Rosalind - Amby Awards 2023 TOP PICK

8- When the Spiders Came

The snow silenced all of Transylvania. Where shepherds and their flock roamed, patches of white spread over the once green grass of the animals' grazing. Burly sheep with yellow-tinged wool felt the wetness of the snow seeping into their thick coat. Tiny spring lambs baaed in confusion as a chill came up to nip at their little noses. The smallest of the smalls ran under their mother's legs, shivering, their knees knocking together as if in a melody to a new song they had yet to learn.

The builders paused on the cobblestone streets while on their way to work, their faces tilted to the sky watching the early morn fall as white as bone before them. They lowered their toolboxes, spread their callused hands to the powdery softness of the snowflakes. Their faces were a mixture of confusion and fear for the men were uncertain whether to laugh or weep.

In the bakery, the old baker-woman who had been awake since before dawn stopped her bread making and craned her head to the west window. Outside the snowflakes fell, thick and beautiful, whiter than the flour dusting her knuckles and arms. She gasped as the flakes fell. The baker-woman brought her hand to her mouth in awe and left an imprint of flour upon her thin lips and nose. In her sixty-four years, she had never before seen snow.

In the village, children began to wake. Their parents clung onto their offspring as the little ones dashed to the doors begging to be let outside for all their lives, all the children had ever known of snow was in the tales and fables their parents and grandparents had told them.

Oh, how the younger children loved the snow; in the tales, their elders had narrated there was always a calming beauty to the falling flakes. Yet the older children were unsure because some of them had been told of another tale. One of a beast that lived high up on the Carpathian Mountains that would kidnap youngsters and turn them into statues made of ice. The older children fearfully believed that the snow falling before them was these wretched ice-children weeping.

A tiny girl, no more than five or six years old, slipped out of her mother's embrace, ran out into the streets and began dancing in the falling flurries. Her pale pink dress and blonde hair fanned around her as she twirled and twirled. Her arms outstretched, a smile on her face. She welcomed the snow with open arms. The little girl giggled when flakes fell upon the bridge of her button nose. The child's mother cried out as she ran to scoop up her daughter. When the woman felt the flakes on her own blonde head she smiled and giggled because the snow was as delicate as feathers, like the caress of an angel. As the sun shone upon them, the little girl opened her mouth and allowed the snowflakes to become a part of her.

In the manor, Lord Caspian tried to breathe but a raspy sound was all he could manage. His heart raced like a runaway horse. Flickers of sunlight flashed into his and the lady's chambers illuminating the fallen four.

The servants lay still. Caspian noticed no rise and fall of their chests. Yet when he crawled to them, Caspian saw Agnes's fingers twitch.

Next to Agnes lay the lord's wife. Calla was motionless in her white nightdress. Caspian growled as he leaped to Calla's side. He began nudging her with his head. Calla... He tried to call out her name yet his tongue felt foreign and words felt unfamiliar anywhere but in his brain. Calla!

The lord reached for his wife, his palms sliding on the floor as though it was made of glass. He tried to pick his wife up, but his hands felt brand new. Caspian fell face-first to the ground, hitting his jaw on the stone with such force that it brought tears to his eyes. He struggled to rise, to stand up like a man, but his hind legs would not permit him to. Calla... His brain screamed and howled like a fiend. Calla!

Through tiny cracks in the wall, forty little blue spiders came. Only the smallest of the small dared enter the lord and lady's home. With their thread-fine legs and black bead eyes, they skittered towards the lord and his beloved. The little blue spiders did not care about the lord's horrid transformation. They sought to find no pity nor malice from the wretched man. Their sole desire was to embrace Lady Calla and take her away into a long slumber where no amount of begging, no amount of regret, no amount of anything could ever bring her back. But the little blue spiders would not kill the beautiful lady just yet. They spider-walked over her slender arms and across her chest. The spiders hurried before the lord could catch them, towards Lady Calla's face. Ten little blue spiders crept into Calla's nose, ten in each ear, the remaining ten slipped between her lips and trickled down her throat. Every little blue spider would make its way towards the lady's heart where they would slowly eat it away. The lady would sleep for years until the last bite of her heart was swallowed away and her soul fled to find another body. The only thing remaining would be a shell of Calla. Her body would not disintegrate, her beauty would remain intact. But life and breath no longer flowed within her. A reminder to Caspian of his cruelty for revenge sets its own rules.

Lord Caspian saw the minuscule spiders creeping over his wife. He lunged at them and tried to swat them away but they were too quick and tiny. Caspian felt as though his hands were tree trunks and not hands at all. Yet when he looked at his fingers, hands and arms, he saw that they were the same as a man's although covered in white scales.

A choke caught up in Caspian's throat yet he would shed no tears, not even for his beloved wife. The lord arched his head to the sky and howled till Gods and Devils fled from his home leaving him all alone. 

Why Christine?

Q- Why 40 spiders? Wouldnt 3 or 4 be enough? Ew!

Me- When the dead die, in the Greek Orthodox religion, they say it takes 40 days for their soul to leave purgatory and rise to Heaven (or take a nose-dive southwards). Hense 40 spiders and...they aren't ew. :/