Felix Takes the Stage by Kathryn Lasky Read Free Book Online

“But I know I’m better off without him. I do miss the spiderlings, though. I hardly got to know them before that fool owner opened the doors. How would he like it if someone decided to air out the place where he lived and all his babies were swept away!” To emphasize her feelings, Glory plucked the filament from which she suspended herself through the hatch into Edith’s cabin. Her visits were brief, and she never accepted an invitation to settle into the web for a nice long chat. She seemed to prefer rappelling down through the hatch and hanging on the end of the silk thread for a bit.

    â€œWell, humans usually just have one child at a time, sometimes two or three. But never one hundred twenty-two,” Edith offered.
    â€œIt doesn’t matter — one or one hundred. You miss them all the same.”
    â€œYes, I suppose so.”
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    What worried Edith more than Glory Uxbridge’s sadness over her spiderlings was the shopkeeper’s sudden interest in cleaning. It did not bode well. Edith preferred a certain amount of dust, clutter, and downright filth. It was never a good sign when humans became too particular about housekeeping. She began having a vague premonition that she and her children were on the brink of another move. It was this fear that caused her to seek out a globe, not the dented globe where the leucauge spiders lived but one in better shape.
    â€œFollow me, children. I want to show you the precise spot where the Constitution encountered the HMS Cyane and the HMS Levant in the War of 1812.”
    â€œBut we know that,” said Felix, resting on the chart in the cabin. “You showed us, remember?”
    â€œOh, yes, I did,” Edith answered. “Well, how about I show you where the Constitution is right now?”
    â€œIt’s still around after all these centuries?” Jo Bell asked.
    â€œAbsolutely!”
    â€œYou mean the real ship and not a model?” Felix asked.
    â€œPositively.” An idea, like the tiniest little flicker, began to glow in Edith’s mind — Boston!
    â€œBoston!” She blurted out the name of the old city where she had once lived with her mother after her father had died.
    â€œBoston?”
    â€œYes, Boston! What a fine old city it is. Come quickly.”
    â€œTo Boston?” Julep asked.
    â€œNo, to the globe so you can see it.”
    Two minutes later, Edith began to release some silk from the very tippy top of the globe. It was what her children called a “speaking thread.” She suspended herself over the Arctic land mass and then rappelled down over the North Atlantic. At the fiftieth latitude, she swung east toward the coast of Newfoundland, continued her descent over Nova Scotia, Maine, and New Hampshire, and fetched up above the state of Massachusetts. To be exact, for Edith was a precise sort, her position was 42° north and 71° west, the latitude and longitude of the city of Boston.
    â€œAll eyes on me, please,” she said.
    Her three children, gathered near the Arctic Circle, looked down.

    â€œI am dangling right above the coastline of the New England state of Massachusetts. This is Boston, home of the finest and the oldest public library in America! As I told you, my mother and I spent a very happy time there.”
    â€œBut the E-Men came, right?” Jo Bell asked with a sigh.
    â€œNo, no.”
    â€œThen why did you leave?” Felix asked. There were several endless seconds, or so it seemed to the children, when Edith grew very still. “Well, Boston was where your grandma died, and I … I felt … so … so …”
    â€œLonely?” Julep asked, thinking how lonely she would feel if her mother were gone.
    â€œYes, there were too many reminders, I suppose. We passed so many happy hours in the children’s room.”
    â€œMom,” Felix said when they had returned to the Constitution . “Is there any art in Boston? Any