Ravenspell Book 1: Of Mice and Magic by David Farland

intellectual giant. He could appreciate potty jokes. Yes, quite the scholar—for a pill bug.”
    Ben objected, “Just because it’s a stupid bug doesn’t mean it should be put to death.”
    “Too late now,” the spider said, “I done injected him with my venom. He’s already walked through the tunnel of light. Probably whooping it up with his pill bug ancestors. He didn’t suffer none.”
    “Oh,” Ben said. He still felt terrible. But there was nothing he could do for the bug now.
    Ben held up his light and began looking for a weapon. There wasn’t much here. He jumped up on the tool bench and found his dad’s container of nails. The spider kept talking while Ben searched for a weapon.
    “Besides,” Cob hollered. “A fellow has got to eat. Been a tough winter. I sat out under the lilac bush for months. Didn’t catch a danged thing in my web but a couple of snowflakes. Had some big hail last winter too—slashed my nets to shreds.”
    Most of the nails felt too big and heavy for Ben to carry, and the nails were really too dull to use as weapons. Ben began digging through the tin.
    The spider kept talking, ignoring the fact that Ben felt uncomfortable talking to him. “Most cobs would’ve starved. But not me. I went on a safari. Last week, I bagged me an assassin bug. He put up quite a battle.”
    Ben glanced over. Cob stood a little taller. He was proud of catching that bug. Ben wasn’t sure what an assassin bug was, but it sounded dangerous. “You caught one all by yourself?” Ben asked. “Where is it?”
    Cob squatted a little, deflating. “Well, uh, I tried dragging him home, but some ants caught the scent. Big old Mako fire ants, following the smell of fresh meat up from the hayfields. They kept coming at me, and I fought them off. And while I was fighting some of them off, others snuck in and grabbed pieces of my assassin bug.
    “By the time I got home, all I had left was pretty much an empty shell . . .” He nodded to the piñata hanging in his web. “Yep, he was a biggun.”
    “I’m sorry you lost your dinner,” Ben said. He glanced down. Bingo! He found a large needle, the one that his dad had bought to mend their canvas tent. “Don’t be sorry for me,” Cob said. “I got a little something to eat, and I had a grand adventure! You want to be sorry for someone, be sorry for the starving spiders that don’t eat. I hear there’s like a hundred quadrillion of ’em over in China. Hardly a fly over there to eat. Them human kung fu masters just sit around all day catching flies with their chopsticks. Don’t give no never mind to other folks’ needs.”
    Ben stood on the counter for a moment, studying his needle. A round brass doorknob nearby formed an almost perfect mirror.
    Ben held the needle like a spear, as if he would jab it, and peered at his reflection. “You looking at me, cat? You looking at me? Smile when you say that!”
    The spider studied Ben, then hopped a little closer. “Hey,” he said, “You must be that boy who got hisself turned into a mouse.”
    “Y—yeah,” Ben stammered. “How did you know?”
    “Heard about it on the web,” the spider said, as he reached out with one languid leg and plucked a silk line running across the ground. “You see, my trunk line here goes outside and connects with the widow’s web under the mulberry bush. Whenever she wants to talk, she speaks into her web, and it causes the line to vibrate. Then I hear her on my side of the web. Her web connects to a burrow spider’s line out back, and on and on. I can keep in touch with spiders all over town, all over the country.”
    “Wow,” Ben said. “Us people do the same thing with computers. It’s called the World Wide Web.”
    “Humph,” the spider scoffed. “Us spiders were big on webs long before you humans figured out how to wipe your own noses.”
    Ben practiced a couple of thrusts with the needle. Cob moved closer to take a better look.
    “So, you gonna find out what