Back in the Ether, Vellie ducks back into the office, head low, and mercifully finds his desk without bumping into any other Seers. Whew, this is getting more difficult than I bargained for. He realizes now that he should have reported those children, instead of rescuing them from the Narwitches’ world. Now they have become his responsibility. He rolls his eyes. It is classic. This is exactly the kind of thing that always happens to me for caring too much. He should have known. Reprimanding himself won’t help now. He has to figure out what their mission is. And he has to keep switching them between worlds in the process: too much time spent in one world will arouse suspicion. The more junior Seers are not as adept as he is at logging anomalous observations, but given more than an hour or so in a world, even they will notice the children. And if they notice the children, there’s a chance they will report it, and a chance, by extension, that Vellie will be discovered for exceeding his mandate. Actions deviating from declared role and responsibilities, the telepathic text would read after the words ‘Reason for disciplinary citation.’

Vellie had let compassion get the better of him. He pushes away thoughts of what being discovered will do to his prospects for being promoted to the Council of Seers.

He’d stowed the Earth children briefly on his origin world with the dragon fairies. Porting to Earth would have taken too long; that world is further removed than many others. Plus, Vellie is less accustomed to Earth topography, so to return the children to the right place would take some doing. Stowing them with the dragon fairies had allowed him enough time to duck back to the office and grab additional strands of Ether so he could continue making time on his assigned orb. Foolishly, he’d forgotten it was the time of the Acorn Sacrifice. He’d allowed himself to get distracted, nostalgic, even, for his days as a young dragon fairy, taking part in the festivities, breathing gentle blasts of flame in time to the sacred chant. After the ceremony ended and the last acorn tribute had been sacrificed and planted, he and his 18 siblings would take turns blowing elaborate smoke rings out of their tiny mouths, all of them barely as large as dragonflies at the time. That was hundreds of moons before his recruitment to the Seers. His family was gone now, of course, their tiny spirits released back into the Ether after their deaths. His appointment to the Seers had expanded his body just as it elongated his lifespan. Visiting his origin world made Vellie feel as though no amount of moons could help him adjust fully to this increase in stature and in days.

He must find somewhere it would be possible to really talk to the children, where he can get to the bottom of why they were travelling on that rabbit-issued passport with no apparent clarity about where they are going or why.

He is pretty sure he knows just the place.

Without memory of the past or idea of the future you have no idea where you are. You can only ever be right here. It is from this insight that the land of the Nowhere, or the NowHere (these two are the same, really) derives its name. This land is ruled by nomadic people. These nomads raise gigantic tarantulas, the result of countless moons spent in the perfection of spider husbandry in another world, which eventually gave rise to this world in an effort to accommodate this strain of tarantula. The nomads’ migration patterns are dependent upon these tarantulas. The tarantulas regulate migration in the shape of a giant web, which stretches across the entire landscape of the NowHere. The tarantulas make sure that no two nomadic groups intersect on this web for more than a few days in which they can trade goods.

The nomadic people of the NowHere neither remember the past, nor do they plan for the future. They suffer from a collective, selective amnesia that prevents them living anywhere but in the present. The tarantulas alone have memory. Memory of how to raise the next generation of spiders. Memory of where to travel, hidden in their DNA. Memory of what to eat and what will kill you. Memory of where you can find water in a desert (this last one is of penultimate importance, because the entirety of the NowHere is desert). The tarantulas alone plan for the future and they simply carry their nomadic masters along on their backs from place to place to place. As they walk, each generation of tarantulas inscribes the web they follow with all the memories and knowledge each one has acquired. As they walk, each tarantula picks up the information they need in order to continue their amnesiac masters’ way of life.

The place where Oliver and Olivia land after leaving the Dragon Fairies’ Kingdom is slightly South-West of the centre of the web which regulates migration in the NowHere. They, of course, do not know this and believe themselves to have landed in a random desert in the early dawn — perhaps, they think, they might even be back on Earth.

“Vellie!” Olivia practically shouts as she lands with a soft thud of sneakered feet on soft red velvet sand. “Vellie! Where are you? Listen — we have to talk about finding Paul.”

“Paul.” Vellie repeats.

“Yes, Paul,” says Olivia. “I’m letting myself get distracted with all these, these places you’re bringing us to. We came here for a reason.”

Vellie’s ears seem to visibly perk up at her statement. “Yes, Earth child. Pray tell me the reason for your unfortunate descent onto my path.”

“Our friend Paul is missing,” Olivia tries to explain. “We went into his bedroom to find him after he didn’t make it to the bus stop. And we found the grey book — the passport there. And suddenly there was a staircase leading out his window and when I went down the stairs there, there was the mermaids’ — I mean the Narwitches’ — world.”

“We were worried because he wasn’t there on the day of his presentation and his presentation was on the Dark Web — ” Oliver tried to chime in but Olivia cuts him off.

“Don’t give unnecessary details, Oliver. We need Vellie to help us.”

“Hush child,” Vellie interrupts, his tone very serious. Olivia feels good to be on Vellie’s side for a split second, thinking he is speaking to Oliver, but Vellie goes on. “Did you say the Dark Web?” His voice is very hushed all of a sudden, like he is in a library or telling a secret during class.

“Yeah,” Olivia is annoyed. “But what does it matter what his presentation is on? He’s missing and we need to find him.”

“That thing, child, is not to be trifled with. It matters a great deal if Paul is missing over matters related to, to, to…it.”

“To the Dark Web?” Olivia says, too loudly. Vellie looks left and right as if they really are in a library and are going to get caught.

“Hush, Earth child. Hush. Do not speak about it like that, particularly in this place.” Oliver is watching this exchange, perplexed. He says:

“Why, Vellie? Do you know where Paul went? Is it bad?”

“It is impossible to tell now, but I may be positioned to discern something of his whereabouts, yes,” Vellie squints behind his big plastic glasses, focusing on the children, putting something complicated together in his mind. Like Oliver and Olivia are tiny bugs and he is trying to count their legs to categorize them in his collection or determine their genus and species .

“Well!?” Olivia is incredulous. This is all too nebulous and she needs answers. “So? Will you help us or not?”

Vellie huffs once, sending a stream of hot air out his nose and mouth (Olivia sees a whisper of flame in the exhale, and it confirms her suspicions that their reluctant, robed guide bears some biological resemblance to the dragon fairies from the world they just left.) He sighs deeply and looks like he is about to say something when they are interrupted by a great thumping noise, like someone playing a huge bass drum, no, like a train approaching and heading straight for them. The reverberating sound accompanies a great cloud of reddish sand flying up and encompassing all of them. The red cloud is so thick that for a moment Olivia is all alone. She can’t see Vellie or Oliver.

When the dust finally settles, Olivia is faced with two gigantic chelicerae. Below them are two legs covered in silky grey hairs. All of these appendages trail up to a body shrouded in darkness. Each of eight eyes focuses in unison, taking in the childrens’ faces, taking in Vellie, seeming to study with great consternation these strange creatures they are being presented with. Only the whites of the eyes indicate to the children how far away the giant creature’s head is. All is darkness around the eyes and body.

Olivia’s heart thumps uncontrollably, the noise taking over her whole head, chasing out all her thoughts. She can’t remember ever feeling this terrified before. She tries to reach for her bubblegum but her hands are frozen in terror. She thinks of the retractable claw that tarantulas have on the ends of their legs and for once she wishes she knew less facts.

One giant grey, haired leg slowly lifts off the sandy earth. The leg lifts over top of Oliver’s head, so he feels a slight breeze, and comes to rest squarely and lightly on the very top of Olivia’s head. Olivia’s mouth feels dry like the desert all around them and when she tries to swallow, she can’t. Her brain tells her to scream but her body will not do it. She feels the great weight of the spider’s leg pressing her down, down into the ground. She feels the soft, fleshy pad of the leg’s bottom squisshhh to accommodate the curve of her crown. She expects to be crushed any second. Oliver stands, mouth agape, staring in awe and being of no help at all. Vellie might as well be somewhere else altogether. He stares into the distance with the same studied expression he had before the red cloud bearing the giant spider appeared, as if he hadn’t noticed it happen at all.

“Oh, hello! Don’t be scared, she’s just saying hi!” Yells a cheery voice from somewhere above both their heads. “Aren’t you, Arachne? Aren’t you?! Who’s a good girl? Who’s a good girl?” The same voice goes on to speak, apparently to the spider, in a gooey kind of diminutive voice demonstrating endearment. Arachne (which is in fact this spider’s name) closes all her eyes at the same time and emits a kind of gleeful warble that causes the foot on Olivia’s head swoosh off her and nearly knock the girl over. The drumming sound returns, louder this time, as seven other legs whump whump whump up and down on the ground all around them, causing mini earthquakes and whipping the sand into swirls that make the children cough. “Who’s a good girl? Hmm? You’re a good girl!” The cajoling voice goes on like this for a minute or two, by the end of which the children are in coughing fits and the ground feels like a turbulent ocean pitching back and forth under their feet. Finally, the dust settles and all the legs come to rest. Oliver and Olivia slouch on their knees, unable to muster enough energy to stand up. Chests heaving, sucking in air finally absent of sand granules, they both raise their eyes to look up at the now-relaxed Arachne’s underbelly. The outline is almost perceptible now in what seems to be early morning blue light.

From out of the near darkness above them, a humanoid leg materializes, then another one. And then whump! Two heavy-duty hiking boots land on the sandy earth. The small man stands directly under Arachne. The children realize now that Arachne’s relaxation seems to coincide with a humming that emerges from the man. It is a lovely melody, floating over all of their heads as if on wings.

“Well, I’m Rick.” He says amicably, extending a hand almost-professionally, as if this were a totally normal first encounter. The humming does not stop as he speaks. Olivia wonders if he has two mouths, one for the humming and another to speak. He speaks casually, as if Oliver and Olivia are not slumped in exhaustion on a strange desert floor. As if his (pet?) spider has not almost trampled them eleven or twelve times in the past five minutes. Olivia narrows her eyes. She wants Rick to see how upset she is, without her having to tell him. She raises herself to her feet slowly, resolutely, brushes the dirt off the knees of her favourite dark jeans and takes Rick’s hand a bit aggressively.

“I’m Olivia. This is Oliver. And that other one in the robe is Vellie.”

Rick grins a good-natured grin and points upwards. “This is Arachne. I’m Rick.”

“So you said,” Olivia says, a bit snippily.

“Did I?” Rick smiles his benign, friendly smile at the three of them. Olivia thinks it looks almost goofy, like the smile was stolen from a Saturday morning cartoon character’s silly face and found an out-of-place kind of home on Rick’s. “Well, don’t be afraid of Arachne. She’s big but she’s friendly. She’s not dangerous — ” he pauses — “unless you’re in her food trough!” Rick laughs and slaps his thigh with a leather-gloved hand as if he’s made a very clever joke.

At this moment, without any kind of warning, Vellie seems to snap out of his trance.

“Yes, yes,” he mutters. “The spiders. The spiders of the web, the web. Yessss.” He drags out these last s’s like a kindergarten teacher instructing small children how to pronounce consonants. He steps forward and looks directly up into eight giant eyes of Arachne. Then he closes his eyes, squeezing his eyelids together behind his black plastic glasses, as if concentrating very hard. The ground around Vellie’s feet begins to rumbles again, a little less severely than before, for about 18 seconds and then it stops. He stands in the remnants of risen sand-dust waiting for a reply.

After a few long seconds, the same reverberating bass sound, like the train approaching, from before begins to emanate from each of Arachne’s eight long legs. For a full two or three minutes, the rumbling starts and stops, in longer and shorter intervals. Olivia wonders if it is morse code. She clenches her mouth and eyes shut. Oliver pulls the neck of his hoodie over his mouth and nose to guard against the rising dust. After what feels like a very long time, the ground settles again and everything becomes very still.

“Oh dear,” says Vellie, in a hollow, concerned voice. “Oh my.”

“What?” Coughs Olivia, unsuccessfully rubbing red sand particles from her eyes with an equally dirty sleeve.

“This spider has delivered an oracle from the web,” says Vellie, as if this makes perfect sense to all of them. He looks a little shaken and pale, even more-so than usual. “I asked her to give me information about your lost one, Paul, and she has delivered an oracle in response.”

“Okay — so, what is it?” Olivia is impatient.

“I will translate the poetry from the arachnid tongue,” says Vellie. “One moment…” His eyes roll back as if concentrating. Oliver regards the still-spinning orb in his lower two hands with suspicion. He doesn’t exactly trust their multi-tasking travel companion yet. “I am the Eighth, I know your plight. / Your Paul is missing, am I right?/ Once eldest sacrifice is done / I will reveal the missing one.” Vellie recites this in foreboding monotone. “The Eighth demands a sacrifice of the eldest.” (He knows it is a serious oracle because of the rhyme scheme, but he does not reveal this to the children.) “In exchange for this sacrifice, the Eighth will take you to where he has Paul.”

“Ok, ok, we can figure out what it means together,” Olivia blasts into problem-solving mode, mistaking Vellie’s hesitation for a lack of understanding. “‘The Eighth demands a sacrifice of the eldest,’ um, ‘sacrifice’ makes sense, we can figure that out. The Eighth — I don’t know what that means. The eldest — ”

“ — well, you are older,” Oliver interrupts.

“Don’t be silly, Oliver!” Olivia reprimands. “This isn’t about us. It must mean something, something else, something about these worlds we keep traveling through.”

“I didn’t say us,” Oliver is getting a little red. “I said you. What if it’s about you?”

“I said don’t be stupid, Oliver”

“It could be you.” Vellie says in an unusually quiet tone they haven’t heard him use until now. “You are the eldest. And ‘sacrifice’ here does refer to the ultimate sacrifice. The arachnids use a tonal language; Arachne’s tone has confirmed that. I ensured I was correct in this.”

“The ultimate sac- you mean… death?” Vellie won’t meet her gaze and she knows she’s got it right.

“WHO the HECK is the Eighth?” Olivia demands. “And WHY would he want me to DIE?”

Before she gets an answer, Olivia and her brother find themselves being swept away again. The rabbit-issued passport inside Olivia’s pocket burns red-hot, almost scorching her skin through her jeans pocket. As everything starts spinning like they are in a blender, and then all of a sudden they land in a completely blank expanse. No features. No colours. This latest world appears to be the equivalent of a three-dimensional blank canvas.