Mr. Cleat got down on one knee beside Tess so that their eyes were level. He pointed up at the sky, which was already speckled with stars and hung with a thin rind of moon. Somewhere the planes’ engines roared and Tess imagined them circling the park, waiting for their moment.
“Now,” Mr. Cleat began, as though they were out on an evening stroll, “do you see that constellation right above the house? It looks a little like a cup with a long handle.”
Tess blinked at it. “No,” she said as disagreeably as she could, but the pattern in the stars was quite clear.
“Very good, Tess.” Mr. Cleat chuckled. Then he put one arm round her shoulders and with his other hand held the Star-spinner loosely. “You need to find the bright star just above the cup of the constellation you seem unable to see. Can you do that?” He pointed and Tess saw the star he meant. It was brighter than those around it, like a diamond among shards of glass.
She nodded. “I see it.”
“How wonderful,” Mr. Cleat said. “Now, you’ll recall I spoke to you some time ago about the materials your father used to build the Star-spinner, and how he found them at the site of the meteorite crash in his own world. Well, that star—Polaris, Tess, the North Star—contains some of the same material as the meteorite that dealt a deathblow to your home. Your device is made from part of that star. Like calls to like.” He placed the Star-spinner in her hand. “As above, so below.”
“What are you saying?” Tess blinked at him.
“Lift the device, Tess.” His voice was low, even gentle.
Tess choked back a sob. “I don’t want to.”
“Do as I ask and you’ll see why your little trinket is called the Star-spinner, child. And do it quickly or you can kiss everyone and everything you love goodbye.”
Tess shook her head, hating what she was being forced to do, and opened the Star-spinner’s eye. Beside her, Mr. Cleat held his breath as he watched, his face bathed in the light of the void.
“Now,” he told her, lifting his eyes to the sky again. “Focus it on the North Star. Do it, Tess.”
She did as he asked, her fingers shaking. In the void, the star looked even more beautiful, but Tess could barely see it through her tears.
“Set the stars spinning, Tess,” Mr. Cleat said. “Turn it.”
“I won’t do it,” Tess said, gritting her teeth. She tensed, preparing to fling the Star-spinner away, and Mr. Cleat grabbed her, hard. He held her still, crushing her fingers around the Star-spinner and making her gasp with pain.
“You!” he barked at the man holding the tray and its strange contents on one outstretched hand. The man nodded, whisking the cloth away—and Tess saw the lantern with Violet still inside. The spider jerked in fright, her limbs spreading over the glass like an outstretched hand, and Tess sobbed. She looked up at the man pleadingly but his eyes were shadowed. He didn’t move an inch.
Mrs. Thistleton stepped forward, lifting the lantern as she went, and held it in Tess’s sight line. “A reminder,” she said, “of what’s at stake here.”
“Don’t hurt her,” Tess begged.
“Do what we’re asking,” said Mr. Cleat in a soft voice, “and she’ll be fine. I promise.”
He relaxed his grip a little on Tess’s fingers and Mrs. Thistleton stepped out of the way, holding Violet in her lantern high. Tess, knowing she had no choice, raised the Star-spinner again and focused it on the North Star. Then, her eyes streaming with tears, she began to turn the upper half, the markers clicking into place as it moved. The device hummed with power, which seemed to increase as it notched up a gear.
Suddenly a circle of the Star-spinner’s light burst forth from the mechanism, making Tess’s hands jerk with the power of its movement, and was gone into the sky in a blink. As it rose, it began to grow, getting bluer and brighter with every second. The circle was centered on the North Star, held at its heart like a jewel on a neck, and inside the circle, around the fixed point that was Polaris, the stars were spinning, growing faster until they were curves of light like comets trapped in a tight orbit.
The roaring of the bombers’ engines tore the air overhead. Chairs overturned as people scrambled to get out of them; screams were lost in the chaos. Guests stood on the lawn, unsure where to look—at the wildly whirling stars overhead, or the huge airplanes making straight for them, looking like they were on a collision course with one another.
But they didn’t collide. The moment the planes reached the edge of the starfire ring, they vanished, swallowed into another world, a world full of innocent people who had no idea they were coming.
A world where the only family Tess had left was right in their path.
Thomas was startled by a bright blue flash, like lightning. He cowered in the observatory as he waited for the thunder—but all he heard was silence. After a few moments he sat up, confused.
“I’d better close the roof, Moose,” he said, shifting the mouse onto the floor as he got to his feet. “Just in case it rains.”
He climbed to the opening in the dome, and what he saw almost made him fall back down the ladder. He clung to the edge, his teeth chattering, as he looked at the hole that had torn open in the sky right above his house, trying desperately to understand. It was surrounded by a ring of bright blue fire, which looked like the light in Tess’s device. A single star burned at its heart like a glittering eye and all around it other stars whirled faster than Thomas could imagine, so fast they became a streaked blur.
Then the spinning circle of stars was sucked outward, becoming something that looked like a tunnel. Thomas couldn’t tear his eyes away from it, despite it being—by quite some measure—the most frightening thing he’d ever seen.
That was, until five bombers—like Messerschmitts, Thomas thought, only bigger—screamed out of the tunnel, without identifying markings of any sort and looking far more brutal than any plane he knew of. Thomas knew their bellies were filled with explosives—and then, as if to prove it, the final plane released a bomb as it roared over his parents’ house.
Thomas ducked, clutching the rungs of the ladder, and waited for the boom. When he could look out again, half his house was in flames. Thomas slumped against the observatory roof and turned his head. Dublin lay there, twinkling in the darkness, filled with thousands of sleeping people, and there was nothing he could do. In a heartbeat, the planes had disappeared, ready to lay waste, and Thomas stood on his ladder with his fingers digging into the metal of the conservatory roof and despaired.
He pulled his head back inside and climbed down. Collapsing onto his sleeping mat, he pulled out his mother’s notebook. As quickly as he could, he flipped to the page with his father’s portrait on it, and Moose clambered up onto his shoulder as Thomas sat staring at it, wrapped in his blanket.
His mind was filled with Tess and thoughts of what was happening to her a world away, and then all he knew was the shrieking of the engines.
As the planes disappeared, along with the sound of their engines, the crowd reacted with uproar. People got to their feet, knocking over chairs and pulling tablecloths askew, upturning glasses and sending tableware flying into the grass. Most of the guests started running. Those that remained were wide-eyed and gape-mouthed, fixated on the gap in the stars. Mr. Cleat stared at it too, a wild grin on his face.
Of the airplanes, there wasn’t a single trace.
Mrs. Thistleton was also looking at the sky, but her expression was different from Mr. Cleat’s. Where he was examining the scene with rapturous disbelief, Mrs. Thistleton looked somehow disappointed, as though she’d expected more.
Tess took advantage of her distraction and made a lunge for the lantern in her hand—but the woman was too quick. She snapped back to attention, holding Violet out of Tess’s reach.
“Give her back!” Tess shouted. “I did what you wanted!”
“I don’t think we’re through with you just yet,” Mrs. Thistleton answered. “Now, Tess. Give me the Star-spinner.”
Mr. Cleat looked away from the scene in the sky and turned to Mrs. Thistleton. “What?” he asked, confused. “Pauline? What do you want the Star-spinner for?”
Mrs. Thistleton grimaced and flung Violet’s glass cage away, sending it spinning into the darkness. Somewhere in the distance it crashed to the ground, shattering Tess’s heart. She screamed, desperately trying to see where it had landed, but in the same second Mr. Cleat stumbled back against her, treading heavily on her foot.
“The only thing that can truly destroy the Star-spinner is a weapon made of the same ores that were used to fashion it,” Mrs. Thistleton said, glancing from Mr. Cleat to Tess and back again. “I searched for years, using every contact I had, spending every penny I had, until I had enough metal to have this forged.”
She slid her hand into her coat and withdrew a long, thin dagger with a blade that tapered to a point so fine you could hardly see it. Mrs. Thistleton held it up, turning it this way and that, and Mr. Cleat and Tess couldn’t take their eyes off it. “Beautiful, isn’t it? And when I drive it through the center of the Star-spinner, this portal you’ve opened will remain for long enough to start a chain reaction that will tear through all the worlds.”
She ran a finger up the blade before piercing Mr. Cleat with her stare again. “What’s the point, Norton, of accessing realities only a few yards from our own when we could open a rift that would give us access to realities at the furthest edges of our imaginations?” She took a step toward him and he involuntarily stepped back, stumbling against Tess once more. She fought to hold him up as Mrs. Thistleton kept talking. “You and your foolish notions about interfering with a war the next world over. That’s beginners’ stuff! Think beyond your bank balance. Imagine what we will learn! How closely we’ll be able to examine the structures of reality! They’ll be talking about us for centuries, in worlds unnumbered!”
Mr. Cleat struggled to understand. “How much we’ll learn about reality by destroying it?”
“It’s for the greater good,” she said, lunging at him with the dagger in her hand. Tess saw Mr. Cleat’s arms go up in self-defense but it was too late. With a groan of pain, he fell to the ground. Mrs. Thistleton stood over him, shaking out her dagger hand, and then she turned to Tess. Her face was pinched and cruel, her eyes sparkling with malice. “Give me the Star-spinner, Tess,” she said, holding out her hand.
“I’m not letting you destroy anything!” Tess cried. “Get away from me!”
“That’s it!” came a voice from among the stragglers who remained at the tables. “Give her what for!” Mrs. Thistleton turned to give the speaker the full benefit of her scornful stare, and just at that moment a shape came hurtling out of the darkness behind her—a shape wielding a hockey stick.
Prossy shouldered Mrs. Thistleton to the ground, knocking her flat. The dagger flew out of her hand and across the grass. Tess stood back, mouth agape, as Mrs. Thistleton struggled to sit up. Prossy dropped one knee heavily into the woman’s midriff, completely winding her, and placed Hortense’s head on Mrs. Thistleton’s throat. Someone in the crowd cheered loudly before being drowned out by a chorus of “Shh!”
“Who in the blazes are you?” Mrs. Thistleton managed to croak. Prossy increased the pressure on her larynx and anything else Mrs. Thistleton might have wanted to say ended in a strangled, squeaking hiss.
“Tess’s family,” Prossy replied in a low murmur, leaning on the stick. Then she raised her voice. “Priss, search the ground for that ridiculous-looking knife, will you? Don’t want anyone getting the wrong end of it.”
Then Prissy, Wilf, Eunice and Millie stepped onto the lawn and Tess cried out in disbelief and delight. As Prissy began to search for the knife, Tess ran straight to Wilf and threw her arms around her, almost knocking her in the head with the Star-spinner.
“Oh, hello there. We had nothing better to do tonight, so we decided we’d come and pay you a visit,” said Wilf, her voice muffled a little by the strength of Tess’s grip.
Tess laughed and let her go. “You picked a fine night for it,” she said. “How did you even get here?”
“Thank Millie for that,” Wilf said, looking warmly at her new friend. Millie just blushed.
“I take it the sky isn’t supposed to look like that?” said Eunice, staring up at the growing void. The blue sparkling ring was growing by the minute and there was no telling how big it was going to get.
“That’s my fault,” Tess said, stepping back from Wilf and wiping her cheeks with the back of her free hand. In the other, she still held the Star-spinner. “I’ve got to fix it. And there’s someone—a boy in the other world who’s my brother. Or sort of. I have to find him and see if he’s all right.”
“Right,” said Wilf, frowning. “I didn’t understand any of that. But carry on.”
“And Violet is here somewhere. At least,” Tess said, feeling something inside her being crushed with every word, “all that’s left of her.” She turned to Wilf, her eyes filling with tears. “Will you find her for me, Wilf?” All Wilf could do was nod, her chin wobbling, as they stared at one another in silent understanding.
“But—you’ll be able to do that yourself, won’t you?” asked Eunice. “When you get back?”
Tess’s only reply was a sad smile and Eunice looked away. Then Tess glanced at the sky again, the sight of it making her brain reel. Behind her, Mr. Cleat gave a pained groan.
“Wait,” said Wilf, looking back at Tess. Her cheeks were wet. “This is all happening too fast.”
Tess took the Star-spinner in her hands. The void had closed, and the mechanism was still. She wondered if it would even work to get her where she needed to go. I’m coming, Thomas, she told herself. No matter what.
“I’m sorry,” she said, looking in Wilf’s eyes. She opened the Star-spinner and it shone true and steady. With that, and with her eyes still on Wilf, Tess was gone.
After a few seconds of stunned silence, a man at one of the tables got to his feet. “Bravo!” he called, clapping heartily. “I must say, jolly good show!”