by Vered Ehsani
“Sir,” I finished. Kam had used the Swahili version – Bwana – but I felt it would be pretentious on my part to do the same and I’d probably mispronounce it.
Anansi clicked at me, perhaps informing me which of my limbs he’d devour first.
“My name is Mrs. Knight,” I continued, enunciating each word with care. A spider has eight eyes but no ears, relying on hairs on its body to identify sound. I had no indication as yet that he understood English or wasn’t planning on eating me.
I glanced at Kam who gestured for me to continue.
“I’m trying to resolve a dispute with your wife,” I said as delicately as was possible for me.
Anansi sat up at my words. Until then, I hadn’t realized he’d been performing the arachnid version of a slouch, but now he loomed over me. I took an inadvertent step back. The Spider smelled of a musty attic that was cluttered with dust, cobwebs and dried-up insect husks. It overwhelmed the sharply clean scent of the forest.
The fangs clicked and a high-pitched, scratchy voice demanded, “She where?”
“Ah…” I turned slightly to Kam. Could Anansi truly be unaware of his wife’s whereabouts? Didn’t these insects possess pheromone tracking systems, or did those only function within the same species? If Kam could find her, why couldn’t her husband?
“She is in the Kilimanjaro region, Bwana,” Kam answered.
Eight legs, each taller than I was and significantly hairier, stomped under the massive belly, crushing the broken bamboo shoots further into a pulp; each time a leg came down, there was a wet crunch. When he had thoroughly obliterated the shoots, Anansi eased down on the green slime that remained.
“Why?” he squeaked, his front eyes studying me, six glassy mirrors, while the two on top of his head gazed at the green canopy.
“Well,” I said. How does a person explain to a spider that she is the culprit responsible for slicing off his wife’s leg? I squinted at Anansi, trying to read his energy. There were symbols embedded in it, reminiscent of Kam’s skin markings, bristling with ancient power.
That’s all I had a chance to read before a hefty, spiky leg slammed down before me. If Kam hadn’t yanked me back, I’d surely have been scratched from head to groin by the single claw at the end of the leg.
“No look,” Anansi squealed. “I no like.”
“How did you know?” I asked.
“Others try,” the Spider said in a sulking tone.
“There are others like me?” I asked with more interest than I’d had in anything for a while.
Anansi rocked from side to side. “Ate last one hundreds years past.”
“Oh,” was all I could say, grateful that Kam still retained a firm grip on my upper arm.
“Wife,” Anansi yelped.
“Yes, yes, your wife,” I said. “Koki. Well, sir, she has for some reason set her mind on eliminating me.”
Anansi settled himself further in his mushy nest. “The Law.”
“Pardon me?” I asked, wondering if he was suggesting I had a legal obligation to die.
He waved a leg, as if urging me to continue.
“That’s it,” I said. “I’d rather not die just yet.”
“Why?”
“Well, I’m still relatively young for a human,” I explained, wondering how a confused frown would be interpreted by my interrogator.
“Why she?” the Spider said, clarifying the subject of his question.
“Oh,” I said and cleared my throat as I patted the fist atop my walking stick. “My, my. This is a tad bit awkward. You see, sir, I cut off her leg.”
In the following silence, distant bird calls were a sweet reminder of a world where spiders were small and could be squished by a shoe, and widows didn’t have to converse with gigantic insects. Even Nelly’s belch echoing through the bamboo tunnel had me longing to be back in her saddle.
Anansi lurched back and wailed a terrible keening noise that scratched against my eardrum and set my teeth chattering. In that moment, I knew my demise was assured.
Kam chuckled.
Aghast, I glanced at him and then at the oversized arachnid rocking back and forth.
Anansi the Trickster God was laughing.
I’d cut off his wife’s leg (granted, she had five more), and he found it amusing? By such a macabre standard, the massacre in Lagos would be the height of hilarity for him.
“Little girl,” Anansi wheezed through his cackling. “Cut off Koki leg. Possible?”
“I suppose so,” I answered dubiously, wondering what sort of husband would find this a laughable event.
Perhaps the sort of husband who marries a Mantis and survives the experience, I pondered. Perhaps she’d attempted to decapitate him and this was his settlement for the crime. Perhaps the minds of spiders and Mantis were too foreign for a mere little girl to comprehend.
“I’m delighted that amuses you, sir,” I said. “In that case, perhaps you would consider extending your assistance to me then?”
The spasms of merriment ended as abruptly as they began. “Why?”
I understood his monosyllabic question: why should he help a mere mortal? This colossal creature who counted time not in years but in centuries, why should he assist the girl who’d attacked his wife, no matter how justified the assault had been?
“There are others — my family and friends — who have vowed to stand by me,” I said. “Truly, they don’t deserve to die.”
“Who?” Anansi demanded.
I glared at the Spider, holding my words in check, tiring of his simple questions, his utter disregard for the needs of others, even his wife’s. What did he mean by ‘who’? Did he want a biography of everyone involved?
“Many people,” I said and thought of the Society and its mandate for secrecy. Inspired, I hurried on. “Many mortals will learn about you and your community of the supernatural, and they will hunt you down. You will defeat them, of course, but they’ll persevere in their pursuit, destroying many less powerful beings who depend on you.”
Anansi seemed to consider my words, the thick hairs on his back quivering. Would he deem this a threat, as the Society would? Or perhaps after thousands of years of life, would he relish the challenge, unconcerned about the resulting chaos? Perhaps he would welcome it, as Koki seemed to.
“Who?” he repeated.
Exasperated, I turned to Kam. “What does he want? A list of names?”
Kam shook his head and stepped forward. Although dwarfed by the Trickster God, Kam’s strength was clear in every motion, in every muscle that flexed, in the spirals of his skin markings. In a ringing voice, he declared, “I will be there, standing by her side. I will fight with Miss Knight against Koki the Mantis and against any danger that she faces.”
Sheet lightning punctuated his statement and Anansi shrunk away from the glare, shielding his lidless eyes with a leg. I was too stunned to do more than blink.
Ozone and crisp air whooshed through the clearing as I marveled at Kam. So apparently did Anansi, who lowered his leg and studied the God of Lightning. How often in recent centuries had the great being faced such a fearless warrior?
After a pause to absorb Kam’s declaration, Anansi’s great weight eased toward me, his fangs snapping a few feet from my face. “Give what?”
What would I give to be free of Koki and her desire for revenge? What would I offer up in order to be rid of Mantis-filled nightmares that disrupted my nights and lingered through my days? What would I relinquish in exchange for a future that was devoid of the decapitated bodies of those I cherished?
Anything.
Almost.
What did I have that he could possibly desire? My first born child, the one I’d never have? One of my limbs? A leg for a leg?
“What do you want?” I asked, suspicious of the response. He was after all known by the title of the Trickster, for good reason.
Anansi hissed and eased his bulk back down. He clicked his fangs. “Good.”
“But that was a qu
estion,” I blurted out, dismayed that he believed I’d answered him, that all he had to do was name his price and I would give him whatever he desired.
“Help maybe. Thinking,” the absurdly whiny voice piped out of the huge head. “Go.” Anansi the Spider waved a leg in dismissal while pulling a cluster of bamboo in front of him like a curtain.
“No, wait, I didn’t answer your question,” I protested.
Kam bowed and backed away, grabbing my arm when I didn’t move. My mouth began to form a protest: I hadn’t agreed on the price and I couldn’t leave like this, vulnerable to the whims of the Trickster God, but the Spider’s eyes were no longer visible. I knew with a certainty that my voice would go unheard, my protests ignored. I pulled away from Kam but his grip was implacable.
By the time I resolved to knock Kam over the head with my stick, push through the thick bamboo and scream at the ancient insect, we were inside the tunnel. Kam’s arm was encircled firmly about my waist, his hand clenched about my walking stick, as if he’d discerned my intention and refused to let me commit a form of suicide.
That was what he meant, I numbly realized. When he stands by my side, he means to protect me from all dangers, including myself.
Chapter 15
Without Lilly, the house seemed smaller, darker and quieter. Even Mrs. Steward was less than chatty, her breakfasts spent peering glumly into her teacup as she ignored Bobby’s chicken-chasing antics.
Mr. Steward had half-heartedly offered the empty room to Drew, who energetically declined to accept. My brother retreated to his loft in the barn and only emerged at nightfall. One such evening, a heavy moon glowed benevolently above the grasslands.
“It’s almost full,” I commented as I brought him supper on a tin plate. Mrs. Steward wouldn’t allow her good chinaware outside and Drew wouldn’t come in. He seldom ventured to the house, preferring to sit on the grass under the open sky and take his meals there.
He grunted as he scooped mashed potatoes with a cupped hand. Mrs. Steward had been appalled at his table manners or lack thereof.
“Where in heaven and earth were you raised, boy?” she’d demanded, her eyes popping out of her head as she’d watched him lick his plate. “The jungle?”
He’d gripped the unused knife by his plate but didn’t touch the fork. Only I heard his soft growl.
“And his fingernails,” she’d continued, outraged by the sight of his untrimmed nails and the grit under them. “Bee, teach your brother how to behave in civilized company or…” Mrs. Steward had mentally groped about for a suitable threat. “Or he is not welcome to eat at my table,” she’d declared with a haughty expression.
Mr. Steward had groaned and rubbed his eyes, but the offer had suited Drew very well. At her pronouncement, he’d stood, picked his plate and left the house, never to enter again.
“Drew,” I said, hoping he’d respond. “What happens when the moon’s full?”
He shrugged as he decimated a chicken leg with several enthusiastic bites. The bone wasn’t spared and the crunch of it between his teeth drowned out the cicadas and crickets.
“Well?” I pushed.
“We won’t need a lantern,” he said around a mouthful.
I huffed. As it was, we seldom needed a lantern to walk about, as our werewolf eyes provided us excellent night vision. “That’s not what I intended by the question, Drew.”
His eyes shifted sideways, and he peered at me through long, stringy strands of hair.
“I know, Beatrice,” he said, his voice barely audible above the racket of the insects. At least those ones were properly sized and squashable. “I’m not going to go rampaging through the village.”
I sighed. “I want to believe that, Drew, really I do, but I’ve seen how some werewolves are.”
“The new ones,” he pointed out.
“Yes,” I admitted, “most of them were. But there were others too, older ones, who made a bloody nuisance of themselves. I was assigned to more than a few such cases.”
“Beatrice,” he said, all the heaviness of his heart lingering in his words. “The full moon makes it easier to turn, and harder to resist the urge to run wild. But it’s not impossible. There are those however who would use any excuse to lose themselves to the animal within. I am not such a man.”
His words silenced me, for I hadn’t expected such insight from him, from a werewolf.
My, how deep your prejudices run, I thought ruefully.
His aged eyes glowed as he smiled in a world-weary way. “Be assured: I shall behave.”
“What happened to you?” I asked, not for the first time. Perhaps he would give me some answer if I continued to ask.
He shook his head. A cool breeze played with our loose strands of hair before moving up into the top of a nearby thorn tree, where it danced amongst the branches, rustling leaves as it played.
“She was lonely,” he said, staring at the quivering branches.
“Who?” I asked.
“The werewolf who attacked us,” he elaborated, spinning the plate between his hands. “You realize it was the same one both times, don’t you? The first time when we were both bitten, and the second time when I was taken.”
He touched a scar on his shoulder, just as I reached up to pat a lock of hair that covered my mangled right ear.
“Yes, it’s possible, although those first bites didn’t change us,” I pointed out.
“Not fully, no,” he said. “It was only after she took me that second time, when you thought I was dead. That time, it worked.”
The night’s cold seeped into me with his words. What had he endured?
“Why us?” I voiced a question that had plagued me greatly over the years.
He shrugged his shoulders, watching the tin plate twirling in his hands. “That was her forest.”
I thought back to the first time we’d encountered what I’d believed until recently was a stray dog. The creature had bitten each of us once, very precisely. If Mother hadn’t been nearby, would the werewolf have taken both of us?
“I don’t know,” I said, his explanation not sitting well with me. “Do you think Mother knew?” I stared up at the moon, bright in a brittle, cloudless sky.
“Yes, although I wonder how,” he replied.
I turned to him and stared at his profile. He continued to twist the plate in his hands, round and round, his eyes unfocused.
“I forgot, you don’t know,” I said. “She was a witch, Drew. That’s why we survived the first bite with only minor consequences. Her witch blood protected us.”
He didn’t look up or stop playing with the tin plate. No surprise startled his features.
“Did you know?” I asked.
“No. But it makes sense now. Don’t you remember that first time?” he asked, the plate spinning faster, his fingertips gently tapping along the edge, his gaze penetrating the blur of patterns. It reminded me of Prof. Runal’s brass pendulums minus the metallic clicking of the balls.
“Not really,” I admitted. “Just that dirty, wet dog smell and matted fur and the pain.” I touched my ear again.
“I do,” he said. “I remember everything.”
“That’s right,” I said, smiling. “You always did have a remarkably impressive memory for details.”
“Unfortunately,” he said and paused. “Mother was the one who chased the creature away. She gave us something to drink after, a cure she’d concocted. That’s when you started wearing something on your head all the time.”
As he spoke, a blurry image flittered through my mind of a graceful lady holding a cloth to my ear with one hand and a cup of foul liquid to my mouth with the other.
“They knew each other,” Drew continued in that fatigued voice of his, as if every word were a burden to his lips.
“Who?” I asked, still marveling that I’d forgotten so much about that first encounter, and had ignored the clues of my mother’s true identity.
“Mother and the werewolf,” he said. “I was taken to pu
nish Mother.”
“What? Why?” I asked. My form of questioning reminded me of Anansi and I sounded like an imbecile, talking in such crude sentences.
“As a warning,” he said with a shrug. “They were going to let me go, eventually, once her antidote had fully worn off and I could be bitten again.”
“They?” Again, the stunted questions, but I was dazed by the revelations that this had been no random occurrence but a carefully orchestrated admonition. Could it be true though?
“The alpha wolf and the council,” he responded without a trace of emotion.
“What wolf? What council?” I demanded, twisting about onto my knees so I was facing him. I grabbed his forearms. The plate stopped spinning, his fingertips resting in stillness against the edge.
“Werewolves don’t have councils,” I said before he could answer with more nonsense. “They have packs and one leader but no… There is no administration for a wolf pack, Drew. You’re confused. You were a child. What could you know?”
Now he lifted his face, and his aged eyes stared through mine, impassive and clear sighted, viewing my doubts, my rejection of the truth he was trying to articulate. The golden yellow of his eyes shimmered in the moonlight.
“I was a child, yes,” he said, his voice unflustered by my silent accusation. “A child with an impressive and unnatural memory for details. The council was not just for the werewolves but for all the creatures that live amongst humans, creatures like Mother, like us, and many others.”
He was referring to the Society, I realized.
“Stop,” I hissed. “That’s not possible, Drew. You’re wrong. That werewolf lied to you…”
“I was there, Beatrice,” he continued in that irritatingly disinterested tone, as if world-shattering news was of little consequence. “I was young, half-asleep when she brought me before them.”
Now I wished he would stop. I didn’t want him to reveal anymore. Why couldn’t he withdraw into his moody, introverted self and disappear into his corner of the barn? But no. Now that I desired his silence, now he insisted on sharing his story, each word an implacable enemy to my own story.