Chapter 4

A new day is here, and with it comes a chance for Dash to explore the web...and discover something just a little bit odd.

Chapter 4

 

I awoke to wide eyes, eight of them to be exact. I have to say that I freaked, flopping gracelessly out of my silk hammock and onto the soft floor. “Holy friggin’ Zeus!”

“Zeus?” The eyes reappeared, now connected to one of the gigantic, hairy, bodies of my hosts, “I was instructed to come show you the web, and you can eat as well, if…if you wish, my lady,” My lady? Really? I struggled to sit up. If I was going to be called a lady, I should probably get off the floor.

            “Oh yeah, sorry. You…you just scared me. That’s nice of you,” Thinking of my encounter with the girl spider last night, I figured this must be the brother, “Oh yeah, your, uh, sister, said you were coming. Can I ask your name?”

“Hugo. The sister you met was probably Eleyn. She was really curious about your arrival. She’s been waiting…” Suddenly, he stopped himself, turning his massive head guiltily, “Sorry, your must be hungry. I brought food for you. You know… everyone wants you to feel at home here,” I have to say that the prospect of eating anything with these creatures was not particularly appealing, but his awkward kindness was sort of endearing, for a giant spider.

            “Thanks. That’s really kind. Uh, do you mind…what is it?”

            “Crickets in milk soup. Don’t worry, we cooked them for you. Some of the older spiders have done extensive research on human diets, and cooked cricket is actually quite beneficial for your health. Here, try some,” With that, Hugo used his appendages to lift up a bowl made out of what appeared to be some kind of nut. I looked apprehensively into the bowl. True to his word, it looked like milk and crunchy dark pieces. I had always been a pretty adventurous eater, and it was a little gross, but honestly it could have been so much worse. Hunger did weird things to my perspective. I slurped at the odd concoction for a couple of minutes before stopping, suddenly realizing something.

            “Where’d you get the milk?” Okay, probably not that important, but still.

            Hugo didn’t answer, and I swear he would have been laughing if his mouth was able to work that way. I cringed mentally at the thought of a spider smiling. A few moments of awkward silence ensued.

            Hugo shifted between his many legs, looking uncomfortable. “We should probably get going on the tour. The web is quite large. You can just hop on my back, um…I do not know your name?” Strange how ginormous spiders could act like shy teenage boys.

            “Dash…it’s Dash. Uh, thanks for letting me ride you, I guess,” My mental innuendo meter suddenly went haywire, and I blushed deeply. Saying that sort of thing to a spider wasn’t creepy at all. Luckily, he didn’t seem to catch the thankfully very human reference.

            “Off we go, then,” I clambered awkwardly over one massive leg and onto his back, sickened by the harsh bristles that met my touch. I should probably be trying to get used to that if I was going to stay here for any length of time.

            Hugo scuttled nimbly out of my little room, as sure-footed as his sister. Once again, I was blown away by the immensity of the webs, the complex buildings of silk, and the countless spiders that hurried throughout them. We were on a gradual descent, the thick strands of webbing creating a stable and seemingly well travelled highway. On every side, silken buildings rose from the “streets”, most appearing to be modest huts. As we progressed though, they seemed to get bigger and more elaborate, employing more and more non-silk materials.

            “Ok. So right now we’re headed towards Abbot Bartholomeus’ dwelling. He was the elder that you met yesterday. He presides over the entire web and makes sure that everyone does as they’re supposed to. He lives on the furthest edge of the web, keeping us all safe,” A spider who was an abbot? Absurdly, I was reminded of the abbey mice in Redwall, a favorite childhood book. In fact, this whole society was seeming strangely medieval to me.

            “I’m sorry if this is rude, but your names…they’re not what I would have expected,” As if I had ever thought about spider names. “Where do they come from, and why do you have an abbot?”

            Hugo paused in his trek, “No, don’t be sorry. It’s actually a very good question. I suppose you wouldn’t know. My kind used to live among yours. We coexisted for thousands of years in fact. Only recently, about 650 years ago, did we have, you could say, a falling out. There were more of you; we went underground, quite literally in fact. Now only our small brethren live amongst you. They are too little to be killed off easily, though you do seem to try. I believe your kind has had an innate fear of us since we left, probably with good reason. We parted on bad terms. The whole thing, it was horrible,”

            I listened in rapt silence, still not quite wrapping my mind around this crazy tale. It would certainly explain the names and slightly stilted speech, but yet…

            “Why don’t we know that you were there? Surely someone would have remembered a bunch of giant spiders walking around,”

            “You burned the records. Probably covered it up with that religious splintering you had. Not many people wrote, and many books were burned. The knowledge that was lost…” Suddenly Hugo seemed much older than he had a few minutes earlier. How old was he? “Anyway, I should be giving you a tour, not lamenting old conflicts. On the left over there is where the hatchery is,” He waved a leg at a huge cocoon-like structure covered in complicated silk patterns, “We have to ensure the continuation of our species, and the gestation period is  naturally quite long. Behind us were most of the residential huts and small artisan shops. As you’ve probably noticed, the webs get older and grander as we near the abbey. Beyond it are the fields and forests that we have created to raise crickets and harvest wood and bugs,”

            “Hold on, how did you create an  underground ecosystem? I thought you left in the middle ages. No way could you have that kind of technology,”

            Hugo chuckled, “We too have evolved. And faster; we do not wage war or persecute our own. All here are family. Look, we are at the abbey. We have no need to enter today, but you can certainly observe. It is the pride of our architects,”

            The architects had reason to be proud. I suppose humans had never had much chance to experiment with the potential of spider silk, but this structure was a work of art grander than I’d ever seen. A complicated origami of silk and wood created a massive, arching building, very reminiscent of one of those old churches on English postcards. Not much of an architect myself, I had no idea how it was done. I could appreciate it though. Not only that; there were colors. Colored silk. Dye, I supposed, but regardless of its origin, it brought the place to life. While the rest of the web was mostly glossy silver, a twisted sort of ultra-modern, this was exotically bright, shining with a rainbow of colors.

            “Wow,” There was nothing else to say.

            “I know, but that isn’t even the best part,” Hugo sounded excited even though I was sure he’d seen it all a hundred times.

            “How could anything top that? I mean, just…wow,”

            “That smaller building right next to it; that’s our library. Wanna see?” He started moving forward again, heading towards a structure that I’d missed at first. Seeing it now though, I could just tell it was a place for stories. It looked much plainer than the extravagant abbey, but deeper too, like a kind of architectural allegory.

            “Of course I wanna see it. But how could you know? That I like libraries…”

            Hugo tilted his head, his top eyes contemplating me, “You smell of lives you’ve never lived. Nothing else can mark a person like that. You have more experience than you know,” I was taken aback by his strange sincerity. Sometimes he seemed so young, and yet…I couldn’t place him. Well, he was a giant spider. Maybe that explained the enigma. I still wasn’t sure about what he said though.

            “Well, I may have seen other worlds, but only as an observer. I could never do the things that book characters do. They’re fictional for a reason,” He gave me that odd look again.

            “You’d be surprised, Dash. Now come on. I think you’ll find our libraries are not quite like yours,”

            He was right. It was a library without books. Somehow, I still loved it. It was beautiful. Splendid aisles snaking off in every direction, covered in…pictures. Silken, embroidered pictures. The silk was colored like the abbey, but the strands were much finer, weaving around each other in thousands of pictures lined up in hundreds of panels for as far as I could see. Slipping off of Hugo’s back, I approached the images.

            “It’s all pictures,” I stated the obvious.

            “It is. You know that we came here before many on Earth wrote. Humans used stained glass to tell stories; we used stained silk. It is a kind of writing, even mostly standardized by now. On the left are the histories, the webs of the past, so to speak. On the right are the fantasies, all the worlds we might have lived. The ones we are looking at right now, these are the ones that are prized for their humor,”

            I laughed suddenly. Hugo seemed confused. “Oh my god,” I said, “It’s a web comic. That’s awesome,”

            “Yes. Why is that awesome? I don’t get it,”

            “It’s a human thing,” I laughed again. “You know nothing, Jon Snow,”

            “Now I’m really confused,”

            “Nevermind. Hey, what’s this?” I’d just spotted a picture panel near the floor. Each image was only about the size of a bathroom tile, but I thought I saw…

            Hugo glanced at the panel, suddenly awkward again. “ Oh! Uh…you know, Dash, it seems to have gotten quite late. I should take you back to your hut,”

            “But isn’t that…”

            “No. Hop on,” he said  rather harshly. The sudden shift was frightening. The library seemed abruptly darker, as if a shadow had come over us. As Hugo scuttled back into the network of webs, I thought about the  strange and wonderful library. I needed to go back, to look again, to be sure. Hugo’s reaction had scared me though. I wanted to talk to him; I liked him. Then again, how did I know that I could trust him? By the time he had deposited me in my hut, I had a plan.

 

           

           

 

 

Author's Note

Sorry this chapter took so long, I'm getting pretty busy, but I'll try to update every week. Please review or message me on tumblr! Enjoy.