“Did Kostya do that to you? Did he make a little bracelet of your legs?”
“How funny you are! No, of course he didn’t. I am a recluse spider. It is an apt name, and indicates the poisons of my body, besides. No one could sever my legs did I not ask them to…”
THE
DRESSMAKER’S
TALE
ANOTHER CREATURE’S TALE IS LIKE A WEB: IT spirals in and out again, and if you are not careful, you may become stuck, while the teller weaves on.
Did I become stuck in Kostya’s tale, or did he become stuck in mine? It is confusing, and so I will begin with mine, and perhaps somewhere along the strand we will snare him.
The first thing I remember was glass. I was caught under glass with a few dozen others as brown and small as I—perhaps siblings, perhaps not. One cannot really smell the egg sac after a few days, and though we might have been brothers and sisters, we easily might have not. Who can say? But what I saw from that squirming, thronging glass was a long table with a tall cup standing on it, holding up a stack of books, a cup of horn, all twisted red and black and yellowed white.
Each day he would scoop some of us out and crush us in his mortar, mixing in rose and snake scale and whatever else he could think of. He would pour this mixture into the cup and drink it down, savoring and considering each concoction. Now, even as an infant I was a clever thing, as spiders must be to find their web rafters and their suppers so soon after their mother crawls back into the dark. We are born with the knowledge of poison beating hard in us—we taste it; of course we taste it. Do you not know the taste of your own mouth, your own spit, your own blood? So do we, and know it well. He could have been at no other trick than poisoning, with so many of us crushed in his bowl, twitching legs brush
ing weakly at the rim.
I have no grudge against poisoners, being one myself, but nor did I greatly desire to become a tool of his trade. And so, when he came for me, with his dry, thin fingers groping under the glass, I was ready, and scurried up his reaching arm, all the way to his neck, and sank my fangs in him as quick as a snapping web strand, before he could even cry. When I am very angry, I sometimes have a second bite to give, and this too I gave gladly to him, with a high, whispering shriek of triumph, and two red points of blood on his cheek.
I am quick. I am merciful. He thrashed like a drowning man, and out of his skin came snaking vines—I have since been very careful, in case all men have these whipping things hiding in their skin. Out snarled holly and thorn apple and ivy, reaching to find and strangle and save. But I am too small for such blunt limbs, and they never touched me. One lashed out, a blackthorn branch, and shattered the cup of horn, which had held so many spider broths—and a terrible, sorrowful sound filled the room, like the last gasping note of a song that had once dreamed of forests, and storms, and lightning brighter than love. I shuddered as it died away in the room’s stale air. But I cannot really mourn a cup.
Away from his purpling corpse I and some few others ran, into the world and the light. Having been captive since as near to birth as makes the difference of one strand of thread to another, I was not properly socialized, and unsure of what a spider ought to do with her time.
I asked the crickets in the Glassblowing District, and they said:
“We suspect it is proper and right that a spider should rub her legs together and make a very nice sort of music which fills up the night air and draws mates from all corners, green and black and handsome!”
I tried to rub my legs together, but no music of any kind came from them, only a dry sort of scraping. I asked the moths in the Bird-keepers’ Ward, and they said:
“We suspect it is right and proper for a spider to seek out the flame wherever it lies, and bask in its light.”
I went then to the Candle-makers’ Quarter and there found more flame than tallow, but I found it very hot and uncomfortable, and when a foreleg began to smoke, I in my wisdom retreated.
I asked the flies in the Calligrapher’s Close, and they considered for a very long while, keeping far back from me—I did not know why.
“We suspect it is proper and right for a spider to eat flies,” they stuttered, “but we do not advise it. Perhaps it is more proper and more right for a spider to weave beautiful alphabets, as a calligrapher does, or beautiful dresses, as a tailor does. We do not know, but we seem to recall that weaving is the essential thing. Now please leave us alone.”
I shrugged, and set about locating a calligrapher who would take me as an apprentice. I suspected the flies, like the moths and the crickets, were silly, flighty things who knew no more of spiderhood than I did, but without a map, all roads seem equal.
I asked the squid in their tanks, all a-flush with ink.
“We have no use for a spider,” they gurgled. “You are extremely drownable, and it would be impolite of us to ask you to work in our element. Try the humans.”
I asked the man in the high shop with a hat of blue and buckles, who penned careful manuscripts all through the night.
“I have no use for a spider,” he coughed. “You are extremely crushable, and it would be impolite of me to ask you to work beside my careless hands. Try the Sirens.”
I crawled beneath the door of a room at the highest floor of the highest tower in Ajanabh outside the Duke’s estate, a drafty, cold place—cold! In Ajanabh! But there it was, the tower so high that the air itself shook with a terror of the heights. Within the rooms, the windows creaked and trembled with their own dread of the sheer walls, and three women blinked at me in wonder and hunger.
They had women’s legs, and so I call them women, but from the waist, brown feathers overtook the skin, and the upper parts of them were sparrows, great, tottering beaks and long page-brown wings tipped in black folded neat as elbows at their sides. Their huge, wet black eyes regarded me with an early bird’s right to breakfast, and I tucked my legs in quickly.
“Please! Do not eat me! I come to learn the art of letters—I can weave and spin as well as any, and I will stitch whatever words you ask me!”
The birds looked at each other and said nothing. Instead, they extended their wings and began to turn, a strange, hopping, sinuous dance that looped each one out of the embrace of the other, ducking under one wing and hopping with bare, grimy feet over the pirouetting leg of another. Their backs arched and bent, their wings dipped down low and fluttered wide, tracing circle after circle. I watched them in awe, their sure steps, their constant touch—never was there a moment when one Siren did not have her wing or her toe on another of her sisters. When they stopped, they looked expectantly at me, as if they had spoken, as if I was now sure to answer, if I was not a very rude creature.
Then I looked at the floor.