“Let’s take cover in there,” Arturo said, pointing to an opening in the rock beside them. Ferns and grass grew almost completely over the entrance, as if no one had been in the cave for a long time.

“How far back do you think it goes?” Esmerelda asked, leading them in without waiting for his answer.

Fortunately, the cave wasn’t very deep at all. They could still see by the light trickling in from outside when they reached the back. And what they saw there was surprising indeed. Uniforms, weapons, wooden chests of supplies — all of it buried under a thick layer of cobwebs. It looked like they’d found a military outpost.

“Do you think these are from this war, or the last one?” Esmerelda said, brushing away a web and picking up a sword that still looked sharp.

“Neither one,” Arturo said, though he suspected she’d been joking. “I think this is all much older. Just look at this map.” He angled the crumbling parchment in his hands so that she could see it over his shoulder. The map depicted the Ottoman Empire, a place Arturo only knew about from history class.

“How are we ever going to get it all back?”

“Back? You mean, you want to take this stuff? I guess once a thief, always a thief.”

“How many times do I have to tell you I’m sorry about that?” Esmerelda asked. She didn’t sound very sorry anymore.

“I just worry about what will happen when the owners of this stuff come looking for it. What if they’re pirates? Or killers? That’s how it would go in a story.”

“Well, this isn’t a story. And no one has been here in ages, clearly. Unless you count the spiders.”

Arturo wasn’t convinced.

“Fine. What if we each just take one thing?” she said.

“One thing?”

“Just one. I already know what I’m picking.”

Esmerelda grabbed a necklace with a purple stone pendant and placed it over her head. The necklace looked stunning on her.

“All right, then. You win, as usual,” Arturo said, laughing. “What about this?” He grabbed an old officer’s coat from one of the chests. When he pushed his arms through the sleeves, he was amazed to discover that it was a perfect fit.

“You were meant to find it,” Esmerelda said.

Arturo smiled. The past few months had been so full of uncertainty, it was wonderful for something to feel like it made sense.

“Now come on,” she said. “The rain has stopped, and I can ride back on your handlebars. We’ll come back here later with a tool to fix my bicycle.”

They left the cave then, giddy with their discoveries. But they would never see this cave, or Esmerelda’s bicycle, again.

A few nights later, in the quiet of his room, Arturo put on his coat once more, imagining that he really was a storied officer and not a boy about to become a pawn — either for the Germans or for the Russians, it hardly seemed to matter.

He felt a knot poking him in the ribs, and at first, he thought it must be a stray button. But when there was no button in sight, Arturo realized there must be something inside the lining of the coat. Knowing that his mother could always sew it back up, Arturo retrieved a knife from the kitchen and cut into the fabric. Inside, he discovered a hidden pocket made from a fine, white silk that seemed awfully extravagant for something not meant to be seen. He turned the pocket over.

Two rings fell into his hand.

They were rings unlike any Arturo had ever seen. In place of jewels, each ring had a large, lifelike spider. One had long, thin legs and a kind of plate armor on its back; the other had tiny legs but a large glass body.

Arturo couldn’t imagine why these rings had been hidden away in the secret pocket of this coat. He finally decided it was so that he could discover them — that just like the coat itself, he had been meant to find them.

Arturo knew what these rings were for. It couldn’t wait. He had to see Esmerelda.

“I just don’t understand why we have to leave like this, in the middle of the night, without a word to our parents.”

“Fine, we can leave them notes.”

Esmerelda crossed her arms. Her eyes darted to her bedroom door, as if her parents might be on the other side listening in.

“You know what I mean,” she said.

“I don’t think you understand how serious this is, Esmerelda. In another week, I could be off fighting, and then it won’t matter how much we love each other or whether we have our parents’ blessing.”

Esmerelda bit her lip and scowled. It was the face she often made when she was reading a book and came to a part she didn’t like.

“This all sounds very dangerous, Arturo.”

“That’s exactly why I thought you’d be excited.”

“It is sort of exciting, isn’t it?” she said, cracking a smile. Then she seemed to remember where she was. “But how will we make any money? What will we do?”

“We could sell these rings,” Arturo said.

Esmerelda looked down at the ring on her left hand. Arturo had taken his mother’s ash-wood box — the one in which she stored needles in one end and thread in the other — and placed the ring that looked more like Esmerelda in it. In the other end, he’d written her a note, so that she could read, rather than hear, the question: Will you marry me?

“I don’t want to sell the ring,” she said finally. “I only just got it.”

“Then we’ll figure something else out. Esmerelda, you have to trust me.”

Neither of them could imagine the web that had drawn them in from that night onward. A web as old as war and as deadly, too.

In accepting these rings, Arturo and Esmerelda had forever changed the course of their lives. They believed they were embarking upon a new story, when in fact they had been drawn into a story already long in place.

“For that is the blessing and the curse of youth, you must understand,” Arturo told Maria now. “Believing that no one else has lived your story before, and no one else will live it again. But I have been where you are now, Maria. I used my powers without regard for the consequences, and I was found out, just as you have been.”

“Found out by you?” Maria asked.

Arturo sadly shook his head. “I wish it were only by me. I am not your enemy. But the Black Widow — the Black Widow knows you have the ring. She killed Esmerelda … and now she is after you.”

She’d held off through his entire story, but now, at the end, Maria finally sat down.

“So you and Grandma Esme were married?” she said.

Arturo didn’t respond. He spun his ring around his finger.

“I still don’t understand. Who is the Black Widow? A person?”

“In most senses, but not all. The Black Widow is the most powerful and treacherous of all in the Order of Anansi. For years, she has been hunting down the other members of the Order and killing them for their rings.”

“Why?”

“The rings all draw their power from the spiders, but they each have their own special qualities, as unique as their species. A person who has more than one ring increases her or his power exponentially. According to legend, a person who collects all eight rings will have power to rival that of Anansi himself.”

“‘Legend’ meaning that book?” Maria said, nodding toward the leather tome.

“Well, yes, I suppose so. But that book contains the knowledge of many generations of the Order. I myself have annotated it with the things I have learned. In all that time, no single person has obtained all eight rings. As of right now, the Black Widow has six.”