The Spider Ring

by Andrew Harwell

  “Well, yes, I suppose so. But that book contains the knowledge of many generations of the Order. I myself have annotated it with the things I have learned. In all that time, no single person has obtained all eight rings. As of right now, the Black Widow has six.”

  “You mean, the only two rings she doesn’t have are yours and mine?”

  Arturo nodded. Finally, Maria could see why he looked so sad.

  “How do you know all this? I mean, I’m guessing you didn’t write that book yourself.”

  “You guess correctly. Esmerelda and I didn’t sell our rings, of course. We discovered their magic after joining the Rimbaud Brothers, and it was only a short matter of time before we had climbed the ranks from cleaning the elephants’ slop to starring in the show, putting our powers on display as if they were cheap parlor tricks. When we were first confronted, it was not by the Black Widow, but by the Orb Weaver.”

  Maria remembered the drawing of the orb ring from the book. She tried to imagine the kind of person who might have worn it, but the problem was, the rings could belong to anyone. It’s not like there was any meaningful connection between the nature of the rings and the nature of the people who found them. She had to believe that.

  More importantly, whoever had worn the orb ring back then couldn’t be the person still wearing it now. The Black Widow had the ring. Maria gulped.

  Arturo continued his tale. “The Orb Weaver was a well-meaning gentleman named Adrian Eberly. Our troupe was in Sion for a week of performances, and this man, Mr. Eberly, had read about Esmerelda and me in the paper. He guessed right away what we were meddling with. I’ll never forget it — he found us in our tent, claiming to be an admirer and wondering if he could speak to us privately. But no sooner had we welcomed him in and offered to hang his coat than he turned to us and said, sure as death, ‘You have rings, don’t you?’

  “At first, we pretended to have no idea what he was talking about. But Mr. Eberly was no fool. He beckoned his orb weavers, one by one, and they came hurrying into the tent in an obedient line until they had filled every inch of the ground around us.

  “‘Do you know why humans fear spiders?’ he’d said, and for all that I’d seen through my own ring, I found myself afraid. ‘It is in part because they can move in any direction without warning. But in larger part because, for all their quickness, they choose to wait for their prey. A patient spider can defeat even the most powerful lion.’

  “His orb weavers climbed the walls of our tent, and they began furiously spinning a web to enclose us. Esmerelda and I were terrified, but we dared not move. Mr. Eberly was clearly more powerful than we were.

  “‘In this book,’ he’d said, removing from his coat the tome you discovered tonight, ‘you will find the terrible history of the eight rings of the Order. Wealth, power, greed, and deceit are etched onto these pages. The powers of Anansi have led countless unsuspecting victims astray. But there is no one more greedy or deceitful than the present possessor of the Black Widow ring.’

  “It seemed the Black Widow had been seeking out the other ring bearers and obtaining their rings at any cost. As Mr. Eberly put it, if he had found us so easily, the cunning Black Widow couldn’t be far behind.

  “I’m ashamed to admit it now, but Esmerelda and I thought Mr. Eberly was insane. It was not that his story made no sense, mind you — at that point, we’d begun to wonder ourselves whether these magical rings were entirely decent. It was more that his manner was so frantic, so absurd. He was a bad performer. We didn’t know yet that the rings had that effect on everyone in the end. We were young, and this man was old.”

  This last line had been aimed squarely at Maria, surely. And true, she’d been thinking more and more that Arturo sounded crazy — paranoid like Grandma Esme always had been — even when his story explained so many things. But then, she herself had become a bit less sane since she first put on the Brown Recluse ring. Her behavior at Claire’s party seemed proof of that.

  “We didn’t listen to his warnings, Maria. We thanked him, and said we would be more careful about whom we showed our rings. But we refused to cancel our performance that evening. He left us the book, hoping it would change our minds, and begged to see us again before our show. But that afternoon, we learned that Mr. Eberly had fallen from the tower of the castle of Tourbillon. Even then, we accepted the story that he was a madman who had suffered a terrible accident. We couldn’t see it for the portent it was.”

  “Hang on,” Maria said, jumping to her feet. “Where did you say this performance was?”

  “In Sion. It’s a mountain town in the corner of Switzerland, near Italy.”

  “And the Black Widow was there?”

  Arturo nodded.

  “She’d been following us for days — the Orb Weaver was just a bonus. That night, she was at our performance, waiting in the audience to spring her trap. Esmerelda’s lion, Cocoa, saved our lives. Unfortunately, we couldn’t save his.”

  “Wait. You mean the Black Widow …”

  “I’m afraid so, Maria. The Black Widow had us surrounded. We wouldn’t have stood a chance had it not been for Cocoa’s sacrifice. He knew right away who was commanding the spiders. He leaped at her from the ring, and managed to take a piece of her with him.”

  As Arturo said this, he touched his right ear, and Maria gasped. The feeling had been building inside her ever since the funeral, when Luellen had held her hands as if she was searching them. A jewelry appraiser who wore a hat like a mask — Maria must have been grieving indeed not to have noticed it before.

  “I think I know who the Black Widow is,” she said. “I think I’ve met her.”

  Arturo grimaced, but he didn’t look surprised. So he knew the Black Widow’s real identity, too.

  “It’s Derek’s aunt Luellen, isn’t it? She told me at the funeral she’d seen you and Grandma Esme perform in Switzerland. I almost didn’t believe her.”

  “Luellen chased us relentlessly in the years after that horrible night. Our lives became a nightmare game of cat and mouse, moving from one abandoned building and false identity to the next, never feeling like we could trust anyone we met.”

  “Why didn’t you just leave the rings somewhere?” Maria asked. “Put a big sign on them that said, ‘Here you go, now leave us alone’?”

  “The thought did occur to us. But we knew too much. And the legacy of the rings is one of fear and distrust. The reason the Black Widow always kills her victims is that she doesn’t want anyone left to oppose her. She only has power while she has the rings. She can’t risk having an army rise up against her to take that power away.”

  That Maria had been in the same room with this woman, while her grandmother’s casket had been resting less than ten feet away, made her want to scream.

  “So what happened?” she asked Arturo, trying to piece together a complete picture of her grandmother. “I mean, one minute you and Grandma Esme are on the run together, the next minute, she’s going to yoga on Tuesdays and Thursdays and organizing church functions on Wednesdays and Sundays.”

  Maria couldn’t keep all the bitterness out of her voice. Maybe the anger rising in her chest was keeping her mounting fear at bay, or maybe it was just building alongside it. Either way, there was the fear, and there was the anger. Why had Grandma Esme left the ring for her? Why had she let Maria get trapped in her story, instead of taking it with her?

  Arturo looked stricken. “You think I abandoned her, is that it? You think I left her here for Luellen to find? I’m the only reason she had a life here for as long as she did. I’m the only reason that —”

  He broke off with a gutteral sound between a snarl and a sob. This was clearly a case he had made before, if only to himself. It wasn’t as convincing as he wanted it to be.

  Arturo took a deep breath and tugged at the sleeves of his suit coat. He really did look like an old little boy, if that made any sense. It was like after so many years in hiding, he had stopped growing up. He was Peter Pan’s lost sha
dow.

  “I knew the only way the Black Widow would leave Esmerelda alone was if she thought she was dead. And I knew the only way Esmerelda would let me go was if she thought I was dead. So I gave her a passport and an address in a small American city I hoped would remind her of Cahul, and I told her I’d meet her after a short detour.”

  “And that was the last time you saw her?”

  “No,” Arturo said. “But until last week, that was the last time she saw me.”

  It was strange how so many things could finally make sense at the exact same moment that suddenly nothing made sense. It was like Maria had spent hours putting a puzzle together based on the picture on the box, only to get to the end and realize that the box didn’t match the puzzle at all.

  She continued to question Arturo. “Mom always said that Grandpa Lopez passed away before Dad was even born. I’m starting to think there was no Grandpa Lopez. Is that right?”

  “You’re a smart girl, Maria. Just like your grandmother.”

  “She knew Luellen was after her. She told me a week ago, ‘The other spiders are back.’ I thought she meant real spiders, the kind she collected. I had no idea she meant other people with rings.”

  “I came to her as soon as I knew Luellen was on her trail. I tried to get her to leave with me, to run. But she wouldn’t.”

  “You tried to get Grandma Esme to leave us?” Maria asked, horrified.

  “If she had come with me, she’d still be alive.”

  “Maybe, but that doesn’t sound like much of a life to me. You can’t just keep leaving your family behind whenever things get scary. That’s not how it works.”

  As soon as she said it, she felt a stab of guilt. It was one thing to say this, and another to believe it. Her shoes were still caked with mud from her own late-night escape.

  “Oh my gosh,” she said, connecting the last of the puzzle pieces. “Luellen knows about the rest of my family, too. She even met them at the funeral.”

  Maria thought of how cruel she’d been to Rafi earlier, not to mention the way she’d yelled at her mom. They’d only been looking out for her, when here she was, putting both of their lives in danger.

  “Why hasn’t the Black Widow tried to kill me yet?” Maria asked.

  “I’m sure she is hoping to catch us both at once. I’ve eluded her for over seventy years, and she’s growing impatient. If we are lucky, her impatience will make her careless.”

  “What do you mean, ‘if we’re lucky’? What do you plan for us to do?”

  “Run away, of course! Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? The Black Widow is here, and you are fortunate to be alive. Especially after your extravagant choice of mourning clothes and your little temper tantrum at the birthday party. Honestly, Maria, I’ll grant you your grandmother didn’t fully explain the nature of the rings, but the way you’ve been broadcasting your powers this week —”

  “Has been no worse than what you and Grandma Esme did back in the day,” Maria said, cutting him off. She stood to her full height and brushed off her dress. She crossed her arms so that the Brown Recluse ring glittered against her skin. “Now, thank you for all your help, but I am not running away. My best friend says that if something makes you nervous, it just means that you’re thinking about it too much. And he is one of many people whose lives are in danger if we don’t stay and fight the Black Widow.”

  “You mean Derek? I hate to tell you this, Maria, but I fear Derek has already become one of his aunt’s followers.”

  Maria couldn’t help laughing. “A follower? Derek? If there’s one thing about Derek I can absolutely guarantee, it’s that he does his own thing.”

  “This isn’t a joke,” Arturo bellowed. “I don’t mean followers in the grammar-school playground sense of the word. More powerful men than Derek have been drawn into the Black Widow’s web. And with six rings now in her possession, the Black Widow will surely have powers even beyond my imagining.”

  “Well,” Maria said, her voice staying strong even as her eyes misted over, “that’s all the more reason why he needs my help.”

  “Don’t be foolish, Maria. I won’t let you throw your life away like your grandmother did.”

  “Grandma Esme didn’t throw her life away!” Maria roared. “She made a wonderful life here, and she fought to protect it. You ran away, but she stayed with what was important to her. She warned me that I’d face the same decision. To do what is easy and run away, or do what is right and stay. You can make your choice however you want to, but my mind is made up.”

  “I won’t allow it. I’m sorry, Maria, but this is for your own good.”

  Arturo moved like smoke, twisting his body in a fluid arc that shouldn’t have been possible at his age. In a blink, he had taken off his suit coat and thrown it at her, as if it was a net he could catch her in. Maria darted away without thinking, fleeing the cave with Arturo’s footsteps thundering behind her.

  Her spiders were screaming, Hurry, hurry, but it was nearly impossible for her to run — the mirror spiders were everywhere, their round silver bodies glittering in the dull light of the cave.

  Maria darted and dodged, narrowly avoiding them with every step. She knew it too well — a spider never forgets. She could hear Arturo locked in the same struggle behind her, cursing the brown recluse spiders that had come to her defense.

  Maria could see the mirror spiders scrambling to build a web in the mouth of the cave. Even if she pushed through, there was no way she could avoid them on the slippery staircase.

  Yelling a warning to the spiders to get out of the way, Maria threw her arms in an arc and leaped.

  In less than a second, the icy-dark water came up to meet her.

  Maria surfaced for air as fast as she could. The pool of deep water at the bottom of the fall was no bigger than her mom’s jeep. Five feet to the right and Maria would have landed headfirst on the sharp rocks at the bottom.

  Maria kicked her legs until she reached the edge of the sinkhole. She’d always hated swimming, and swimming in a dress was even worse. The wet silk of the skirt clung to her legs as she climbed out of the water and pulled herself up the slippery rocks to even ground. As soon as she was on her feet, she ran. She didn’t look back. The image in her mind of a swooping black coat and a sea of pale light was enough to keep her running.

  She reached the boardwalk, and then the short grass, and then the line of her backyard. She was almost home free. But one look through the sliding glass door and Maria could tell something was wrong.

  The lights were all on, and the chairs around the kitchen table were overturned. The refrigerator door stood open. Maria crept up to her house as quickly as she dared. She didn’t hear anything from inside the house, which supported her suspicion that whoever had done this was already gone.

  Not that she had any doubt who had done this.

  Maria slid the glass door open. She stepped over the oranges, trash, forks, and knives that had been scattered across the floor, trying not to imagine the struggle that must have taken place while she was in the cave.

  “Mom? Rafi?” she called. She wasn’t surprised when they didn’t answer.

  She had sworn she wouldn’t get trapped in Arturo’s story, but that’s exactly what had happened. It didn’t matter that he probably thought he was on her side — he and the Black Widow, and now Maria, too, were all part of the same vicious web. A poisonous circle that ensnared innocent people, just like the one around her finger.

  Maria dripped water all the way back to her room, only now thinking to take off her shoes. Surely her mother would forgive her the muddy footprints, under the circumstances. For now, Maria needed to change clothes, and she needed to save her family. If she thought too hard about all the steps that came in between those two things, she might faint. Unfortunately, not overthinking things had always been Derek’s strong suit, not hers.

  When Maria flicked on her light switch, she had to stifle a scream. The spiderweb that had begun blooming on her bedroom cei
ling days ago now stretched all the way across the room. In the center of the web was a small white rectangle.

  On closer inspection, Maria recognized it as a business card for Vic’s Antiques. Derek had once used a stack of these cards to do a magic trick. He’d had Maria write her name on one of them, then he’d put the whole stack behind his back and acted like he was trying to feel for which one had pen markings on it. Finally, he’d brought his hands back around to reveal that the card with the writing was the only one left in his hands at all. The rest of the stack had simply disappeared.

  The business card in the center of the spiderweb didn’t have any writing on it, but the message was clear enough. The Black Widow had sprung her trap. Rafi and Mom were the bait.

  Maria drew back her arm and slung her shoes at the web. The sound of the wet smack as the shoes hit the wall gave her courage.

  She felt the ring on her hand grow warm. She heard the spiders before she saw them, and for one paralyzing second, she thought that Arturo had found her — that she’d never get the chance to rescue her family.

  But of course she could hear only her own spiders, and her fear turned into a sense of overwhelming relief as a brown recluse swarm surrounded her feet. Her reinforcements had arrived.

  The spiders did not stop by her side, however.

  Maria’s ring grew from warm to hot, until it was almost painful, as the brown recluse spiders scurried up the wall to the web. The voices in her head were so fast and frenzied, it was impossible to untangle them. What Maria saw clearly was a color: red.

  Maria followed her spiders as they climbed, until finally she saw what she had missed before — a black widow spider near the top of the web. It dangled from a thread over the hole Maria’s shoe had just created. It seemed to be injured, or stuck, or afraid.

  The brown recluse clutter flew at the lone black widow. In a second, they would be upon it, blind with rage.

  “Wait, stop!” Maria shouted. “That’s not what I wanted!”

  Her spiders stopped. They turned to face her, confused.