Matilda's Arc

Chapter 9 of 10

Matilda spread the deciphered recipe on her kitchen table and read the last line aloud. "Three drops of silken dew, gathered at first light." She read it again. She did not know what silken dew was. She checked her own herb jars, her mother's old notes, the margins of the stolen book. Nothing. The half-brewed potion sat in the cupboard in its stoppered jar. Three days. After that the base would turn and she would have to start over, with a book she could barely hide and a watcher creeping closer every day. She tried the obvious guesses first. Morning dew off a leaf. Dew from a rose petal. She squeezed both into a saucer and held them to the light. Plain water. The recipe called for something with a name, not a puddle. Old names meant old people. She thought of the one place in the forest witches used to trade before her time, a small hut past the second stream. She had passed it as a girl and never gone in. She wrapped a shawl over her head and walked. The hut leaned under a thatch roof gone gold with age. Vines climbed the boards. Green shutters hung open around a clouded window. Small bottles sat on a shelf below the sill, dusty, still corked. No smoke rose from the chimney. The herbalist was long gone. Matilda stepped onto the plank and tried the door. It swung. Inside, jars lined every wall. She read labels by the window. Foxglove. Nettle. Bat wort. Then, on a low shelf, a small glass box tied with red thread. The label read: silken dew. She lifted the lid. Inside lay a web strung between four twigs, each strand hung with tiny beads of water that caught the light like glass. A card beneath it said, in the same crooked script she had learned to read, dew gathered from spider silk at first light. A voice behind her said, "You are far from your cottage." Matilda turned. Angela Ant stood in the doorway, small and orange, her pack strapped across her chest. Matilda's throat tightened. The ant she had poisoned. The ant who now walked with Summer Sun. "I followed you," Angela said. "She asked me to watch the hill." "Then you have seen enough," Matilda said. She set the glass box in her basket. Angela looked at the box. "Spider silk. First light. I know a web." Matilda stared. "Why tell me." "She trusts you a little now," Angela said. "I do not. I want to see what you do next." Matilda took the box home and set it beside the potion. She had the ingredient. She also had a witness. Tomorrow at dawn the ant would be at her door, watching her drip three beads into the jar, and Summer Sun would hear every word of it by breakfast.