The Spider Goddess

by Tara Moss

  Arachne.

  I covered my gaping mouth with my hand, speechless.

  ‘I fear she is coming for you, Miss Pandora. You can’t stay here.’

  Luke was right. I looked around the room, my legs were tingling with adrenaline and fear. She was after me and I couldn’t just wait for her to get me. I had to do something. But what . . .? How could I escape a two-storey wave of spiders?

  It was then I heard the strange scratching on the glass of my bedroom windows. A multitude of legs scratching to get in. The first wave of spiders had reached our penthouse floor. Thousands more were behind them. ‘Quick!’ I cried, as the bottom corners of the windowpanes began to fill with spiders. Luke swiftly closed the one partially open window to keep them out, and stomped on a small swarm on the floor that had already infiltrated my room.

  ‘No! Don’t kill them!’ I protested.

  Luke stopped to look at me.

  ‘On second thought,’ I said, ‘do what you have to.’

  ‘Miss Pandora, the windows will not hold. We need to get you out of here.’

  He was right.

  I ran into the main lounge room and checked that the windows were shut tight. It might give us more time, at the very least.

  ‘Look! Webbing!’ I cried.

  The spiders were weaving a giant web across the windows so I couldn’t escape. Soon, Luke was at my side with his frockcoat done up, his belt tight and his sword in place. Wordlessly, we ran from the apartment to the elevator outside.

  We peered down.

  ‘I think they are building a web to cocoon the whole building,’ I said. Would they . . . swallow up the whole building? Could they? As they had done with Brunette? As they tried to do with Laurie?

  The lights were on in the lobby downstairs and what we saw there made my heart sink even further. Already many hundreds of spiders had squeezed through the small gaps in the front door and were moving steadily across the tiles of the lobby, blackening the floor like spilled ink. There was little doubt where they were headed. They would soon climb the lacework on the lift and swarm the penthouse. The laws of the Sanguine did not limit them. These spiders needed no invitation; their mistress’s orders were enough to see them enter our top-floor sanctuary.

  Celia. Where was Celia?

  I raced back inside the penthouse and pounded on Celia’s door. ‘Celia!’ I used the key she’d given me and stepped inside the antechamber. The only light came from three lit candles – one white, one red and one black – sitting on the low carved table. The red candle was larger than the others, and its flame danced high above the wick.

  ‘The pentacle,’ Luke observed, noticing the carving.

  I nodded.

  ‘I thought she was out, but . . .’ I rushed to the first of the doors in the antechamber. ‘I have to make sure she is not sleeping.’

  ‘I cannot pass through the walls,’ Luke said with regret. ‘I can’t check if she is here.’

  ‘Celia? Are you in there?’ I said, banging on the door.

  I heard nothing from the other side. I tried the door handle, and found it locked. The key she’d given me did not work. I tried each of the other doors, again knocking and calling for my great-aunt.

  Luke placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘The spiders are climbing the inside of the building.’ He looked back towards the lounge room. ‘The windows won’t hold.’

  I turned back to the door. ‘Great-Aunt Celia!’ I cried again. ‘Celia, wake up!’

  ‘Her fox stole was not by the door,’ Luke remarked.

  ‘Celia?’

  There was still no answer. Despite the glowing candles, I had to assume she was not home.

  Strange how the red candle danced like that.

  I walked blindly to the corner where I’d seen the coffin, and when my toes found it I bent and opened the lid. A faint flicker of light glowed from within. ‘Luke, close the door behind us. Quick, into the coffin.’ Despite the absurdity of my statement, he did as I said. I pulled the lid fully open and crawled inside, and Luke followed. It shut above us with a dull thud. I prayed that my great-aunt was somewhere safe.

  Wow.

  The staircase beneath the open bottom of the casket led down to a darkened hallway of old stone. There was a flickering candle in a rusted wall sconce. Beneath it was a pile of white wax, rising up like a melted snowman. The place smelled slightly of sulfur. In the candle’s light I could see that the stone walls were stained with age exactly like the exterior of the mansion. There was no furniture here, no wallpaper, carpeting or hardwood floors.

  ‘It’s a secret entrance, I think. Deus uses it,’ I told Luke. In one direction the stairs led down. In the other direction they went up. I paused for a moment, pondering the best course of action. I found myself instinctively headed for the descending staircase.

  But Luke took me suddenly by the elbow. ‘I don’t think you want to go that way,’ he told me firmly.

  I felt a rush of unexpected annoyance and stiffened, wanting to shake off his grip. For an awkward moment we stood that way in the corridor, my body urging me down the dark staircase and Luke holding me fast. I became aware of an unnatural pull, and an odd, faintly sulfurous smell coming up the stairs towards me. Something about it was distantly familiar. And then I remembered what Celia had said:

  If you discover a passage that leads underground, do not take it. Do you hear me? Not even with your guide.

  ‘Here. This way leads to the roof,’ Luke suggested, gently pulling me back from my thoughts, and from the strange pull I had felt. Of course he knew about these passages. He had been present in this building for many years. He probably knew every nook and cranny in the place. ‘Come with me, Miss Pandora.’

  He let go of my elbow and offered his hand. I took it.

  I turned on my heel, and from the corner of my eye caught a glimpse of the most horrifying sight.

  ‘Spiders. Look!’ They were coming up the stone staircase, crawling over the walls in a steady stream, like a dark wave rolling up the corridor. The mansion was slowly drowning in spiders.

  ‘Up! We must go up!’ I said. ‘Quick!’ I grabbed the candle and protected the flame in my palm. It lit the way for us as we ascended the cold, damp steps that soon began to change direction and pull into a tight circle.

  ‘We are in one of the turrets, aren’t we?’ I said, and Luke nodded.

  We soon emerged from the turret on to the roof of the mansion. Ahead of us was a dramatically sloping roof flanked by carved gargoyles. The view was spectacular, if deadly. The night-time winter air was bracing, and I shivered in my thin nightie; I’d neglected to dress properly in my haste.

  The Hunger Moon illuminated the dramatic angles and curves of the rooftop, as well as the sheer drop to street level. The streets of Spektor seemed a long way down. I felt a sudden vertigo overcome me and I swayed a little.

  ‘I’ve got you,’ Lieutenant Luke said, and I felt his arms around me.

  I had not imagined myself to be scared of heights, but the view was dizzying.

  We heard glass crashing below us.

  ‘The spiders. They’re coming in the windows.’ The house would be teeming with them now. I wondered where Arachne was. Would she come in through the front door? Or . . .? I looked for a way across to another roof. Perhaps we could hide somewhere. Or make it into another building? Where was Arachne?

  My question was answered far too soon.

  I couldn’t hide. I wasn’t going anywhere.

  The spider goddess appeared just beyond the edge of the sloping roof in front of us. She was rising slowly as if she were floating. Her arms were extended, and she let out a strange, high-pitched scream. She launched a web at me. I turned back to the turret but the web hit and wrapped around my lower leg, like a rope of fine, silk fishing line. I struggled to free myself, but then another shot of web hit me and knocked me over. My footing on the roof was lost, I slid down the shingles at heart-stopping speed towards the spiders and the long, steep drop to the st
reet below. I managed to grab at a large gargoyle at the far edge of the roof and bring myself to a halt. I lost my candle and I watched it plummet over the edge and smash on the street below.

  ‘Luke!’ I called, but got no answer. I’d lost sight of him. I couldn’t get the web off me, I was stuck.

  Arachne rose up before me – close, so close. She was riding the mountain of spiders as though they were a living, breathing, frozen wave. Others poured up on to the roof of the mansion, across the sloped roofs and over the turrets and gargoyles. They were coming towards me.

  I was trapped like a fly against the shingles, captive beneath the stars and the full glowing moon.

  ‘Pandora English,’ Arachne spat. She moved towards me and I could see the outline of her spidery legs moving beneath her clothes. ‘You dare go to my factory and destroy it! And my workers! You dare try and stop me from exacting my justice?’

  ‘Justice?’ I said.

  ‘Those designers had to pay for their boasts.’

  ‘Like you paid, you mean? When you boasted you were the best?’

  ‘I paid dearly, but I shall pay no more. I’ve lived in the shadows of this world long enough. If this world will not accept me, I will make this world mine. I will make the world my web, and my children will inhabit every inch of the Earth.’ She gestured to the thousands of spiders behind her, and I wondered whether my dream had been real. Whether beneath the eight-legged bodies were real people consumed by her pride. She moved closer, until her pointed spider legs touched the edge of the roof. I could see them, long and thin, and dangerous. She leaned over me. ‘And I can’t have the likes of you around to get in my way . . .’

  Arachne smiled, and revealed a set of fangs – horrible, dark fangs. They lengthened with sickening speed until they were bigger than the fangs of any vampire.

  What is it with everyone and fangs?

  She was on the roof now, more sure-footed than I could ever have been on my bare human feet. In one movement she hunkered down on all six of her horrible legs, and crouched forward, her human neck stretched at a gut-wrenching angle, eyes staring at me. She came towards me, and crept over me, her large, spider belly bulging over my hips and thighs, her strong, thin spider legs flexing. She straddled me and I couldn’t even move. My legs were still caught in the webbing, which was probably all that kept me from falling off the sloped roof and down on to the street below.

  My arms were still free though. I swung a fist at her delicate jaw, but she caught it in one try, and squeezed my fist in hers with disturbing strength.

  ‘You are so powerless, little mortal. Don’t you see?’

  Using two human arms and two spider legs, she forced my arms back on to the shingles and bit into my shoulder. I felt the spider fangs go in, piercing my skin and immediately setting my body on fire with an acid sting. When she pulled back I could see her fangs dripped with an unearthly green fluid. She wiped her mouth with one black sleeve of her robe, and the hideous fangs slipped away again, as if that small dark mouth were almost human.

  No!

  I could feel the paralysis of her spider kiss almost instantly.

  Soon I was completely paralysed, and wrapped in her web of sticky thread. I could no longer even struggle against the silk binds.

  ‘The Seventh? Look at you. Such a reputation, and yet look at how pathetic you are. You’ll be my little treat tonight. One tiny triumph before I take on bigger things. Normally I prefer to devour men, but you will do fine, little girl. You should be honoured to be at my table.’ She tilted her warped face and examined me closely. ‘Yes . . .’

  I would have shivered, or perhaps even vomited, but I could not move a thing except my eyes, which I held wide open. Then my eyes blinked. And blinked again. I felt a poisonous sleep pull at me, urging me to fall away into nothing. Anything was better than this paralysis, this helplessness . . . no, I had to stay awake, had to find a way to escape this. My head spun and, though I urged my body into action, I could not wiggle even my toes. Only my eyes could still move, though it seemed increasingly hard to keep them open. And now my eyes detected movement.

  A glint of steel.

  A blur of uniform.

  Luke!

  Lieutenant Luke Thomas appeared from behind the gargoyle, perched over the statue, holding tight, his cavalry sword in his hand, the tip pointing right at Arachne.

  ‘Back away! Back away from her now!’ he shouted.

  Arachne paused over me, and looked up at him, straining her unnaturally bent neck. ‘Ah, you’re more like it,’ she said. ‘I like a man in uniform. But wait your turn while I deal with this one. Apparently she’s special . . .’

  Quickly the spider goddess reared up and threw a web at Luke. He dodged it, but temporarily lost his footing. My heart skipped as he swung precariously to one side. His cap slipped off his head and tumbled through the air, disappearing over the edge of the building. No! As a ghost he might be safe, but his new, human body could not survive a five-storey fall to the street below.

  I saw the sabre fall from his hand. I watched it as if in slow motion.

  The Kumokirimaru, I thought. The spider killer.

  And then to my amazement it wasn’t falling at all. I could feel it. With my mind. And in my mind I held it, making it fly towards us, spinning, the blade flashing in the moonlight.

  Arachne shrieked.

  She pulled her robes back and grasped the hilt of the sabre. Somehow it had gone right through her belly. ‘No! My babies. No!’ she screamed, gasping and squirming. The tip of the sword poked right through the robe at her back. There was a hole in her, and now the skulls of her victims began to tumble out of her distended belly – skulls and baby spiders. She screeched again and again, and all around us, her spiders began to screech. It was a terrifying, unnatural sound, high-pitched but louder than thunder – the sound of thousands of nails on a giant chalkboard. The spiders that surrounded me began to jerk and shrivel as they screamed, curling up like burning paper, and with them, the webbing across the building began to shrivel.

  As did the webbing that held me to the roof.

  I felt myself start to slip. One inch. Two. I had no voice to cry out, no limbs to stop myself from tumbling away.

  Oh god . . .

  My bare feet could not find a grip on the steep shingles. I only had inches to the edge, and in seconds I found myself sliding right past the screaming goddess that held me.

  I hit the edge of the roof and plummeted over.

  Paralysed and motionless, I nonetheless thought I heard something as I fell – a voice. Not mine, not Luke’s. ‘Deus, would you mind?’ I thought I heard someone say. Was that Celia?

  I woke in Celia’s antechamber.

  I felt like I’d been coming in and out of consciousness for a while, and when my eyes finally fixed and focused on some-thing, it was on the bright flame over a red candle. It seemed to flicker and dance an inch or two above the top of the wick.

  ‘Celia?’

  The sounds of the room around me came in and out. I recognised Celia’s voice, and Luke’s. Though I tried, I could not form words. Someone was telling me to drink some more, and I realised that I had been drinking something that still clung to my mouth. I licked my lips.

  Strange. Sticky.

  ‘It’s safe now. We saved her,’ I heard Great-Aunt Celia say, and she seemed to be talking to me. Her face appeared above me, white and serene beneath her widow’s veil. ‘Don’t fret darling, I made sure she didn’t die.’

  ‘Didn’t . . . die?’

  I sat up on my elbows with some effort, and felt Luke’s warm arms around me. ‘Miss Pandora, you’re all right. I’m so sorry I let you fall.’

  I took in the dimly lit room around me. I was on the velvet chaise lounge. The three candles still burned on the low, carved table. There was a glass of red wine, and a jar on the table – a small glass jar.

  ‘If we keep her in there much longer we’ll have to poke some holes in the lid so she can breathe,’ Celia
said.

  ‘Are you saying —’

  ‘That is Arachne. Yes.’

  It seemed only a moment ago that Arachne was destined to destroy all of Spektor, and now my great-aunt was concerned that she be kept alive? That she got enough oxygen? The surprise must have shown on my face, because Celia added, ‘As you well know, I couldn’t let her die. There would be ecological ramifications.’

  You shall live to swing, to live now and forever, even to the last hanging creature of your kind.

  ‘If she dies then spiders will become extinct?’ I asked.

  Celia only gave a quick nod. ‘She is the goddess of all spiders.’

  I swung my rubbery legs off the lounge and leaned forward to look at the jar. The woman – the goddess – who had been intent on devouring me piece by piece now looked impossibly small and vulnerable trapped in that tiny glass jar. Her expressive human face was pure spider now, her half-human torso had morphed into a plump, round shiny black body marked with the distinctive red hourglass of the black widow, the bright red marking just where Luke’s sword had cut her open – as if all black widow spiders had been created to show that piece of present history on their bodies. Where once Arachne had slender, human arms above six monstrous limbs, she now had eight tapering spider legs. She was perhaps ten millimetres long. There was nothing about this little spider to indicate she was the immortal weaver, the goddess of the ancient tale.

  ‘You saved me, Luke. It was so close. I thought you’d dropped your sword but you got her. You are amazing. She would have eaten me.’

  ‘But that was you, young Pandora. You took hold of that sword.’ It was Celia who spoke.

  ‘But, I couldn’t move.’ Then I remembered the strange feeling I’d had. The feeling I was controlling the sword. Had that been real?

  ‘It’s true, Miss Pandora,’ Lieutenant Luke said.

  My great-aunt smiled. ‘You didn’t know, did you? You have the gift of Mind Movement, just like Madame Aurora.’