“Ahem.” Astrophil tapped one leg impatiently.
Petra ignored him. She inspected the floor more carefully. She noticed a dusty rug at the foot of one of the bookshelves. She pulled it aside and saw, to her excitement, a constellation of holes smaller than the point of a needle bored into the gleaming wood.
She climbed up the ladder to the dandelion for the second time, her heart beating. Shifting aside a book on water fountains, she blew once on the flower. The seeds did not budge. She shook the stem, but it simply bent back and forth without shedding any of its seeds. Nothing worked.
Astrophil said, “Again I must ask: what are you doing?”
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. Petra glared at the dandelion. She felt like shaking it again just to relieve her frustration, but instead she pushed the book back into place.
But as she did so, something occurred to her. Nestled next to the book on water fountains was another one about precious stones. She gnawed her lip in anxious consideration, and then uncovered the dandelion again, taking in its round, silver shape.
“Petra, do you want to go or not? Because we need to leave now”
She leaned toward the flower. Then she said, “Marjeta.” This was the word for pearl. It was also the name of Petra’s mother.
The flower’s sphere collapsed. The seeds whirled down to the spot on the floor where the rug had been. Astrophil squeaked as a panel slid away to reveal a hiding place he hadn’t known was there.
That had been too easy. Petra grinned and shook her head. She would have to tell her father to change the password when she returned.
Kneeling by the hole in the floor, she stuck her hand inside and gasped when it hit something hard. She touched cloth and dragged it into view. It was very heavy to pull. It was a sack tied with twine. She opened it quickly and saw—nothing. Bewildered, she thrust her hand inside and yelped when she hit that same hard something yet again. She shook away the pain and then felt inside the bag more gingerly, tracing the outline of something long and cylindrical, with a sharp, pointed end. Suddenly she realized what it was: a screwdriver. It was one of the invisible tools her father had made years ago. No wonder she could never find them in the shop! Her hand passed quickly over the tools, feeling several of them. What were they doing here?
She had no time to consider the answer. She roughly tied the bag again and shoved it back to where it had been. Then she continued to grope for anything that resembled papers or a notebook. When her fingertips touched a smooth vellum binding, she pulled it into sight. She did not pause to look inside the book but thrust it into her pack. As Astrophil tugged at her sleeve she fumbled for the hidden brass flower, pressed it, and was already dashing as quietly as she could out of the room when the panel in the floor slid shut.
TOMIK WAS WAITING for her by the road that led from Okno to Prague. “Where were you? It’s already dawn! Lucie and Pavel will be coming along any minute. Here.” He thrust a small cloth bag at her. “A little going-away present. Use them well. Actually, don’t use them unless you have to, since the effects will be … dramatic.”
Petra opened the bag and looked inside. Three glass balls winked up at her. “You didn’t,” she said.
“Oh, but I did. Sir Wasp is all yours.”
“What’s the third one?” She reached inside, fished around, and brought out a ball that did not contain an angry insect or a sliver of lightning. She lifted the sphere, and a small jet of water splashed inside.
“One Marvel, made to order. It was your idea to put water inside, remember?”
“Actually, it was Astro’s.” She shook the ball and stared at the water’s lovely dance.
“Indeed it was my idea.” Astrophil drew himself up to his full height.
“But she made some key suggestions,” Tomik told the spider. “Now, Petra, seriously: try to avoid breaking one unless you need to for protection from something. You know I haven’t tested the Hive.” He tapped the sphere with the wasp. “And I haven’t tried out the Bubble either. So don’t break them unless you have to.”
“What’s the one with lightning called?”
“Not sure. Any thoughts?”
Petra recalled what she had been thinking about before she fell asleep the night before: a lightning bug. “What about ‘Firefly’?”
Before Tomik could respond, they heard the clopping of horse hooves and the rattle of a carriage. He gave Petra a fierce hug. “See you in a couple of weeks!”
He broke away and began to walk swiftly into the trees. “Not sticking around for Lucie and Pavel?” she called.
He turned around. “I see enough of them as it is. By the way, take care to keep Astro hidden when you’re in the city. He could get stolen. And take care of yourself, too.”
SO FAR, SO GOOD. Lucie and Pavel didn’t look at the letter twice, and the young blond woman was thrilled to have Petra for company. Petra sat in the back of the cart, which chimed with glassware whenever the cart rattled against a bump in the road.
Lucie talked nonstop. She pointed out where poppies had grown along the road earlier that summer. “But they’re all gone now.” She sighed. “They were so red and pretty.”
Pavel looked lovingly at her. When a snake squiggled across the dirt road, the horse whickered and Lucie squealed. Pavel patted her arm. Petra rolled her eyes.
For most of the trip, Lucie hung her arm on the bench and twisted around to chat with Petra. The younger girl nodded along to whatever Lucie had to say, but she was impatient to look at the book she had taken from the secret panel in her father’s library. As the day grew darker, she stole a few glances at the pages. It was enough to confirm that the sketches were indeed of a large clock.
“May I read it?” Astrophil asked. Petra propped it open for the spider. His green eyes glowed in the twilight. He walked quickly across the page, scanning the scribbled notes. Soon he reached the bottom of the page, and then slipped beneath it. A bump appeared in the paper as Astrophil pushed it up from below. Then the page flipped over as if an unseen hand had turned it.
“I don’t like the dark,” Lucie said.
“Don’t worry,” Pavel replied. “We should reach Prague before true nightfall. And if we don’t, we’ll be able to see by my Little Lantern.”
Petra snorted, then coughed to hide her noise of disgust. “Little Lantern” was Pavel’s nickname for Lucie, whose name meant “light.” Petra’s own name couldn’t have been more opposite.