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“…he said, look, Natasha, your webs follow me everywhere.”
—those who are afraid of wolves, ohladybegood
Neither of them remembers where it started. There is eternity and the earth tilting in the heavens, but there is no beginning. They are not human enough yet for beginnings.
A hawk flies over pristine forest, dropping from his mountain heights. A spider weaves her webs where water and hunting are good. The spider watches his flight and leaves her webs for him to find. She never attempts to take to the air herself.
The earth is young yet; there is no man in it—at first.
The hawk learns to read the glisten of her silken strands. It is little wonder, for he is intelligent with a keen eye. He too is wise. He never attempts to seek her out; he merely follows the webs like maps from one to another.
Seasons pass. Man has come. Man has no respect for those who have come before. He hunts and kills and burns down parts of her forest to remake the world in an image of his liking. She does not like man.
It is the season for migration, and she lays her webs as she has done for so long. The wait is longer than usual and she finds herself restless, a widow spider displeased with the variation from their pattern. She destroys her webs in the night and rebuilds them, a little higher, a little more glinting under the sun, and she waits. Endlessly, she waits. But she is not human enough for impatience, and so she waits for three days while birds pass overhead who are not hawk with the bright golden eyes and powerful wings. She waits for the flocks to wheel past and catches and eats more lunches than she should. She is distant enough from where the hawk will likely catch his own dinner, but for once, her caution seems unnecessary.
On the fourth day, he comes, listing on one side, a feathered shaft of wood spearing him.
The spider rises on her legs and watches as the hawk sees her webs and drifts to a safe landing. He lies still. If she had a heart to beat, it would be beating fast with fear.
It is morning when the hawk falls to the earth and does not rise. It is almost noon when the spider picks her way across the trees and earth to step out onto his wing for the first time. It is one of man’s arrows, lodged where it would not kill directly, but the hawk has been injured for days and there is too much dried blood.
She is not human enough for regrets and not human enough to question herself. She is a spider. She rubs her feet together and prepares herself to weave.
She crawls over him slowly, weaving a new web of materials she has never used, webbing over his wound and altering his flesh in the only way she knows can save him. It is dusk when the spider crawls away to a safe distance and sets herself her last simple task: simple but not easy and far from anything she has ever done before today. She weaves herself a new body from the old one she has always worn.
It is night when a man wakes with golden brown eyes—like a hawk’s. It is cold. His skin shivers with it before his muscles do. He takes in a breath, but doesn’t move except for his eyes. He sees her, a woman sitting knees drawn up under her arms, red hair pouring around her shoulders like fire. On the back of his shoulder is a silvery weblike scar.
“Our time is coming to an end,” she says, voice curiously flat.
“No—” His mouth freezes on the answer.
For a moment, she says nothing. It is the human voice that stopped him. She gives him a moment before answering his unspoken question. “I wove you a new body,” she says quietly, and it feels more comfortable to speak than it did the first time. She meets his intense, uncertain stare with her own spider stillness. “You must master the arrows so they cannot hurt you again.”
It is the closest she has been able to come to saying she studied his strength and loved to watch the fierce flash of him through the sky. It is the closest she has come to admitting she would feel the loss if he died.
He is shivering in the cold night air. She should be shivering too. These human skins are weaker to the elements than the ones she made them from. She should have built a fire to keep them warm as humans do.
She holds out her arms and he moves slowly, uncertain of his new limbs, but then she is holding him and warming them both with the simple embrace.
“We will burn the old world down,” she murmurs, “but I will be there. You will find me in the fire.”
He looks at her then, and this gaze is nearer her own. It makes her breath catch just a little, for his eyes are still the eyes they have always been. They see her webs and read what she has no words to say. “Hawks mate for life,” he tells her, his voice a low rasp.
“My fellow widows think I’m foolish,” she admits more practically. “We kill our husbands after we get our children.”
He makes a sound between a laugh and derision. “Then don’t have children.”
She isn’t sure what she feels, but she feels something, and she answers wistfully, “I would love our children.” She wonders briefly what they would be like, these impossible children, something like neither of them and both of them.
He stirs in her arms and she blinks at him. “I would bleed for you,” he tells her with a certainty they should not have.
But they have followed each other for years, left messages in webs and flight patterns, known each other in their own way.
“Shall I weave you a new world?” she whispers. This one will not last for them. Their time is coming to an end.
He considers thoughtfully, a birdlike sound in the back of his throat. “I will find you in the fire?” he asks after a long moment.
“You will find me in the fire,” she confirms.
He lifts his hand to brush her fiery hair. She sees acceptance in his eyes. “Tomorrow then,” he says. “Tonight, I will hold you.”
They are not human enough yet for lovemaking. His hair is soft in her fingers. His head rests over her heart as he listens to it beat.