SatM: Immortal
The sun streamed through the early morning mist, cutting holes in the air to reveal trees, whimsy, and every damned rock I was set to trip over during this stupid hike. When I was a kid, I remembered my dad taking me out to the Smokies twice to go camping, so I could learn how it felt to be a “real human.” The first time it had rained so hard before we even finished setting up that we had to sleep in a motel that night or risk being flooded down the mountain, the second time he caught me playing in a fairy circle and, again, we ended up sleeping in a motel.
This time, the Door had deposited me, fully kitted out with boots and anorak, from the side of a particularly large pine tree at the base of the mountain. I had narrowed my eyes in the near darkness and sketched a sign of revelation over each of my eyelids to show exactly what I had expected: a shimmering, glittering, oh so pretty forcefield that the likes of a Ward Door could not have penetrated without incurring a massive penalty (like a fine from the council of Whatever the Fuck).
An hour later, I had cooled off enough to know that in all fairness, it was impolite to intrude on someone else’s home with a random Door or Portal or even just to Scry in. An hour later, I could appreciate the beauty of the world waking up around me and feel at peace with the decidedly natural world. Things could certainly be worse, but I was still here on an errand that someone else didn’t feel like completing and no matter how sweetly the birds sang or how breathtaking the view slowly became, the fact of the Why I was here unfailingly wrinkled my brow.
I paused to sit on a rock, unhurried as I drank from my water bottle and continued to watch the morning unfold. I could see into the still partially shrouded valley at this point, but there was enough of the mist left for me to pull out my spindle for a spell. Some of the creatures from Doubleshot had been trading me favors, and Belle in particular had been surprisingly forthcoming with how to weave without fabric.
Careful, I took my drop spindle and carefully let it fall onto the flat stone beneath me. I felt the world still around me as peace dropped onto my shoulders, opening my heart to beckon to the stillness of the mist, promising to help it live forever, albeit in a different form. A curl wafted through the air, reminding me of the cartoons I used to watch growing up. The movement of the drop spindle drew it in the way movement does to all air. Slowly, I used both hands to suggest length from the coiled drops of water, pulling thread into existence reminiscent of spider silk and ten times as beautiful.
Air is a fickle element, both more stubborn than water and less volatile than fire. Despite their inherent oppositeness, I had come to love the air and the earth, for the freedom and the realism they both provided. However, that love for the wind helped me convince it to move how I wanted, even if that was as a twist of fabric rather than a rope of air. When I had nearly filled a spool, I allowed reality to filter back into my mind, slowly and easily as the lazy sun approached his peak. It was then that I realized I had company.
I yelped as I spun, to face what cast a shadow over me, breaking off my thread to an only mostly filled spool. The person behind me did not belong there. She had gray hair that was bound into a magnificently long braid that fell over one shoulder nearly to her hips. Her face was lined, but not so much that she could have been a grandparent. Her smile when she stood straight was blindingly beneficent, belied only by the deep sadness that sat inside her eyes.
“Hello there, dear,” She said with an Irish burr coloring her words, “yours is a fresh face, in these parts. I suppose you’ll want to leave now.” She sighed, the smile sliding off her lips like icing off a hot cake, turning away from me.
“Wait!” I called out, despite my better judgement. To my surprise, she stopped. “I’m looking for something, the Peak Spider?”
Her grin showed too many teeth. “You’ve found her, dear.”
“I’m…” I faltered, unsure of how to ask what I had assumed would be a monster, that I wanted one of her claws. “I’m here on a mission.”
“What, a mission from God? I’ve met a few of you before.” She chuckled darkly and I could have sworn I heard a scream in the distance. “No interest in the wares you’re peddling.”
“No, I was sent to uh… I was sent to win a claw from you.”
“Dear me, what a silly thing to do, as if a scrap of a thing like you could take one of my claws.” She sat back down, a little color flooding her cheeks, making me realize how pale they had been before. “You seem a little tired, sweetling, why not just stay here with me for a time.”
I blinked, used to propositions from the fae, but rarely one so utterly blatant. “Madam I cannot, I have a contract already that I must fulfill, my apologies.” I gestured towards the shining band around my head, having assumed she would have known what that meant, judging by her age. She frowned at me, gesturing me forward.
I slid off the rock and stepped towards her, realizing now that I was a solid foot taller than this stately woman. She reached out a finger and tapped the metal, sending a ringing note spiralling through the mountain air far louder and longer than it should have. When my vision had cleared from the power she’d released, I noticed she was shaking her head, tutting under her breath. “Apprentices were never so bound back in my day, this is barbaric. Sweetling who has done this to you?”
“Julius and Phantasma Ward, Madam Spider.” For just a blink of the eye, her hair seemed made of oily black snakes and her skin from cracked granite, massive teeth jutting from between her lips, before what I sincerely hoped wasn’t an illusion snapped back into place. “I have another few years on my contract before I can practice on my own. If I stayed here, I fear I would never be rid of my servitude.”
The woman pursed her lips and tapped her jaw (her jaw, I reiterated to myself, not her tooth) in contemplation. Finally she began pulling at the skin around her left hand. “I’ll make you a bargain, dearie.” My hackles rose involuntarily. “You show me how you did that with the mist and I’ll give you - ugh - one of these.”
My stomach threatened to jump out of my mouth as she slipped off her skin of human flesh to reveal razor sharp jutting hands of stone, ice, and bone. What in the hells was this creature? Against my better judgement, I nodded, and sat her down to show her how to work the drop spindle and what I did to call the mist to me. She fumbled the spindle with her ungloved hand for a few seconds, before immediately winding a perfect full spool of thread. Satisfied, she popped one of the many, many claws on her hand and let it land in my hand. Before I could do anything else, she reached between her lips that suddenly stretched to her ears and yanked out a fang that had not been there a moment before. To my horror, she used that beautiful thread and wove a necklace faster than any jeweler I had met before.
“I’m the Peak Spider, dear.” She winked at me with an eye that sat above her cheekbone. “I know how to weave just about anything. Take this from me and know you are welcome into my home whenever you need a friendly ear. You have a talent for this, don’t let them take it from you.”
She slipped the necklace of mist and fang over my head and around my neck. She waved and I watched as she and the mountain grew further and further away until I was back at the Door in the pine tree and the sky had rewound to dawn. I blinked and, on a whim, redrew the sign of revelation over my vision. The shimmering border had come down.
I hid that gift from the undying Peak Spider, unsure of how the Wards would react to such a blessing from a creature they were no longer allowed to see. Phantasma seemed surprised I had returned at all. When I went to sleep that night I clutched the necklace to my heart and saw spiralling lines of fate cross through my room, one that held me in knots to the Spider’s Tooth.