Ginger noticed the web because the morning sun found it before she did.

She had gone outside early, when the yard was still cool and the shadows stretched long across the ground. The night had left tiny drops of dew on the grass and flowers, and Ginger was wandering along the edge of the garden when something flashed between two branches of a bush. At first, she thought it was a piece of silver thread caught in the leaves. Then she moved a little to one side, and an entire web appeared.'

It was enormous, or at least it seemed enormous to Ginger. It stretched from one branch to another in a nearly perfect circle, with delicate lines running from the middle to the edges and smaller threads looping around and around them. Every strand was covered with drops of dew. The sunlight touched those drops, and suddenly the web glittered. Silver. Gold. Blue. Then silver again.

Ginger crouched beside it, careful not to bump the branches. She had seen spiderwebs before, tucked into corners or stretched beneath porch steps, but she had never seen one quite like this.

Then something moved in the center.

Ginger jumped backward. A spider sat there. It wasn't a very large spider, but Ginger thought any spider looked large when you were close enough to count its legs. Its body was round, and its eight legs rested lightly on the threads.

Ginger leaned forward again. “You made all of this.”

The spider did not answer.

Ginger studied the web. She wondered how something so small could make something so complicated. There were no knots that she could see, no crooked places, no pieces tied together. Somehow the spider had carried that thread through empty air and built a whole silver world out of it.

Ginger walked around the bush to see the web from the other side. It almost disappeared. She stepped back and there it was. She stepped sideways and it was gone again. Ginger spent several minutes making the web appear and disappear simply by moving through the sunlight.

Then she saw a broken place near the bottom. One of the silver strands had snapped, leaving a small opening in the otherwise perfect circle.

Ginger wondered if she should help. Maybe she could find a piece of thread. Maybe she could tie the broken ends together. She was already imagining herself repairing the web when the spider suddenly began to move.

Ginger froze.

The spider hurried across the web, traveling along one strand and then another. It reached the broken place and began working. Ginger leaned closer. A new thread appeared behind it. The spider moved back and forth, attaching one end here and another there. Ginger could barely see what it was doing, but little by little the hole grew smaller.

“Well,” Ginger said. “I guess you don't need me.”

The spider continued working, and Ginger sat down in the dirt to watch. A breeze moved through the yard. The branches swayed, and the entire web stretched with them. Ginger expected it to tear apart, but it didn't. It bent. It trembled. It shimmered in the sunlight. Then it settled back into place.

Ginger looked at the spider differently after that. A few minutes earlier, she had thought the web was the remarkable thing. Now she wasn't so sure.

She stayed until the spider finished repairing the broken strands. By then, the sun had climbed higher. The dew began disappearing, one tiny drop at a time, and the beautiful silver web slowly became harder to see. Soon it looked like nothing more than a few faint threads hanging between the branches.

Ginger stood up. She knew the web was still there, even though the sunlight no longer made it sparkle.

Later that afternoon, Ginger returned to the bush. The spider was gone, but the web was still there.

That night, the wind began to blow. Ginger could hear branches scraping softly outside her window, and she thought about the delicate web in the garden. She was certain it would be gone by morning.

As soon as she woke, she hurried outside. The old web was gone. Only two broken strands remained between the branches.

Ginger searched the bush for the spider but couldn't find it. She checked beneath the leaves and along the fence. Nothing.

Then something caught the morning light farther down the garden.Ginger walked toward it. Between two completely different branches hung a brand-new web. It was larger than the first, and right in the middle sat the spider.

Ginger smiled. “You've been busy.”

She crouched beside the web as the rising sun turned its dew-covered threads to silver. This time, Ginger didn't wonder how long it would last.

She just watched it shine.