by T. Cook
60
I was used to Shin’s half spent nights of sleep. They were much like my own. But during our journey, my exhaustion couldn’t be overcome with a short three or four hour sleep. I rose late morning to find without surprise the bed beside mine abandoned. And it was just as well. I wanted privacy for the next few hours at least.
In the dark of the crystal chamber, I rose on the balls of my feet and dragged my fingers across the spines of the volumes, searching by feel. My mother’s volume was covered in sheep’s skin. Impossible to mistake. I brought it back to the mouth of the cave, hugging the soft cover to my chest.
At the mouth of the cave, I sat lotus style and opened the leaves to read by the light of the new day’s sun.
I had not known whether I would even be able to decipher her handwritten calligraphy, but from my first glance at the page, my mind opened up wide, and I comprehended the characters with decision and speed I had never possessed before. Whole passages leapt from the page transformed from cold characters into images: visions of my mother, her warm beating heart in its physical and emotional anguish, and her heart breaking decision. I stared, captivated by the pages before me for hours.
This woman was my own mother?
Yes. A soft voice spoke from somewhere deep inside of me, though it was not my own voice. It resounded distinct, separate, and yet indivisible from my own person, and I could not reject the thought that my mother was nearby, watching me with eager interest.
Finally, I turned the last page and the leaf came loose in my hand. I stared at its clean, fresh, rice paper face and realized it was an insert, added much later than the account I had recently finished. The calligraphy was identical to my mother’s own hand and was not dated, but I had the impression it had been transcribed much later in time than the rest. I read:
Dearest Furi:
How I love you and long for your success and happiness. If you read this, I hope you will understand and forgive me for surrendering you to a life of such sorrow. One day I will amend this hardship, but you must come to me.
I do not wish to interfere with your choices any more than is absolutely vital for you and our line, but I feel I must inject this briefest instruction now.
Do not unite with the Earth Kumo. This union will give the Kumo access to the immortal skies, a passage they have long desired and has been rightly denied them.
I trust you will feel the justice in this and follow my instructions.
She signed this script, Your devoted mother, Orihime.
I stared at the text, my breath coming rapid and shallow as I read and reread—trying to understand what this meant. For some moments I gazed into the bright light of day, confused and unable to wrap my mind around the meaning of my mother’s implied message.
With effort, I heaved the breath I had been holding too long in my lungs and let the truth settle where it fell like beads of red dye upon the face of a pure white fabric.
My mother forbade me to love Shin? And this because she did not want to give the Earth Kumo access to the skies?
I didn’t know how long I sat, turning this instruction over in my head. But during that time, something shifted inside of me.
A new pattern rose up, and the problem I confronted took on an added dimension. What had once seemed a dreadful betrayal to myself and to Shin, opened up a new way of thinking of the matter. My mother’s point of view forced it upon me.
I had never given my immortal life the weight she gave it. She had left me alone from infancy, never interfering in my earthly life once. The immortal realm was her only consideration. This was a new idea to me: A child with Shin would cement Shin’s standing in the sky. Forever.
Though I had given our immortality almost no thought, my mother gave weight to this thing. Great weight. It was her only demand. It was the thing she wished to foreclose against all contingencies. She did not want an Earth Kumo son.
I didn’t care that she wanted this. I had proved Shin in every way and I could scarcely bear to look at the rejection my mother’s letter meant to me…to Shin. And yet I did look at it. I read it again and again. And could not reconcile it with my mother’s own record. Did she realize what she asked of me? Could she really fail to empathize considering her own mortal choice in husbands?
I hated to do it, but I honestly considered whether I could abide my mother’s instruction. Could I save Shin’s mortal life and deny him the sky?
* * *
In the end, the way did open up for me—not as I had hoped or anticipated, but I knew what I would do.
I prepared without haste, neither eager nor reluctant. Of what would follow, I had only the vaguest idea. I supposed I would have a child; bring it to Western Capital and pass it off as an heir to the throne. I didn’t know what it would cost to give life this way. How did the children of Vega and Altair pass to the heavens? Would I simply transcend, or would what was arachnid in me demand my own death? Perhaps it would, and if that were the case, then so be it.
I didn’t know how to fear or welcome that consequence, but having made my decision, duty took over, and I prepared both for Shin’s love, and his dying rite.
The day prior, Shin had filled several pots with water from the cold stream. I poured the cool liquid out into a small bathing basin. The chill dimpled and flushed my flesh, but I could not feel the cold, so determined was I to follow through with my intention. In the remaining water, I washed the simple, unadorned slip I had slept in the night prior and wore it damp to hasten its drying. Then I went beyond the cave’s mouth in search of Shin. He could not be very far away.
The sun was setting and the slight wind tugged and pulled, molding the fabric of my slip around me. Shadows lengthened and the sun’s glare blinded. Then I passed into a pretty grove of pines. A little distance inside, and I realized that the wood had once been a sort of garden to the cave dwellers. Now it grew wild, but someone had cultivated it once.
I ventured deeper within the wood and a breeze tickled my bare neck. Something about the azalea bushes carpeting the roots of the maples struck me for with strange familiarity.
On entry, I had sensed Shin’s nearness, but began to wonder if I were wrong when I saw and heard nothing of him. I continued on, feeling increasingly vulnerable in my colder than naked skin. Then an overgrown bed of poppies caught my eye and I started.
I had been here before. But when? A step farther, I gasped and panned the grove from tree to tree. Delicately woven silk draped from the branches forming an elaborate tent!
I crept inside the firs overlaid in silken webbing. Shin had been at work. But such work! Deeper yet, giant, heavy webs spanned full trees, blocking the sunlight and turning the wood into one massive room of silken white tapestry.
As I turned about staring upward in awe, I recalled to mind the vision I had dreamt while Shin had treated my whip scarred neck and back with his pine salve. The point of view altered the images slightly, but I recognized it. I had seen myself in this place years ago. My body had healed within this very canopy.
My dream had been in mid summer with warm and balmy breezes. A new blast of wind bit my skin, dimpling it all over. My chest tightened. The summer was well behind us now. The sensation of the season’s slipping past filled me with urgency. Whatever prophecy the dream may have promised seemed far from inevitable now. Was I, after all, too late?
I searched on, lifting and parting thin shrouds of white webbed fibers, barely daring to speak Shin’s name—to hear my voice’s rising desperation.
He couldn’t have been far. I would find him within this web, somewhere. If I couldn’t discover him, at last he would find me and couldn’t fail to know my intent. Inside I was screaming: Here I am. I am ready!
It wasn’t until I peered upward that I saw it. There! Up in a tree, was a canopy of webbing where I was sure he had nested. To get there, I would be forced to climb, but I thought I could. I reached down and gripped the seam of my slip and tore it open to my pelvis, fibers screaming as they spli
t.
Then I cast my gaze upward for low branches upon which to pull myself up. It took some time. Branches grabbed and pulled my hair and scraped my skin. Pinesap stained my slip. The struggle opened the seams of my gown further, almost to my navel, but I reached the nest.
I peered over and wondered as I took in the expanse and depth of the web. It was a massive feat of industry. A prodigious work of weeks, perhaps months, and surely more than one arachnid. I scanned for Shin, awestruck by the enormity of this creation. I trained my eyes on a patch of flesh. There! On the far upper edge, I spied a hand and forearm only, but it must be him.
“Shin!” I said, pulling myself up into the web, which bore my weight with surprising resilience. “Shin,” I called, now screaming as I climbed toward him.
Then I stopped and stared dumb. His wrists were bound tightly with webbing fibers. He was caught.
I knelt down beside him and shook him. “Shin. Shin!”
His eyes widened in recognition. “Furi.”
I gasped,” Who did this to you?”
“Nature has to regulate the species somehow,” he whispered. “And I am already past my time.”
His words smarted like judgment. I bent over him. “You will not go like this.”
“Will you save me then?” He asked, one eye arched in deliberate irony.
“No,” I whispered, my voice breaking roughly over a tightened throat. “And, yes. Yes!”
He acknowledged me with a slow blink of his eyes. “Furi. You’re here now. There’s no rush.”
I checked my haste, but every other restraint fell away with Shin’s bindings.
You may think our spider sex a barbaric rite, and I will not recite those private details to you except to say we knew we had only this once, and we sacrificed everything for it.
61
I slept with his remains a day following his passing.
Macabre? Perhaps, but by then so was I—coated in sap, sweat and grime. I brought him down from the tree with the last of my strength, his corpse wrapped all around with webbing. It served as an appropriate burial shroud.
I made his grave in the garden, at the foot of a new maple. The tree would grow up mighty on the strength of his body. It was the only shrine I had to honor him by.
Epilogue
I administered the antidote to Yasuhiro Whitegrain, and was heralded a hero for saving his life, however temporarily. As Shin had promised, it was not a long life. He died not long after the birth, in the blissful illusion of fatherhood to my lovely daughter. Most people are capable of this kind of self-deception. Who would not have been proud to think himself the father of a child so lovely?
I called Madame Sato to the Western Capital to stay with me and assist me through my pregnancy. I learned only much later that she was an Earth Kumo queen, and Shin’s mother had sent her to me to teach and to prepare me for the role I would yet play. And when the time came for my child’s birth. Madame assisted, and held the newborn babe in her arms with all of the pleasure of a rightful grandmother. She, too, had lived for that moment, and would live to see my daughter grow and teach her to understand and respect the goals of reforms she would make.
I never met Shin’s mother again, after her first appearance to me in the spring inn. And yet, she and I are connected and I know she is not yet finished with me.
The revolution was brilliant in its conception and execution. With Shin’s arachnid blood, no more would emperors battle their sons and daughters to retain power. No more would their heirs assassinate their fathers, anxious to seize power and control.
No emperor’s reign could continue long at all, but the stability the system engendered brought peace and prosperity. Who can tell how many lives were saved after the grafting of our arachnid blood into the Ruling House’s chain of succession? I like to think not only our own peoples’, but the lives of many more nations’ as well.
When my daughter took her throne, she exercised her father’s gifts to preside over the greatest advancement in agricultural productivity and efficiency the eastern world had ever seen, growing the Otoppon economy and enriching the people generally. She initiated social reforms recognizing women’s contributions, and ended slavery. With the creative spirit she acquired from both her parents, she promoted the arts, literature and music foundational to a renaissance period, directly following her reign.
I cannot tell my daughter’s private life. That is her story to set down in the annals of our family history. Not mine.
If I am honest, I cannot say I never regretted the course I took. Even a brilliant daughter is not enough for a woman who lost her whole heart. Yet, I knew my daughter’s value. It was measured in Shin’s life, and I love her fiercely. She was full of days and much beauty.
You may ask how long I lived before Shin’s star reunited with mine. They were long days—long days with pain I learned well how to savor, but their end was as final as time. And our love is now the architecture of the heavens.
Glossary of select terms:
Earth Kumo (tsuchigumo): literally translated "dirt/earth spider", is a historical Japanese derogatory term for renegade local clans, and also the name for a race of spider-like yōkai in Japanese folklore. Alternate names for the mythological Tsuchigumo include yatsukahagi (八握脛) and ōgumo (大蜘蛛, "giant spider"). The term “Earth Kumo” represents my personal adaptation of the traditional lore. Tsuchi means dirt or earth. I wanted to draw up a more nuanced view of the tsuchigumo idea. I don’t explore that fully in this version of the story, but I plan to in subsequent work.
Jorōgumo is a type of Yōkai, a creature, ghost or goblin of Japanese folklore. Jorōgumo literally means "binding bride" or “whore spider".
Shogun: a hereditary commander-in-chief in feudal Japan. Because of the military power concentrated in his hands and the consequent weakness of the nominal head of state (the mikado or emperor), the shogun was generally the real ruler of the country until feudalism was abolished in 1867.
Machi bugyo: (町奉行 machi-bugyō) were samurai officials of the Tokugawa shogunate in Edo period Japan. Senior administrative posts open to those who were not daimyō. Conventional interpretations have construed these Japanese titles as "commissioner" or "overseer" or "governor".
Daimyo: powerful Japanese feudal lords who, until their decline in the early Meiji period, ruled most of Japan from their vast, hereditary land holdings. In the term, dai(大) means "large", and myō stands for myōden(名田), meaning private land.
Burakumin; (部落民, "hamlet people"/"village people", "those who live in hamlets/villages") is an outcaste group at the bottom of the Japanese social order that has historically been the victim of severe discrimination and ostracism. The umbrella term burakumin was coined to name the eta and hinin because both classes were forced to live in separate village neighborhoods. The term burakumin does not refer to any ethnic minorities in Japan.
Kitsuke: noun; a fitting of the traditional kimono dress. Often requires a trained artist.
Jou: unit of length measure in the shakkanhō (尺貫法, "shaku–kan system") roughly equivalent to ten feet.
Shaku: unit of measure within the shakkanhō (尺貫法, "shaku–kan system") roughly equivalent to one foot.
Acknowledgments
Spinning Silk is a fairly radical reimagining of what would be late Edo Period Japan. I require quite a bit of artistic indulgence for this rather mashed up representation, but I make no apologies for it. This novel is, after all, a creative work.
While I introduce several characters with origins in Japanese (and Chinese) folklore including Orihime and Hikoboshi, Furi and Shin are fictional characters of my own imagining. I have radically reimagined the tsuchigumo, who have an altogether infamous connotation in traditional lore. I hoped to be able to bring more subtlety and dimension to this mythical character, however.
My thanks to the historians and authors of the Japanese Mythology and Folklore site: https://japanesemythology.wordpress.com. I found the site a th
orough and highly accessible resource for the sake of research. Yokai was also a beneficial site.
Personally, I have a great terror of spiders. And bringing off this story idea was challenging for me. Thanks to my many beta readers, some with a far deeper knowledge of Japanese folklore and tradition than myself. Thanks to my faithful readers and especially my husband. Finally, thanks to Sindre Aalberg for the striking cover photography.
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