The Spider Goddess

by Tara Moss

  That sounded rather grim. ‘But if she was killed, then it can’t be her?’ I reasoned.

  ‘Ah, there is much we can learn from legends, Pandora, but never take those heroic endings literally. Men like to boast. Heroes always feel they have to claim a goddess or two. It rarely happened in reality.’

  ‘Oh.’ I wasn’t heartened by that idea. It doubtless meant that if a goddess wanted to destroy me, I’d have a hard time protecting myself, let alone vanquishing her. I had no interest in being a hero, of course, but that hardly seemed to matter. ‘She said something about not believing I was the Seventh? What could she have meant by that?’ I asked.

  Celia pondered that. ‘She knew who you were. She might have expected a fight.’

  I thought about my efforts with the umbrella and the can of hairspray. Hardly awe-inspiring stuff.

  ‘Being the Seventh is a gift, Pandora. But it won’t be easy. They’ll be drawn to you, and you to them. It is the way of things.’ She contemplated something for a moment. ‘Raiko’s sword was called Kumokirimaru, or “spider killer”. I wonder if it exists,’ she said, possibly thinking it might come in handy.

  ‘Wait, you need to explain this to me. What do you mean, “the way of things”? And who is they?’

  Celia placed a cool hand on my knee. ‘Well, all this is not so easy to explain in common terms, Pandora. You have to cast aside what you learned back in Gretchenville. You have to open yourself to the fact that you are the Seventh. You are special, and you can be sure that those who are powerful will be drawn to you because of it. It is the natural order of things. Every one hundred and fifty years, there is this tension, or agitation, this explosion of activity from . . . well, from different forces.’

  ‘Different forces? You mean like this spider woman? Like the Blood Countess?’

  ‘Yes. And others besides.’

  Others. Great. ‘So these people, or whatever they are, they will come here looking for me?’

  ‘Well, not exactly. Many of them will come here and hope to avoid you, in fact. But yes, they will come, and you will be drawn together.’

  ‘I’m a little confused.’

  ‘That, darling, is quite natural,’ she said.

  Some time passed as we sat there in silence. Freyja continued to sniff at me occasionally. Her pink opal eyes regarded me with curiosity.

  ‘Supernatural hive-mind spiders,’ I told the cat in a whisper. ‘And a spider web cocoon. That’s what the smell is.’ Freyja cocked her head to one side, considered my explanation and lay down at my feet, evidently as perplexed as I was by it all.

  ‘I know you sometimes think it would have been easier if you hadn’t come here, Pandora,’ Celia said. ‘But believe me when I tell you that these forces would find you no matter where you were.’

  I swallowed.

  ‘You were the Seventh long before you came to Spektor. But the time – your time – is now.’

  ‘Why every one hundred and fifty years? What does that mean?’

  ‘Your friend will understand. He knows.’

  ‘Luke?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Great-Aunt Celia, how do you know all these things?’ I’d read so many of my mother’s books on mythology and ancient cultures – read them over and over in my youth until the stories of gods and monsters were as familiar to me as fairytales were to other girls. And yet I didn’t know half of what my great-aunt seemed to. I’d certainly never heard of anything called ‘the Seventh’.

  ‘It’s rather become my business to know,’ she responded, typically evasive.

  ‘But how do you separate myth from reality? How do you know which of these goddesses or creatures really exist?’ I pressed.

  ‘I don’t,’ she said simply. ‘But if they do exist there’s a good chance they’ll show up in Spektor.’

  I watched her face carefully. She didn’t betray any sign of jest.

  ‘You are serious, aren’t you?’ I said.

  ‘Indeed I am, Pandora.’

  Spektor was an unusual place. That much was clear from the first time I’d set foot in the suburb. Perhaps we had the Victorian-era architect and psychical scientist Edmund Barrett to thank for that?

  ‘Pandora, what most people call folklore is generally just a report passed down over so many generations that the facts seem fantastical. A bit like a game of Telephone. The details change, but there is truth at the centre. More often than not, folklore begins with the truth.’

  In the past two months I had discovered, with great surprise and some alarm, that some folklore the modern world thought was ridiculous was indeed true: mediums existed, psychics, ghosts, the undead. And if vampires existed – though they’d hate you to call them that – then what else was real? How many monster stories were founded on a real species or supernatural being? How many ancient legends were based in truth? I thought of the spider woman, whose power and poison could be felt like an aura around her. And that body . . . those spider legs. She was sinister, there was no doubting that. She was no beneficent spider goddess.

  ‘So if she isn’t Grandmother Spider or one of these Japanese spider women, then who is she?’ I asked.

  ‘There is one more suspect who comes to mind. I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned her yet.’

  I drew a blank. ‘I don’t know who you mean.’

  Celia frowned at me. ‘Really now, Pandora. The name Arachne? You mean to say that doesn’t ring a bell? With all your love of ancient mythology?’

  The legend of Arachne did ring a bell. And I’d seen the name somewhere recently, too, hadn’t I? I searched for the context, but for the moment it eluded me. ‘But that story is definitely a myth,’ I protested, thinking of the ancient Greco-Roman tale. ‘Obviously there was no Arachne, or Athena for that matter.’

  ‘That’s an interesting perspective,’ Celia said and folded her arms. I knew that look. It told me I had much to learn.

  Arachne . . .

  ‘Wait. Now I remember where I saw that name! It’s the other address Pepper gave me,’ I said, and leapt from my seat. I fished the piece of paper out of Celia’s coat and brought it over. Sure enough, the word was scrawled across the page in Pepper’s tiny writing. Arachne was the name of the last remaining designer that was to be interviewed for the knitwear feature. There was an address in the Garment District, and a phone number.

  Celia raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it?’

  The ancient story of Arachne was that she was once a great mortal weaver, praised for her work. Eventually she became so proud that she boasted she was greater than the Greek goddess of crafts, Pallas Athena. The goddess heard of these boasts and was angered by the young woman’s conceit. She set a weaving competition, during which Arachne wove a beautiful tapestry, but cheekily chose to depict the sins and transgressions of the gods. Enraged by her defiance, and perhaps even jealous of the beauty of her work – and in some tellings, also jealous of the beauty of the young woman herself – the goddess destroyed Arachne’s tapestry, broke her loom and cut her face before turning her into a spider. Athena clearly had some fierce temper. I could remember a few words by the Latin poet Ovid from his famous work Metamorphoses, in which he wrote of Arachne’s curse: ‘You shall live to swing, to live now and forever, even to the last hanging creature of your kind.’

  Arachne was cursed to become a spider – the spider woman, the spider goddess. She was cursed for her conceit.

  Everyone knows I am the best knitwear designer in the world. In fact, I’m probably the best there has ever been, Victor had said, only hours before he went missing. He had been boastful. Had the others? Was Arachne the one sending the mysterious parcels? Destroying the designers’ workshops? For revenge? Because of their boasts?

  I hesitated. ‘But it’s just a tale. It’s a parable. Metamorphoses was written in, like, 8 AD or something. There’s no way . . .’

  And then I thought of the beautiful but warped face of the woman who had confronted me. Those faint
lines I’d seen. They were scars.

  ‘Just because it’s in a book doesn’t mean it isn’t real,’ my great-aunt answered with a level gaze.

  It was midnight, and I had little chance of drifting to sleep. I’d long since bathed, dried my hair and changed into my nightie. I sat on the end of my bed gazing at the deep pitch of the obsidian ring for an incalculable stretch of time before deciding to give up the notion of going to sleep. My mind was crowded with thoughts of supernatural spiders, ancient myths, necromancers and mad psychical researchers, and my veins were still charged with my great-aunt’s tea. Thankfully, I didn’t have to be up for work on Saturday, so sleeplessness seemed not to matter.

  Should I head to the Garment District in the morning? Just check out the address? I wondered. Surely it could wait until Monday. What would I find, anyway? Even after what I’d thought I’d seen, and everything Celia had told me, the idea that Arachne herself was loose in New York seemed too incredible to be true.

  No. It just wasn’t possible.

  But nor was sleep. I hopped into my favourite pair of jeans, a T-shirt and warm sweater, and I stepped out into the lounge room. The curtains were open over the tall windows, and moonlight fell across the room. In the distance, the Empire State Building was silhouetted by a bluish full moon against the dark sky. Celia was no longer reading at her chair. If she were any average great-aunt, she would be fast asleep, but I fancied she was out somewhere in her sumptuous red ensemble, painting the town black. As if to confirm my suspicion, her fox stole was gone from the Edwardian hatstand. I was alone.

  I stepped out of the front door of the penthouse and stood by the rail. The mansion was quiet below me. I gazed at the lobby tiles of the ground floor and wondered if there was some secret passageway down there. Perhaps a passageway that led to Luke’s resting place.

  Luke. My spirit guide.

  ‘Lieutenant Luke?’ I called out tentatively.

  In moments I felt a coolness descend, and my ring gave a surprising but brief burst of heat. I was looking at it when he materialised at my side, first as a white misty shape, and then as the handsome soldier I knew.

  ‘Miss Pandora.’

  ‘Luke. Hello.’ His luminous blue eyes met with mine and I grinned helplessly for a moment. He seemed to be getting more handsome. Or maybe there was something unreasonably attractive about having him appear when I called? Probably it was both.

  ‘Is your hand okay?’ he asked.

  ‘My hand?’

  ‘You were looking at it.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ I turned my hand over and frowned. ‘It’s this ring Celia gave me . . . It became almost hot for a moment. Or I thought it did.’

  He looked at it and two creases appeared between his brows. ‘That ring has power,’ he said.

  I was taken aback. ‘In what way?’

  ‘You are anchored,’ he told me. ‘It helps to keep you on this plane, while you communicate with the dead.’

  The dead. Like Luke.

  I leaned against the rail and watched him. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I can feel it,’ he said.

  ‘Oh!’ I stood to attention. ‘Should I take it off? Is it hurting you?’ I felt a touch panicked.

  ‘No, Miss Pandora,’ he assured me. ‘It anchors you and gives you strength, but it does not alter me. It protects you.’ As with so much of what he explained to me about the spirit world and his connection to the mortal world, I did not fully understand, but I felt comforted. Celia had said Madame Aurora’s ring was a talisman. I wondered about its powers. What had Madame Aurora experienced with it? Or accomplished with it?

  ‘Luke, can I talk to you about something? Do you have time?’

  ‘I have no time, and nothing but time, Miss Pandora,’ he told me. He removed his cap, and held it close to his breast. ‘What I do have, I give to you.’

  I felt my knees weaken a touch. My cheeks grew warm and I looked to my feet, willing my face to return to a normal colour. Blushing in front of a ghost? How ridiculous. Even worse, to be blushing over a ghost. I felt my father’s disapproval even from the grave.

  This time, Lieutenant Luke’s words were no riddle. Ghosts like Luke were already departed, if not really gone. They had no time left, in the mortal sense, but also no schedule. No possessions. No earthly body. No daytime presence. Only spirit. Luke brushed my chin with one cool, misty finger, lifting my face up to him. ‘I wish I could do more for you,’ he told me. ‘I wish I could be more.’

  I felt the compulsion to kiss him. ‘I . . .’ I began, not even sure of what I wanted to reveal. The silence was too awkward. I needed to say something. ‘Will you come downstairs with me?’ I finally asked and swallowed.

  ‘Of course, Miss Pandora.’

  We took the lift down to the lobby. Luke probably could have drifted down through the mansion and met me there, but he stood attentively in the confines of the little rattling lift as it descended, holding his cap neatly in front of him with both hands. I thought about how we’d never be able to walk along the street together. Or go to the movies. Even leave the house . . . And yet I felt so safe with Luke. I looked down at the ring on my finger again. Why had it grown hot? What did it mean?

  We emerged from the lift and walked across the tiles of the lobby.

  I had an idea.

  When Luke saw that I was heading for the entrance, he slowed. I walked straight up to the large wooden front door and pulled it open. The night air blew in, along with the faint smell of Spektor’s curious fog.

  ‘Come,’ I beckoned.

  Lieutenant Luke stopped just under the dusty chandelier. ‘I cannot pass out of this mansion,’ he said. ‘I am trapped here.’

  I thought about these strange supernatural rules I was learning about – how a Sanguine needed to be invited into a home, and how they could be affected by a crucifix if they really believed in the power of it. (Though Celia said it would take a lot of belief to burst into flames . . .) I thought about the ring. Who knew how much power and magic it held? ‘I think you can make it,’ I told him. ‘You just have to believe.’ I said it with conviction, and I found that a good part of me believed what I said. Had Luke ever been invited to leave?

  ‘I cannot. I am sorry, Miss Pandora.’ He stood fast.

  I stepped through the door into the cold night, and held out my hand to him.

  His whole body seemed to stiffen within his tailored uniform. For a while we stood a few metres apart, each firm at our posts. I hoped to feel something in the ring, another flash of heat perhaps, something that might indicate that this strange talisman Celia had given me would help him to pass through the doorway. Nothing happened, and then, just as it seemed we were at an impasse, Luke fixed his cap on his head, and began to walk slowly towards me.

  ‘You can do it, Luke,’ I encouraged him.

  Please . . .

  I kept my hand out, and he neared me, taking slow steps, his leather boots unnaturally silent on the tiles. Closer. Closer still. Soon we were nearly touching. And just as he stepped over the threshold, inches from my outstretched fingers, he disappeared.

  ‘No!’ I gasped.

  I raced back inside the lobby. The door slammed shut behind me, pushing dust into the air. ‘Luke? Luke?’ He was gone.

  ‘I told you I couldn’t leave.’

  I looked around for where his voice had come from and after a moment Lieutenant Luke’s form materialised as a white shape near the base of the winding mezzanine staircase. In time he became whole again, and I let out a deep breath I didn’t even know I was holding.

  I ran a hand over my face. ‘I’m so sorry. I was just hoping . . .’

  ‘I’m the one who must apologise, Miss Pandora,’ he replied. ‘I am meant to remain here. I do not know why.’

  The sincerity of his voice only added to the shame I felt for having pushed the issue. I’d thought it was at least worth a try, but now I felt selfish. I sat at the base of the staircase, defeated. Luke came to sit next to me.


  ‘There is a woman out there . . . a spider goddess,’ I found myself explaining. ‘She’s been following me all week and tonight she attacked me. I guess maybe . . .’ I hesitated. ‘I guess I’m afraid. I guess I hoped you could help me somehow – because you are my spirit guide.’

  It felt strange to say it aloud and, even stranger, Luke made no protest or comment. It was as if he already knew or suspected his role.

  ‘I don’t know what all this means,’ I said, and leaned forward on my knees. If he was my spirit guide, how did that work? Why couldn’t he leave the building with me? Maybe he was right? Maybe he was meant to remain here? Or maybe there was still something we could do about it. Perhaps Deus was right about Barrett? I had no idea.

  To my surprise Luke snapped to attention and looked towards the lift. I wondered what he had sensed, until I heard the little elevator come to life seconds later. I nervously observed its ascent. One floor. Two floors. It stopped. Level two or three? It hadn’t reached the top floor, that much I could tell. Was Athanasia about to pay us a visit?

  ‘Someone is coming,’ I said, though it was obvious. I stood up and readied myself. There was no point getting melancholy about Luke. And certainly not now, when there were more pressing things to consider. Like whether or not I had rice. (I didn’t.) I briefly considered leaving the mansion and going out into the night air of Spektor, but that would not really help things. At least inside I was protected by the mistress of the house, and her rule that I not be harmed. Protected somewhat. It wasn’t a rule I particularly wanted to test.

  I listened to the elevator descend, and soon it reappeared in the iron cage of the lobby, holding a solitary slim figure in a grey suit.

  I relaxed.

  It was the Fledgling Sanguine, Samantha.

  ‘Hello, Pandora,’ she said softly.

  My predecessor at Pandora magazine didn’t look so well. She’d grown paler since I’d last seen her, and her face was even more gaunt and angular. She was still wearing my old suit. Actually, it wasn’t really that old. I’d bought it in Gretchenville at the finest fashion boutique in town in preparation for my exciting move to New York, but after experiencing the reaction it got from various fashion types (it clearly wasn’t cool enough, to put it mildly), I couldn’t wait to get rid of the thing. I’d given it to Samantha, who’d been bizarrely stripped of all her clothes and ID when I’d met her. (In truth it was less of a meeting than a derailed attempt at feeding.) It looked like she’d worn the suit day and night since I’d given it to her. It was quite filthy, and the hems of the pant legs were frayed over her dirty bare feet.