I tried not to make a face. That Hathor should be calling my sanity into question seemed unbelievable. I was also disappointed with my friend. To feel you are not believed, especially on a subject another knows nothing of, isn’t a heartening feeling. But seeing as this was the second time Hathor had chosen to save my life, I could hardly justify turning my anger on her.

  “Her mind was very different to other spiders I have been in,” I said. “She could almost communicate. She was showing me a memory of guarding her spiderlings.”

  “She was probably considering feeding us to them,” Hathor muttered grimly. “A spider is a spider. They do not think, they do not feel. They live on instinct.”

  “That’s pretty much how the flesh-eaters described me.”

  Hathor shoved the last part of the hammock into her pack and turned to me wearily. “It’s a spider,” she said. “Spiders are flesh-eaters and they eat flesh. We are made of flesh and we are smaller than them. They will eat us if they can. They are not interested in becoming friends with us.”

  “I didn’t say she was, Hathor,” I said, starting to lose my temper. “What I said was… her mind was different. And she seemed… I don’t know… confused, lost.”

  “Spiders don’t get lost, Holt,” said Hathor, again adopting that tone that suggested I was a child. “They aren’t going anywhere so they can’t get lost.”

  “I don’t mean lost physically,” I said. “Lost… inside.”

  Hathor swung her pack up on her shoulders. “It’s a spider,” she said, as though that was the final argument. “The one good that comes of this is that no other spiders would live close to a beast like that.” She grimaced. “Perhaps no other predators would live in this area either… that thing was huge.” She shook her head, seeing I was still thinking on the spider. “Let’s go,” she said curtly.

  As Hathor walked off, I could hear her muttering. No doubt the voices in her mind had something to say about the spider. I was sure Hathor would have to do some explaining to convince the other voices that we were still doing the right thing.

  Hathor’s conversations with her dead people had become more frequent, I realised. They had ceased to claim control of her, and now appeared to talk to her. I wasn’t sure it would last, but I wondered if it had something to do with my entering her mind and blocking out the voices for a while. I had done it twice since we had entered the woods, both times after leaving her to let Skye know I was fine. My intervention hadn’t banished her ghosts, but it appeared to have granted Hathor the strength to maintain her own personality, alongside theirs.

  I pulled my pack onto my shoulder and looked back. I could not shake the feeling that there was something entirely different about this spider. She had tried, in her own non-verbal way, to talk to me. She had resisted my control and pushed into my thoughts. That had never happened to me before. When we returned to the village, I needed to ask Mother and Bracken about this. How many creatures were there with the ability to communicate?

  A sudden image of Leaf sprang into my mind. “Not like us…” the memory said. It was the day we had gone to the Farmers; the day I became a Reacher. “But all life is sacred…” said the ghost of Leaf in my mind.

  I cast one last, long look back, and sighed. Whatever was in the mind of that spider, this was not the time to discover it.

  I followed my muttering friend up the hill. I hoped she was right that there would be fewer predators living in terrain recently occupied by such an enormous spider. We had a long way to go.

  I tried to concentrate on the path ahead, but my thoughts could not rid themselves of the spider.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Something Wicked This Way Comes

  “The girl is not mad,” Hathor said aloud.

  I grimaced as I shifted my pack. As we had walked through the dripping forest, Hathor’s voice had risen from a constant, soft murmur, to the volume of normal speech, getting louder and louder as she fought her voices. It seemed they all had something to say, but for now, at least, they were leaving Hathor in charge of her body. She was, however, clearly conflicted.

  “Everything alright?” I asked.

  Hathor shrugged and scowled. “They all think you’re mad,” she said, “I’m trying to convince them you’re not.”

  There is something deeply disturbing about your own sanity being called into question by someone you think of as slightly unhinged. But what is sanity? I thought. Who gets to decide what is sane and what is not? Hathor’s reaction to the massacre of her people was, in truth, perfectly understandable. Keeping her people alive in her mind was no different to people who believed in ghosts, or an afterlife. Were it not for the torture they inflicted on her, or rather the suffering she inflicted on herself, it would seem entirely reasonable.

  “But you worry too.”

  Her scowl grew deeper. “I don’t think you’re mad, girl,” she said. “But I seem to be almost alone in that idea.”

  I walked to stand beside her. We were nearing a high ridge. Tree roots struck out from the ground like twisted hands, greyed and blackened by the sticky mud. Above us, a soft mist of rain was falling, but I could feel the oppressive heat of the sun. Soon it would be time to plant at the village, so we might store food for the next season of rain. So life continued; destruction birthing creation, creation bringing destruction in a never-ending cycle. I smiled as I thought of Skye and his story. Every end is a beginning, and every beginning an end, I thought.

  “Who else is on my side, then?” I asked as I looked out through the trees and saw the side of a large cliff, shining and steaming in the sunlight. Huge flowers, bigger than I had ever seen, grew hanging on to the rocky, crumbling cliff, stretching bright petals and dusty inner stems into the air, as though seeking to breathe in the world. Large butterflies, much like those I had seen in the village but bigger, floated above the flowers, alighting to drink their sweetness.

  We had climbed so far and so high, from here I could see the rushing river on the other side of the forest as it poured over the first of many waterfalls. I could see smoke rising from the town where the flesh-eaters lived, and the gleaming, silver-grey tops of the broken buildings of the ancient ones running down the huge valley where land eventually met sea.

  If I craned my neck and held on to a branch, I could see the distant oceans, and on them, more long ships. The ships looked like creatures themselves, giants riding the waves of the sea. But in the belly of these creatures was food none could ever need.

  I shuddered and pulled myself back into the gloom of the forest. The air was cooler, musty with the scent of leaves on the ground. It was good to be able to turn my head from the horrors of the world, even if I could not forget them.

  “So?” I asked. “Who is with you, in my defence?”

  Hathor shot me a dark look. She thought I might be teasing her. “My daughter,” she said shortly. “My daughter is the only other person who doesn’t think you’re mad.”

  My heart ached and I felt bad for having taken her mutterings so lightly. What appears funny one moment may make us see parts of ourselves we wish we could erase the next. I felt sad for having teased her, and put a hand to her shoulder. “Give your daughter my thanks,” I said. “And keep a piece for yourself, too. Tell the others that whatever I thought of the spider doesn’t matter. It’s not as though I was suggesting we invite her to come along.”

  Hathor’s mouth popped open and her eyes widened. She pressed her hands to her head. “See now?” she said through gritted teeth. “You’ve done it again.”

  Hathor stalked off up the hill, continuing to mutter. I sighed. I had meant to offer comfort, but it seemed I was as lacking in grace in conversation as I was in energy to climb. But Hathor was going, so I had to follow. As we walked, we munched on raw tatoes, their flesh crisp and juicy. I was finding that eating little and often was more soothing to my belly than trying to eat a lot at any one time. Hathor said it was often the way when a woman carried a babe.

  As we climbed, I became aware of something, but what I was aware of, I could not say. I could hear and see nothing untoward, but I started to feel uncomfortable. My eyes kept darting back to the path behind us. I looked up at the trees. Soon, my breath was coming in short puffs as fear of something unseen started to play with my senses.

  As we cleared another hill and sat down to rest, sharing water, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being followed. I handed the gourd to Hathor. “I think there’s something watching us,” I whispered.

  She kept her eyes on the gourd in her hands. “I feel it too,” she said softly. “Keep your eyes open, but don’t let it know you are watching for it. If it thinks we are unawares, we will have the benefit of surprise.”

  I blinked. I had no idea Hathor had felt this presence too. She had been so busy talking to herself that I had thought her unaware of anything else. I was constantly underestimating my friend.

  “What do you think it could be?” I asked softly.

  She shrugged. “A spider, or a jasper. We might be lucky and it’s only a bug making sure we leave its territory.”

  “You used to make this trip alone?” I asked. Hathor inclined her head.

  “I never used to attract attention alone.” She offered me a sideways grin. “It must be your magnetic presence.”

  I laughed a little and hit her on the arm softly. “What’s a jasper?” I asked.

  “Big, stripy thing with wings.”

  “Like a bee?”

  Hathor cocked her head. “A bit... but jaspers are rarer, and bigger.”

  She looked up sharply as a soft buzzing sound overhead started to get louder. Hathor’s face turned grey. “Not rare enough,” she muttered grimly. “Better get ready to get rid of another monster,” she said, raising her spear as she scrambled to her feet. “You wanted to know what a jasper was?”

  She pointed into the trees. The soft buzzing was now much louder; a disturbing, hostile sound heading our way. Dropping through the trees, hovering on incandescent wings, came a large black and yellow striped creature, about half the size of me. Eyes took up most of its monstrous head. Great long black legs twitched under it and at its back was a long, sharp point.

  “You seem to have left out some details,” I said, my voice strained with terror, as I jumped swiftly to my feet and backed away. As the jasper’s feet settled onto the ground, its black jaws made an awful, sharp, clacking sound. It turned and faced us. I had never seen anything I feared more… not even a spider.

  “You get in its head and take it away,” said Hathor sharply. “Get yourself over there and I’ll keep it at bay. Stay away from its rear. The barb is poison.”

  I nodded and stumbled backwards, trying to find a safe place to gather myself and Reach. The jasper clacked its great jaws again and took a few scuttling steps towards Hathor, buzzing its wings.

  “Get back!” she shouted, thrusting her spear at the creature. The jasper jumped and its wings burst into furious buzzing. The rear end with the sting was vibrating too. The noise was deafening.

  I fell back against a tree and tried to gather my mind, but I couldn’t concentrate. In the din of the jasper’s wings, my thoughts were scrambled. I looked up to see the jasper advancing on Hathor. Panic leapt in my heart, freezing my blood. I knew I had to do it, there was no way we could fight this creature, it was either Reach, or die.

  But then, even as I started to close my eyes, they burst open again. As the jasper took another ominous step towards Hathor and she screamed defiance at it, jabbing with her shining spear, the leaves above us started to shake.

  As the jasper started to fly along the ground at Hathor, a huge shadow leapt into its furious path.

  A great, hairy, striped spider flung itself from the cover of the trees and wrapped eight legs around the charging jasper. The jasper buzzed violently with alarm and anger as its body clashed with the colossal spider. I watched in dumbfounded horror as the two monsters wrestled together, writhing on the earthen floor, as they fought to the death.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  A Friend in Need…

  Hathor ran from the fight and collapsed beside me at the base of the tree, gasping for breath and gripping her spear to her chest. We both stared, stunned, at the battle of giants erupting before us.

  Down the hill, the huge spider was crushing the jasper in her legs. It didn’t take more than a moment for me to understand this spider was the same we had encountered before. Her massive legs wrapped about the jasper, who buzzed horribly, almost making a squealing sound, trying to jab her with his barb. Easily, the spider evaded his attack. The jasper’s long sting thrashed against the air as the spider bit it again and again.

  She crunched into its armoured casing of yellow and black near the middle of its body, splitting the jasper into two. As its body twitched, the spider started to devour its head.

  Her vast jaws chomped easily through the jasper’s armour-plated body. She sat facing us as she chewed. I had to turn away. I was not fond of the flying fiend, but that was not reason enough to wish to see its head twitching and legs flailing as they disappeared into her monstrous mouth. I had to remind myself that the jasper had been about to kill us, but even then, I could not help but feel pity for the monster in its last desperate throes of death.

  The battle had been short and vicious. In all my life I had seen nothing as awesome or as terrible.

  “It’s the same one, isn’t it?” Hathor said when she could finally speak. She was staring at the spider in amazement, but didn’t seem as horrified as I had about watching the jasper die. Hathor, it seemed, had a much better sense of the value of her own preservation than I did.

  I nodded. “It’s her.”

  Hathor gripped her spear. “It was trying to kill you again. It must have known you were inside the jasper.”

  I shook my head. “I never got there,” I said. “I couldn’t focus. I don’t know if I would have made it.”

  Hathor whirled her head about. “Do you mean to say I was standing ground before that jasper and you didn’t think you could stop it?” she snapped. “You could’ve said something.”

  “There wasn’t a lot of time.”

  “All the same,” she said. “The spider must have thought you were in there, otherwise why would it bother attacking the jasper? That thing has a massive sting; spiders usually avoid them unless they have no other choice.”

  I shook my head, watching the spider with the kind of fascinated horror that makes it impossible to look away. The head of the jasper, its huge dark eyes, was disappearing, splitting and cracking into the gaping maw of the spider. Its rear was still buzzing, although now it was a plaintive, fading sound. The spider’s black eyes glistened, staring at us, as she gnawed through crunching, snapping skin.

  “You’re not going to like what I’m about to say,” I said softly, staring at the beast.

  “Then don’t say it.”

  “I think she’s been following us,” I said slowly. “I think she was the thing we could feel in the trees. And… I think she might have been trying to protect us.”

  Hathor stared at me. “Protect us,” she said in a strangely flat voice.

  “I said you wouldn’t like it.”

  “It’s a spider,” she said, bringing out her faithful argument. “They don’t protect things like you and me, they eat them.”

  “Then why did she attack the jasper?”

  Hathor shrugged. “Perhaps she was annoyed at it getting at her food.”

  I sighed. “Look at her,” I said, pointing at the spider. “If she was following us for that long, why wait until now to show herself? There were plenty of times she could have jumped on us. Why wait until now?”

  Hathor shook her head. “I don’t know. But you will never convince me that a spider just decided to put aside all its natural instincts and befriend a couple of humans. We’re its food. That’s why you don’t see the flesh-eaters naming us or talking to us. You can’t eat things you cosy up to, it gets the conscience confused.”

  I gazed at the spider. The last bits of black antennae were disappearing into her mouth. I took a deep breath and stood up.

  “What are you doing?” hissed Hathor, grabbing my torn sleeve and trying to hold me back. “It will kill you.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, even though little hiccups of fear leapt in my stomach. I pulled my arm out of her grip. “If this is the only way to convince you,” I said, “then watch.”

  She struggled to her feet and grabbed me. “I didn’t come all this way just to watch you and your baby die!” she shouted, holding my arm with a grip like iron chains. “Stop trying to make friendly with monsters and let’s go before the spider decides she hasn’t had quite enough to eat.”

  I tried to pull my arm away but her grip was tight. “Let me go, Hathor!” I shouted. “I can show you she isn’t a threat.”

 

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