by Joan Holub
Besides, hadn’t her sisters been coming to the IM to pick up mail from Hermes every week since forever? Without telling her? Checking out wool and knitting supplies seemed to her to be every bit as good a reason to explore the IM as picking up mail. Better, really. Because who needed to read that mean ol’ mortal mail?
“Lachesis and Atropos shouldn’t always get to tell me what to do,” she murmured to herself. “I only need to do better at obeying Zeus’s rules.”
Fired up by that notion, she reversed direction. Now she walked at a brisk pace, her head turning back and forth as she searched for the sewing shop. Along the way, she took the papyrus bakery sack from her travel bag and pulled out the Oracle-O fortune cookie. When she crunched into it, the cookie announced: “Oh, what a tangled web you’ll weave, when first you practice to deceive.”
She scrunched her nose quizzically. “Huh? Are you sure you’re not mislabeled, cookie? I think you must be an Opposite Oracle-O. Because I’m not dishonest.” Then an uncomfortable thought struck her. “Oh, wait, maybe I have been just a teensy bit dishonest today. Because I’ve been talking to mortals here at the IM. Is that what you mean?” she murmured to the cookie. No reply. She sighed. “Well, thank you for the fortune anyway. You are delicious. And that’s no lie!”
Crunch! She finished the cookie off in three bites, then stashed the bakery sack back in her travel bag again and pushed her guilty feelings about being here to the back of her mind. The stores she was passing were so intriguing. She saw a shop called Mighty Fighty that had a window display of armor and weapons. And a wedding shop full of fancy dresses and gifts called Hera’s Happy Endings. Over the years she and her sisters had learned a lot about immortals. For instance, Hera was Zeus’s wife and Athena’s stepmom.
There was also Demeter’s Daisies, Daffodils, and Floral Delights. Demeter was Persephone’s mom, she recalled. The shop’s bright green doors were propped open by various potted plants. Clotho paused to sniff a bunch of yellow flowers for sale. When she got too close to one of the flowers, it snapped at her nose!
Finally she spotted a glass-fronted store called Arachne’s Sewing Supplies across an atrium. She hurried over to it. A sign in its window read: GONE OUT OF BUSINESS.
Unfortunately, paper shades covered the inside of the shop’s large glass door and all its windows. She couldn’t see in to find out if it still contained any wool or yarn now that it was permanently closed. She tried turning the doorknob. Drat. It was locked.
Cupping her hands around her eyes, she attempted to peer in through a narrow gap between one of the shades and the edge of the shop door. She leaned close, her nose pushing against the glass.
Creak! She stumbled forward a few steps. To her surprise, her weight had pushed the door inward a few inches. It turned out that although the knob was locked, the door hadn’t been pulled all the way closed, and so it wasn’t latched. Score!
She decided to sneak in and take a look around, get what she needed, and then sneak out. No problem, right? Hermes had said it was okay to take supplies, so…
Clotho checked over her shoulder to be sure no one in the IM atrium was watching her. Even if it was okay to go inside, she didn’t want anyone to see and start asking questions. As she was glancing around, she caught the eye of a mortal boy one store over. He had spiky hair and wore a green cape—and he was rushing in her direction! Startled, she drew back, but then he angled sharply to run across the atrium.
Her eyes followed him as he went over to stand at the end of a long line of kids queuing up outside another shop’s huge arched entrance. Big, blinking, candlelit letters across the front of that shop proclaimed its name to be Game On! The new place everyone was so excited about. A banner above the sign read: GRAND-OPENING EVENT TODAY!
Everyone in line was focused on the new shop. Neither the caped boy nor anyone else appeared to be paying her the least bit of attention. Quickly Clotho pushed the door of the sewing shop farther open and slipped inside.
Phew. Made it! She leaned back against the door. It closed and latched behind her with a snick. When she gazed around the shop interior, she gasped. Because… woo-hoo! This place was a crafter’s paradise! Despite having gone out of business, it was still well stocked with fabric, yarn, and all kinds of supplies.
Since no one outside the shop could see in through the shades covering the glass door and windows, she decided to take her time investigating. Spotting some stairs at the back of the shop, she headed there first and set her heavy travel bag down on the bottom step. She wiggled her shoulders up and down, back and forth. They kind of hurt from carrying all her junk around with her all the time.
The store looked a bit gloomy. And it had a slightly musty smell, like it had been abandoned for quite a while. Tall bolts of fabric stood on end on long rows of shelves. They were tilted at an angle, as if they’d gotten tired of standing upright with no customers in sight and had given in to slumping over. The floor was covered with a thin layer of dust.
Still, as Clotho wandered around, her excitement grew. Everywhere she looked, she saw stuff she and her sisters could use: yarn, thread, scissors, pins, embroidery hoops, small silver needles for sewing, brightly colored long needles for knitting, and hooks for crocheting.
Much like the Oracle-O Bakery, everything here was well organized. She admired one entire wall lined with shelves and cubbies that were stuffed with skeins and balls of yarn of any color she could ever want. Upon closer inspection, however, she noticed that many of the yarn skeins were droopy and the balls flattened. She pulled a bright blue ball from a cubby. This caused a small puff of dust to kick up and made her sneeze. Achoo!
Noticing a large loom for weaving cloth that had been set up in one corner of the shop, she went over to check it out. The loom wasn’t threaded. If Lachesis were here she’d thread the thing up in a hot minute! That girl loved to weave and wouldn’t have been able to resist. And all those scissors hanging on a turquoise pegboard? Clotho didn’t know why you would need so many differently shaped blades, but Atropos would know the special use for each one. She’d go crazy over them.
Then Clotho spotted her own little piece of crafty heaven in the center of the shop. Bins and bins that held everything from alpaca fleece to angora wool to sheep’s wool to cotton and silk. Wowza!
She rushed over to her bag and grabbed her distaff and spindle. Then she returned to dust off a stool near the bins and sit. In a flash she became absorbed in spinning the sheep and angora wool to test their textures. Spinning required multitasking. It wasn’t easy to control the amount of fiber you were twisting while spinning it. It was sort of like trying to pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time!
Lulled as she was by the familiar and comfortable task, a couple of hours passed without Clotho realizing it. At last she stood and reached her arms high in a stretch. After lowering them, she turned in a circle to again gaze upon the riches surrounding her. To think that no one was using any of this. What a waste.
An idea took shape in her brain. Why not come here every day to spin, knit, and crochet stuff? Her sisters wouldn’t have to know. It wasn’t exactly lying to leave out information, was it?
And next visit, she wouldn’t talk to any mortals. None. Zip. She could still peek out at them and pretend to herself that she was friends with some of them without them knowing. No rule against that. Doing so would make her feel less, well… less lonely. Sure, she knew her sisters cared about her, but it had been fun to be around other girls besides them today.
Quickly Clotho pulled some raw sheep’s wool from one of the bins. She would take it with her to the constellation tonight and spin it. Then tomorrow morning, she’d return here and knit some green yarn into serpent puppets. Even though Hermes had said it was okay to take what she needed, she decided to leave some drachmas on a dusty counter in payment for what she was taking. If someone did indeed still own the shop and happened by at some point, they’d no doubt appreciate the money she left.
“Mew.
Mew.”
Wait—what was that? The sound was coming from over by the stairs. From a kitten! It was now perched on the bottom step, sniffing around her bag.
Moving toward the kitten, she extended her hand in a friendly way, cooing in a sweet voice. “Hello, kitty. Where’d you come from?” When she got close enough, she stroked the top of its head with her fingertips.
It cocked its fuzzy head cutely, gazing at her with big green eyes. Then it rolled over in a long stretch. It even let her pick it up. She dropped down to sit on the bottom step, then set the kitten in her lap and ran a hand lightly over its soft white fur. Snuggling in, it began to purr in a soft rumble she could feel under her palm. Her heart melted like chocolate in the sun.
“Aww! You are sooo adorable. But what are you doing all alone? How’d you get in here?”
“Purrr,” the kitten replied.
“Sorry, I don’t actually speak cat language.” She could feel its ribs, she realized. “You hungry?” She pulled the bakery sack from her travel bag, then shared some crumbled cookie tidbits. Although it probably wasn’t the healthiest cat food ever, the kitten ate greedily.
Hearing a dripping sound coming from somewhere, Clotho went to investigate, leaving the kitten to eat. Behind the stairs she found a small kitchenette with a sink and cupboards, a little table, four chairs, and some dishes. She got a bowl and filled it with water.
While carrying it back, she spotted a kitten-size hole along one wall near the floor. It led directly from the IM to outdoors. Mystery solved—that had to be how the kitten had gotten in here. By the time she reached the stairs again, the kitten had finished the snack crumbles. Thirstily it drank the water she offered, then licked its fur for a while.
Clotho tried playing with the cutie-pie fur ball, dragging a piece of yarn across the floor for it to chase. It attacked. It pounced. Sooo adorbs! Watching it, she felt a tug at her heart. She’d never told her sisters she yearned for a pet. What if she took this one with her when she left here? Maybe she could carry it around in her bag? No, that wouldn’t be responsible. This kitten had made a home for itself in here. It wouldn’t be fair to make it homeless like she was.
Eventually the kitten got tired and curled up in a basket of unspun wool for a nap. Clotho petted it and petted it, falling completely in love. It purred loudly for her, almost seeming to smile.
This kitten needed her. Not just for food and water, but also for love. It was probably every bit as lonely as that serpent back in Colchis. Remembering her plan to return to the shop every day, she figured she now had an even more important reason to do so. She needed to care for this kitten! She’d feed it, play with it, and love it, and it would love her back, she thought with a happy sigh.
Suddenly a new thought struck her. “I guess you don’t already belong to anyone, huh, little kitten?”
“It’s a stray,” a teeny, squeaky voice informed her. “Wanders in here to keep me company and sleeps inside the shop sometimes.”
Clotho jumped up and her head whipped around. Her eyes swept the room, looking for the owner of the voice. “Huh? Who said that?”
“Me,” squeaked the voice.
It was coming from upstairs, Clotho realized. She went to investigate and was halfway up the steps when she passed through some almost-invisible sticky strands, which clung to her. “Ew! Yuck. Spiderwebs.” She batted them away.
“Hey, watch it! Took me ten minutes to spin that web,” grumped that same teeny, squeaky voice.
Clotho froze. “Who said that?”
“Me. The owner of this store, who’d you think?”
“Owner?” Her heart sank, her dream of making this into her own personal daytime workspace and hangout dimming like a dying candle. She squinted into the semidarkness at the top of the stairs, where the voice was coming from. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to trespass or anything. Hermes told me about this shop and I just had to see it. The door wasn’t closed all the way, so I was hoping to take some wool. I left some drachmas on the counter to pay for it. Um, who… where are you, anyway?”
She heard a small sigh. Then the voice came again. “Not everyone travels on big feet stomping across the ground like you, you know. I’m up here, foolish girl.”
Clotho’s gaze rose to another web, which hung high in a corner of the staircase where two walls met the ceiling. A brown spider sat upon it. And it was staring right at her with all eight of its beady, round eyes! Good thing she wasn’t afraid of spiders. In fact she actually found them interesting. She stepped closer.
That was when she noticed the single word woven into the web: ARACHNE.
“Are you… Arachne?” Clotho guessed, staring up at the creature.
The spider puffed herself up, appearing pleased. “Why, yes. I’m not surprised you’ve heard of me. I was once pretty famous.”
“Well, your name is on the sign outside the shop. And in your web up there too, so it wasn’t hard to guess.” Clotho tilted her head, a little confused. “I’ve never met a talking spider, though. Or heard of a spider owning a store, either. I didn’t think bugs were able to do stuff like that.”
“Bug? No way. I’m an arachnid!” huffed Arachne.
But Clotho wasn’t really listening. Because she’d just noticed there were other spiderwebs along the ceiling with shocking words woven into them, such as THEENY IS A MEANIE! ZEUS IS A GOOSE! It was a well-known fact that Theeny was Zeus’s nickname for his beloved daughter Athena.
Clotho pointed at the web words in horror. “Did you spin those sayings? They could get you in a lot of trouble.”
“Trouble, schmubble,” muttered Arachne. Letting out a single long, silvery thread, she lowered herself to hang about a foot above Clotho’s nose. “I’m no stranger to trouble. Do you think I’ve always been a spider? Nope! I was once a mortal. A magnificent weaver, the best on Earth, and this was my shop. Until that goddessgirl Athena ruined things by turning me into an arachnid. I had to crawl all the way back here after losing a weaving contest to her. I’ve never forgiven her.”
“Athena invented weaving, right?” Clotho mused aloud. “So I’m wondering why she would turn a great weaver like you into a spider.”
A shifty look came into Arachne’s eyeballs. She raised one hairy leg, then lowered it. Probably a spider’s version of a shrug. “No clue. Well, I may have woven a tapestry of Zeus dancing around with a thunderbolt stuck in his foot and his tunic on fire. Hilarious, right? Some immortals can’t take a joke.”
Clotho gasped. “What? That’s terrible. No wonder you got in trouble!”
The spider slid down a few more inches of silver thread to dangle closer. “Yeah, well, I still don’t think it was fair. So what’s your name, anyway?” Arachne asked her, changing the subject.
“Clotho,” said Clotho. Then she winced. She’d done it again! Her and her big mouth. But this spider likely had no more idea of who she was than the girls in the bakery had. “Anyway, I guess I should get going.” She turned to leave.
“Wait! Don’t you want to see the rest of my shop? C’mon.” Arachne sped up her sticky vertical thread and took off across the ceiling, moving farther upstairs. “Besides my room, there are three more little rooms up here. Plus a bathroom.”
Clotho considered this information as she climbed the rest of the way up the stairs and peeked inside each room. Her heart began to pound with excitement. It was just the way she’d always imagined her home might be. Three rooms, one for her and for each of her sisters, where they could keep their stuff and be private when they wanted to. And downstairs, some hangout space and a kitchen. Plus, a big, fat bonus—the shop. This place had all the space and supplies they could ever need!
It was perfect except for two things. First, Arachne owned all of this. And second, Clotho’s sisters didn’t seem to want a permanent home. Still, she could so easily picture them all working here at night on the Destiny List. Most IM shops would close once it grew dark, so no mortals would be around then. If only.
Just then the
sounds of distant footsteps, cheers, and laughter floated up to her ears. Had someone else entered the shop? Clotho crept back downstairs but saw no one. The sounds were coming from out in the atrium. She went over to the door, lifted the edge of the shade covering it, and peeked out. Across the atrium, the long line of people had finally begun moving into Game On!
She glanced back at the kitten and saw that it was still sleeping atop the basket of wool. Cassandra had said there would be food at that grand-opening event across the way. Including little sandwiches. Possibly she could find something there like tuna fish that would be more appropriate to feed a kitten. She ran over and grabbed her bag.
“Arachne? I’m going to that new gaming shop to see if there are any snacks the kitten might like. Be right back,” she called in the direction of the stairs. No answer from the spider. “I’ll be back!” Clotho called again, louder this time. Still no answer.
Shrugging, she slung the straps of her travel bag over one shoulder. After pinching off a piece of sheep’s wool from a bundle in one of the baskets, she stepped outside the shop. Before the door could click tight behind her, she carefully slipped the hunk of wool between the lock mechanism and its counterpart in the door frame. Then she gently closed it. There was no click sound. Satisfied that the door would appear to passersby to be securely latched (even though it wasn’t), she hurried across the atrium to join the throng heading into the brand-new Game On!
5 Game On!
AFTER FIFTEEN MINUTES SPENT IN line, Clotho was finally moving through the tall arched entrance to Game On! The arch was carved with fancy scrollwork that was entwined with figures of the goddesses and gods of Mount Olympus fighting against the Titans in a famous war called the Titanomachy. There was Zeus hurling a mighty thunderbolt. And Athena holding an owl that represented her famed wisdom. And Ares, the god of war, holding a spear high as if poised to strike down enemies.
Once beyond the arch, Clotho found herself in a lobby with several booths displaying game-related merchandise for sale. She kept going. A mortal employee dressed in an oracle costume and wearing a sparkly Game On! hat came over to her. “Welcome! I predict you will have fun at Game On!” he said. Then he pulled a thumb-size stone with a number painted on it from a bag he carried. “For choosing team captains today,” he informed her.