The Spindlers by Lauren Oliver Page A

wider than two steps and must have been infrequently traveled. In some places it was no more than a faint impression of displaced stones, and in other places it disappeared altogether and they had to scramble over the large, flat rocks that jutted out of the foothills. Occasionally Mirabella stopped and—alarmingly and without warning—dropped flat to the ground. The first time this happened, Liza cried out, thinking that the rat had been injured; she ran to help, before discovering that Mirabella had only pressed her nose to the ground and was sniffing furiously.
    â€œThat way!” Mirabella pronounced, springing to her feet and straightening her wig, which had begun to skew dangerously to one side. She confided in a whisper, “When in doubt, follow the feet! Sniff for the toes! That’s what you do. Of course, once that brought me straight to a half wheel of Camembert cheese … made a nice dessert for the brothers and sisters that night …”
    Up, up, up they wound, up the barren, rocky path. Liza began to be very sorry that the tree snake had eaten one of her sneakers; her socks did not protect her from the sharp stones in the path, and soon the sole of her right foot was aching. At a certain height, she began to notice large, brittle brown shrubs that grew up among the boulders. They were hung all over with thousands of tiny dark seeds—each no larger than a pinhead, and quite ugly, Liza thought.
    â€œWhat are those?” she asked Mirabella, pointing to one of the scraggly bushes.
    Mirabella stopped walking. “Those are the bushes of hope,” she said. She removed the wig from her head and pressed it to her heart, like a person about to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Underneath the wig, her fur was tufted in some places and matted in others. “Aren’t they beautiful?”
    â€œI guess so,” Liza lied, wrinkling her nose.
    â€œThere you go again,” Mirabella said miserably. “Judging a book by its cover and an animal by its tail. Go on. Look a little closer. And be lively about it.” She clapped the wig back on her head and crossed her arms.
    Liza bent down close to the branches and peered hard at the tiny, dangling seeds. They were teardrop-shaped and at first appeared to be a solid black, the color of onyx. In fact, other than their strange shape, they looked almost exactly like poppy seeds, which Liza did not at all like and which were, she thought, a perfectly good way to ruin a lemon muffin.
    But on closer inspection, Liza noticed that at their very center there was a tiny bit of pure white light—this no bigger than the fine, tapered point of a needle—that nonetheless was so blindingly bright she jerked backward, blinking.
    â€œOh,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “Oh.”
    Mirabella tittered. “I should have warned you. The seeds are full of light. Each seed contains as much light as your sun!”
    Liza stared at her. “Impossible.”
    Mirabella swept her tail around her wrist and gave an imperious sniff. “That is a human word,” she said. “And a very ugly one at that. We have no use for it Below.”
    â€œBushes of hope …” Liza bit her lip. “Does that mean—I mean, well, does that mean what I think it means? Does that mean that these seeds …?”
    â€œAre seeds of hope, yes. Of course.”
    The only thing Liza could think of to say was, “They’re so small.”
    Mirabella snorted. “Small—and powerful enough to knock your socks off. Oh yes. Strong stuff. Big as a boom!”
    â€œI didn’t think hope was something that grew,” Liza said.
    â€œOf course it grows,” Mirabella said. “What else would it do? Sing?” She leaned a little closer. “The nocturni are the bearers of the hope seeds.” As usual, when she spoke of the nocturni, the rat lowered her voice and looked anxiously from left to right, as though