by Vered Ehsani
Observing my attention, he said in his whispery voice, “I’m still recovering, you know, so my energy isn’t what it used to be.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you,” I said, closing my journal and fingering my pen.
He shrugged his shoulders. “There’s not much you could’ve done.”
That was probably true, but I still regretted not being by my dead husband’s side in his time of need. Mrs. Cricket had been an offensive personage of the worst sort, as Lilly, Gideon and I had all learned first hand.
“Do you want me to sing to you?” he asked.
I smiled at that. It had been his custom to sing to me at bedtime when he’d been alive, as it relaxed my mind and eased away the nightmare images from my work. The habit had continued after his death.
“I’ve missed that the past few weeks,” I admitted. “Where’s Liam?”
Gideon shuddered as he floated closer. “I never want to be inside an automaton again. I left that pigskin-covered rust bucket near Dr. Cricket’s house.” He grinned, some of his naughtiness shining through. “Won’t he be surprised?”
“Pleasantly so, I hope,” I said, although without Mrs. Cricket’s spirit animating the engine and giving the metal man its power of movement, he probably wouldn’t be too impressed.
I blew out the candle and settled into bed, but Gideon wasn’t ready to sing just yet. “What’ve you been up to lately?” he asked, sitting down near me, or pretending to.
“Oh, not much,” I said. “I escaped demonic possession, vanquished an evil spirit, saw my cousin married to a shape-shifter, fed a were-lion, that sort of thing.”
His smile broadened. “So same old thing then. What else is new?”
I could just make out his face from the light of the moon sneaking through. I’d forgotten to draw the curtains.
I sighed, physically ready to sleep even as my mind churned about. I told him about finding Lilly in the cave, and how Mr. Timmons had absorbed Mrs. Cricket’s spirit from me; Nelly’s new gift of speed; Dr. Ribeiro, his animal training abilities and his extensive knowledge of unusual facts; Drew’s re-appearance; Lilly’s wedding; and the were-lion’s visit.
“And why did Kam so desperately need to tell you about the Spider Anansi?” Gideon asked, his soft voice suspicious, for he could tell I was holding something back.
I sighed again, wishing he’d leave it alone and sing. “Remember when I told you about Koki?”
“Koki,” he mused. “The psychopathic bug?”
“A Mantis, actually,” I said. “And the wife of Anansi, the only creature who seems able to survive her habit of decapitating anything that moves.” I paused for effect. “She’s on her way here.”
The silence that followed my pronouncement was worse than the conversation.
Finally Gideon spoke. “She knows you’re here?”
“Yes.”
“You’re the reason she’s coming?”
“Yes.”
Gideon leaned toward me, his eyes fierce. “Then run. Run away, Bee. I’ll come with you. We can…” He searched for words.
“Keep running?” I offered. “Because that’s what I’d have to do, Gideon. Keep moving, keep hiding, avoid contact with anyone who could come to harm. And when I’m too old or sick or tired to go further, what then? She’ll find me eventually.”
More moon-drenched silence slid between us.
“So that’s why Kam went to find the Spider?” Gideon asked, his voice as weary as I felt.
“Yes,” I said and closed my eyes against visions of a future too terrible to contemplate. “Now can you sing?”
He did. As I sunk through the layers of consciousness to sleepy oblivion on the waves of his voice, I prayed his song was strong enough to hold the nightmares at bay.
Chapter 13
Kam appeared the next morning with a solemn expression and a dead gazelle.
“It’s that wretched porter,” Mrs. Steward complained when she saw through a window who was on the veranda. “Jonas, tell the boy we have no work for him.”
Jonas, who was clearing away breakfast plates, scowled at her back and I sympathized, for how could he tell the God of Lightning such a thing? Pretending not to have understood, he said in a vapid tone, “Yes, mama, I’m working on it,” and limped into the kitchen before she could correct him.
“He’s not a porter, you know,” I told her as I rose to meet Kam.
“Well, I’m sure he isn’t anymore,” Mrs. Steward snapped, fatigued from all the wedding activities and the vast amounts of advice she had felt obliged to deliver. “I’m sure he’s not anything at all. With his attitude, he probably can’t hold down the simplest of jobs for more than a week.”
She wagged a pudgy finger at me. “Don’t give him anything, Bee. These people will become lazy and spoiled and quite useless if we over-indulge them. And we can’t afford to fight a battle to put them right. Our troops are too caught up fighting those terrible Boers to now have to sort this lot out. Give nothing at all, Beatrice.”
“I’ll try not to,” I said dryly and closed the front door firmly behind me as I stepped outside.
I nodded at Kam who returned the gesture. “What’s the gazelle for?” I asked without preamble. I’d given up apologizing to him for Mrs. Steward’s rambles.
“An offering,” came the response.
As neither of us required offerings in the form of dead herbivores, it was safe to assume the carcass was meant for Anansi the Spider.
“Bring Nelly,” Kam ordered in the same flat, gravelly voice and he strode to the barn, dribbling blood in his wake.
“Good morning to you too,” I muttered but I knew such civilities were beneath Kam, who viewed them as a superficial waste of time, or so I’d deduced from my interactions with him.
And that suited me very well, I decided. I wasn’t too keen on small talk myself, and really every minute lost was one minute closer to the inevitable encounter with Koki the Mantis.
I grabbed my walking stick, put on my hat with its solitary feather bouncing jauntily about, stuffed my feet into riding boots and slipped into my pocket a sachet of cinnamon. The spice was in case the Spider became too frisky; cinnamon works wonders on all sorts of insects.
Kam was inside the barn, talking to Nelly who wasn’t paying much attention, being far more engaged with her oats.
“Serpent spirits are creatures of the sky,” Kam said as I walked in.
“Really,” I said as I flung a saddle onto Nelly. She grunted and eyed me reproachfully. I breathed in the scent of oiled leather and warm horse. My skin tingled with the coolness of the night that still lingered in the shadowy barn, fresh and hay-scented.
“Serpent spirits are like lightning,” he continued in one of his rare talkative spells. “They can ride the air currents.”
Puzzled at the sudden interest in storytelling, I focused on the saddle buckles. Leather creaked and the other horses nickered wistfully.
“This horse has the serpent energy,” he said.
That drew my attention to him. I hadn’t informed Kam about the serpent spirit that had drained a zebra to death and then had possessed Nelly. Nelly had in turn devoured the serpent and acquired the power of speed and, apparently, of flight.
“Yes?” I said, already deducing where this conversation was going to end and fervently hoping I was mistaken.
“It’s faster,” Kam said with finality, staring at me as if daring me to contradict his assertion.
“And so?”
With a slight frown that indicated his disappointment at my obstinacy, he gestured for me to mount my horse.
“Oh dear,” I said, not liking the prospect of flying along the air currents.
Galloping on Nelly was challenging enough and on one occasion, she’d unseated me with the unexpected speed. But flying? My first and last flight had been in the claws of a giant bat under less than ideal circumstances, which hardly enamored me to the activity.
Kam led Nelly out and arou
nd the back of the barn, out of sight of the main house. I tucked my stick under one armpit and tied my hat’s ribbons firmly under my chin.
“Are you sure this is absolutely necessary?” I asked, gripping the saddle’s pommel.
Kam merely provided me his flat, unrelenting stare before whispering into Nelly’s ear.
The horse perked up. With an energetic nicker and a stamp of hooves, she bounded upward and continued moving in that direction. Lightning flashed by her side.
I dared to glance down and decided that was entirely unwarranted. I focused between Nelly’s ears and even such a narrow view was alarming. Clouds disintegrated before us, leaving only a film of moisture on my face. Sunlight blurred into streaks and sporadic sparks. There was most assuredly lightning involved, for I heard the crackles and the air was suffused in the tingly scent of ozone.
Before I could become too accustomed to the experience (not that I ever really could), we were hurtling toward the ground, an even more distressing sensation than our ascent had been.
I tried tugging at the reins without loosening my grip on the saddle but Nelly paid me no heed at all. Ears flat against her thick head, lips pulled back and flapping in the whistling wind buffeting us about, she stared fixedly at the rapidly approaching ground.
I closed my eyes and prepared myself for impact. Hopefully this beast of a horse would take the full brunt of the collision, although I doubted that would save me.
Hooves smacked against the ground and a few paces later, Nelly stopped with a snort and another bodily noise. A crack of lightning on one side caused me to finally open my eyes. Kam stood nearby, skin markings sparkling and shifting all over his skin. He looked disgustingly pleased with himself.
My hands ached from gripping the saddle’s pommel so fiercely and I allowed myself a moment to release each finger from around the leather, waiting for the tingle of returning blood to fade away before I leveled a glare at Kam.
“A little notice would have been appreciated,” I said with all the sternness of a school teacher.
He shrugged his broad, muscular shoulders and turned away, but not before I noticed the edge of his smile.
I slid off Nelly and held onto her, for my head was still all aflutter with the flight. Once the world had ceased gyrating around me, I studied our surroundings. We’d landed in a jungle.
That was my first impression. Giant trees towered above, their branches so intertwined there were barely gaps for the sky to be visible. Ropey roots dangled down, while large, buttressing roots jutted out of the tree trunks and plunged into the ground in thick, wooden sheets.
My highly sensitive olfactory senses tingled. I breathed in the scent of rich, dark soil full of decomposing leaves and fresh flowers. Water dripped nearby while further on a waterfall rumbled. The air was cool and moist, so unlike Nairobi.
Small animals and birds rustled through the luxurious growth, but they were not a concern. Before me was proof that a far mightier creature had forced passage through a nearby cluster of giant bamboo. The resulting tunnel was twice my height and as wide as it was tall, and bore straight through the tall, thick stems and slender leaves of bamboo until it rounded a corner. Pale green light filled the resulting space.
The bamboo stems were each thicker than my thigh. What could possibly be able to push through them as if they were mere blades of grass?
Whatever had created that tunnel was huge, and I didn’t believe it was an elephant.
Chapter 14
“Where are we?” I asked, eyeing the tunnel.
“Your people call this place Mt. Kenya,” Kam said. Thunder rumbled overhead and he said no more but shifted the dead gazelle to his shoulder and turned toward the bamboo tunnel.
Nelly peered at the tunnel’s entrance, snorted, eyed me with a surprised expression, sat on her ample rump and began deflowering a white angel trumpet bush.
“Those are poisonous,” I informed her as I followed Kam in. “They could kill you, you treacherous beast.”
Nelly neighed in a manner suspiciously like a laugh and continued eating the lethal bell-shaped flowers.
Inside the bamboo tunnel existed a stillness that I could sense was unnatural. A number of bird species use bamboo leaves for nesting material, yet the giant stems were empty of winged life. Bits of broken bamboo crunched underfoot, or at least under my feet; Kam’s bare feet glided along soundlessly, leaving me as the only source of noise in the tunnel.
“Is it too much to hope that this is all merely the result of an elephant herd passing through?” I asked. Kam’s silence was all the response I received.
Although elephants preferred the open plains, I knew from the foreign hunters who transited through Nairobi that there were elephants living in the forests around the mountain. Perhaps?
But no, that was wishful thinking on my part. I knew why we were here.
I hefted my walking stick, reassured by its weight and thickness, and by the knowledge of the gadgets it contained inside. I wondered if any would be of use against a creature as big as the one we were following.
“This is from Anansi?” I finally ventured to ask, just to hear something apart from my noisy feet.
Kam nodded, unconcerned that we were tracking a spider larger than a grown elephant.
The bamboo tunnel burrowed straight through the jungle and I began to believe that the whole mountain was made of bamboo until we reached a break in the wall. I glanced out at the vista and stopped walking.
Below us lay a small, narrow valley thick with trees and bird songs. Weaver birds flashed about, yellow smudges against the riot of greens. A cluster of banana trees huddled under the massive Bombax tree that dominated the scene, while thorn trees spread their branches calmly amongst the chaos. A soft veil of mist filled the spaces in between, blurring the crisp edges of foliage, transforming the landscape into a dream.
Within the tendrils of fog lingered the ozone and earth-scented breath of the ancient world, one that knew nothing of men and machines, but was deeply aware of giant insects and large snakes. While a mist-magnified daylight pushed its way up from behind the opposite hill, the valley clung to the muted colors and stillness of a pre-dawn night.
I started to speak, to dare to break the spell. Kam waved his hand imperiously and gestured away from the break in the bamboo.
Pointing to a clearing further down the tunnel, he said, “The Spider awaits.”
I followed him to where the bamboo tunnel opened up into a circular space that reminded me of the giant snake’s nest Mr. Timmons and I had hidden in. Crushed bamboo stalks created a bouncy floor while pale green stalks rose above us, an arching green roof. But it was the form at the furthest end of the clearing that gave me pause.
At first, I couldn’t comprehend what I was standing before. I saw only a large mound, covered in prickles, each a hand-length tall. Thick, ropey roots stuck out at regular intervals. When one of those roots twitched, I saw the scene differently: the prickles were golden-tipped hairs, the roots were legs.
Two large, glassy eyes, unblinking and glossy black, stared out of a vaguely human face. Below these two was a row of four smaller eyes; on the top of the head were two narrow eyes, as if the creature was perpetually squinting up at whatever was on the ceiling. It was indeed a spider and one of immense proportions.
I waited for the beast to shift into a human form but he didn’t; I however did shift about uneasily. I’m not the squeamish sort, but I wasn’t overly fond of insects of any size, particularly when they’re the size of an elephant. I prefer insects that are smaller than my shoe, for obvious reasons.
I could of course appreciate that he would have to be so massive if he was to survive a wife as fierce a predator as the Mantis. Still, if he didn’t shift, how would we communicate?
Or was I here for breakfast?
“Kam,” I whispered.
“Hush,” he whispered back and that startled me further, for Kam wasn’t a man to whisper. He seldom had need to. “No sudden mo
ves.”
I stiffened and wondered how useful my bronze fist would be against Anansi’s gargantuan head. Would he even notice I’d hit him?
Perhaps I could use the darts and blowgun I had hidden away. I’d used them once to blind a particularly nasty Cyclops. Admittedly, that had been rather straightforward, needing only one well-placed dart. But I didn’t have sufficient darts to blind the Spider, assuming I’d have enough time to blow more than one.
Like a poorly oiled automaton, Kam stiffly eased into a bow, gesturing for me to do the same. “Bwana Anansi,” he said to the accompaniment of thunder and a flash of lightning overhead.
Something chirped in an exasperating, high-pitched tone and I rubbed my ears, uncovering my mangled right ear in the process. I stared about, searching for the source — an oversized cricket perhaps — and noticed that Anansi’s fangs were twitching.
“Is he… talking?” I asked.
Kam nodded.
“Such a big head and that’s all the sound he can make?” I whispered as I smirked.
Anansi shifted slightly, all its eyes (except the top two) glittering at me, and the minuteness of his voice wasn’t quite so amusing.
“He asked if I brought you here as an offering,” Kam said, his poker face as unreadable as always.
“Offering? As in food?” I asked as I forced a grin in the hope that he was jesting.
“What else?” Kam asked.
“Well, have you?” I asked.
“No,” and he lowered the gazelle gently to the ground. “And don’t smile. It looks aggressive to a spider.”
I was happy to oblige, for in the circumstances it was far easier to frown than to smile. “Will he accept that?”
“Hopefully,” Kam said, taking a step back from the offering. “But he may decide otherwise if you don’t convince him.”
“Any suggestions?”
“Don’t get eaten,” Kam advised.
“Charming.” I straightened up and Anansi lurched a bit toward me, fangs clicking.
“Good day,” I said and paused, wondering how one addresses a monstrous spider, apart from cautiously. My usual interactions with spiders involved a rolled-up newspaper and a hefty splat.