Fate Deals the Cards: Fifty-Two Pickup

Part 2: The Hermit

Ch: 2 Land Of A Thousand Dances

As a human man, I’d never gone walking in the woods with a lady, so this was a first for me… I had been tied up in a sack before, but that was my own doing. Reflecting on my laundry bag getaway, it struck me; I’d done it to myself this time too. The irony was too cold and sharp to enjoy at the moment, but someday…

My hostess was less than gracious, as she dropped me to the short cropped turf, unceremoniously. She stood over me for a few long seconds, as if she was deciding what to do with me, which let me ogle her pretty thoroughly.

Now, I’m not a leg man; but if I were, eight would be far too many… and they were way too long, several feet too long.

I also keenly remembered her lively discussion with her friend; the one where they debated eating me and didn’t seem to have come to a definite conclusion on the topic.

When I landed on the grass, still snugly bound, I held very still for a few seconds; watching her watch me, in silence.

“Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” She asked at last, strumming her harp gently to whisper through her instrument. She stared at me a little longer, watching to see how I would react, I suppose. Since I had no Idea what was going on, I just sat still, hoping that was the right choice.

“I think you might just; more the fool I am… I’m going to let you out, Jumpy; don’t try anything stupid.” She still seemed to be speaking to herself, as much ast to me… as if I were a startlingly clever dog.

She loomed over me, as she gently snipped one thread after another with her mandibles. “Oh, you really are stuck in there…” She cooed and purred over me as she worked; until finally, I stood up slowly, still beneath her long, deadly fangs. “Poor thing, let’s get you free.”

She backed away from me very carefully, keeping at least one long slim leg on my abdomen at all times, for as long as she was in reach. She petted and tapped on me all the while, creating a soothing rhythm in my carapace, which triggered an instinctive sense of relaxation in me, shutting down my ability to even think about fight or flight..

“That’s it Jumpy… calm down, I won’t eat you.” She cooed and carefully stepped closer, petting and stroking me again in ways that I was pretty sure should have been terrifying. “You’re safe…, I won’t hurt you. Can you communicate?”

I stirred to begin making a reply, but her soft and gentle strokes kept me quiescent, short circuiting my urge to try and dance my way out of this mess.

“No, settle down… if you start moving, you might freak out again.” She whispered softly through her harp of human looking bones and spider silk.

“Take some time and get yourself under control.”

That seemed like the best advice I’d ever had from a spider, so I took it to heart. I slowed down and stepped out of her reach, careful to avoid hopping or leaping at all; it wasn’t easy. I slowed the rapid fluttering of my weird new lungs and steadied myself for a few seconds, seeking a sense of inner calm that remained elusive.

It took a few minutes to get myself in a state where I could manage my body, without it trying to manage me.

From a dozen yards away, I began to dance my story at her, waving my colorful markings like semaphore flags and ruffling the fluffy tufts of hair at my leg joints. She watched in silent contemplation, all the way to the end of my one spider show.

“I didn’t get any of that, but you were trying to speak… There’s an actual mind in there, somehow.” She whispered in awe, watching me sag to the grass, after dancing my heart out for her entertainment. “If only you could speak…” She murmured through her macabre harp.

With slow and careful steps, I moved toward her, while waving my frontmost legs wildly, signaling that I wasn’t attacking or anything, just coming closer… I hoped. Beneath her towering, eight eyed face, I held out my front pairs of limbs, hoping she would pick up on my vibe.

She peered down at me and her head pivoted a few times, while her mandibles chewed on the only thing between us… A few dozen inches of thin air. After an eternity, she leaned forward, putting her eight eyes on the same level as mine.

“Are you asking to borrow my voice, little male?” She strummed gently.

I waved my four front limbs gracefully, playing a bit of air guitar in her direction; that message failed utterly to translate, unsurprisingly. Eventually she decided I was for real and, with much hesitation, she handed me her terrible artifact of primate bones and spider silk.

Once it was in my ‘hands’, I felt a lot better about the thing, they were ape bones of some kind, not human. It was still pretty creepy, but a spider’s gotta work with what he’s got.

“I’m not a spider.” I strummed… off key and unintelligible, as far as I could tell, but she immediately backed away and peered at me silently. She tapped her front legs impatiently after a second or two, urging me to continue.

“I said, I’m not really a spider…” I repeated, in slightly better key and rhythm. The harp played in frequencies that human ears couldn’t perceive, so it was tricky to adapt to, especially since I’d only noodled around with harps and lyres a little bit in the past.

“I was born as a human… On another world, I think. Please don’t try to eat me.”

She couldn’t answer, of course; I was holding her harp, her ‘voice’... So I was a little startled, when she danced idly to herself, mumbling in the unconscious movements of her body, lost in an unguarded moment as she stared at me.

‘Odd, beyond odd… what the heck is a ‘human’?’ She wondered to herself.

“A human is a kind of hairless primate… like a monkey that walks around on two legs.” I offered helpfully, now that I had a better idea of the instrument. I may have goofed around in the melody of ‘Man Of Constant Sorrow’ for a minute or two. I knew it was pointless at the time, but hey… I was having a seriously bad day.

That brought her full attention back to me, in a hurry. “You can understand my dance?” She asked, in a brief series of posture changes and a few flexes of her legs.

“Uh, yeah… I just shook my ass all around this meadow, trying to tell you my story…” I answered through her harp. “You have a different accent and the syntax is different, but I understand you.”

‘How doubly odd and extra strange…’ She murmured in a series of gentle leg movements and a sway of her abdomen.

‘I myself can dance in Funnelweb, Harvestman and Huntsman, but most of us only ever learn our own dance… That’s why we use the Orbweavers’ auditory language through our webs or voices, like mine.” She murmured in a quick step-dance around the meadow.

“Orbweavers use sound and other vibrations to communicate, because their vision is just awful. The rest of us use it as a common language.”

She shrugged at me, which meant exactly what it would for a human; which made me giggle a little bit.

“Well then, Jumpy…” She strolled over to the silvery entrance to her funnel and settled herself in the opening, watching in the middle of her clearing. In the darkness behind her, at least four of her legs were busily doing something, while she regarded me.

“Tell me all about yourself, while I make a voice for you.”

Since I was literally standing in her parlor, I couldn’t very well refuse… Especially since the close cropped grass of the open space was laced with long silver strands of silk, leading back to where she squatted in her funnel, ready to pounce.

Feeling like I was playing a talent show with my very life on the line, I put on the best show I could under the circumstances. I channeled my inner Peter Frampton; making the strange harp squawk and moan out the beginning of my tale for an audience that listened very attentively, but gave no hints of how my show was landing. That was a tough room, my friends.

“Well, my new friend… Gary Ward…” A halting and faltering new voice called from the open funnel where my date lurked. “Let us trade instruments, please; I’ve finished crafting one for you.”

Mabel held a half size version of her own instrument in her forelimbs, strumming it with delicate strokes of her massive appendages. Her new harp was a higher pitch, inevitable when dealing with such a difference in scale length and string tension, but it was a marvelous work of craftspidership…

“As odd as your story is, hearing it in my own voice has been an experience.” She sighed through her completed project.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

The smaller scale instrument helped a lot, even so, I must have sounded like a new hatched spiderling, learning her first few chords.

Poor Mabel had to listen with great care to understand my halted and faltering speech, as I struggled with a new instrument and a whole new tonal scale, along with learning how to operate my new body. I needed to keep her attention and keep the party rolling on, so I stole a bass groove from Kool and The Gang.

‘Get Down On It’ is so infectious, even the giant spider lady couldn’t help but shake that big round thang.

I admit, I boosted the record, then I looped it, but I needed to get her back, up-off the wall… ‘How you gonna do it if you really don’t wanna dance?’

Before too long I was a little caught up… it had been so long since I really played in front of anyone else. I used to whistle for the otters that lived in the creek that ran by my camp, that was fun. They were a safe audience, since those cuties would never rat me out to old Johnny Law, but otherwise I’d been in hiding for years.

I lost myself in the pleasure of music shared with another thinking being. And I seriously dig Kool and the Gang…

‘Fresh’ hit the mark and kept things swaying along until I got all the way through my tale… With a few digressions into funky breakdowns and an extended solo or three.

“I think I get the gist of what you are saying, my odd little pet… Though you did spend the last three minutes entreating me to ‘Blame It On The Boogie’. It feels like that portion of your narrative left me with more questions than answers.” She sighed in her own mellow and bassy voice.

“Uh… That was the Jacksons, not me…” I mumbled awkwardly. “Did I mention that I was having a really hard day?”

“Regardless…” She muttered mostly to herself. “Jessie, have you been listening to this?” She strummed into the nearby woodlands. I’d forgotten entirely about the orb weaver over the river… which seemed weird at that point. Though, when being carried through the woods, trussed up in webs by a gigantic freaking spider, the journey had felt very long indeed.

“Oh, yes… Though I can scarcely credit it! Are you certain he’s really a male?” She demanded. “You should check on that!”

“I’ll do no such thing!” She shouted back at her neighbor, A hint of an embarrassed giggle in her song. “Contact the expedition leader and tell her we’ve found something… Keep it vague please, my new friend seems like he’s about to panic again.”

She turned back to me and bobbed her whole body up and down slowly, in a spidery smile. “We’re not natives of this world, we’re exploring a newly formed rift between realms…” She explained to me, sounding quite embarrassed. “I’m sorry, it never occurred to me to introduce myself to a male!” She gave another of these knee bobbing smiles, this time seeming shyly embarrassed.

“I’m Mabel, team xenobiologist and first contact specialist. You’ve already… met Jessie, she’s our communications specialist, in addition to aiding me with my duties, mostly by capturing wildlife samples.”

“So you’re scientists?” I asked weakly, as the silver orb weaver climbed to a higher vantage point on one of her web’s anchoring trees to more fully enjoy the show. I may have put a little prog rock into my question, tapping into Rush for a moment, borrowing a few tasty licks from ‘Tom Sawyer’.

Mabel held up a long, slender leg, calling for silence with a gesture that was imperious and curt, cutting me off. “That last word did not translate… Gary Ward, hooman being.” She spoke coldly and clearly, in a more commanding tone than she had been using.

“Please try again, that felt important; lord Aclintherios whispers the truth in my soul… there is something more going on here.”

“Uh… I guess you are researchers and explorers, you know, scientists…?” I stammered, put off by her sudden tonal shift. Her mention of ‘Lord Something-or-other’ put me on several of my back feet right away.

“I don’t want to cause you any trouble… I’ll just be on my way…” I mumbled at the pair of eight legged ladies.

“You can get back to your research, I don’t wanna interrupt...”

“I don’t know what a Scintieast is… but we are researchers.” She sighed. “Our deities have commanded that we investigate this fractional proto realm for any threats to our world.” Her hash and commanding words softened as she spoke.

“I am a cleric of great Aclintherios, weaver of fates, first of my people’s gods. Jessie is a disciple of the

Moonweaver, she who rules the dreams of all sentient spiders.” She intoned, once more sounding warm and enthusiastic.

“Uh… yeah… I’ll just be going. I’m not a religious guy.” I stammered, as I tried to back out of Mabel’s clearing.

“I’m afraid that will be impossible, young oddity.” A new voice called from the edge of the clearing. “This is too interesting a specimen to let slip away!”

My new nightmare walked into the clearing as a tight trio, strumming their bone and silk instruments in harmony.

A massive tan wolf spider and two smaller examples of the same species emerged from the woods with a soft rustle of leaves, bringing the number of eyes on me to… way too damn many.

“Whatever this creature may be, it is exactly the kind of thing the gods wish us to investigate!” The two smaller spiders sang behind the big one. “It should be studied intensively!”

“Ladies, let’s discuss this…” Jessie strummed at the new arrivals. “Perhaps when the subject of our discussion is not listening in!” She urged carefully. “He does understand what we are saying…”

I proved her point by bounding into the woods, as far and as fast as I could; which it turns out, is damn far indeed. “Sorry girls, I’m a boob man!” I sang as loudly as I could, while I sailed for freedom.

I listened to the big one and her two flunkies tear strips off of Jessie and Mabel for not keeping me securely bound. “...Violation of mission protocols! Local wildlife samples are to be cocooned securely, once captured!” The big one shouted so loudly I could hear her for a half mile as I skittered and leapt through the woods, fleeing from life in a cage, again.

“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss… We won’t get fooled again!” I grumbled to myself, as I made a cozy nest, high up in a sequoia, overlooking a wide and pleasant valley.

I used my nifty silk spinning abilities to make a cozy, if messy web to rest in. I strung up a few small snares in the boughs, in hopes of catching something to snack on for the morning. I was feeling really hungry after running through the woods all day and had no idea how food was going to work in my new body.

Once I got all eight under me and figured out my jumping ability, I’d managed to put several miles between myself and the ‘expedition’ of creepy spider dames. I resolved to avoid them with great care, going forward and planned to put more miles down at first light.

The sun was beginning to dip toward the mountains and I knew just how quickly darkness could sweep over the forest; since I’d been homeless for two years, living furtively on the edges of civilization.

That was the most jarring thing of all; no sign of civilization showed through the dense tree canopy of the bottomlands and thickly forested hills. No roads, towns, jet contrails in the sky, not even any ruins peeked from among the trees.

With nothing better to do, I scanned the valley floor for any sign or clue of where I should go next, until the shadows of sunset engulfed the world. Granite peaks reared up around the wide, deep valley, providing a dramatic backdrop for my adventure into a new freaking world. No signs of pursuit appeared behind me, just as nothing of note revealed itself ahead. It was all just trackless wilderness and wildlife.

I’d startled rabbits, badgers and numberless varieties of birds, squirrels and other small creatures as I fled through the forest. Deer and a few larger game animals were around as well, along with at least one pack of wolves. I heard them calling as the sun slipped away. With wildlife around, I started looking for a safe place to spend the night.

Nesting up in a high tree, on the eastern side of the valley, I had a little while before darkness reached me, so I spent the time studying the device Jessie had created for me.

The thing was oddly constructed, to say the least. If a harp and a banjo got freaky in the halloween store they might give birth to something like what I held. Rib bones and femurs had been securely notched and lashed together with a silk compound that felt light, hard and resonant like carbon fiber. That simple cross braced hoop of bone had been skinned with a thin scraped hide of some kind, creating a nicely resonant drumhead.

Bridges of thin shaved rib bones rode on either side of that taut skin, carrying strings of braided silk. When strummed, it produced a range of tonal variations that were truly impressive for such a primitive looking thing. There was something else going on, some kind of subtle acoustic amplification was coming in from somewhere…

“There you are, Jumpy…” Jessie murmured from the base of my tree. “Sorry… I mean; there you are, Gary Ward, human.” She sounded embarrassed, of all things, as she called up my tree in the gathering twilight.

“Don’t worry, I’m not here to try and capture you… The others are miles from here searching for you. They have no idea that I can track you through the spells I used in crafting your instrument. My god has seen fit to grant me some skill with the art and craft of enchanting.”

“Spells?” I asked, wondering why there were so many crazy cultists who believe in magic out there. “Yeah… Miss me with whatever sacred text you’re peddling, preacher. I’m not buying.” I grumbled down at the big green lady.

“If you want your toy back, come to this tree at sundown tomorrow; I’ll leave it for you, hanging down near the forest floor.” I spoke sharply and kept all my eyes out for any sneaky tricks while we chatted, I wasn’t feeling very trusting.

“I crafted that for you, my friend. Keep it with my blessings.” She murmured up at me.

“No thanks. If you really can track me through it somehow, that’s even more reason to ditch it… Hey! No climbing.” I spoke more crisply, when she placed a few of her legs in position to start scaling the trunk to join me in the boughs.

“If you discard my gift, you will be unable to communicate with those who do not understand your dance…” She urged me gently. “You might be mistaken for a normal male, in that case.”

“What was up with that? You all seem surprised that I’m able to speak and understand you.” I demanded, now that I was holding the high ground.

“As I mentioned, we are an exploratory team from a nearby realm of creation. Our pantheon deputized us to investigate this fractional world for threats and I am our designated first contact specialist; tasked with establishing cordial relations with any native sentients or other extraplanar visitors we might encounter… like yourself.” She replied, completely failing to answer my query or explain the situation.

“And that’s why your friends wanted to capture and ‘study’ me? No thanks… Also, you have a weird idea of what ‘cordial relations’ entail.” I growled at her, rapidly tiring of the company of people who thought they could treat me like an animal.

“Don’t be like that, Jumpy… sorry, I mean Gary.” She bobbed on her knees again, slowly displaying that shy spider smile that made her so much less frightening. “Among my people… males are literally animals. They cannot speak or form abstract thoughts. Their lives consist solely of web building, hunting, courtship and mating.” She sighed.

“The idea of having a conversation with a male is… frankly ridiculous. I could as easily have a discussion of higher order magical theory with a squirrel.” She shrugged at me and delivered a gentle sighing whisper through her harp.

“As team exobiologist and first contact officer I have received extensive training and education in no arachnid species and have even met several outsiders and other species…” Her shy smile appeared again, subtle and gentle. “I’ve never even heard of a ‘human’ before… You say you were a hairless tree primate of some kind?”

‘Mabel is kinda cute, after all…’ I found myself thinking idly, a few moments later. It took a little effort to shake that feeling off, as well. There was something going on with her voice… something very subtle and soothing, disarming.

“...Even with my interspecies communication training, I find taking you seriously to be… deeply challenging.” She was saying, as her notes drafted along my hastily strung web, a sweet, thrumming song my triplines and entangling strands responded to with a slow building resonance.

“Mabel, whatever you’re doing to me… Stop it or I’m out of here.” I barked in minor chords of disgust and anger. “You’re manipulating my emotions somehow. Cut it out.”

My sharp words cut whatever she was doing as neatly as you please… Which seemed to leave her stunned and very upset.

“Fascinating… Can you do that again?” She cooed softly, her eyes intensely focused on me with a predator’s stare. “I’ll recreate the spell you severed in just a moment… once my Mana recovers a little. That was quite a jolt!”

“Spells? Mana? Screw that, if you start fucking around again, I’m gone.” I was spanking the strings of her clever instrument and working the higher frequencies, as I shredded my disapproval across the quiet forest night.

My words struck her with an almost visible impact, as she backed a few yards away from the base of my tree. “Apologies… That was inappropriate…” She mumbled, embarrassed again.

“To be honest I never suspected you would perceive the spell of influence and tranquility I was working on you.”

“If you try that again, we are going to have a serious problem.” I was starting to really get a hang of the instrument and let some grunge and punk sensibilities spill over into my protest song.

“And in addition… ‘I didn’t think I’d get caught’ is a piss poor excuse for fucking around with someone’s mind and emotions!”

“You really are fascinating…” She purred, once more at the base of my tree and clearly thinking about climbing up. “I’ve never even thought about how it would feel to be scolded by a male… I think I like it.”

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