Gemmer. The word cut through Claire’s tangled panic like a pair of scissors. Yes—she was a Gemmer. She was not helpless! She just needed a plan. She needed to think. But being rolled across the floor by a giant spider—her back, sides, and stomach thumping hard against the floor with each turn—was scrambling all her thoughts.

Her fear grew sharper as the blanket wrapped tighter and tighter. Pain rumbled through her. She was going to be one giant bruise … if she even managed to survive being treated like a washrag across the flagstone floor.

Wait. An idea whirled past her, and Claire grasped at it. Flagstone floor.

The silk wrapping around her was nothing like the smooth polishing rags Claire had used in Starscrape Citadel to call forth light from gems. But it wasn’t light she needed. She needed heat.

She stopped straining and let herself and the silk be rolled. And as the world turned and her body connected with the floor again and again, Claire thought of Mom lighting the coals under the grill. Of blistering summer sand under her bare feet. Of rock striking rock, releasing a shower of embers.

And as she rolled, she felt a hum. It trickled through her bones, and she felt the rock’s answering song. Though she was exhausted—exhausted from running, exhausted from almost drowning, exhausted from worrying—the rock was not. Magic was always in the material, and stone did not tire and it did not forget. It remembered heat at its beginning, when the world’s weight formed it.

Claire smelled singed hair, and a second later, a high-pitched screech filled the cottage as the room finally stopped spinning.

“You foul Gemmer!” the spider spat, but Claire could barely hear its angry clack over the sound of its eight feet stamping the floor as it tried to avoid the stones that were now as hot as summer sand.

Flinging herself in the opposite direction, Claire unrolled as fast as she could. The silk blanket clung to her, resisting, but at last, she was free! Lurching to her feet, she glanced around the room just quickly enough to see that the spider had sprawled onto the ground, its eight legs akimbo beneath it … but for how long? Claire sprinted for the door.

She was ten feet away. Then three. One … She reached out, fingers straining for the handle.

“Helmmmmppfff meefff!”

Claire stumbled to a stop. There it was again, that same mournful cry she’d heard in the tiny bedroom. The sound that she’d decided was just the sea slapping against the shore. But now she was certain: that was an entirely human voice. And she could make out all the words: Help me.