Sentience, page 29
part #1 of Farm Land Series
We faced each other, our eyes blazing like fire.
“You can’t show me anything you foolish, reckless…”
Hathor’s voice suddenly trailed off. She dropped my arm and whirled around. The hairs on the back on my neck were standing up. My flesh suddenly had turned to ice. I turned slowly.
The spider was right behind us.
As we had been occupied with arguing, it had got up very quietly and walked to us. It stood, bobbing slightly, as though it meant to spring, but it made no move to do so. Close up, its face was terrifying. The many eyes at the top of its head held no pupils. They were black pools, reflecting the green of leaves overhead. The fact that they were so blank made them all the more horrifying. We had no way of knowing where she was looking, but I was sure she was fixated on us. Her mouthparts were hairy, but looked deadly, and two of her eight arms, or legs, were brought up before her mouth, as though she was ready to grab us, as she had with the jasper.
Swallowing hard, trying to contain the fear that leapt through me, and ignoring every instinct that told me to run, I stood my ground and looked into its eyes. Hathor was frozen in shock.
Slowly, the spider bobbed, then came up, and then bobbed again.
It was the same motion I had made her do when I had been in her mind, trying to communicate with Hathor.
I was entirely terrified. I had never felt anything quite like the horror I felt then. It was as though I had walked into a cave, and it had fallen about me, smothering me, covering me, holding me fast. My heart was beating wildly, my legs told me to run, but every bit of me was weak. Its huge eyes gleamed at me and the mess of its massive jaws, still shining with the blood of the jasper, was enough to make every part of me want to flee, but I did not.
I forced my shaking hand up, towards the great head. As my palm came down on its hairy cheek, the spider did not move. She allowed me to stroke her face. Unblinking eyes watched me and then, as I lowered my trembling hand, she raised one of her legs. Hathor tensed and gripped her spear tighter, but I put out a hand to stop her. The spider reached up with its leg and very gently put the tip against the swell of my stomach. It kept it there for a moment, then lowered it, and stepped back a few paces. She stood watching us.
“I think, whether you like it, or believe it,” I said, my voice emerging as a strangled croak, “we have a friend.”
Hathor stood motionless, her mouth open, staring at the huge hairy spider which had somehow just volunteered to become our protector.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Natural
I had to take time to enter Hathor’s mind and quiet the restless voices when the spider joined our party. Despite the evidence of the spider’s wish to protect us, the voices that rode Hathor’s thoughts had all but exploded at her when I described the spider as a friend.
Wrapped around the central heart of her mind, I could give her a little peace, but I could not stay forever. When I emerged and re-entered my own body, she sat still, her eyes closed, as the voices returned.
“Did it help?” I asked.
She nodded. “It did.”
I looked over at the spider who sat still, watching the world around us. My feelings had been correct, for if she had wanted to eat us she would have had ample opportunity as my body lay empty and my mind covered Hathor’s thoughts. I had not said this to my friend, but as she opened her eyes and looked at the spider, I knew she was thinking the same thing.
“The spider could have eaten us at any time as she followed us, or just now,” she said. I knew she wasn’t really talking to me.
“I don’t think her purpose is to kill us.” I stood up. My body was protesting at having been left to stiffen on the damp floor.
“That much I will accept,” she said. “But no more.”
“Good enough. I think we should move on.”
We slung on our packs once more. As we started to walk up the hillside, the spider followed, her great steps instantly taking her further than us. She stopped at the top of the ridge, turned and walked back. We continued to plod upwards and again she overtook us, only to stop once more at the top of the ridge.
“We’re not as fast as you,” I said to the spider. Her huge, sparkling eyes stared at me without expression.
“That’s why we’re so much easier to catch,” Hathor muttered grimly.
We continued on; the spider running ahead, then coming back. Her legs pushed down the dense vegetation, making our path easier. Her glinting eyes watched for danger.
Many times I saw her tense, and heard something scurrying away in the bushes. Hathor saw this too. Each time the spider tensed, so did my friend, and each time something scuttled away, I saw Hathor’s confusion deepen. The spider was scaring away other creatures. I began to think we might not have got far without her.
Eventually, the spider ran back and stopped straight in front of us. We came to a halt, staring, as she bobbed, doing that strange motion that she seemed to think communicated her thoughts to us. Hathor groaned and pushed at a hairy leg with the bottom of her spear. “Move!”
The spider stood still; her eyes all seemed to be on me.
“Let me see what’s in her mind,” I said gently. “We cannot talk to her, but perhaps she can show us what she wants.”
Hathor grunted in a noncommittal fashion. I sat down and flowed into the spider.
I did not seek to control her, as I had before. I tried to make a picture of my perplexity. I pictured us walking, and eventually reaching the village. I tried to show her my feelings of happiness at finding Skye and showing him our baby growing within me. I tried to show her where we were going and why.
As I pulled my thoughts along, the spider responded. She sent me pictures, too. I saw myself and Hathor standing helpless before the jasper as it lunged towards us. I saw the spider watching my swollen belly as I fell against the tree. I felt fear coming from her, fear for us, for my child.
I know, I said. You want to protect us, to protect my baby. I understand.
And then there was a vision of the village, of us walking. It was my own thoughts brought back and played over to me. She understood where we were going and why.
I tried to make her see that if she kept stopping us we would never reach the village. I felt a little impatient. Despite the entirely bizarre and wonderful fact that this spider wanted to help us rather than eat us, it was obviously hard to get her to understand things. I wondered whether Hathor was right, and this creature was more of a beast of instinct rather than intelligence.
But then, she showed me another image. She showed me how fast her legs moved and how excruciatingly slow we really were. She showed me how quickly she could climb and leap. She showed me the faltering, halting steps we took through the forest and I would have laughed if I could… she was impatient. We were taking too long.
I left her mind and returned to mine, laughing out loud.
Hathor was staring. “What on earth is so funny?” she asked. “Don’t tell me the spider told you a joke? I don’t think I could take any more.”
“She thinks we’re very, very slow,” I said, still chuckling. “And it’s making her impatient.”
Hathor scowled at the spider. “We don’t all have eight legs, you know,” she said loudly, poking the spider with the dull end of her spear. “We can’t run as fast as you.”
The spider shuffled towards Hathor and then, slowly and carefully, lowered her enormous body to the floor. Her legs kept her slightly above the damp leaf mould and mud, but her head and abdomen were now just below our waists.
“What’s that, then?” asked Hathor with another poke. “You bowing again?” Hathor seemed to think that the louder she spoke, the greater was the chance of the spider understanding her.
“I think it’s another of those things you aren’t going to like,” I said and straightened my pack.
I reached out, took hold of a clump of the spider’s hair with each hand, and started to pull myself up, onto her back. Where her head met her bulbous behind, there was enough room for me to dangle a leg on either side. I pulled my body up quickly and found myself sitting on the hairy back of the towering spider.
I laughed at Hathor’s astonished face. “Come on,” I said. “You’ve accepted many strange things today, why not one more?”
“You can’t ride a spider,” she said weakly, leaning on her spear for support.
“Who says?” I asked, feeling the spider’s body below mine. The hardness of her skin and the softness of her hair were exhilarating. She was a creature of such power; it was awesome to understand.
“It’s not natural,” Hathor said faintly.
“I think it should be up to each of us to discover what is natural for us and what is not,” I said and chuckled. “She offered us a ride, why not let her decide?”
Hathor shook her head. I reached out and beckoned to her. Moving as though she were sleeping, Hathor stumbled towards me and took my hand. I pulled her up, over the head of the spider, pushing her into position ahead of me.
The spider rose and started to walk, slowly at first, then quicker.
“Look at it this way,” I shouted to Hathor as the spider started to race up the hill. “We’ll reach my village in half the time!”
Hathor said nothing, but her knuckles went grey as she gripped the spider’s hair.
Magnificent legs flew over the ground as though they could never grow tired. As we raced through the forest, creatures and bugs scattered to get out of our way. The giant sped across the heavy terrain, carrying us as though we weighed no more than a leaf. Wind battered my face and I could feel every fibre of my body screaming as I tried to hang on, but in my heart there was joy. We were going to reach the village, reach Skye, reach my people, so much faster than we could have on our own.
“This isn’t natural,” Hathor gasped.
“We don’t get to decide what is natural!” I cried to the wind as we flew through the trees.
Chapter Fifty
Seraphina
“Whoa!” I called to the spider, pulling at her hair. Reacting to my urging, our strange mount slowed her steps and came to a halt. I heard Hathor emit a great, breathy sigh as the spider stopped racing.
We had come to the edge of the river, to a place where water flowed over the side of huge, spiky rocks, and fell in crashing whiteness below. We slid off the back of our odd friend and made for the water, each of us scooping up handfuls and putting the fresh deliciousness into our mouths. I looked up to see the spider leaning her head into the river and drinking deep. Although she looked as fresh as the water, our passage through the forest had obviously taken something from her too.
I glanced at Hathor. Her face was grey, but she was staring at the spider with an expression that was hard to read. So many things had happened that seemed unnatural to her, I knew, but I was wondering if she was starting to see the benefits of having such a creature on our side.
“We need to give her a name,” I said, smiling at the spider. “We can’t keep calling her ‘spider’.”
Hathor shuddered. “Spiders don’t have names.”
“This isn’t just any spider,” I said, scooping more water into my hands and throwing it into my hot face. The coolness against my heated skin was wonderful. I looked over at the spider, only to see she was gone.
“Where did she go?” I asked Hathor. The darkness of the forest seemed deeper now, somehow more ominous. Hathor’s head whipped about in alarm, still full of suspicion that the spider meant to do us harm, and then she stopped and pointed.
“There,” she said.
We walked over to the spider. She stood with her back to us. As we came to her side, I stopped.
At first, I could not think what the thing was that lay on the ground. It was blackened, burned, confused. Then, through the mess of blackness I started to make out objects. Huge leaves had been caught and bound in sticky silks which shone with gossamer whiteness. A great pouch, also made from white silk, lay in the centre, its contents wizened, roasted by fire. From the centre of the pouch, sharp, long things extended, and here and there I could see the rounded edges of burned, bulbous bodies, some still whole, and some exploded, their sticky, broken bodies heaped on one another.
It was a pouch of young spiders. All dead. All burned and black. Their youthful bodies struck out from the pouch, piled on top of each other. They had tried to escape their fiery deaths; their sharp long legs thrusting out into the skies as their last desperate attempt to live had been thwarted by flames that had consumed them. There was a smell of burning flesh on the air. It hung in my throat and polluted my lungs.
I took a step back and glanced at Hathor who was staring at the burned bundle of baby spiderlings. “They are hers,” I said.
Hathor nodded. She was transfixed, but I had to look away.
I looked instead at the spider. She did nothing but stare at the bundle. I knew, somehow, that this was not the first time she had seen the fate of her offspring. A thought reared into my mind. The spider had failed to protect her own young, and when our minds had met, she had seen a chance to undo this, in me.
I had to stagger to the tree line to vomit, retching up horror and disgust along with my meals of that day. As I pulled myself upright, Hathor wordlessly offered me her water flask. I sipped gratefully and felt my stomach churn again.
If I closed my eyes, all I could see were baked bodies, frozen in death.
I stood up unsteadily. “How could this have happened?” I asked Hathor.
“Men,” she said simply. “There is no other creature that commands the power of fire. I would take a guess that someone found her nest and set fire to it, to try to stop the babies being born.”
“My people would never do such a thing,” I said quickly, “even to a spider. We do not kill unless there is no other choice.”
Hathor shook her head. “I would say this was the work of flesh-eaters, but we are so far from the town. I cannot think what would have made them come out this far.”
“It must have been recent,” I said. “Otherwise other things would have eaten those bodies, no matter how burned.” I frowned. “Perhaps those flesh-eaters following me came further than I thought, but I could see no trace of them. I thought they had gone back.”
Hathor glanced about with concern. “Perhaps they followed the river further than we thought.”
I swallowed. My churning stomach was still reeling, but it was now also twitching with nerves. “We are still a long way from my village,” I said. “They will have given up before they find my people.”
Hathor nodded. “I am sure.” She sounded sure. It made me feel better.
I looked at the spider. She stood near her dead young, her back to us.
Hathor sighed. “They do not think,” she said sadly.
“Who?” I asked, still thinking with concern about the village.
“The flesh-eaters,” she said. “They don’t think, they just do. They have hunger, so they kill our people. They fear her kind, so they kill her offspring. They are careless with lives because they do not consider anything to be as important as themselves. They do not think that another creature may have thoughts or wants or feelings. They don’t stop to think before they act. They do not care for the world or anything on it, as long as they can have what they want. These spiders posed no threat to their town. They set fire to these spiderlings because they could. They reacted to their first impulse, and killed what they feared.”
She shook her head. “I said that the spider couldn’t think or feel because she was a spider,” she said, sounding remorseful.
“But we know that she can,” I said. Hathor nodded. “Not like us,” I said, “but all life is sacred.”
“Not like us,” she repeated thoughtfully. “But not less important.”
“Why didn’t she stop them?”
“She would have,” she said. “But spiders have to leave their young at times to hunt. Most likely she was off hunting when they did this.”
I shuddered and stared at the ground. Feeling Hathor’s eyes on me, I looked up. “Like me,” she said. “She left and when she came back, they had taken her world.”
I put a hand to her shoulder and squeezed. There was nothing I could say.
Hathor straightened herself and walked slowly to the spider. She put a hand to its great hairy head; her touch was gentle, soft. “I know,” she whispered. “They took my family too.”
The spider let out a hiss. It was almost a sigh, a moan of sadness.
“We should leave this place,” Hathor said. She stepped in front of the spider and gently started to turn her away from her dead young. Slowly, but obediently, the spider moved. Hathor led her back to me.
