoon gray enough for her Invis-Ability to be effective. She’d slipped off the raft and into the main harbor, a small forest of bobbing ships’ masts. She’d selected the largest ship, the Thread Cutter, and had scrambled to this highest point, where she now needed to …

  Well.

  Claire’s semi-visible fingers gripped the arrow harder, and she tried to swallow her heart back down to where it belonged. She must choose: either test the arrow—or leave the crow’s nest and find someplace safe to hide until she was ready.

  But instead of making up her mind, Claire reached for the spyglass.

  She just needed one more look at where to aim. She knew from experience that a Lode Arrow could take her miles high and miles across in only a few short seconds if she shot it properly. But she had only used one once before, not on purpose, and that arrow had been crafted by the commander of the Wraith Watch, a man with many years of Gemmer experience. This arrow, however, Claire had crafted herself, using the lessons she’d learned at Stonehaven. It wasn’t really sharp, but her fingers had tingled as they always did when she created something using her own Gemmer magic.

  Holding the spyglass to her eye, Claire braced for the eddy of colors that would immediately bring on a headache. She shifted slightly, and there it was, drilled into a cliff face, thousands of feet above the water: a single black hole. The mouth of a cave marked on one of Aquila Malchain’s maps as Spyden’s Lair.

  A raindrop plopped on her head.

  Uh-oh.

  Claire froze, waiting to find out if more drops would come, but it seemed to be the only one.

  Hurry! her mind urged. Shoot before you’re caught!

  But her hand seemed to have other ideas, and without meaning to, Claire turned away, the spyglass still held to her eye. Change was coming over Arden. Trees had lost their leaves, and the world was a palette of fawn brown and dove gray. She found the frothy white ribbon of the Rhona and began to follow it north, through a gorge in the mountains, toward where she’d last known Woven Root to camp. She didn’t think they would have moved yet—

  A brilliant light flared across Claire’s vision, followed by a giant BOOM … and the applause of a million raindrops hitting the wooden deck.

  She’d waited too long to make this decision!

  Claire couldn’t shoot the arrow in the middle of a thunderstorm, but she also couldn’t stay here, at the tallest point of the ship, while lightning zagged across the sky and rain threatened to wash off the last of her Invis-Ability dye.

  After shoving her spyglass and arrow into the Hollow Pack, she quickly grabbed her bow and slung it over her shoulder. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe the invisibility would stick—

  “Hey!”

  Claire looked down to see a Spinner on the deck pointing up at her. She glanced at her arm, where she could see streaks of pink skin as the invisibility dye streamed off.

  “Slug soot!” she cursed. If she wasn’t already completely and utterly visible, she would be soon. Which left her no choice.

  With the shouts of Spinners climbing up the ropes toward her loud in her ears, Claire again grabbed the arrow from her pack and set it to her bowstring. She scrambled up to the top of the wooden rail, balancing precariously over the angry sea.

  Lightning flashed. Thunder cracked.

  Claire shot the arrow.

  CHAPTER

  2

  The wind snatched the scream from Claire’s mouth as everything turned gray and blue, cold and wet. She hurtled through the storm.

  Her Lode Arrow was working!

  The Gemmer-ness in her blood clung magnetically to her transportation, making sure her fingers were stuck to the arrow’s shaft so that she wouldn’t accidentally let go. It wasn’t like flying, because even though she was arching forward, she was also sinking down toward the sea’s churning swells. The storm’s winds buffeted her about, pulling her off course. She wasn’t going to make it to Spyden’s Lair—she was barely going to clear the mast of a looming ship!

  Desperately, Claire hiked up her feet, leather boots narrowly missing the wide-eyed expression of a Spinner in another crow’s nest as the wind shoved her on again.

  She just needed to clear the sharp outcropping of spindly rocks called the Needles that jutted out of the water, protecting the bay. If she could land beyond them, they would temporarily conceal Claire from Needle Pointe’s harbor, and she didn’t think anyone would dare sail out to investigate until the storm passed.

  But if she landed in front of the rocks, a nosy Spinner searching for a story might risk the wind anyway. And if she managed to make it to the rocks but not over them … Well, there was a reason why the town was called Needle Pointe.

  The rocks came close …

  Closer …

  Closest!

  Claire’s toes skimmed the outcrop, and she kicked down, giving her and the arrow one more slight lift to miss the rocks—before splashing down into the sea on the other side.

  Silence engulfed her. The water smothered the roar of wind and thunder.

  Without the sun, all she could see was midnight blue, except when a flicker of lightning illuminated the seascape below her: swaying shadows of seaweed, glimmers of fish and intricately shaped rocks, the color of apples, that twisted delicate branches upward like the fanciest of candelabras. It was an underwater forest that loomed larger as the Lode Arrow dragged Claire along with it.

  It would not stop until it hit a target.

  Clai
re unwrapped her fist, but still the Lode Arrow stuck to her palm. She couldn’t break away from her magical transportation, and now, she realized, it was delivering her to their final destination—the bottom of the sea.

  She screamed.

  Lacy bubbles streamed from her mouth and floated upward to sky and air, to where Claire could not follow.

  Let go! a familiar voice shouted in her mind’s ear. For goodness’ sake, stop being a baby and let go already!

  Claire had heard that phrase so many times before, in the exact same tone. When the family had gone ice-skating and she’d clung to Sophie’s gloved hand even as she spilled onto the ice, pulling her big sister down with her—

  On the monkey bars, when a much littler Claire had hung there, tears dripping down her cheeks because she was too scared to swing herself across—

  After she’d lost the fire-safety poster contest to Brittany, and she’d spent a week accusing her classmate of copying the winning poster from the year before.

  Let it go, Claire!

  Salt stung her eyes. Salt lashed her tongue.

  Claire kicked, trying to propel herself and the arrow back up, but the strength of the stone tip pulled them down.

  She was helpless.

  Panic settled in her chest, burning her lungs—or maybe that was the lack of air. What had she been thinking? She closed her eyes. Gemmers shouldn’t play games with water! They knew how to nudge the potential of rock, but rocks sank.

  Something hard scraped across her arms.

  Claire’s eyes flew open. She was now hurtling through the rock forest, the red branches grazing her as she dove past. And it should have hurt, but instead of feeling pain, she felt only the overwhelming sense of … of welcome.

  There was no other word for it. It wasn’t as clear as a “hello” or even a handshake, but it was definitely a greeting. Each time a little branch touched her arm or leg, she sensed a salutation. Like if the rock had a tail, it would be wagging it. As if the rock were alive.

  And it was.

  Because the stone forest wasn’t stone at all. It was coral.

  Coral, Claire knew from her fifth-grade unit on the ocean, looked like rock but was actually an animal. An animal that was intimately acquainted with stone, just as Claire was herself. It seemed to know this and had recognized Claire as a friend.