by Nazri Noor
“Shakespeare,” Thea said. “He was talking about how humans are prone to making things complex, whether with lies or other complications.” She spoke deliberately, I noticed, like she was taking care to be informative without being condescending, her tone different from the one she used to regale me with stories about orange chicken and chop suey.
That’s when it dawned on me. Thea was nervous. I’d never seen this side of her before, and in all honesty it made me fidgety, too. If my boss, a powerful, high-ranking sorceress of the Lorica itself had reason to be fearful of this entity, how was I supposed to feel? What had she gotten me into?
“That’s why we’re here,” Thea continued. “There’s lots of tangling going on, but not enough unraveling. We need clarity, Arachne. We need your help.”
“We,” the spider woman said, her voice brightening with glee. Her head turned in my direction. I could feel her gaze boring into me. I swallowed and did my best not to fidget or shuffle my feet.
“And who have you brought me today?” The soft rustle of her silks murmured through the chamber as she moved just the faintest bit closer, her jewelry tinkling like tiny bells. “Is this your offering?”
I repeat. What had Thea gotten me into?
Thea cleared her throat. “Not at all, Arachne. This is my protege. My apprentice, if you will. He is not an offering. He is not meant for consumption.” I looked at her, aghast, waiting for her to chuckle and indicate it was a joke, but Thea’s face was deathly serious. She was speaking plainly, specifically to avoid confusing this creature, in words that couldn’t be misinterpreted.
I looked over my shoulder. The gossamer portal was still there. I measured the distance between my body and the gateway, and between myself and the spider on her throne. I knew I was fast enough to run if I had to, but I had to wonder if Arachne could be even faster. I glimpsed up at the ceiling, and at the canopy of silks that now looked so much like a net waiting to be dropped over us.
Arachne laughed, a full, throaty sound that caused her myriad jewels to jingle and glint in the dull light.
“Such a formal tone you use with me, Thea. Don’t worry. I was making what you humans like to call a joke.” Her lips parted in a smile. Her teeth were sharp. Far too sharp. “Such a pity. He certainly looks good enough to eat.”
One of Arachne’s legs snaked out, its length and its reach taking me by surprise, and it stroked against my jacket, running bristles against my shoulder. I realized that it was meant to be a friendly gesture, even flirtatious, maybe. Instinctively I knew that I would offend her by showing fear or revulsion, so I did that one thing I was really good at: I turned up the charm.
“I might look appetizing, but I promise you that I don’t taste as delicious.” I ignored the talon poking into my shoulder, the claws at the end of her leg, and gave her my best smile. “Surely your loveliness deserves a more appropriate treat.”
She squealed. “It speaks!” Bangles and bracelets clinked as she clapped her hands, her body bounding as her legs skittered in excitement. “Oh, and such sweet words it brings me. Well done, Thea.” She turned her head, the smile on her lips fading. “But as for sweet words and sweet treats. Have you a proper offering?”
“Of course,” Thea said, giving me a sidelong glance. I could just detect a hint of approval in her expression. Maybe she was even a little proud of me. The plastic bag rustled as she held it out.
“Have the boy bring them to me.” Arachne retrieved her leg, and now her frontmost limbs were twisting into the ground, the kind of body language I recognized as what a young girl might use to show shyness, hesitation. This was so fascinating. And, let’s be real, utterly terrifying.
I accepted the bag from Thea, then strode forward. I tipped its contents out onto the floor before Arachne, just in front of her legs, and made a subtle bow. She squealed again. Her legs darted forward, sorting the cookies into piles, then separating them again, their plastic wrappers crinkling as she played with them as a child might fiddle with building blocks and marbles. I couldn’t see her eyes, but I knew that they were gleaming.
“So many treats. So many fortunes. Where to start, where to start?” Her hands were up to her cheeks, which looked flushed even in the realm’s sickly light. She turned to me again. “You. Sweetling. Which would you choose?”
I lowered my head. “I wouldn’t presume, Arachne. The fortune you choose will always be the best.”
And for a third time, the spider woman squealed. In a blur of black bristles and talons, one leg shot out, swiping at the cookie closest to my feet. I hardened my muscles, not daring to flinch, to even show discomfort. Arachne hummed pleasantly as the plastic fell away, and she broke the cookie apart in her human hands. It was odd to acknowledge that she functionally had ten limbs. I had so many questions, none of which I was allowed to ask. I stepped back to join Thea at her side. She nodded at me, and gave the smallest smile.
“You will soon embark on a business venture,” Arachne pronounced, reading slowly and savoring each mouthful with ringing pride, like a child at a spelling bee. “Oh, how vague and clever and utterly pointless! Do your kind truly believe such drivel? Such whimsy in these little scrolls. You chose well, sweetling.”
She secreted the fortune somewhere on her person, then crammed the broken cookies into her mouth, her fangs crushing them into dust. Arachne chewed noisily, shards of cookie flying past her lips as she spoke again. “Ask, then. Why have you come?”
“You know why.” Thea clasped her hands together and lowered her head. “It is a grave matter. Someone is killing your kind.”
“So I have heard.”
Arachne sent out one hand, tugging at something invisible, until I saw that it was a gossamer strand, attached to the webs high in the ceiling. The faint chittering, the same sound we heard when we stepped into the portal started up again. I squeezed my fists, bit my tongue, and focused on the pain of my nails digging into my palms as tens, scores, then hundreds of spiders descended from the ceiling. I didn’t dare steal a glance at Thea and only looked straight ahead, waiting with mounting panic as I saw that the spiders were pouring in from all corners of the room.
Some of the spiders swept across the fortune cookies still on the ground, snaring them with fine silks of their own before dragging them away into the darkness under Arachne’s heaving thorax. I meditated on that spot of shadow, wishing I could just step in and whisk myself away.
“Someone has dared to kill an entity. That is what my children tell me.”
Her children – hundreds of them – crawled up her arms, and for a moment it looked as if they had come bearing jewels. But I noticed that some of them did indeed have gemstones embedded in their backs. These rarer ones, the gilded spiders, crept closest to Arachne’s ear, sitting quietly on her shoulder or draping themselves across her neck, each one its own link in a chain of gems. One dangled from her ear, a perfect, arachnid earring. She bent lower, as if to listen.
“They bring news to me. And much of it is ill.”
“That’s why we’ve come to you,” Thea said, her voice steelier than before. I could tell she was pouring more conviction into it. Couldn’t blame her. Arachne’s children were still swarming around her, a huge, coalescing mass. One word from her and Thea and I would be as good as dead.
“This is a larger request than you thought, friend.” Arachne held the silence, stretching it for emphasis. “I demand one of your baubles in exchange for my knowledge.”
Her jewels. Thea wore so many of them that I knew she had enough to spare, but I also knew that her jewelry was precious to her. She had crafted and imbued each piece with arcane power herself. Like the opal I wore, nearly each one had its own enchantment, its own purpose. Thea nodded at me, selecting one of her larger rings. It didn’t look any different than the others, but I had a suspicion that she had prepared for just such an occasion. This was probably a decoy, unensorcelled, just a mundane gift.
“Very well, Arachne.” Thea worked the ring slowly off
her finger, twisting it begrudgingly, making a great show of hesitation. “It pains me to do this, but I grant you one of my most precious stones.”
And Arachne didn’t squeal this time, but I could feel the delight emanating from her in waves. Even her children seemed more placid, less threatening than before.
No ceremony this time, no playful ploy to get Thea’s protege to deliver the goods. A large spider descended on a single strand of web, collecting the ring from Thea’s outstretched hand. She hardly seemed perturbed. The spider scuttled across the ground, then threw a line up to its mistress. Arachne received her emissary with gentle fingers, cradling it in both hands. She wore the ring on her left hand, turning her head this way and that, admiring it in the light.
“You already know that the manner of slaughter was magical,” she said, her voice deeper, and taut. “That much would be clear, even to one as unlearned as your apprentice.” Her unseen eyes glanced in my direction, and the smile she favored me with was oddly warm. “What I do know is that the murder was committed with the intent to siphon Resheph’s power. Whether the murderer did so to add to his own strength, or to gain control over Resheph’s dominion, I cannot say.”
“Dominion? You mean rats?” Thea frowned. “Who needs rats?”
Arachne hissed, her legs adjusting, scraping against the stone floor as she reared herself up to her full, terrifying height. The spider half of her being was coming to fore. The green light of the chamber flickered, then everything seemed darker. The chittering of the spiders grew in volume and frequency, and all around us the silks in the hallway quavered as more, impossibly more spiders poured out of the darkness.
“Who needs rats?” Arachne said mockingly, her voice sing-song and high. “Some might say that my children are just like rats. Skulking in darkness, in the corners and the in-betweens. Vermin they may be, yes, but you belittle my brethren’s children, even as you come to trade for the secrets that my offspring bring me.”
“That wasn’t our intention,” Thea said. This time, despite her unwavering stance and her gaze, I knew that she was overcompensating.
“And yet you move to offend me,” Arachne spat. “I should kill you where you stand. I should feed you to my young, have the millions of them rend the flesh from your bone.”
Arachne skittered forward, the forbidding bulk of her body clearing the room in the blink of an eye. Her children moved with her, a carpet of spiders following wherever their queen led. Arachne’s teeth were bared, and it wasn’t the green light’s doing anymore. Something viscous, the color of jade, was dripping down her teeth, past the corner of her mouth.
I don’t know what came over me then. Blind idiocy, bravado, or madness, or maybe an innate desire to show my boss that I could perform in a real world, high-stress occupational situation. I stepped between Thea and the hulking mass of Arachne’s body, mindful that each of her legs was the size and thickness of a spear, with the honed, pointed sharpness to match.
“Please,” I started. “We didn’t mean to anger you. We only came to receive your wisdom. I beg your forgiveness for us both. Don’t let this ruin your temper, or tarnish your beauty.”
Anticipation burned like fire under my skin as Arachne craned her head in my direction, but I knew I had hit my mark. The faintest hint of a smile crept into the corner of her lips, then faded just as suddenly.
“You are fortunate that you have brought this one to whisper sweet words to me, Thea. No blood shall be spilled today, but neither shall I tell you more. If I should learn anything else, I may deign to relay it to your apprentice.”
She lowered herself gently, graceful in spite of the bulk of her thorax, then pressed her lips against my forehead. Her kiss was moist, and while the sensation of it burned on my skin, I knew she meant me no harm. And I could finally see her up close, and decipher what hid behind the veil across her face. All eight of her eyes focused on me as she smiled. Three of them winked.
“Now that you are marked, my brood can more easily find you,” Arachne said. “Tell your master here of anything that my children whisper in your ears.” She retreated slowly, her gaze alternating between the two of us. “You may leave with your lives.”
Finally, in a small voice, Thea spoke. “Thank you, Arachne.”
I didn’t need to be told twice, already knowing that I’d be getting more visitations from this strange spider queen and her horrific offspring. I couldn’t remember whether it was me or Thea who reached the gossamer portal first, only that we were both relieved to find ourselves back in the alleyway, clutching our knees and panting from the effort of sprinting. Thea’s forehead gleamed. She was sweating, and shuddering.
“That was her,” I panted, wiping at my upper lip. “From mythology. The woman Athena turned into a spider. She’s real.”
“They all are,” Thea said, patting at her forehead with her sleeve, her hand faintly trembling. “They live in the unseen spaces, like spiders. In the corners. Here and there, between the cardinal directions. Anywhere you aren’t looking, there they are.”
My breath returned to me in gasps. The dust in the alley choked at my lungs, and I couldn’t wait to get out, to breathe in the relatively fresher air of the city.
“Come on, Thea. We should go.”
“One minute,” she said, rubbing her knees. “Just – just give me one minute.”
In spite of the darkness, by the timbre of Thea’s voice alone, I could tell something was wrong. It was tough to see her so shaken by our encounter, her perfect surface splintered and cracked. Thea was someone I looked up to. She saved my life, once. She was a hero. It stung to see her so defeated.
Thea lifted her hand to her face again, rubbing her sleeve under one eye. I looked away, pretending that I didn’t see her tears.
Chapter 7
It was dark by the time I got home. Actually, let me clarify that statement. It was already dark by the time we’d gotten out of the alley. Thea said that being in Arachne’s domicile had done something to compress time, so that the minutes we had spent there were hours in the real world.
I’d waited long enough for her to get a ride, making sure she was fine to get along on her own. She offered to drop me off, but I didn’t want her knowing that I wasn’t heading back to my apartment, but my other home – at least what I used to call home back when I was somehow even younger and dumber.
I hugged my elbows as I watched from the safety of the shadows in the garden, or whatever passed for a garden at the house where I grew up. This had become a kind of ritual for me since I’d joined the Lorica, since the day someone tried to snuff my life out, which was part of the reason I didn’t want Thea knowing. It wasn’t healthy, she said, and damn it if she wasn’t right.
The lights were on inside the living room as they always were this time of the evening, without fail. That was when the man who lived here started actually putting things together for dinner. Once he did that for his wife and son, but both of them had gone.
I craned my neck to get a better look at what he was preparing. Time was when he would make stuff from scratch, something comforting like a chicken pot pie, or a casserole on lazier nights. I guess things were different when you were on your own, when there was no one to please, no one to tell you how good your cooking was. I watched as the man, who had the same black hair as me, the same blue eyes, pulled out a flat box from the freezer.
“Not another frozen dinner,” I muttered to myself, as if he could even hear, my words leaving my mouth in wisps of fog. “Come on, dad.”
Norman – the name I never called him for fear of getting smacked upside the head – was a cheerier person, once. Things used to be great at home. He liked to build things. When the mood took him, sometimes he’d sit down and play video games with me. Sometimes he’d even kick my ass. And mom, she liked to tinker with old toys and bikes and machines, and to bake, and some weekends we’d all head down to the beach for a picnic. I always loved the smell of the ocean, the sound of surf. They reminded me of f
amily, and home.
Things started to change when mom died. Cancer killed Diana Graves, and then it broke my father’s heart. I must have been seventeen then. I did what I could to console him, to lighten the load, help around the house, you know, just keep him company. I couldn’t say that it ever helped. Before things went south, he always used to say that I reminded him of my mother. Towards the end I think I began to remind him of her in all the wrong ways.
I wasn’t the perfect son. I never said I was. Still it got to be too much, between the push and pull of him being angry with me for the littlest things, but still wanting me around, begging me not to move out when things got too tense between us. “I’ll still visit,” I told him. “I promise.” I shuddered against the cold and smiled tightly. I always kept my promises.
Norman Graves was skinnier now, his face sallow, his eyes sunken a little further into his head than they should have been, but I knew I couldn’t just walk in there, tell him I was sorry, that I wanted us to be a family of two again. The last time I visited there was an argument. I left angry. He’d never been happy with how I couldn’t find something to do with myself, with my life, and the grandest irony was that now that I’d found something worth doing, I couldn’t even tell him about it to make him proud of me for once.
That’s why I knew that it weighed heavier on him, why he must have thought in some twisted section of his brain that it was his fault I ended up the way I did. That made it even harder to just knock on the door and announce myself. Ah, but that was the toughest part. I couldn’t even do that, not when he was there when they lowered my body into the ground.
Where to start? It was some weeks ago, the same night I had it out with my dad. I didn’t head back to my apartment right away, that shabby piece of shit I shared with those two roommates I didn’t even like, but hey, you have a shitty job, or no job at all, you put up with shitty living conditions. I didn’t know what possessed me to do so, but I took off and went to a park, just to walk around, to clear my head.