“You always complain that she tries to drown you with her slobber.”
“Yes. Well. I am merely being affectionate when I say that.”
“All right. Go on ahead. I’ll meet you there soon.”
Astrophil tried one last thing. He tried being honest, or close enough to it. “Petra,” he said, “if you truly wish to make your father happy, you should do as he asks right away.”
She paused. “You really think so?”
“I do.”
“Hop on my shoulder, then. You’re getting muddy.”
Relieved, Astrophil shot a web to her shoulder and quickly pulled himself up the glittering line.
“A JOURNEYMAN!” Mila Stakan had said when she first saw Tomik pin the badge to his tough leather work apron. “You’re all grown up. And look how that badge brings out the blue in your eyes!”
“Mother, please,” he protested. “It’s just a badge.”
“You know better than that,” she said. “It’s everything it represents.”
That had been several weeks ago, the day after his Coming of Age ceremony. The ceremony had taken place on his fourteenth birthday, when Tomik legally became an adult. He was supposed to have certain rights now: he could buy property, attend university, and marry. He had thought he would feel different, but the truth was that nothing had changed. He had no money to buy land. The only university he wanted to enter was the Academy, which was impossible. And no fourteen-year-old he’d ever heard of actually got married. The idea of marriage seemed far-off and foreign, something for people years older than he was.
But at least Tomik had been promoted from being his father’s apprentice. He was now a journeyman. The blue badge stitched with red flame had been Master Stakan’s birthday gift to his son.
The next morning, Tomik had pinned the badge over his heart. But when his mother began cooing over him, Tomik felt as if his secret hopes had been found out. He tore the badge from his apron.
Yet on that foggy morning at the end of December, something made him fish out the scrap of cloth from the box under his bed. He knew he would be alone in the shop for the entire afternoon, as the rest of his family had errands to run. But maybe somebody would stop by . . .
When Petra opened the shop door at the Sign of Fire, Tomik couldn’t help wondering if maybe the journeyman badge pinned to his chest made him look different after all.
Petra mumbled a distracted greeting, and Tomik’s smile sank.
She sat down at the worktable next to the fire, which was burning with brassica oil, and shifted the invisible sword so that the hilt wouldn’t jab her side. She laid the tin sheet on the bench.
An enormous metal dog burst into the room. Atalanta ran up to Petra and began snuffling the girl all over.
“Attie, behave yourself!” Tomik ordered.
“Where Astro?” Atalanta panted, showing knife-sharp teeth. Her silvery tongue hung out of her mouth.
The spider walked down Petra’s arm and stepped onto the table. “You should say ‘Where is Astrophil?’ ” He raised a leg and shook it at Atalanta. “You are old enough to learn how to speak properly.”
“Astro!” The dog pushed her nose against the spider.
Astrophil shrank away.
“She’s just trying to lick you,” Petra said.
“May I point out that her tongue is five times the size of my entire body?”
Tomik poured green brassica oil into a large bowl and set it down in the corner of the workshop. “Come here, you great big hunk of tin.”
Atalanta slurped up the oil, green drops scattering around the bowl.
Petra looked at the pile of sand in a pan next to the fire. “What are you making, Tomik?”
“Wineglasses. I’d love to get my hands on some pure white sand. When you heat up white sand you get the clearest glass in the world. Not like that dull tan stuff there. But your father gave me iron oxide to add to that batch, which should turn the glass a decent red. If you can’t make glass clear, you might as well make it colored.”
“You don’t seem too excited about it.”
“The glasses will be pretty, but they won’t be special. Know what I mean?”
Petra leaned forward. “Have you made anything special lately?”
Eagerly, he reached into his pocket and pulled out something shaped like an oval pebble. He set the glass object on the table with a small thunk.
Petra picked it up and turned it in the light of the fire. It was almost clear, but held a tint of light blue. It shone more brightly than normal glass. “What is it?”
“Guess.”
After swearing Tomik to secrecy, Petra had told him about her ability to speak silently with Astrophil. Sometimes she regretted this, because Tomik was so excited that she had a magical talent that he often pushed her to use it. Like now. Petra looked at Tomik, wishing that he hadn’t challenged her on this morning, of all mornings, when it seemed like she wasn’t able to do anything right. She rolled the stone between her fingers, conscious that both Tomik and Astrophil were watching her. Closing her eyes, she focused on the slippery glass. She felt something flutter in her mind. “Lead?” Petra opened her eyes. “Is there lead in the glass?”
“Got it in one guess! Watch this.” Tomik took the pebble from her and squeezed his hand around it. When he opened his fist, the glass radiated with light. “I call it a Glowstone. All you have to do is squeeze hard, and the warmth of your hand will activate the lead inside the glass. The longer you hold the Glowstone, the stronger its light will be. It’ll be great for exploring caves, don’t you think? Here.” He handed her the Glowstone. “Keep it. I made others.”
Petra put it in her pocket.
Atalanta ran back toward Tomik and Petra. When she reached the table, her long, wagging tail knocked against the tin sheet. It clattered to the floor.
Tomik noticed the sheet for the first time. “What’s that?”
“Father told me to bring it. He said you needed it.”
“For what?” He picked it up and inspected it. “For float glass?”
“I guess.”
“But float glass is used for making windows.”
“So?”
“Our windows haven’t sold well lately. We’ve got a huge stack of them in the back. We definitely don’t need to make any more.”