Tallah

Well… this was a sight she wouldn’t cherish in the dark of the night.

Sil had to concede one thing about the spiders: they were industrious. Already the birthing chamber looked nearly ready for more flowers to be planted. The dead had been gathered and dragged away, the churned earth had been dug and seeded, and there was water flowing among the fresh seedbeds to help plants regrow.

Tallah’s fire had only left behind soot on the walls and ceiling, and not much else proof of its passage.

It had been bells since it had all happened.

It felt like a whole season gone past. A lifetime. Maybe even several.

There was one thing the spiders hadn’t touched and she couldn’t help but stare at it.

Erisa’s corpse lay where she’d been slain by Panacea. It was surrounded by the small corpses of red spiders, all of them left insensate after the girl’s capture. None had been touched by the rest of the brood, same as the corpse itself had been left unattended.

She approached it.

A thin layer of silk lay draped over the body, built by the caretakers most likely. It made for a strangely terrifying tableau, and made her painfully aware of the black gem that rested in her own rend.

Tallah had trusted her with it. Sil wasn’t certain it had been a wise thing.

What would happen were she to smash the thing? Would Erisa be finally free of her nightmares, returned to wherever souls went once free of their bindings?

Or would she return here to retake her bodies and her pain?

She ran a hand across the corpse’s face and closed its eyes. It didn’t lessen the feeling of being stared at.

“We have collected what you asked for,” a voice intruded into her private misery.

She turned and saw one the white spiders standing a few steps away from her. It lay a small bottle on the ground between them, and then retreated some distance away. It avoided looking at the body.

Sil picked up the bottle and inspected it. Two drops of water sloshed in a thin layer at the bottom, just barely there.

“This was all that we could recover. All that was left. We are sorry.”

“How quickly do the flowers grow?” she asked, looking at the fresh flower beds and the clear water gurgling in the fresh irrigation channels.

“We do not know. We have never grown them. They were here.”

She’d seen the spiders planting the seeds so they knew something of how to plant anything. She’d instructed them on how to do the irrigation, though that also seemed to be something they understood innately.

What use would they have for the flowers now?

Likely none. But, like the rest of Grefe, this was something they’d inherited and she could understand how they wanted to maintain that which had been there always. Or, at least, recover what had been broken. Already there were things happening at the place where… where Erisa had hurt her. They were taking apart the webs and revealing the structure beneath.

Maybe by the time they left there there would be no sign of Erisa’s existence… except for the corpse.

None of the spiders could be made to agree to spin Erisa’s soul into thread. She’d asked.

“We will not forget what we did here,” a new voice said and drew her attention away from the body. She’d moved closer, at least someone to offer a wake to the death of innocence.

Sil didn’t recognise the spider stepping into the room. All the rest, however, cleared the way for it as quick as they could, doing complex bowing motions to it.

Black. Thin-legged. Hardly larger than Luna, but with a frame that suggested it would grow much larger in time.

“You are the mother, I assume?”

Everything about it made her skin crawl, but she felt no real fear at the sight even as the spider approached her. It came within arm’s reach of her, but that was as far as it dared approach.

“I will be,” it said. Black eyes regarded her. “I have come to apologise for what we’ve done. I beg your forgiveness, saviour.”

She could also speak. That was something Sil hadn’t expected, speech being of Erisa. The brood had decided on maintaining that particular part of knowing.

“Not for me to forgive. I am—”

“You are meant to heal. We wish to heal. We wish to heal the wound between us all. We do not know how.”

Sil shrugged. At long last, she’d reached a limit of what she could do and what she could understand. Bridging humanity and spiderdom… well, that was beyond her abilities.

“We’ll see in time. I wish I could tell you to come to the surface and meet the rest of humanity. Become the eighth, as it were.” She let out a slow laugh. Eighth? Who knew how many other secret peoples there were across Edana? Who knew what grew in dark places where nobody ever dared look?

“You do not wish for us to be revealed to the rest of you?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think you’d be welcomed. Not yet. We’re a bunch of bastards playing at being civilised. Fear guides our steps. Makes us stupid. And we’d be afraid of you. In more ways than you can imagine.”

Silence stretched between her and the mother. They watched one another for a long time.

“Will we ever be welcome among you?”

She shrugged. Didn’t know. Couldn’t lie. Maybe one day, but definitely not now. And it wasn’t as the spider thought, because of what they’d done to Erisa. It was a tragedy, sure enough, but who above would care?

Even that thought squirmed in her head and made her guts knot up in rage. It was the truth. Nobody would care for one girl that had suffered a terrible fate and died a terrible death. It wasn’t fair but, then again, nothing ever was.

An echo of pain cut through her midriff and she pressed a hand to her belly. She knew there was nothing there. Tallah had assured her. Anna had offered to check and Sil had accepted, even if the ghost’s touch was repulsive. Nothing grew within her. Erisa was dead.

Pain still squirmed there. It would, maybe, become a constant companion and reminder of this accursed place.

“There is something I may offer,” the mother said. “If you will allow.”

Sil raised an eyebrow. She sat at the corpse’s feet, suddenly tired and weary. Whatever she’d drawn upon to keep going had run out at long last.

It felt better to be eye-level with the spider.

“And what is that? I’m not sure I want anything else from this place.”

It raised a black leg and pointed at her head. “We can… hear… words under your words. Barely there, like breath. You speak in words and in echoes. Do you know this?”

Pain lanced through the centre of her forehead. It hit with the sudden intensity of a bolt driven through her skull and burned in the space behind her eyes. She pressed hands to her forehead and felt as if her entire head was wreathed in burning thorns.

It passed as sudden as it had come. She found herself surrounded by spiders, all drawn much closer than before, with the mother at the forefront. Sil gasped for breath. Fresh tears streaked down her face.

“What did you do?”

“I did nothing. I merely spoke.”

“What did you say?”

It hesitated before repeating word for word. Again the pain, like a hammer beating against her skull. Something inside cracked and Sil saw… saw…

Knew why she’d killed Dreea. Remembered..

In the gorge, she’d seen a glimpse of the truth. Erisa had opened up something in her that wasn’t supposed to be there. It had come. It had gone. Faded like a nightmare in morning’s light. But the spider’s words tore through whatever she kept hidden from herself.

Sil remembered sins she’d chosen to forget… chosen to have taken away from her. Remembered why Dreea had to die for her to live. Dreea had been repulsive!

A spider came in carrying water in a jug. It pressed it into her hands and tens of eyes watched her in mute terror as she drank. They knew that water was life, and nothing else of healing.

“Say the words again,” she insisted. “What do you hear when I talk?”

“The pain—”

“Pain is only pain. Pain passes,” she repeated. “Say the words. Say more. I want… I want to remember more.”

Something had come undone. Striking the final blow. Killing the girl to drag the soul out of her. Something felt so horribly familiar about that moment that she’d not stopped thinking about it since. Now she was coming to understand exactly what it had been and why.

How had Tallah kept this from her? Why?

“I hear echoes. They scream. There is another voice in yours. It is you, but without you.”

Dreea screamed in the back of Sil’s mind. Each word from the mother opened the way to the prison. She’d not just abandoned a simple jailer on the mountain. She’d not just decided to pay penance by serving as an Adana.

Adana: a servant to all, always. That was her penance for having failed in freeing more prisoners of Aztroa’s Crown.

But Dreea hadn’t been a simple jailer who’d found a conscience. Her sins…

Oh, how grave were her sins! Aliana knew. Tallah knew. Both of them had always known!

And they’d never told her the truth.

Blood gushed from her nose as she could barely keep her head up. The spiders skittered away from her, running out the door, as if…

“Don’t call Tallah,” she groaned, wiping her nose on the already ruined sleeve of her shirt. “Don’t call the others. I’m fine.”

She wasn’t.

She remembered. She remembered a lot.

And she remembered the debt of blood she owed. There were dozens of her victims crying out in agony, asking for vengeance. She’d wanted the voices be quiet. It was why she’d gone to Aliana, why she’d asked to be… freed. Those gates now swung opened.

She’d lied to the goddess… and Panacea had known. Chosen not to reveal the truth that sat right there, in the centre of her memories.

Dreea did not lie dead on the mountain. Sil had not left her behind. Sil had only hid her away, locked the door, and pretended innocence.

Well, innocence lay dead. Here and within, it was all a decomposing corpse.

She leaned back, blew her nose, and rested her head on Erisa’s cold knees. For the first time in years, she remembered. And she allowed herself to, for she had penance to pay.