Felix Takes the Stage

by Kathryn Lasky

  “It doesn’t matter. The E-Men will come within the hour. This place will be sealed off. Fatty, you’ll have to leave, too, at least temporarily. That stuff is terrible. It kills spiders, but it won’t do you any good either, believe me. I’ve seen what it can do.” Her somber tone was like a death knell.

  Fatty heaved a deep sigh. “Yes, yes, I suppose you’re right, Edith.”

  “There’s an alarm to stage left, in the wings, by the switch box. Get to it, Fatty.”

  Julep and Jo Bell gasped as Fatty streaked across the stage. Never had they seen the old cat move so fast.

  Within seconds, the performance hall was reverberating with the screech of the alarm. And in less than two minutes, there was the answering scream of sirens as fire trucks and ambulances tore through the streets of Los Angeles toward the little spider family.

  Are we halfway there yet?” Julep asked.

  “Halfway to where?” Jo Bell muttered. “Like Mom really knows where she’s going! Gimme a break!”

  “Children!” Fat Cat said sharply. “I don’t like your tone, and I’m sure your mother doesn’t either.”

  “And don’t say ‘gimme a break’!” Felix exclaimed. “It’s not very sensitive, considering what I have just been through.” Felix was being transported aboard Fatty. He was tucked into Fat Cat’s ear, which made a furry little reclining lounge chair for him.

  “I don’t think it’s fair that Felix gets to ride,” Julep complained. “I mean, he’s still got seven legs.”

  “Fair!” Felix and Jo Bell exclaimed together.

  “Julep,” Jo Bell scolded. “Take it back this instant!”

  “Sorry,” Julep muttered.

  “Really sorry?” Jo Bell insisted.

  “Okay, I am really sorry, really, really, really sorry,” Julep said.

  “Saying ‘really’ three times in a row doesn’t do that much.” Jo Bell sniffed. “You were insensitive. It was very immature of you, very pre-K.”

  This made Julep bristle. The greatest insult her older siblings could deliver was to call her “pre-K.” She racked her brain to think of words, big words, that would say how sorry she felt.

  “All right.” She looked up at Fatty’s ear, where Felix rested. “Felix, I feel extremely sorry for my unkind remarks.”

  How’s that for a pre-K kid? she thought. Take that, Jo Bell, you fathead. “Actually, I so regret my behavior that I feel absolutely squishy in my spinnerets.”

  “Ick,” Felix and Jo Bell said at the same time.

  Julep thought she was on a roll and continued. “It was unfair of me to say ‘no fair.’ I apologize.”

  “Thank you, Julep. I accept your apology,” Felix responded.

  But the word “fair” stayed with Felix. Was it fair that he had to lead a hidden life just because of his species? Should he be judged by the venom in his fangs? There was so much more to him.

  That’s what isn’t fair! he thought dolefully.

  He winced as he remembered that his mom had said it was a crime to show himself. How lame! He felt a twinge where his leg had once been. But in her heart of hearts, did she really think he was so bad?

  “Mom, there’s something I —”

  “Not now, Felix. Once we’re settled.”

  Edith had turned a deaf ear to her children’s squabbling. She was completely focused on where they should go and so grateful that Fat Cat had agreed to carry her wounded son. She knew that they could not travel far, but they had to get away. As soon as the paramedics saw the drops of blue blood, the pest control people would be called — the E-Men! There had been no time to clean up after themselves. The basement was filled with webs, rising like the vaporous mists of twilight. The blue tint of those webs was unique to brown recluses. A “dead giveaway,” as Edith had once heard an E-Man exclaim with merriment. There was nothing worse than an exterminator who was a jokester.

  The E-Men would also find the fresh flies that Edith had neatly bound up for their midnight supper. A supper she and her children would never be able to eat. And, of course, the exterminators would find Felix’s leg. There had been no time to hide it.

  Within minutes the word would go out — an infestation of Loxosceles reclusa, or brown recluse spiders, had been found at the philharmonic hall. And yet the Maestro was not a victim of her son’s fangs. He’d fainted from the shock of seeing Felix. What might he have thought when he spotted the telltale violin-shaped mark on Felix’s head? Did he recognize the badge of the brown recluse? Or could he guess that her shy son was not simply venomous but also deeply musical?

  A sign appeared, hanging over a shop.

  Fatty and Edith saw it at the same time. “Oh, dear!” He sighed. Edith stopped. She floated out a silk line and skibbled up to the ledge of the display window to peer in. There were impressive accretions of dust.

  Ah, yes! Edith spotted an orb weaver’s web between the chin and neck of a ship’s figurehead that was carved to look like an Indian princess. Edith didn’t particularly care for orb weavers. They tended to be fussy. And they considered themselves vastly superior because of their fancy spiral-shaped webs. From the looks of it, this orb weaver was from a more ancient lineage than most.

  However, these were desperate times. Felix needed to settle down and rest so he could molt.

  Please, Edith silently prayed. May Felix molt soon so his leg grows back! If she could just keep him well fed and healthy, the chances for a quick molt were good.

  The store was dusty, and there were droppings inside on the windowsill. There would be mice for Fatty. Very good, Edith thought. Suspended from the ceiling in the middle of the store was a replica of the Kon-Tiki raft. The famed Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl had used this raft to cross the Pacific. This store is a hobby business for someone, thought Edith. The owner might only come in a few times a week. Perfect!

  The Kontiki Antikies shop offered many of the features that Edith always sought — dust, a hint of filth, and delightful clutter. But Edith worried that the contents of the shop were more like junky secondhand objects than genuine antiques. There was a whiff of the tacky to the shop. It reminded her of Tchotchkes Unlimited, a store in New York, where she and her late husband had spent their honeymoon in a plastic flamingo. They were so swept up in their young love that they hadn’t noticed when their flamingo home was loaded onto a semitrailer truck. Before they could blink, they’d been shipped to Arizona with a half ton of other lawn ornaments.

  Edith looked up at Kontiki Antikies and hoped it would prove to be a good temporary home. She sought peace and quiet, and though she was fond of filth, she also longed for a certain amount of culture and history. She yearned for a place where she could show her children the richness of history, all while hidden safely away. Life in the open was unthinkable.

  She turned to her three children. “Come, I want to tell you what this shop might offer.” She paused. “And, Felix, I would like you to come down from Fatty and try walking a bit.”

  “Really?” Felix asked.

  “Yes, you don’t want your remaining seven legs to weaken. They need a bit of exercise.” She cleared her throat and tucked her fangs neatly beneath her chelicerae, the jaws she used for grasping food. “Now, listen up. Many years ago, before I was born —”

  “Oh, wow, Mom, before you were born!” Jo Bell said.

  “Totally ancient,” Julep whispered.

  “Not that ancient. But before I was born, a dashing adventurer named Thor Heyerdahl made a voyage across the vast Pacific Ocean. He wanted to prove that such routes could have been used by ancient people and that contact between South America and Polynesia was possible. It was a very daring feat.”

  “But, Mom,” Felix said. “You always told us that many spiders came to America by floating across on flimsy logs and stuff. So it wasn’t all that daring.”

  “Yes, but spiders are probably one-millionth the size of human beings. No great feat, really. And we didn’t have to sail the craft, navigate. We just … just sort of �
��”

  “Went with the wind, going with the flow,” Jo Bell offered.

  “Yes, more or less. But my point, children, is that this shop appears to specialize in models of the original raft, the Kon-Tiki. And now, Fatty, we’ll have to find an entrance for you.”

  Fatty sighed. “There’s probably a cellar window in the back. I can squeeze in, I suppose.”

  “Look, Fatty,” Edith said softly. “I know you don’t have the fondest memories of the sea, given your history, but think of this as temporary. You can go back to your dear philharmonic hall in a few days, if you wish. By then the fumes will have cleared out. Or perhaps you could continue with us, once Felix grows a new leg. We could find a theater, a new one.”

  “Yes, yes, perhaps.” For life without Edith and her children would be lonely for Fat Cat. There was too deep a bond between them. After all, he had carried that egg sac in his ear for almost a month. He was the godspider to her children. As the old saying went, “The show must go on!” but Fatty wasn’t going anywhere.

  Not here!” a voice threaded through the dust that hung like vapor in the dim light of the shop. The voice came from the figurehead of the Indian princess in the display window. It was a handsomely carved lady with a profile designed to cut the wind and soft, almost kissable lips despite the fact that they were painted wood. Those lips had definitely not spoken the rude words that greeted their arrival.

  “I might have known,” Edith muttered. It was, of course, the master of the orb web. She could see him in a corner just above the web in a cottony sac.

  “Don’t worry,” Edith called. “I’m sure we’ll find a place far from your quarters.” She looked around somewhat doubtfully. The shop was much smaller than she had anticipated.

  “We, my wife and I, would be profoundly grateful. We rarely mix with your kind. Little in common, you know, and then our next batch is hatching any day. We wouldn’t want them getting the wrong ideas.”

  “About what?” Julep stopped in her tiny tracks. “What wrong ideas?”

  “Never mind, Julep,” Edith said quickly. “Follow me.”

  “Ideas,” muttered Felix, limping along behind his mother. He suspected these spiders never thought, let alone had ideas.

  “I’m sure you understand,” the voice said. “We are the five-hundredth generation of our family. I am Oliphant Uxbridge. We can trace our family back to the Mayflower. Remarkable, isn’t it? Our forebears came over in a crate of gunpowder.”

  For a spider who did not like to mix with their “kind,” Edith thought he was awfully chatty. But she simply could not let the gunpowder remark pass. “Odd!” she said softly.

  “Odd? What’s odd? You don’t believe that we came over on the Mayflower with the founders of this country?”

  “Oh, no, not that. It is odd that the Mayflower humans, who came over for religious reasons, would have gunpowder. I don’t associate such types with violence. Although I suppose they did become rather violent later on.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “All that witchcraft business in Salem.”

  Oliphant Uxbridge seemed temporarily at a loss for words. “Are you an intellectual?” he said with sudden suspicion. “We don’t particularly care for intellectuals. Radicals, the whole lot of them.”

  “I read,” Edith said simply.

  “Hrrumph,” Oliphant grunted. “And what’s wrong with that child — deformity?”

  Edith gasped, but Felix replied before she could.

  “I lost a leg, sir,” he said with quiet dignity. “It is not a deformity.”

  Edith could hardly contain her rage. “There is no such thing as a deformity. There are only minds deformed by the wrong values. Felix is a special-needs child until he molts and grows a new leg.” Her mind reeled back to countless humiliations she had suffered as a youngster, not because of anything she had ever done but merely because of the brown recluse reputation. Her father — with the best of intentions — had exposed them to too much. He was a bit of an adventurer. It was fine for humans like Thor Heyerdahl but not for brown recluse spiders. Life was so unsettled with adventurers.

  “Don’t engage them,” his wife could be heard whispering. “They’re brown recluses, and you know what that means! They’ve been outcasts for generations. No manners whatsoever. Very primitive.”

  Felix felt something contract within him. So now being a recluse means we’re ignorant! But as they made their way toward a distant corner, Felix paused and turned to take one last look at the orb weaver’s web. He hated to admit it, but its shimmering geometry entranced him.

  Edith looked about, wondering where to lead her little family. The store was a hodgepodge. There were dust-encrusted compasses and navigational instruments, old sea charts, maps, globes, and hundreds upon hundreds of model ships, ranging from somewhat flimsy-looking rafts like the Kon-Tiki to more modern vessels. Clipper ships and yachts were all jumbled together. It wasn’t like a library, where the books were properly ordered by subject matter and author. “Oh, mercy, one must bless the Dewey decimal system!” she whispered.

  “What, Mom?” Jo Bell asked.

  “Nothing, dear,” Edith answered as she walked by another family of orb weavers who had spun a web in another figurehead. It seemed as if the orb weavers had staked out all the best figurehead real estate. She supposed her family was destined for the worst spot in the store. It was too bad. She had just passed by a large round table piled high with ship’s lanterns, old dive helmets, and miniature cannons. Felix would have loved to live in a cannon!

  “Pssst!” Fatty hissed from a corner. Edith and her two daughters scuttled over a pile of navigational charts to a far corner of the store.

  “What have you found, Fatty?” Edith asked, and then her six eyes lit on her new home. “Oh, my word! Perfect.”

  There, perched on a pedestal, was a model of a square-rigged ship called the USS Constitution. Above the ship, the model of the Kon-Tiki raft swung from the ceiling.

  “Look, Mom!” said Felix. “You’ll hardly have to weave a web. It’s like it’s already been done!”

  “That’s the rigging, dear. I doubt if it can compare in strength to what I spin … wouldn’t trust it.”

  “Each of us kids can have a mast,” said Jo Bell.

  “Your mother should definitely get the captain’s quarters aft of the wheel. They’ll be the most luxurious,” Fat Cat said.

  “I think Felix should be there with me. I don’t want him dangling about with only seven legs,” Edith replied.

  “Aw, Mom! I’ll be fine. Look, I walked into the store, didn’t I? Honestly, I think I might feel a molt coming on!” argued Felix.

  “First things first,” Edith said. “We have to go hunting. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m starved. And, Fatty, I saw some mice droppings, so there’s got to be a mouse for you around here somewhere.”

  “Don’t worry, Edith. I’ve already had my appetizer course.”

  “My goodness, you don’t waste any time.”

  “Ruled by my stomach too often, I fear. But I noticed some plump cockroaches by the cellar window as I pushed through.”

  “Yum!” Julep exclaimed. “Maybe there’s some ketchup around.”

  “Oh, no, not the ketchup thing again,” Jo Bell moaned. “Why would you think there would be ketchup here? It’s an antique shop, not a school cafeteria.” Ever since their mother had told them about lunch at the Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, Julep had been obsessed with ketchup.

  “But don’t cockroaches with ketchup sound so delicious?” Julep asked.

  “Please, children, let’s get settled,” Edith said. Why did I ever mention ketchup to this child? She never forgets a thing!

  Edith had somewhat of a love-hate relationship with the word “settle.” She liked to settle, she liked the feeling of being settled. But usually a horrible period of unsettlement came first. She had to admit that she had settled in the philharmonic hall for quite a long time. Her child
ren had all hatched and spent their whole lives there. So she should not complain. By Julep’s age, she and her family had moved half a dozen times.

  She had seen more E-Men than she cared to remember. Her dear old aunt Tessie had finally said, “No more!” She squatted down in the deepest corner of her web and refused to budge. And she had, of course, been killed by the poison gas that jetted out of the white tanks the E-Men wore on their backs.

  Edith’s entire childhood had been lived on high alert. Her father seemed to thrive on this sort of excitement. Edith thought her mother did, too, until her father died. That was when her mother had begun talking about the Place Where Time Has Stopped. It wasn’t just a place that promised peace and quiet and no fear of E-Men. It was also a place where brown recluses were never whispered about by other spiders.

  Mrs. Uxbridge’s remarks had cut deep. Her words brought back every bit of teasing Edith had endured as a child. She remembered in particular a period of time in an old barn in New England. There had been a lovely woodpile where her family had fetched up. All sorts of other spiders had strung their webs throughout the barn — orb weavers, sheet web weavers, jumping spiders, even leucauge spiders, a spider of stunning beauty, as dazzling as an Easter egg. In this barn, a young leucauge spider named Barbie led a group of girls that operated like some sort of horrid children’s militia. They called themselves “spiderniks,” and their mission was to bully any newcomer, especially if that newcomer was a brown recluse. When Edith’s mother complained, all Barbie’s mother said was, “Rites of passage — it will teach her to be prepared.”

  “Prepared for what — cruelty? Mercy me, they call us deadly, but you, madam, are raising a little tyrant with Barbie.”

  Yes, Edith knew too well that the taunting words of other spiders could be as toxic as the chemicals in the E-Men’s tanks. Such words could break your spirit. She had vowed she would never expose her own children to such viciousness. She would be the most reclusive of all recluses.