Silk by Caitlan R. Kiernan

Author:Caitlan R. Kiernan [Kiernan, Caitlan R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub

They had sat together on Spyder‘s bed, surrounded by the glint of aquarium glass and the web-painted windows, and watched Spyder make the dream catcher by the soothing light of rose-and cinnamonscented candles. Had all gone out together to the wild backyard night, even Walter, and Spyder had cut a green and slender branch from one of the crape myrtle bushes. Back inside the house, she‘d used her pocketknife to strip away the twigs and leaves, had left the cuttings in a scatter on the kitchen floor. And with the same knife, tiny thing but razor sharp, she‘d taken locks of their hair. Robin‘s first, emerald in the candlelight, then Byron‘s, dyed jet-black and slick as mink, and Walter next, dirty, unwashed tortoiseshell. Had saved her own for last, sliced colorless strands from a place near her right temple where one of the dreads was coming loose. And then she‘d laid each lock out on the quilt, four fraying streaks against the cotton patchwork. She had bent the branch carefully while they watched (all but Walter, who‘d pretended to read from a thick book on fossil arachnids while she worked), bowed pliant wood into a perfect hoop, near-perfect mandala six or seven inches in diameter, and tied it closed with white nylon kite twine from a box beneath the bathroom sink. And then she picked up the pocketknife again, brass handle and stainlesssteel gleam, had passed the blade slowly through the flame of the red votive candle burning on the table beside Lurch and Tickler‘s tank. Spyder cut herself in the soft bend of one elbow, had drawn the cooling blade quick across her skin, severing tattooed lines and the vein hiding beneath. Dabbed her fingers in the wound and slicked the hoop with her blood. And no one had said anything, not one word while she wove their hair with certain, patient fingers, tied the concentric rings and irregularly spaced radial lines running from rim to hub.

"It‘s just a simple orb web," she said when she‘d finished, almost dawn, and Spyder had pointed to the design on one of the windows. "A snare, like garden spiders make."

Last of all, she‘d used more of the twine to tie a couple of musty old mockingbird feathers to the rim. Robin had held it while Spyder stood and stretched, wiped at her jeans and a few stray hairs sifted to the floor.

"Now, we put it someplace safe," she‘d said and had taken the dream catcher from Robin, lifted the lid off one of the bigger tanks, twenty-five gallons of air, mostly, a few sticks and rocks strewn across the bottom. Robin didn‘t have to read the sloppy writing on the yellowed strip of masking tape stuck to one corner of the tank, didn‘t have to know the correct pronunciation of Latrodectus mactans to understand: the shiny black bodies like living vinyl, crimson hourglass bellies. Spyder brushed several clinging forms from the underside of the lid with her bare fingers, mother-voice whispered to

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