‘She didn’t jump out the back,’ explained a patient Ox. ‘I’d have felt it if she had. She’s still in there.’
‘Whaaat?!?’
Footsteps, cries were heard coming round the side of the cart. Spider Girl loosened the lid of her snake jar. They lifted the hood, stared in, the three of them started to clamber into the back, led, she judged, by Wolf Man, a hard, vicious-looking thug. The Ox, rather confused, was behind them.
‘Who the fuck are you, coming into our crib, stealing our loot?’
Crouching beneath the bright yellow canvas, Wolf Man crept towards her, his two fellow thieves on either side. He drew his knife.
‘You’re dead, you fat bitch.’
At this second Spider Girl jerked the snake-filled jar forwards so the lid flew off and the black snake flew through the air and hit Wolf Man smack in his face. It bit him. Wolf Man tried to wipe it off with his hand and the panicked snake bit hard and deep into his hand. Wolf Man screamed, ‘Get it off me. Get it off me!’, waving his hand back and forth as the snake bit ever deeper.
Spider Girl leant forwards and spoke directly into his face.
‘This snake was in this jar, and into this jar I put scorpions and hornets and poisonous spiders and caterpillars, and this snake ate them all. So all the deadly poison that was in those creatures were eaten by this snake – who is already deadly poisonous – and now all these poisons shoot through his fangs into your hand.’ She paused for effect. ‘You are dead, Wolf Man.’
Wolf Man let out a terrible scream. His lieutenants were already crawling frantically backwards. Suddenly Wolf Man’s fear turned into rage. Dead he might be, but this evil witch would die with him. So, snake still waving, he advanced under the canvas, knife in hand, towards Spider Girl. Which was exactly what she wanted him to do. She blocked his first slash with the snake’s jar, then, with her hands and arms, powerful after years of kneading dough and threshing corn, she grabbed him by his collar and with her strong midriff muscles yanked him around, reached beneath her right leg, pulled out her knife and cut his throat from ear to ear in one hard keen slice – just as she’d watched her father slaughter the pig. Then with her other hand she jerked back his head and waved it from side to side so his arterial blood fountained all over the staring, paralyzed faces of his companions and The Ox. And as they choked on the blood they swallowed and wiped it out of their eyes she stopped and thought.
I am a cripple. I need servants. These two are beef-witted village lads. If I terrify them enough they’ll serve me faithfully.
She stared into their eyes, and then, with the blood still dribbling from their dead leader’s neck, she pronounced these words.
‘I am a witch! The most powerful witch you shall ever meet. If you dare cross me in any way, your pubic hair will twist into sharp-toothed worms and eat into your flesh so your balls and pricks and noses fall off and your eyes are sucked into your skull and in the pain your hands will rip out your hair and strangle you. Your arseholes will grow teeth and eat your balls. If you do not do exactly what I order you, all this will happen to you, and worse, far worse.’
(Spider Girl had taught herself this witch-cursing when, as a youngster, she’d sat behind the pigsty with a friend from the village and the two of them had spent many happy hours pretending to be witches and inventing the most bloodcurdling curses they could think of. She’d merely repeated these, and thrown in an improvised one for the hell of it.)
The three young men suddenly realized they faced a Queen Witch, in all her majesty and wrath. They goggled at her like rabbits before a weasel. Ox soiled himself – which led, due to his size, to the air quickly turning rank.
She drew the pistol from their dead leader’s belt and pointed it at his two lieutenants.
‘Take all your weapons out of your belts and pockets and put them in front of you.’
They obeyed.
‘Now take all the money out of your pockets and put it there.’
Again, they obeyed.
‘Take him away,’ she ordered one of them, indicating the dead Wolf Man. ‘Drop him off after dark. And clean this place up,’ she ordered the other. She advised Ox to empty his pants and resume pulling the cart. She’d have some supper ready for him soon.
They left. The journey resumed.
Spider Girl looked around her. Suddenly she saw that her dear black snake had been killed in the melee. She felt deep pity.
*
As Spider Girl was preparing the meal – there were a few dried-out vegetables and fruits and almost no water – she heard Second Son Wei run past the cart crying out her name. The jerk of fear and emotion in his voice as he shouted it moved her but she bit her lip and did not cry. What must be must be.
After he had gone she lifted the front canvas and pointed out to The Ox the blue tarpaulin of the Wei family cart which he must follow, but always at a distance. If anything unusual happened there, he was to tell her. It took a bit of explaining, which she undertook calmly and gently, but in the end he understood.
She sent one of her two thieves off to a nearby travelling apothecary to buy some ointment with some of the money she had stolen from them.
When he returned she reminded the two of them of her curse and ordered them to pull the cart while The Ox came round to the back to share the meal with her – he walking by the tailgate, she sitting with her (newly soothed) legs swinging over the end. After herself she gave The Ox the best of the food – to deepen the rift between himself and the thieves. She also did it because she liked him. But he was not a great talker. After he’d explained he’d lost touch with his family on the march and had been picked up by the thieves there wasn’t much more to say. So they ate on in happy silence. Spider Girl shared the rest of the water with him.
She let him walk for another half hour beside the thieves pulling the cart before they were permitted to hand the shafts over to him and come back for food. The stronger, more assertive of the two – Spider Girl discovered his name was Tiger Eyes – she served last, with the least food. Before him she served his younger, more gentle associate – White Devil – with more food. Tiger Eyes gave White Devil filthy looks. There was no water. After a while Tiger Eyes, with great deference, asked her for some. His voice croaked. She looked scornfully at them both.
‘Some thieves you are,’ she said derisively. ‘Not thieves, halfwits and fuckups. Parading around here in all your finery, letting everyone know what your trade is and putting them on guard. Proper thieves hide what they are. Look ordinary, everyday. No wonder I caught on to you.’
They looked downwards. She continued.
‘You’re so stupid you can’t even work out what is the most valuable thing, the only valuable thing, on this march.’
‘Gold,’ pronounced Tiger Eyes affirmatively. ‘Everyone knows that.’
‘Retard. You make The Ox look smart.’
White Devil giggled and Tiger Eyes gave him a savage kick.
She looked at both of them.
‘How’s your throat?’
‘Aching. Aching with pain.’
‘And yours?’ she asked White Devil.
‘The same. Bloody hurts. I’m fucking thirsty.’
‘We have no water. You saved no water. You just fucked around stealing baubles and jewellery. Like brainless magpies. And all the time you missed the real gold.’
‘What real gold?’ asked White Devil.
‘Without water, you die. You die in two or three days. We have no water. We die in two or three days’ time. Look at all the people around us dying, all those dead bodies you ransack – dead of thirst. Lack of water. Water is the only gold on this march. Those who have it live – those who don’t, die.’
‘People still respect a man with gold, with money,’ mumbled Tiger Eyes rebelliously.
Spider Girl stared at him.
‘No one respects a dead man with gold. They simply steal it.’
She could see that Tiger Eyes could be trouble. He had still not learnt a complete fear of her
. White Devil was starting to side with her, but in a confrontation she could see he’d well slide back to Tiger Eyes.
Spider Girl eyed them both. White Devil immediately looked downward, but Tiger Eyes’ eyelashes gave a rebellious little flutter before he looked down. Spider Girl decided she had to play the card she’d held closest to her chest.
‘You have seen what a strong witch I am. The power of my magic. Your leader thought he could take me, defeat me. Crows eat his eyes. You know that I can tear off your genitals, burn out your eyes.’ She paused. ‘Tiger Eyes, I can see what you are thinking. You are thinking that all you have to do is hit me with a stone when I am not looking and I will be dead and so will my powers.’
Tiger Eyes shifted uneasily. That was exactly what he’d been thinking. She had not placed her pistol beneath her right leg for nothing. But she had to crush these two mentally, not physically. She still needed them.
She smiled and pointed to the two empty bowls they’d just been eating from.
‘That food you have just eaten…’
‘Yes?’
‘It was poisoned. And you know how all-powerful my poisons are.’
They made strangled noises. One held his stomach, the other tried to clear his croaking throat. They looked at her terrified.
‘I am such a powerful witch, my magic is so strong, that now that poison lives in your bodies awaiting my command to kill you. I can kill you any second I choose. I just have to command it. To flow into your blood and veins. Understand me?’
They did. They cringed before her.
‘And,’ she continued, ‘if either of you are stupid enough to think that by killing me you suddenly might stop me sending that command…’
She looked at both of them. This time not just White Devil lowered his head in submission, but so did Tiger Eyes.
‘…do not even try. To stop that poison killing you I have to continually order it not to. If, after forty hours, it receives no order from me, it will murder you immediately. From now on you will do everything I say, or you will die.’
She let that sink in, then told them that tomorrow she would find some water. She then sent them up front to pull the cart through the night. They were at all times to keep a watch on her father’s blue canvassed cart and if there was any unusual activity they were to wake her immediately. The Ox came to guard the rear of the cart. Spider Girl slept soundly though the night.
15
SPIDER GIRL – THE BACKSTORY 2
Spider Girl had greatly admired a man who lived in her village. His name was Fang. He was a builder. He built walls, farm buildings, small sheds. She did not admire him for who he was but for what he did. Over the years he had accumulated quite a lot of money – not because he coveted money but because he was uninterested in spending it. The only thing which interested him was building.
He did not build as other men build. Before he even started a building he would stare hard at the ground it was to be built on. How it lay, how it was shaped, its texture and consistency. He would prod it with his toe. Dig with his spade to find where the rock lay. Dig in several places because he was as much interested in what happened beneath the soil as what would happen above it.
Then the stones for his building would arrive from the quarry. Be dumped in a pile. He’d look at them. Then one by one he’d pick up every rock, stare at it, weigh it in his hand, observe its precise colour, texture and weight, then place it carefully in another pile, so he knew exactly where it was. Then he’d just stand there. Spider Girl loved this bit. In his mind, in his imagination, he’d be working out precisely where each stone he’d handled would go in his building, what particular place it would have in a wall, how its colours and textures would relate to and blend in with and contrast with the colours and textures of all the other stones he would lay around it. And only when he had completed this process in his head, so he knew exactly where each stone would lie, did he move a single stone on the ground. In every wall and building he built there was this subtle rhythm of delicacy and life and colour.
Most people in the village didn’t even notice this. Just walked straight past every day without a glance. But for the few who did, Fang’s buildings grew like oak trees in their souls.
Watching Fang taught Spider Girl how to think. You assembled all the facts, the rumours, the circumstances of a matter one by one in your mind, you tested every single one in relation to itself and to all the others – as Fang did with his stones – and only then did you decide what had or was occurring and how you would respond. You only acted when you knew exactly what you were going to do.
Spider Girl understood from her observations on the march that some people still possessed water, but that very few of them were honest. Honest people had been relieved of it by dishonest people. Honest people were now dying and collapsing by their thousands. It was those who had robbed them of their water who survived. And to survive, such people had learnt that you did not flaunt or advertise your water – you craftily hid it behind a facade of rags and despair. If she was to help her family and provide them with the water they would need – and they would need it, desperately, very soon – then she was going to have to track down these clever, violent people and take from them what they had taken from others.
In the morning Spider Girl immediately checked that her family’s blue-canvassed cart was still safely ahead of her, then fed herself and The Ox. She ordered Tiger Eyes and White Devil to stop pulling the cart and come to its rear. She looked at them both intently. Both stared rigidly at the ground. She asked if they were thirsty? ‘Yes,’ they replied. She told them she and The Ox were going off to find water. She reminded them of her magical power and said if either of them left their task of hauling the cart she would immediately know and strike them down dead. Her evil eye would be upon them. At all times they were to follow the blue canvassed cart, but not too close. She sent them off for a shit and then, without complaint, they resumed their haulage.
She told The Ox to lift her onto his shoulders which he did, effortlessly. From this sudden vantage point she could easily see her beloved family’s cart. Her father, strong as ever, pulling the cart with Eldest Son on the other side. Her mother stalking along behind holding hands with Cherry Blossom, who was twirling her colourful blue parasol. Second Son was presumably at the front leading the donkey. In the cart sat Grandfather, with his wild wisps of white hair, talking to Baby Girl Wei. Baby Boy Wei was asleep. A stab of deep love ran through her body. She told The Ox to start walking.
A giant with a plump girl astride his shoulders passing through the crowds. Some stared but most just kept trudging doggedly on, heads down. To avoid being seen by her family she got The Ox to walk diagonally to the east, Spider Girl minutely inspecting everyone and everything they passed. Farming families by the hundreds, though with fewer members now than they would have had when they left home. Exhausted, frail, clothing hanging baggy where once it would have been filled out. Some well-to-do people, mostly having abandoned their belongings, now clutched their water which they had to share with their hard-faced guards, marching on. Lost children. Dead children. Dead people. Her eyes would rest on them all for a second, then pass on. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but she knew she would recognize it the moment she saw it – however unimportant or unlikely it might be. Some slight crack in the facade of the normal, a hint of the strange.
She saw something. She was immediately interested. A toenail. Two toenails, to be precise. On the end of a foot thin as the cloven hoof of a roe deer, pink as a pig’s trotter. Both toenails were painted a brilliant blue with gold dust sparkling on them. Almost as soon as they appeared they disappeared, drawn back swiftly behind a dirty old curtain on a rickety cart drawn by an ox led by a rough-looking peasant. Almost as soon as the foot had disappeared the top of the curtain twitched open and an exquisite, heavily made-up face peeked out, swiftly followed by another and then another. Being a fat girl astride a giant certainly attracts attention. Much gigglin
g from behind the curtain followed by an angry male voice from within and the curtain being abruptly twitched shut. Spider Girl immediately told The Ox to turn away so that her interest in the cart was not noted.
As they turned she told him to return to her cart. She knew she’d found what she was looking for, but she hadn’t yet worked out precisely what it was. She thought deeply on what she had just witnessed. The tiny foot with two big blue gold-sprinkled toenails which had been so swiftly withdrawn obviously belonged to a woman whose feet had been bound since childhood. Feet which wealthy men pay a fortune to fondle, drool over and then fuck. Followed by exquisitely made-up faces peering momentarily through the curtain. What she had glimpsed – hidden behind a facade of squalor and poverty – were almost certainly the members of a very rich man’s harem or a very expensive brothel. But it couldn’t be a harem. No really rich man would risk committing himself or his girls to a death march like this. He would have purchased a suite in a steamer or hired a private aeroplane to transport himself and his precious cargo. What she had seen were high-class whores – the angry male voice almost certainly belonging to their pimp. He presumably had calculated that this extremely dangerous journey was worth the risk. That lots of China’s wealthiest men were descending on Wuhan – China’s new capital. And he had to have his finest girls there ready and waiting to service them when they arrived. Spider Girl’s opponent was a man of guile and daring. She felt a moment’s admiration for him.
He was certainly well financed and his undertaking scrupulously organized. With several whores and the Angry Male Voice in the cart – the whores looking in first-class condition – there would not be enough room in that run-down old cart for all the water and food they and the peasant leading the ox and the ox itself would need to get them to Wuhan. Which meant there had to be at least one more cart to carry the food and water, and, because this was such a complicated, concealed enterprise, there would also have to be strong security. Several men. That meant three carts. Spider Girl looked over her shoulder. There was no sign of any likely-looking carts travelling anywhere close to the whores. But such an obvious convoy – however run down – would have attracted immediate attention. And, as a crafty man, The Pimp would keep as much distance as he could between the young men and the whores. He didn’t want them getting close to each other. Young whores are for old men. Young men ruin young whores. So the three carts had been spread out. Therein lay his security. And her opportunity.
Wuhan Page 18