by Jan Bozarth
I sensed a sort of desperation from the huchu lizard.
“You’re an impostor,” I said softly, “and you’ve done some very bad things.”
The lizard stopped struggling. “I am the great …,” it began feebly.
I gave my head a firm shake and looked sternly into the miserable huchu lizard’s eyes. “Don’t make things worse. Why did you do it?”
“No one respected me, and I was lonely. I only wanted to show everyone that I am no different from Kukulkan. I needed the feathers to look like her. I would not have harmed the egg. I would have raised the child as my own, and it would have treated me as its mother.” The voice became whiny. “I just needed a chance to show love…. I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. “You stole a child—just to demonstrate how great you are and that you deserve love?” I could sense the huchu’s desperate loneliness and misery, but that did not excuse what she had done. She was not an innocent. Kukulkan had been so distraught that she could well have killed us by mistake, thinking we had taken her egg.
“You’re a liar, a thief, and a kidnapper. Those things do not make you deserving,” I said firmly.
“I never meant to hurt anyone,” the miserable lizard said.
I went back over to the stone nest, gently scooped up the egg, and placed it into the Guatemalan bag with my cacao pod. “You can’t steal greatness or love—you have to earn it,” I told the lizard after Monty and Imishi had let her go. “If you really want to be great, do something good for someone else. That will impress everyone a lot more than trying to be someone you’re not.”
We returned to Kir and Kukulkan to share the news. With the green orb shedding its light in the darkness of evening, Imishi and I told the strange story of the self-important huchu. I removed the cacao pod from my bag so that I could get a good grasp on the coppery egg and pull it out. The feathered serpent was ecstatic to see her egg. Accepting it from me, she tucked it tightly under one feathered wing and made a trilling, cooing sound. I started to put the pod back into my bag when Kukulkan noticed and touched the tip of her massive snout to the pod.
“Strong magic,” she breathed warmly. “Healing magic.” She bowed her head. “I am grateful.”
I could feel waves of happiness rolling from Kukulkan. She twirled in an excited spiral until she was almost completely upright. She then gradually lowered herself back onto the rocky volcanic mountainside in a smooth, even curl, like a neatly coiled rope with a mound of feathers on top. When she was settled, she opened the wing that cradled the coppery egg again to show us that it now shone with flecks of glitter, like the sparkles on the shell of my pod.
“Healthy,” the feathered serpent said. “My egg will hatch soon.” With that, she tucked the egg into the center of the feather-covered coil and settled down with a contented snaky sigh. “You ssssssleep,” she told us all in a soft voice. “I will guard you.”
And sleep we did—all of us, right there on the side of the mountain. I still had that weird being-watched feeling, but I figured that Kukulkan could protect us from just about anything.
Monty perched protectively on the mound of Kukulkan’s feathers, softly squawking, “Safe now, safe now.” Kukulkan did not object, and Monty put his head under his wing.
It was not the most comfortable night we ever spent, but we were exhausted and easily fell asleep despite the rocky ground beneath us.
We awoke at dawn, sore and yet refreshed. I hate to admit it, but getting up early felt right. There was an urgency in my heart, pushing me to get to Kib Valley as soon as possible. I could sense the same need to get moving from Imishi and Kir.
While we slept, the lizard had come out of the cave and apologetically presented herself to the real Kukulkan, who had listened and forgiven her. I wondered if I had been too hard on the miserable creature.
After eating the last of our fairy food and breaking open the last pod of fairy water, sharing it amongst the group, I pointed to the lizard. “We can take her with us, if you need us to,” I said to Kukulkan.
“No,” she said. “I will keep the small Kuku with me. She will not be lonely.”
It surprised me that the feathered serpent could be so forgiving after all the worry the smaller reptile had put her through. But legend said that Kukulkan was the wisest of creatures, so I trusted that she knew what was best. We said our good-byes to Kukulkan, who, after thanking us again, held her egg under one wing, tucked the huchu lizard under the other, and flew gently away using her two pairs of free wings.
We spent the morning walking around the slope of the volcano to the other side. As we traveled, we heard an occasional rumbling or felt a tremor from deep within the volcano, definitely not comforting. I still had that faint prickly feeling that someone—or something—was watching us. Finally we reached the point where we could begin our descent.
“I know where we are now!” Imishi said, excitement lighting her voice. “I can see the edge of the valley!”
Kir, thinking of his sire, trotted forward.
We carefully began our downward climb. White billows of steam and gray smoke rose from the tip of the cone far above us, making us all uneasy and eager to be away from the restless mountain. As we zigzagged on the steepest parts, we heard a crack and a boom. More clouds of steam puffed from the top of the mountain. The air was oppressively hot. Soon, little bits of something soft and warm began falling on us. Thinking that it was rain, I put a hand out to catch some drops, but instead of water, flecks of warm ash fell on my palm.
This could not be a good sign. My hand clenched, and my knees felt wobbly.
Kir gave a warning whinny.
Imishi pointed ahead to a flat drop-off directly below us. “We need to avoid that area,” she said. “Those are the cliffs where the spider lives.”
I consulted the map. “It looks like we can go either this direction or that.” I pointed out the slopes to either side of the cliffs. “Once we get to the bottom, it’s not far to the edge of the valley.”
We began angling off to the right-hand side of the cliffs. There was a boom, like someone had fired off a cannon. Kir gave a wild whinny and backed up a few steps. With a whiz-pow, a large boulder landed where we had been standing a moment earlier. BAM! Another boulder landed in front of it. A crack appeared just above us, and a rivulet of red spurted out and began to run down toward us.
Lava!
“Wrong way, wrong way!” Monty squawked.
Kir wheeled and carried us with all the speed that caution allowed toward the far side of the cliffs. Small rocks tumbled down the slope toward us. Kir’s hooves slipped a few times, but he managed to catch himself and keep going.
We had made it almost completely to the far side of the cliffs when another large boulder landed not far behind us. With a crack and rumble, the ground gave way beneath it, leaving a gaping hole open to the catacombs beneath. I shuddered. At least there was no lava coming toward us. There were still rocks flying through the air, however.
Imishi spread her wings to cover Monty, Kir, and me, protecting us from ash and small falling stones. When we were past the end of the cliffs, Kir headed further downslope, zigzagging again at the steep parts.
Imishi suddenly gasped and pointed to where the rock had broken open the catacombs. I looked. There, climbing out of the new jagged hole, was the ugliest and most terrifying creature I had ever seen or imagined.
A giant spider.
9
The Web
Imishi screamed.
My stomach did a somersault and then tried to crawl up into my throat. My mind scrambled to pull everything together that I had recently learned about dealing with creatures, especially innocents.
Kir paused. Behind me, Imishi put her head against my back and scrunched down low, as if trying to make herself as small and invisible as possible.
“That is the one—the spider that attacked me,” Imishi said. “I know it.”
I wondered if this spider could have been watching us, followi
ng us.
Monty muttered, “Not safe, not safe!”
Taking a deep breath, I sent my mind outward, carrying the thought If you leave us alone, we’ll leave you alone.
The creature stopped on the slope just above us, slowly raising and lowering itself on its giant hairy legs, as if it was doing some sort of creepy spider push-ups.
Peace, calm, I sent to it, while all the hair on my arms prickled. We don’t want to hurt you; don’t hurt us.
The spider stopped moving. I thought I was finally getting somewhere when bam! The spider slammed my mind away like a baseball player hitting a home run—and it hurt!
“That is one rude spider,” I said. And it was not an innocent.
The spider, balancing itself on four legs, swung its body back and made a trumpeting bellow that sounded like a bull elephant with a bit of rattlesnake thrown in. While it was still on its back four legs, something shot out from underneath it, straight at us—a strand of spider silk. Now, this wasn’t transparent, wispy—almost pretty—spider silk like you might see in a garden or the corner of your attic. It was a sticky, ropy, mucus yellow strand as fat as my thumb.
Kir turned to protect us by heading back downhill, but it was too late. The spider rope tangled in his tail and stuck there. Monty fluttered unsteadily into the air, squawking in defiance at the giant spider, as Imishi and I leapt off Kir’s back and tried to help.
Imishi pulled her shell knife from the small sheath at her waist, but the spider was already reeling in the sticky rope, pulling Kir gradually back up the slope by his flaxen tail. The palomino was frantic. Imishi and I scrambled toward him but kept losing our footing on the slope. We were getting scraped and bruised, though at the time I hardly noticed. All I could think of was Kir.
Abruptly Kir put his feet solidly under him; then he backed up a few steps so the spider silk went a bit slack. Next he turned and galloped upslope. Avoiding the sticky rope, he charged straight at the spider. It reacted unlike any spider I had ever seen. (Then again, normal spiders don’t usually fight horses.)
The spider set two more legs on the ground and reached out as if to do battle with the approaching horse. The arachnid’s body was half again as big as Kir’s, although the golden horse probably weighed more. The spider’s legs were also longer than Kir’s. Imishi and I could only watch as the eight-legged monster reached for our friend.
Monty fluttered above the spider, distracting it briefly while Kir ran past the spider toward its rear legs, turned, and kicked it full force right in its ugly spider butt. The spider flew through the air, releasing its sticky rope in its shock as it turned end over end and landed on its back with a squishy thump, halfway across the cliff top. Its legs were drawn in toward its stomach, and they wriggled as the spider tried to recover from the stunning blow and get itself upright again.
Imishi and I resumed our upward climb, unable to keep ourselves from glancing back. Monty landed on Kir’s blanket and clung for dear life as the horse came to meet us, trailing the gluey rope from his tail. It seemed to catch on every rock.
“Try not to touch it,” Imishi warned me. I cautiously wrapped my hands around Kir’s tail, holding the spider rope up while Imishi cut through it with her shell knife.
Perched on the fairy-silk blanket, Monty supervised our work. “Time to go, time to go!”
We all knew this, of course; it wouldn’t be long before the spider recovered and came after us. During our struggle we had worked our way back onto the steepest part of the trail. The cliffs beneath us were riddled with the spider’s tunnels and caves, and crags of rock thrust up from below.
Looking down at that long drop and the sharp rocks I could hit along the way made me feel dizzy. Keeping a grasp on my bag, I turned away from the cliffside to join Imishi and Kir on the downward trail again. The entire volcano seemed to rumble. The rocky ground beneath my feet disintegrated. I flailed my arms, frantically trying to grab at something, anything.
I felt myself falling into open air, head over heels.
Falling, falling …
My plunge came to a jarring stop that almost wrenched my arms out of their sockets. I felt myself going downward again; then I bounced upward a bit, fell down again, sprang up, fell down…. It was like hanging from a rubber band, and it happened again and again before I jolted to a stop.
I was hanging with my legs dangling over nothing. I looked up and saw that my hands were wrapped around and stuck to the strand of spiderweb that we had just cut away from Kir’s tail. I had managed to grab it, and now it was glued fast to my hands.
Fifty feet above me, at the top of the cliff, Imishi’s stricken face was staring down at me. All the color was gone from her cheeks, and I wondered if she was about to faint. Her face disappeared.
I looked around me for some way to get out of this mess. Six feet away on the cliff wall was a cave opening. If I could swing over there and get my feet under me, I might be able to cut the strand with a sharp rock.
I could sense from Kir that he, Monty, and Imishi were trying to figure out how to reach me. Through Kir’s mind I could hear Imishi say that a fairy-silk rope would not solve the problem, since there was no way I could climb up it with my hands tied. Nor could they pull me up by the spider rope without risking getting caught in it themselves.
I heard Monty squawk, “Help, help! We’re here, we’re here!”
“The Kib Fairies will help us,” Imishi agreed, “but with a broken wing I cannot get to the valley. And I cannot leave Zally. Kir, will you take Monty to deliver the message? Ask them to come help Imishi.”
“Help Imishi, help Imishi,” Monty repeated.
Kir neighed, shaking his flaxen mane. The parrot clung to the fairy-silk blanket while the palomino went down the steep slope.
I couldn’t wait. Kicking back with my legs, then forward, then back again, then forward again, I started to swing myself toward the cave ledge. On the far side on top of the cliff, I saw the spider clinging to the cliff edge, watching. Then it clambered back into the hole it had come out of.
Above me, I saw Imishi’s face again, followed by a loop of silky ribbon descending toward me. Maybe she was trying to lasso my feet so my friends could pull me back to the top of the cliff, just as they had dragged the tree trunk over to the jaguar’s pit in the jungle. I could already see that the loop would be too far away to reach me, so I continued to swing. Finally I managed to touch the cave ledge with one foot, but I couldn’t hold on.
I swung away again. I knew with part of my mind that my arms, shoulders, and neck hurt worse than they had ever hurt before in my life, but I couldn’t focus on the pain or I would never escape. All I could concentrate on was the swinging, just like on a swing set. I pulled my legs back as far as they could go on my outward arc, then swung forward with all my might, pointing my toes toward the cave entrance.
The spider rope slipped. I plunged downward ten feet before springing to a stop again. I screamed. My forward momentum hadn’t stopped yet, and I smacked feetfirst into the cliff wall. The jolt traveled from my feet up my legs. It drove every ounce of air out of my lungs, and I crumpled as my swing pulled me back. All my muscles went limp, and I just dangled there.
The spider rope slipped again—only a few feet this time, but I realized that all my swinging back and forth must have loosened it from wherever it had stuck to the cliff above me. The rope swung me back toward the cliff wall again. I closed my eyes and held my breath.
Suddenly Imishi was there beside me. I felt her arms wrap around my waist and pull. My head seemed to spin, and for several dizzy moments I couldn’t tell up from down. Then we landed on flat, cool rock. I opened my eyes to see that Imishi and I now sat in the cave opening toward which I had been swinging.
Confused, I gasped, “But I slipped! How …”
Imishi pulled out her shell knife and began to cut the spider rope from my hands. In a matter-of-fact voice she said, “I saw that you were going to fall, so I did the only thing I could: I flew.”
“But you can’t! Queen Patchouli said your wing would break if you tried to …” My voice trailed off as I noticed what I should have seen immediately.
Although Imishi’s wings were spread proudly behind her, the one that had been broken and splinted was cracked, and the top half was folded down, dangling uselessly behind her.
I gasped again. “You didn’t!”
“You are more important than my wing, Zally. So is Queen Carmina. So are all of the innocents waiting for our help.” At her words, tears welled up in my eyes.
Just then, from the tunnels deep within the cave behind us, came the same trumpeting bellow we had heard earlier. My friend and I quickly got to our feet to face our attacker. This was the last thing in the world Imishi wanted to face—and my own worst nightmare—so I was proud of the way she stood beside me. She had my back, and I had hers. Actually, we both pressed our backs to the cave wall at the side of the entrance.
Imishi brandished her small shell knife, and I prepared my mind to push away the beast. I held up my hands, which were now free, and clenched them into fists, although I wasn’t sure what I could do against Spiderzilla with my bare hands. Still, we planted our feet and prepared for the attack.
Rays of sunlight slanted in through the cave opening.
And there it was: the spider.
I tried to calm it again. As before, it bounced up and down on all eight legs and threw my thoughts back in my face. It stepped closer and balanced on its four back legs. Then it raised the front half of its body and trumpeted again. This time, the trumpet was answered by a deep, growling roar.
Then everything happened in a blur.
There was a flurry of hairy spider legs and tawny gold with black spots. The spider flew up and hit the ceiling. Fur, claws, and spider legs flashed. With a bellow, the stunned spider shot past us out of the cave. It hung motionless for a split second in midair, then fell. A moment later, we heard a thud as it hit the rocks below.
In the center of the cavern, with one spider leg still grasped in her jaws, stood the jaguar whom we had freed from the pit in the jungle. Her jade eyes glowed, and the thoughts that came from the cat were fierce and protective. All of a sudden I understood that for the past day, every time I thought we were being watched or followed, we were. It had been the jaguar—not stalking us, but keeping watch over us.