Free The Cabinet of Wonders: The Kronos Chronicles: Book I by Marie Rutkoski

Dawn. I’ll be there.”
    Petra practically ran home.
    Through the twilight, she saw the sign with a compass that looked like a flower transformed into a machine, or a machine transformed into a flower. Petra veered. She sprinted around the house to the back. She took off her shoes and loped through Dita’s small garden.
    Petra had avoided coming here. Not because of Dita’s rows of green plants, but because of the building not far from them. It was her father’s smithy, with its forge and a water-filled slack tub for cooling red-hot iron. A little over a month ago, the sight of the smithy would have been disheartening. But tonight her mind burned as brightly with excitement as any piece of fire-tempered metal. Ever since Astrophil had suggested that her father had lost his sight while trying to secure a noblewoman’s education for her, Petra felt a heavy guilt. She wanted to turn that feeling into the glow of pride.
    For twelve years, she had not been what the villagers might call an impressive girl. Petra attended classes at the schoolhouse, butfound them dreadfully boring, and received average marks. She was lean, not exactly pretty—she had high, wide cheekbones and the odd silver eyes of her father. Mikal Kronos always claimed she had a knack for metalworking, but she’d never really applied herself to learning what he could do. Now that she was old enough to become her father’s apprentice, and at least learn the more ordinary aspects of his trade, there was so much that he was unable to do, unable to show her.
    But these things would change.
    Petra entered through the back door. She went to the library and scooped a protesting Astrophil off the pages of a book about geometry. Then she walked into her bedroom, shut the door behind her, and raised her right palm to face the flustered spider.
    “Time for bed,” she announced. “We’re leaving tomorrow. Will you wake me two hours before dawn?”
    He didn’t reply at first. Then he said slowly, “Your plan to go to Prague is brave, Petra, but is it wise?”
    “What could happen to us? We’ll be with Lucie and Pavel. Besides, we’re just going to explore the option of rescuing Father’s eyes. This will be a preliminary investigation. You know I wouldn’t do anything dangerous.”
    If Astrophil had eyebrows, he would have raised them in disbelief. “This adventure could be like a riptide.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “A riptide is when you swim in the sea, close to the shore, never intending to go out very far, and then an underwater current sucks you out far into the deep water.”
    “How poetically
grim
of you, Astrophil. First of all, Bohemia is
landlocked,
remember? We have no seas. So we’ve nothing to fear from riptides.”
    “You are deliberately misunderstanding me.”
    “And second, you’re forgetting just how much we can
learn
from this experience.”
    The spider noticed which word she had stressed. “You are deliberately tempting me.”
    “Think about everything that Prague has to offer. The most learned scholars in Bohemia live there. And what about the prince’s library? Wouldn’t you like to at least see it?”
    The spider was quiet, thinking. Then he said, “I suppose that someone must look after you.”
    “Four o’clock in the morning, then?” Petra said cheerfully.
    “If you actually manage to get out of bed at four o’clock, I will eat my spiderweb.”
    Petra pulled a thick burlap sack from a drawer and filled it with a jug of brassica oil, the little wooden box containing Astrophil’s spoon, a knife, two pairs of trousers, three drawstring shirts, and a work smock. With a grimace, she added a brown skirt that was stiff from having never been worn. She thought a moment, and then tossed in clothes for winter: a hard leather coat and a woolen scarf Dita had knitted for her. Pavel and Lucie might not stay long in Prague. But that didn’t mean she had to leave the city with them.
    She blew out the candle. She would pack the