.....The spiderling opened his eyes and was greeted by darkness.
.....He hung from the ceiling by his head-legs and now he detached all eight of them at once and fell. As he dropped through the cave he spoke his name and the names of the other arraknoi he had once loved. He told the story of his exile to the cool air brushing his nakedness. He spoke in whisper-trills and words, with silence and sound.
.....He fell forty feet into a lake whose frigid waters shocked his skin and his lungs and his clustered eyes and he descended until his feet pressed the bottom and now he saw around him floating fish of every colour: frost minnows and flarefin koi, blood-moon reds and the green of shamrocks in spring. Each illuminated animal dead and perfectly preserved by his own hands in this lake of lights, connected one lifeless form to another by the translucent webbing he produced in the glands of his mouth-spinneret.
.....His head-legs unfurled vertically before dividing into a fountain of obsidian limbs. They angled down on loose sediment to carry him forward out of the lake and his dripping feet did not touch the ground as he navigated through tunnels and glowing blinkroot fields. He traveled at an angle up out of the body of the mountain until he stood on an exposed granite rib, where an evening wind dried his dark skin and shrunk his nipples.
.....Hunger in his belly like flint, hot and sharp. He dropped to his feet, furling up his head-legs; they hung from his head in thick bands down his back to the ground, like the braided hair of his distant human cousins, those Summer Islanders.
.....The spiderling leaped at the mountain’s side and with the adhesive on his fingers and toes quickly crawled on the grey stone. At times he had to backtrack, and so would be upside down, his face pointed toward mist shrouded spears, gravity pulling at his body irresistibly.
.....Let go, the world seemed to say, let go, little arraknoi. Let go.
.....He ignored the seduction, continuing until he had arrived at his garden of skeletons.
.....At its centre rose his hardest kill: a bone-serpent’s framework carefully arranged into leaves and stem, the conical head become the sun-dried bud, the sockets upturned and staring blindly.
.....(Months spent tracking the creature through the mountain’s hollowed chest, and as he went he had come to learn some of how the great rock had been transformed. Sinking deeper into gloom he had seen the work of hands other than his own, of intelligences beyond his grasp, whose metal-slaves still lay half-buried in the walls, their massive claws extending into grit-filled space, their hammered bodies bleeding rust.
.....He had found the bone-serpent at last; killed it; then dragged the carcass from the bowels of the dank interior.)
.....Knuckle-blossoms and femur-daisies. Skulls split in half and sanded smooth and filled with rose-coloured water. Shoulder blades turned into lily pads, resting on ponds of finely ground white dust— the bones of critters and birds, snared by his webs, trapped here since his exile a century before (but that was another time, another place, and he did not like to think on it much).
.....He spun silk from his mouth-spinneret, repairing breaks in his garden or embellishing leaves with his web glossing. During this scrutiny he came across the fairy: cut to ribbons from flying into the blades of his spine-cactuses only to be held fast by one of his webs.
.....“Listen,” it said, with tiny lips shrivelled from dehydration. “Listen.”
.....The spiderling freed it from the spines, careful not to cause further harm, and held it up to his face to see the damage done and opened his mouth and bit off its head. He sucked the body and wings inside and chewed. He hungered still.
.....(In his left hand a silk strand vibrated.)
.....He ceased all movement, and waited.
.....Sunset’s dying rays leeched his body. He wore the night as a second skin; and when he decided to move he made no sound.
.....There was a human at the back, where a tunnel led into the mountain. Milk-white skin in blue cloth. A feather in his cap. From within the bag at his feet were bone-flowers, taken from the garden. Precious cuts. Ignorantly removed.
.....The spiderling’s mandibles clacked once.
.....There is a delight in seeing prey turn, when the realization comes upon the face like a cloud before the sun. The mouth slackens. The eyes gaze up, up, searching higher still in petrified immobility—
.....—and then the sack of meat trembles, for the mind understands that this towering man shares only passing kinship to humanity; for the neck violently widens into the head of a spider, bristles and hair and muscle and teeth steeped in pitch. A symbiosis of animal and man.
.....Predation perfected.
.....“My God,” said the merchant quietly, falling to his knees. “My God, I beg you. Not like this.”
.....His head-legs fanned out into an onyx halo.
.....“Wait,” begged the man. He was sobbing now. “I didn’t think— I didn’t know this place belonged to you. Wait!”
.....Silence.
.....“I didn’t mean to steal.” He fumbled into his bag, took out the flowers of bone. He couldn’t see in the dark, and moved in jerking, unsure motions. “I only took a few. See?”
.....The spiderling placed a hand around his throat.
.....But the merchant was putting out on display more items. A chalice, he explained by touch. Rings. Tiger skins and moon-fringed capes.
.....He took out more than should have been possible from a bag that size: paint; wine; folded hats.
.....“Runes,” he said, swiping at the mucus dripping from his nose. “And more. I have so much more.”
.....But when he showed his hands this time they were empty.
.....The spiderling studied the gifts; and then he added the man to the garden.
.....He hung from the ceiling by his head-legs and now he detached all eight of them at once and fell. As he dropped through the cave he spoke his name and the names of the other arraknoi he had once loved. He told the story of his exile to the cool air brushing his nakedness. He spoke in whisper-trills and words, with silence and sound.
.....He fell forty feet into a lake whose frigid waters shocked his skin and his lungs and his clustered eyes and he descended until his feet pressed the bottom and now he saw around him floating fish of every colour: frost minnows and flarefin koi, blood-moon reds and the green of shamrocks in spring. Each illuminated animal dead and perfectly preserved by his own hands in this lake of lights, connected one lifeless form to another by the translucent webbing he produced in the glands of his mouth-spinneret.
.....His head-legs unfurled vertically before dividing into a fountain of obsidian limbs. They angled down on loose sediment to carry him forward out of the lake and his dripping feet did not touch the ground as he navigated through tunnels and glowing blinkroot fields. He traveled at an angle up out of the body of the mountain until he stood on an exposed granite rib, where an evening wind dried his dark skin and shrunk his nipples.
.....Hunger in his belly like flint, hot and sharp. He dropped to his feet, furling up his head-legs; they hung from his head in thick bands down his back to the ground, like the braided hair of his distant human cousins, those Summer Islanders.
.....The spiderling leaped at the mountain’s side and with the adhesive on his fingers and toes quickly crawled on the grey stone. At times he had to backtrack, and so would be upside down, his face pointed toward mist shrouded spears, gravity pulling at his body irresistibly.
.....Let go, the world seemed to say, let go, little arraknoi. Let go.
.....He ignored the seduction, continuing until he had arrived at his garden of skeletons.
.....At its centre rose his hardest kill: a bone-serpent’s framework carefully arranged into leaves and stem, the conical head become the sun-dried bud, the sockets upturned and staring blindly.
.....(Months spent tracking the creature through the mountain’s hollowed chest, and as he went he had come to learn some of how the great rock had been transformed. Sinking deeper into gloom he had seen the work of hands other than his own, of intelligences beyond his grasp, whose metal-slaves still lay half-buried in the walls, their massive claws extending into grit-filled space, their hammered bodies bleeding rust.
.....He had found the bone-serpent at last; killed it; then dragged the carcass from the bowels of the dank interior.)
.....Knuckle-blossoms and femur-daisies. Skulls split in half and sanded smooth and filled with rose-coloured water. Shoulder blades turned into lily pads, resting on ponds of finely ground white dust— the bones of critters and birds, snared by his webs, trapped here since his exile a century before (but that was another time, another place, and he did not like to think on it much).
.....He spun silk from his mouth-spinneret, repairing breaks in his garden or embellishing leaves with his web glossing. During this scrutiny he came across the fairy: cut to ribbons from flying into the blades of his spine-cactuses only to be held fast by one of his webs.
.....“Listen,” it said, with tiny lips shrivelled from dehydration. “Listen.”
.....The spiderling freed it from the spines, careful not to cause further harm, and held it up to his face to see the damage done and opened his mouth and bit off its head. He sucked the body and wings inside and chewed. He hungered still.
.....(In his left hand a silk strand vibrated.)
.....He ceased all movement, and waited.
.....Sunset’s dying rays leeched his body. He wore the night as a second skin; and when he decided to move he made no sound.
.....There was a human at the back, where a tunnel led into the mountain. Milk-white skin in blue cloth. A feather in his cap. From within the bag at his feet were bone-flowers, taken from the garden. Precious cuts. Ignorantly removed.
.....The spiderling’s mandibles clacked once.
.....There is a delight in seeing prey turn, when the realization comes upon the face like a cloud before the sun. The mouth slackens. The eyes gaze up, up, searching higher still in petrified immobility—
.....—and then the sack of meat trembles, for the mind understands that this towering man shares only passing kinship to humanity; for the neck violently widens into the head of a spider, bristles and hair and muscle and teeth steeped in pitch. A symbiosis of animal and man.
.....Predation perfected.
.....“My God,” said the merchant quietly, falling to his knees. “My God, I beg you. Not like this.”
.....His head-legs fanned out into an onyx halo.
.....“Wait,” begged the man. He was sobbing now. “I didn’t think— I didn’t know this place belonged to you. Wait!”
.....Silence.
.....“I didn’t mean to steal.” He fumbled into his bag, took out the flowers of bone. He couldn’t see in the dark, and moved in jerking, unsure motions. “I only took a few. See?”
.....The spiderling placed a hand around his throat.
.....But the merchant was putting out on display more items. A chalice, he explained by touch. Rings. Tiger skins and moon-fringed capes.
.....He took out more than should have been possible from a bag that size: paint; wine; folded hats.
.....“Runes,” he said, swiping at the mucus dripping from his nose. “And more. I have so much more.”
.....But when he showed his hands this time they were empty.
.....The spiderling studied the gifts; and then he added the man to the garden.
