L S Johnson - [BCS282 S01] - Gert of the Hundred Read online

  One hundred, minus one.

  Oh my daughter! Still the spider was breathless with laughter, her fur tickling Gert’s skin. Don’t you remember? I saved you so that you might one day serve me. She gathered Gert close like an infant. I saved you because you said yes.

  The bite of fangs in Gert’s flesh as sweet as her mother’s kiss, though her mother was but a strand of the web, a corpse watching them with black faceted eyes.

  4.

  At dawn Gert walked slowly out of the woods, her every step ponderous, taking care to keep her footing solid before swinging each leg forward. Beneath her heavy clothes her body was a mass of swellings, limbs and belly soft and tender and pushing not unpleasantly at the rough fabrics. When she wiped her mouth her spittle was a creamy white. Around her the very air vibrated in ecstasy Gert Gert Gert! And beneath the chorus, distant and echoing: one of everything, as many children as the stars.

  She emerged not to her own clearing but to the far side of the tower site, behind the mine, and a rising sunlight that made her squint. To a one the people working stopped and looked at her in astonishment above red-crusted handkerchiefs tied over their noses and mouths. One yelled for the guards to come. None of them moved close to Gert; when she took a few lumbering steps in the direction of one the woman backpedaled quickly, holding up her hands as if Gert was making to shoot her.

  What did they see; what was she to them? Run, run, the crows called, warning now. But there was nowhere for her to go; there had never been anyplace for her to go.

  Mama, they hate us so, Nicholas whispered in her ear, and it was truly his voice, not that echoing mockery of it. But we will weave their bones.

  Two guards appeared; one trained a rifle on her while the other seized her swollen arm, only to drop it when her skin rippled beneath his touch, his expression a mirror of the shock on Henry Chandless’ face all those years ago. What is the knowing worth? the voice had whispered in her ear, and she understood, then and now: everything had a price; even her questions, even her very life.

  Beneath her skin she felt dozens of points of pleasant stroking, as if to soothe her, or perhaps simply to agree.

  “Something’s wrong with her,” the guard said to his fellow. “She’s—look! There, do you see?”

  The other guard took a step forward, squinting at her over the rifle. Gert felt her forehead wiggle, and his face blanched. “You,” he barked, a tremor of nervousness in his voice. “Start walking.” He jerked the rifle muzzle towards the tower.

  We shall weave their bones, shan’t we? Nicholas’s voice trembling with excitement. Oh we shall, we shall!

  Obediently Gert took a waddling step forward, and another. What is the knowing worth? Oh, it all had a price, even her long-ago yes.

  The world doubled in her vision, then flashed yellow and purple; her saliva tasted sour, like curdled milk. She started to aim for the tower, but one of the guards nudged her away, towards a square tent tucked behind the furnaces, and when she nodded her head swung in strange directions and she nearly fell over. Her body not one but many foreign entities, each moving independent of the others. “Weave their bones,” she whispered aloud, and was answered with a rush of sensation that cascaded over her from head to toe, so pleasurable she nearly cried aloud.

  Little mother, it is nearly time. Everywhere Gert felt eyes upon her, a thousand pairs of such; a breeze caressed her face with something fine and sticky, and when she wiped it away her fingers were tangled with cobwebs. They blew over the whole of the encampment in gauzy clouds, wrapping around tents and catching on clothing, snapping before the heat of the furnaces.

  The tent’s entrance was framed by a tattered canopy beneath which a mass of shadows crowded, guards and villagers alike, the latter in their best coats. A parley? She tried to back away but one of the guards barked, “What’s this?”

  From behind the guard another man stepped forward, only to be restrained. “Gert?” Henry Chandless said. “Gertie, are you all right?”

  No, Gert tried to say, but her voice would not come.

  Oh, the daughter-thief! The Nicholas-voice giggled in her ear, and as if in agreement Gert felt a rippling frisson from breast to thigh. All his promises, and never asking for yours. Though he fed us well.

  Gert tried again to speak, to warn him, she was the warning now. But she could not make the words come. From her open mouth issued another sound, high and grating like the scrape of a blade on catgut.

  “I think she’s from the village,” one of her guards said. “Something’s wrong with her, she keeps making these sounds, and her skin...”

  “Is she the one who was making that concoction?” The Overseer appeared, still wrapped in his furs. “I would speak with her.”

  At last, the Nicholas-spider whispered. Weave. His. Bones. Something began walking up Gert’s throat with slim, featherlight touches.

  No, she said silently, and then to Henry: I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry for everything.

  “Wait!” Henry cried as a guard shoved him back. “Sometimes Gertie has... episodes. Please. I need to take her home.”

  The Overseer stepped close to Gert, so close she could touch him. His young face was haggard, his throat blooming with fresh bites atop a field of rash. His eyes were those of an old man; too many decisions made too young. “You made something that eased my workers’ symptoms,” he said. “Can you cure them? I’m losing more every day, it’s interfering with our schedule.”

  Run, she said, though she knew it was no use. Everything has a price. Around them the very air vibrated, every movement of villager and guard making it vibrate, as if the world was an immense web and they were all prey.

  From somewhere above a torn shred of cobweb drifted silently down. “These damn spiders,” the Overseer murmured, watching it cling to his furs. “The sooner we level these woods the better.”

  Gert’s throat was suddenly full. She was choking, clawing at her own neck; all her wind was gone, she could not breathe. Something pushed at her mouth from within, forcing it open wide, wide, her jaws were going to rip her face apart, she was gagging and heaving and she thought she might faint—

  Out of her mouth two white, hairy legs emerged, and a spider vaulted forward and landed on the Overseer’s face.

  He began screaming, but the sounds were muffled. She was alight in sensations, bright pains of tearing skin, sudden icy needles of air stabbing her raw flesh. Everywhere was blurring motion, everywhere filling with gossamer threads; she tried to call out to Henry, to anyone, but silken lines tangled her tongue as dozens of legs skittered across her palate.

  From everywhere on her person the spiders poured forth, large and small, slim and fatly furred, rushing from her body to swarm over the Overseer. Weave his bones! a thousand voices shrieked in frenzied delight. Weave his bones and bleed him dry!

  The guards rushed to his side, swatting the spiders away and stepping on them only to find themselves covered, for the spiders were cascading forth in great waves of legs, moving with single-minded purpose. The village party tore at the tent fabric, trying to escape; only Henry stayed, gaping at Gert with his one good eye open wide and his hands in fists.

  In a daze Gert stretched out her arms to him, only to watch as the skin rose and split like so many pustules, revealing masses of white spiders tumbling free. The horror in his face. She opened her mouth to scream but instead found her tongue suddenly loosened. “What is the knowing worth?” she cried, and the words tasted like bile.

  I saved you so that you might one day serve me. But not like this; she had never imagined it would be like this.

  The guards were screaming, the Overseer was screaming; everywhere she heard shrieks and cries of terror and it was her, it was all her. Within the circle of his guards the Overseer collapsed in a heap of furs and writhing bodies, and her teeth snapped and ground as if she were biting into his flesh. Ropes of saliva dripped from her mouth, her body was shuddering in a strange ecstasy, her very guts twisting with still more bodi
es struggling to emerge. Helplessly she threw her head back and wailed “kill the fucking things!”, and when Henry reached for her she pushed him away. She was the warning; she had been the warning since the day she walked into the village, all those years ago.

  She tried to run then, somewhere, anywhere, but it was as if all her joints had been severed; instead she fell to her knees and began crawling back to the woods. “Daughter,” she screamed, “daughter they hate us!” The spiders continued to tumble from her as she dragged herself towards the welcoming darkness of the trees, her clothes sticking to her bloodied flesh. “What is one boy worth?” she screamed at the trees. “One mere boy?”

  Everything, she answered, and wept at her own silence.

  Above her the crows circled and dove, but their bodies tangled in the grey swaths of webbing that hung from the branches and they cawed help help in terrified entrapment. Blood spattered the leaves and faces peered at her from between the branches, watching her with black faceted eyes.

  “Serve me,” she gasped. Her bloodied palms caked with leaves and dirt. “Serve me.”

  Serve, serve, the voices echoed, bird and mouse and vibrating spider alike, in joy and sorrow and acceptance.

  The sun gave way to shadow, the cold deepening into Gert’s bones and smoothing out the pain of her wounds. Still she crawled, her body a heavy, lumbering thing. Little mother. But there was no more movement inside her, no sense of life desperate to emerge, and she found herself weeping for all her lost families. What price knowing?

  Everything, she answered again, her silence laced with grief.

  When she finally emerged onto the eastern plains the sky was reddening. The pit yawned before her, opening into an unending darkness that she knew would be cold and wet and crowded with decay. Faceless soldiers were barking orders, counting off each person as they lined them up in neat, even rows. Seventy-three they pointed at Gert and she wailed and pleaded with the others, their cacophony no better than silence. And then the shots came like thunder and her mother fell atop her and they tumbled into the pit, with Gert crushed beneath her warm bloody weight and the stones pummeling them both into the darkness.

  Her mother opened her arms daughter you’ve come at last and her father reached for her sooner or later we all come back and she sank into a sea of bodies with black faceted eyes, limbs tangling around her like icy webs. Gasping for air and only inhaling death. The dim white light and the voice whispering are you my daughter? and Gert shook her head no, no more. Small, icy fingers twined with hers and a boy’s voice said earnestly Mama it’s all right now.

  “Gertie,” Henry said in her ear. “It’s all right now. It’s going to be all right.”

  She was tangled in his coat and wrapped in his arms and he was holding her. Not death but smoked meat in her nostrils, not cold but warm, he was so warm, it was her that was cold inside. Gently he untangled her fingers from the grey, dead ones jutting out of the soil, the blood and dirt crumbling away.

  “Is that the boy?” he asked in a low voice, nodding at the little hand just barely exposed.

  Gert found herself crying in response, and he held her tighter. “We’ll do right by him,” he said, his voice as warm as his body. “I promise, Gertie. We’ll do right by all of them. Only you need to come home with me. Just for a little while. Just until you heal.”

  He was blotting her scabbing wounds with his scarf. Over his shoulder she saw through watery eyes the woods and the skeleton of the tower beyond, the whole draped in cobwebs thick as damask.

  “The tower,” she whispered, her voice raspy.

  “Not any more.” He turned her face to his and wiped the clotting spittle from her lips, his brown eye focused on her mouth, his dead eye seeing nothing. “You can’t even get in the woods now, those webs are like walls. Overseer won’t survive, either, and word’s getting out. Poll’s talking to the builders about a delegation to the capitol—”

  But Gert was weeping again. So much harm. Would there never be an end to harm? Perhaps there would be no burning now, no soldiers in the tower, as she had been shown—but Nicholas, the sickness, Henry...

  She touched the scars on his face, tracing them as if she could somehow erase them and return his smile to wholeness. “Oh Gertie,” he said. “It was a long time ago. I should never—I don’t know what I was thinking. I should never have left you alone with this thing. I’m so sorry.”

  Still she could not stop weeping. He settled her in the crook of his arm and dabbed at the sticky ruptures on her forearm. “My boy has a farm,” he said to her lap. “Out west. Plenty of land there, good water. Far from all this, if it comes to it.”

  The air was still, not a hint of vibration.

  “There are worse places,” Henry whispered.

  “Yes,” Gert said. “Yes.”

  Behind them a flock of birds suddenly rushed upwards and she jerked about with a cry, but their song was only noises now. Henry’s fingers twined with hers, warm and alive, strong as an anchor. “South for the winter,” he murmured. “They’ll be back with the spring rains.” And Gert understood that too was a kind of answer. Together they watched as the birds circled and dove, rippling the sheaths of cobwebs with their passing before they vanished into the dark horizon, not once looking back.

  © Copyright 2019 L.S. Johnson

 

 

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