Page 6

6

MAX

I swatted at my face, thrashing and sputtering as I peeled away endless strands of cobweb, batting away the spiders. Through the terror and panic, I could only make out the sound of Leon’s voice.

“Um, Max? Buddy. You okay there, big guy?”

I opened my eyes to a place far darker than the back room of the craft store. I blinked, realizing that the tingly feeling of being webbed and spidered had gone away. Leon blinked back at me, kneeling just by my head.

“We’re here,” he said. “Time to get up.”

I pushed up against the ground. It was glossy and hard to the touch, like black marble. Like an insect’s back. I allowed Leon to pull me to my feet, and then I turned in a circle and scratched my head.

“But — the spiders. My face.” I patted my cheeks, felt at my forehead. “Was it all an illusion?”

Leon shook his head and tutted. “Honestly, you really should let me do the talking next time. I think the old lady at Snitches wanted to fuck with you a little. She didn’t seem to like you very much.”

I brushed off my clothes, sulking. “Oh, as if you’d do any better.”

“Absolutely, I would. I’m positively fucking delightful.”

There was an odd, distant, almost muffled quality to the sound of Leon’s voice, as if the air here was different. It could well have been, the rules of the universe slightly shifted within this dimension, this alternate plane of reality. Because this wasn’t a place for humans. This was a place for spiders, and for their queen mother.

Great strands of silk and swaths of fabric clung from impossible heights in the unseen ceiling. From far beyond the reaches glowed a pale, eerie jade light, casting everything in sickly, deathly green. I stared at my hands, wondering if this was how it would feel to be dead.

This felt larger than the space the Jade Spider had delivered us to. Much larger, a coliseum when that other place had only been a closet. And as before, from the farthest reaches of the dimension, I could hear it: the sound of skittering and chittering. I took a deep breath and steeled myself, willing away the unsettling vision of thousands, if not millions of spiders.

But the only spider we needed to concern ourselves with was already waiting before us.

There she stood on all eight of her legs, each festooned with enormous rings and bangles. The mother of spiders was so fond of accoutrements that even her arachnid half was dressed and decorated. Tailored silk spilled over her bulbous abdomen like so many layered skirts, glassy beads and bits of jewelry stitched onto the gauzy fabric.

Her humanoid torso was similarly clothed — sparsely, that is, her jewels and chains artfully placed to protect her modesty. Bracelets traveled the entire lengths of her arms, so numerous that they could have resembled sleeves or ringlets of armor, the dark metal serving to illuminate the unearthly pallor of her skin.

Hanging from her dull metal crown was an elaborate lacework veil, the patterns so complex and delicate that I couldn’t fathom how they could have been crafted by human hand. Created by her millions of children, no doubt, the only weavers in this known world who could tailor something so intricate and beautiful without tearing a single filament in the process.

Arachne smiled, black lips parting to reveal fangs that glinted wet and green in her domicile’s venomous light. According to the little information I could glean from Vera, few had ever gazed upon the true face of the spider queen. A privilege, perhaps, or a punishment, saved for those who were courageous or foolish enough to peer past her royal veil.

I could smell the tension in the air. Perhaps it was the smell of my own sweat. Leon certainly wasn’t moving himself, nothing but the sound of faintly rustling plastic to break the silence. The fortune cookies. Right. He lifted them slowly to chest height, offering our offering to the spider queen.

Arachne’s stark white hand darted forward, snatching the bag away. Leon yelped. I almost pissed my pants.

“Oh, how delightful!” Arachne squealed, already ripping the bag apart, fortune cookies spilling to the ground. “So many of your mediocre little pastries filled with your pithy little prophecies. Oh, what wonders. What shall my fortune be?”

I exchanged a nervous glance with Leon as Arachne violently unwrapped one of the fortune cookies. The cookie snapped and crumbled in her grasp before she even tore the plastic open. The sound, for whatever reason, suddenly reminded me of the crunching of bone. I took a slow, deep breath.

This was a communion, an exchange between the mortal and the divine. We’d come with a purpose, and it was up to us to communicate that. I bowed my head slightly, the words already stilted before they left my mouth.

“We hope you enjoy our offering, great Arachne. But we have come to you with a — ”

She clapped her hands and squealed again, sending up a shower of fortune cookie fragments. Pinched between her fingers was a strip of white paper, apparently the only reason she specifically requested these things as offerings to begin with.

“Let’s see what it says, shall we? ‘You will have many friends.’ Oh, how utterly unspecific and droll. When shall I make these friends, little pastry? How many?” Arachne rolled the strip of paper into a ball between her fingers and flicked it away, gracing us with a greenish smile. “And yet perhaps this tiny scroll offers a glimmer of insight, after all.”

I opened my mouth to answer, but Leon cut in first, speaking through an easy, friendly grin. “We’d love to be friends, Arachne. But truth be told, we’ve come to learn about your children. The two-legged ones.”

Better to let him take the lead, really. I hated to admit it, but sometimes — okay, often — Leon could be the better choice between the two of us when it came to being charming. And it seemed to have worked, too, Arachne scuttling closer to get a good look at our faces.

“Yes,” she murmured, her breath rustling her silken veils. “My other children. The ones I did not birth, and yet who still swore fealty to me. I reward them with secrets, with knowledge whispered out of the dark. You brought me fortunes. I owe you knowledge.”

The jewels on her necklace shifted, moving along the breadth of her throat. I tightened my fists, fighting the temptation to say something that might offend the entity, but Leon spoke up first.

“Whoa. That’s so pretty. How are your gemstones doing that?”

“Oh, these?”

Instead of offense, Arachne answered with a girlish titter, because of course Leon’s curiosity came off as charming na?veté. It was like his superpower at this point. She ran one delicate hand along her clavicle. One of her rings traveled the length of her finger, switching places with the gemstone on her pendant.

“These are the most precious of my children, perhaps in every sense of the word. My secret-spiders, each with a different gemstone embedded in its body. They link back to me, sending me whispers and stories along the strands of their webs.”

And the Mother Spider sat at the center of it all, this presumably worldwide web. Finally an explanation for why the human spiders named themselves after gemstones. It was aspirational, maybe, a way to bring themselves closer to their mother’s jade light, curry her favor.

“The smallest of my children delight me with their little secrets. The human ones are a different matter. But that’s neither here nor there. You had a question.”

A question. Singular. Everything was transactional with the entities. We had to make this count. Leon and I exchanged looks. He pursed his lips. We nodded in agreement.

“There is someone in Dos Lunas,” I began, “who once called himself the Quartz Spider. Brendan Shum is his real name. His human name. He’s been sowing chaos in the city, dabbling in time magic, and it looks like he isn’t very fond of the two of us in particular.”

“I remember him,” Arachne replied. Her eyes narrowed, her lips flattening into a tight line.

“He tried to trap us,” Leon blurted out. “Drown us, even, spilling tons and tons of magical water in a place that looked exactly like this one. Your domicile, I mean. The Jade Spider brought us there, but it was the Quartz Spider who trashed the place.”

She bared her teeth, her veils rustling when she hissed. “He has no right to enter my spider holes. Those who cease to worship me are no longer permitted access to any pockets of my territory. The Jade Spider — Vera Loong — she is among the brightest of my stars. She may do with my lairs as she pleases.”

Phew. For a minute there I thought we’d gotten Vera into trouble.

“But Brendan Shum was barred entry and stripped of his privileges when he spurned me. Time magic? Pah. And you say he filled the space with water?”

That part seemed to offend her most of all. Leon’s head bobbled as he nodded, eyes wide, a schoolboy telling on his bully.

“He could’ve ruined the flooring,” Leon said. “Or damaged something, all that damp. Imagine mold on the premises. Terrible for any real estate, ethereal or otherwise.”

“Mold.” Arachne growled. She stamped four of her eight feet. “I hate mold.”

I held back my laughter. This was why I loved working with Leon. Neither of us had asked a question, only offering Arachne more information, but she was providing answers all the same, egged on by Leon’s narrative.

The entities were so bonded to their primal nature, this one in particular favoring the corners and shadows, places where she could hear the plumpest and juiciest of secrets. Whispers. Gossip. Information. Arachne craved it, yet couldn’t help dispensing it herself.

“So he’s left your service,” I ventured, having settled on the right question to ask. “And he’s no longer a worshipper. But he placed his feet on sacred ground — one of your pocket dimensions — and soiled it with seawater.”

“Seawater.” Arachne clenched her fists and cried out. “Sacrilege! Desecration!”

“Help us help you, Arachne. The Quartz Spider has wreaked havoc upon your territory, and he continues to do harm out on Earth. Lives are at stake. Help us stop Brendan Shum. How do we find him?”

She clasped her hands, taking in a long, slow breath. “My two-legged children act as envoys out in your reality. Within these dark walls, I am queen. But out on Earth, you will find no better helpers than my bejeweled brood.”

Arachne lifted her veils. I held my breath. All eight of her eyes blinked at once.

“Seek the Amethyst Spider.”