by J. D. Lakey
“Cloud Eye says she has killed it,” Cheobawn said, nudging at the legs with a leather covered finger. The legs clicked together, the air ringing softly with their subtle harmonies. “It would be a good trophy. I could hang it over my study station and make it sing when I grow bored.”
“I do not think the Elders will let you bring it into the dome, Little Mother,” Breyden said. “Come, the weather is growing worse and Meshel cannot get the cattle into the long house with just Erin to help.”
Cheobawn smiled up at Connor as he brought Kite Wing to a halt next to Breyden’s mount.
“Look, Connor,” she said, putting thumb and finger around the body of the dead spider and lifting it by the ridges on the edges of the carapace. “They sing.” Cheobawn held it up and blew on the legs until they rang like little bells.
Was it Connor or Breyden who shouted first? The legs kept moving even after she stopped blowing. She snatched her hand away but it was already too late. Something sharp stabbed through her leather glove into the palm of her hand.
The world fell out of her mind. Cheobawn blinked in surprise at the sudden transition. The white room with the walls of mist was back. How could this be? How had she gotten here? She was nowhere near a bloodstone. Why was she dressed in only her nightgown? Had she lost track of time? Was she lying in bed, dreaming?
Something skittered softly behind the mist.
“Who’s there?” she called, backing away from the sound but the sound came from everywhere and there was no escaping it. She spun around. “Show yourself. Talk to me. I do not like this game.”
Her hand throbbed. She looked down. The place around the bite had turned to crystal. Even as she watched, a new row of crystal scales added themselves to the expanding circle of jewel bright stone. The clear scales grew, spreading down her fingers and up towards her wrist. She pressed her other hand into the arteries of her forearm, trying to stop the flow of blood that threatened to carry the infection to the rest of her body.
“What have you done to me?” she asked. The sounds in the mists started to sound faintly like bells. If she concentrated on them hard enough, they almost made a certain sort of sense. She closed her eyes and listened harder. It was not just random noise; there were harmonies, there were small songs that ran through the whole body of sound like bright lines of gold thread through a weaving; there were songs laid atop other songs, tangling and untangling themselves, disappearing into the background only to rise again in one synchronized note before fading again.
Cheobawn opened her eyes and peered into the white mist.
“I know this place,” she called to it. “It does not frighten me. You can stop hiding now.”
She glanced quickly at her hand. The crystal contagion had consumed her fingers. She clenched her fist and watched as the tendons moved over the bones inside her transparent skin. She should have been terrified but her brain was not totally convinced that this was real. Was she dreaming? Would she wake soon and laugh about this with Connor over breakfast?
“I will listen,” Cheobawn called out to the thing behind the mist, “only make this stop. I do not want to become stone.” Stone. Crystal. She knew who was out there. “Making me into a Spider will not help your cause.”
The mist took form and became a monster. Cheobawn swallowed the scream in her throat as she backed away. For a few disorienting moments, she could not make her brain sort out the pieces of its strangeness. Then it moved and the jumbles of crimson and umber crystal reformed in her mind into a dozen many jointed legs and a great head from which sprouted hard frills, spiked horns, obsidian mandibles, and milky white fangs. It towered over her, very easily as tall and as long as a bennelk. A pair of short, almost atrophied legs moved spasmodically against its mandibles until either the legs or the mouth parts began to hum. Somehow, her ears heard music but her brain heard thoughts and ideas and images that might have been language. She held her breath and listened as hard as she could in and out of the ambient.
At long last, the song said,
the seed planted has finally grown. Long have we waited for your coming. Welcome, child of our longing.
Chapter Fourteen
What a very curious thing to say, Cheobawn thought to herself. Was it perhaps a form of Spider greeting? Had she misinterpreted the sounds somehow?
“You are mistaken,” she said. “I am not your child. I am human.”
Are you? I think not, it said. You can talk to us. No other human has ever done that before.
“I am an aberration. One of Amabel’s experiments gone wrong in the Making,” Cheobawn said firmly. “My existence is none of your doing.”
Is it not? the Spider said with a sound that might have been laughter if bells could be made to laugh. Your hand tells me otherwise.
Cheobawn looked down at her hand. The skin of her wrist was now hard crystal scales. It itched. A thousand prickles shivered deep inside the bones of her fingers. Cheobawn studied the transformation, her lips pressed together, a worried frown on her brow.
“I do not like this. Make it stop,” she pleaded.
They are your memories. Control them as you see fit, Spider said patiently.
What did that mean, she thought in exasperation? Oud had said that the form she took in the misty room was the one she was most familiar with. Everything after that was just dress up and play acting. Cheobawn studied her crystalline hand. As she watched, the bones inside her crystal skin turned to obsidian.
“These are your memories, not mine,” Cheobawn said, shaking her head, trying not to feel afraid.
Are they? Have you not inserted yourself into the fabric of the world, ever questing with your curious mind? Have you not absorbed the thoughts of the universe, that you might better understand them? Did you think this would not change you irrevocably? Now you have touched Spider and Spider has touched you. These are your memories. Make them be a part of yourself, just as you have done for all else.
Cheobawn sighed in resignation. Was it that simple? Like learning to speak to bennelk while remembering you were human? How dangerous could it be? She had not lost herself inside Sam’s Lowlander mind and, as crazy as he was, she had come away relatively intact. She cocked her head and listened to the ambient inside her strange hand.
Suddenly, the mist was gone. She stood upon the shore of a great body of water that stretched to the horizon. The sound of splashing drew her eyes to a disturbance in the waves not far out from the shore. As she watched, a scarlet spider, similar to the Spider in the misty room, rose from the waves and scrambled out of the sea on the delicate ebony tips of its clawed feet. More emerged. Soon the water was alive with their shapes. Cheobawn danced on the tips of her own ebony claws as the battle lust filled her mind. This was her beach, her bit of sand, and she would kill any who would try to take it from her.
Horrified, she ripped herself away, refusing to be anyone but Cheobawn, refusing to watch death, refusing to become a killer, even in this strange land of dreams. She was Cheobawn of the Blackwind Pack who loved small furry things and the color of the sky at dusk. She chased that thought back into the mists and beyond.
She lay in an icy cave, a white storm raging over her head. Something strange and alien loomed over her, its arms, gruesomely soft and clinging, wrapped around her. Two dark orbs stared at her from inside a cocoon of webbing. She struck at it with the tips of her claws and scrabbled away, but she had lost most of her legs, the mutilation leaving her with only four deformed and claw-less limbs. The monster reached for her, sounds coming out of the cocoon below its eyes. It was a brutal and guttural sound lacking any resemblance to language. She screamed and tried to bat the limbs away. Another alien was busy chopping up one of her babies with a sharp metal rod while three furred and fanged land beasts circled them in agitation. She was surrounded by enemies, defenseless.
In the next moment, with just a blink of the eye, she was Cheobawn with memories that told her today was the day after Restday, that they had come outside to gat
her strays, and the monster in front of her was Connor.
“By all that is holy, Ch’che,” he yelled, “I just want to look at it. Give me your hand”
Cheobawn looked down at her hand. Someone, probably Connor had taken her leather glove off. The skin around the bite was red and inflamed. The hand was swelling, her fingers turning into sausages as she watched.
“Breyden!” Connor yelled as he grabbed her wrist in one hand and spread her fingers flat with the other, “Leave the gods cursed spider. Get your med kit out of the saddlebags.”
“Spider is angry with us,” Cheobawn said through chattering teeth as she looked around at the scattered remains of spider babies.
“Yeah,” Connor said, pulling her mask down and shoving her hood and hat back to better see her eyes. “Spider will just have to get over it. Breyden! Now!”
“We must save the eggs,” she said frantically, grabbing the collar of his duster with her free hand to catch his attention, “or else bad things will happen.”
“Empty threats,” scoffed Connor as he probed the wound in her palm, looking for stingers. She tried to get her hand back but Connor was bigger and stronger than she.
Breyden launched himself off the top of his bennelk, did a perfect three point landing, turning it into a roll which brought him up against Connor’s side, med kit in hand.
“Can’t this wait?” Breyden asked as he flipped the tin open and began tossing out bandage packs and suture kits. “The weather is not going to stay this nice for long.”
Cheobawn looked up at the thin strip of sky overhead and wondered what could be any worse than the gale of ice laden wind roaring along the surface of the dome.
“She’s going into shock. Give me spider anti-venom and adrenaline tabs,” Connor said, “Then maybe we can get her on my mount and get her inside to Amabel.”
Breyden handed the yellow tabs to Connor and then peeled a red tab off its paper.
“Just try to breath, Little Mother,” he said as he pulled Cheobawn’s mask down further and pressed the tab into the vein in her neck, releasing the medicine with a flick of a fingernail. Oddly, she did not feel the sting. Trying to breathe was very good advice, as there was a band of steel tightening around her ribcage making it harder and harder to draw a deep breath. The sting at her wrist distracted her.
“What is that?” she asked. It was hard to talk for lack of air in her lungs. “We have no antidote for this species.”
“Stinging spider is the closest I can think of,” Connor said, pulling a bandage out of its paper with his teeth. He began to wrap it as tight as he could around her wrist. Her hand went numb. “Better than nothing. Can’t hurt. Do you think you can ride, wee bit?”
The adrenaline was making her heart race and her head spin. The top of Cloud Eye’s back seemed very far away. Breyden rose and reached for his mount’s lead. The bennelk snorted and danced away, weaving restlessly with the other mounts. Breyden tried to catch Kite Wing. She allowed it but would not draw near nor settle to her knees at the command.
Kneel down, Sister, Cheobawn said to her own mount.
Ice demons cling to your mind, Cloud Eye said nervously.
I have been stung by a spider. We need to go back to the stables, Cheobawn said, too tired to argue.
Herd Mother said not to listen to the ice demons, Cloud Eye chastised.
You wanted me to fight the ice demons, she said, irritation filling her ambient, perhaps fueled by the drugs. This is how it must be done. Be fierce. Let me up and take me home.
Cloud Eye sidled closer and then after a moment’s hesitation settled to her knees. Breyden and Connor pulled Cheobawn to her feet and lifted her into the saddle. Breyden climbed on behind her to keep her safe.
“Go find Erin and Meshel,” Breyden called over his shoulder to Connor as Cloud Eye heaved to her feet and headed towards the stables without any further urging. “Get the cattle settled and then come find us at the infirmary.”
Breyden’s tab was starting to work. The tightness in her chest eased only to be replaced by a blinding headache. Cheobawn wanted to close her eyes but her heart was racing in her chest and her arm ached all the way from the tourniquet to the veins deep inside her shoulder. Breyden crushed her against his belly, leaned forward and kicked Cloud Eye into a bone jarring gallop. By the time the wranglers open the gates into the stable yard she was past caring if she lived or died, as long as someone took the pain away.
Things moved behind her eyelids. The strip of dark sandy beach was hot under her claws.
Breyden jostled her painfully as he handed her down into the arms waiting to catch her in the stable yard. Her vision grayed out for just a moment.
It was not adrenaline but battle lust that made her heart pound so hard. The beach seethed under a mass of scarlet bodies, all of them screaming challenge. She screamed her own challenge as a large gravid egg bearer raced up the beach towards her, lusting after her prime spot. Their bodies crashed together, mandibles snapping, legs dancing out of harm’s way, their battle cries lost in the din of a thousand similar battles.
It was not the pain but the fury that made her bare her teeth and roar at Hayrald as he tried to pull her riding leathers off her swollen arm. She was lying in the back of a cart racing down a path under the dome. Hayrald pulled her long knife out of its sheath on her thigh. Her mind was muddled with images but she knew a threat when she saw it. She fought him. Cursing, Hayrald caught her good arm and pinned it under his knee while he sliced the sleeve away from her spider-bit arm with the blade, being none to gentle in his haste.
She was Spider and she was beautiful and gloriously strong, from the tip of the spines at the top of her head to the obsidian claws on each of her dozen legs. Not just a spider, but all the spiders. That was how it felt; two things inside one body. She was Spider who remembered all things from the beginning of time but she was the spider who was not Spider, but Nnursht of the Blackclaw hive, who stood upon the dark sands of the warm briny ocean and clashed her legs together while she blew sharp blasts of air through the chambers in her carapace until they trumpeted her challenge, the sound echoing through the air for all to hear.
When she had first emerged from the sea, her mind consumed with her egg-laying madness, the spring sun had seemed harsh to her unaccustomed eyes but the benevolent and blessed sun warmed the sand to temperatures perfect for incubating eggs. Ridding herself of her eggs had been the first task, a task worth dying for. Not so easily done. The best spots on the beach had been claimed first. She had taken this spot from a slightly smaller egg bearer who had not been as determined as she. Now, she fought to keep it.
The battles wagged for a day and a night and well into the next day, but what was time when every moment became a test to see if one’s children deserved to live. She fought her sisters, the attacks coming even as she dug her hole and laid her eggs. Some were more persistent or just more desperate than others and needed killing. That was towards the end, when the only egg sites left were already overrun with carrion feeders ready to steal the newly lain eggs out from under their mothers and drag them into the dunes to feast upon them at their leisure. Such was the madness of egg laying.
Empty and exhausted, Nnursht rested once the eggs were properly buried. Now it was just a matter of waiting until the sun warmed the sands and woke the children from their slumber. The largest of the predators would come. Even now she could feel the hunger of the great lizards as they stirred from their warrens, alerted by the violence and rage the spiders themselves had bled into the ambient. They would come to feast upon the eggs of the lesser and more foolish egg bearers at the edge of the nesting ground, killing any spider that fell into its jaws, dragging away the bodies of the dead to crack their carapaces and suck them dry.
Cheobawn, who was Nnursht, waited, her toes spread delicately around the edges of her egg patch, ever alert. Thirty cycles it had taken for the babies to make themselves inside her belly, building the crystal bodies one thin layer at a time a
round their tiny crystalline brains. She had sung all the memories of Spider into those crystals, etching them indelibly into the matrix of the stones, adding the memories of her own life towards the end, as the shells hardened uncomfortably inside her. This was not her first egg laying but in her mind she thought it might be her last.
Thus she waited for a double leg-count of days. The nights were the hardest. The great lizards used the darkness to cover their approach, their minds a void on the ambient that could catch the unwary by surprise. She stood over her children and listened in the darkness as her sisters died on the edge of the nesting grounds. There was little she could do but wait and watch the sky, while her egg laying organs convulsed uncomfortably inside her, reforming themselves for the next task. The bits of light in the night sky eased her mind, their infinite number a balm to her jumbled thoughts.
Thirty cycles it had been since she had last stood on this beach. Thirty cycles of seasons that blended from cold, dark days to the long hot and back again. Thirty cycles is what it took for the two pale moons and the sun and the tides and the seasons to come together in one synchronized event. While the melt of the snows in the high places flushed all the lands, filling the shallow sea with nutrients for the hatchlings, the fresh water kept the marine predators at bay and the low tides ensured plenty of sand safe from the lash of the waves.
Eventually, the time became right. Nnursht looked up at the sky, his heart beating in anticipation. It was only now, with both moons hanging just under the horizon, the sun long since set, that the stars in the heavens burned their brightest. This absence of both moons was a boon for his young, granting them a reprieve from the predators who hunted by sight.
This was a fact, dry and mundane, lacking in any kind of magic. Magic was seeing the moonless sky as the bits of light blazed brightly, free for just a moment from the veil of the pale night. Nnursht, who was Cheobawn in another life and in another time, studied the heavens in the darkest moments of the darkest night in thirty years and felt himself become filled with wonder. Were there other places like this, with warm seas and brilliant yellow suns? Did other places teem with life or did their hot beaches stay empty, begging to be filled with eggs?