Chronicles of the Lands

The Spider’s Trade

I am Melissa Gray of Grayscroft, shepherd of a small valley, keeper of Nuthin Fancy Farm, and chronicler of the lands. I tend more manner of creature than most folk think wise — sheep of more than one sort, pigs with curious extra toes, cattle, horses, small stubborn donkeys, dogs who guard the flock, and birds who make far too much noise at dawn. Most days are ordinary. Some are not. ‘Tis my aim to tell you of both, as they happen, from our little village and our little croft.

This is the first of the not-ordinary ones.

I was trimming sheep in the near field when the brownies found me. I’d tucked my hand shears into my pocket, tied off my apron, and set my basket of wool well clear of the fence — the lambs would have it scattered across the field in a heartbeat, given the chance — when I heard them mumbling in the hedge.

“This had better be good,” said I, brushing off my skirts. “I know not why you trouble me so, nor what manner of emergency this could possibly be.”

“Yes, yes, yes. Come, come, come,” was all I got in return.

So I followed. Along the riverbank, over branches and brambles that snagged at my skirts, gnats troubling my face the whole way, grumbling all the while at being dragged from my work for no good reason I could see. They led me to a cave — a proper hole in the rock, low and dark, and I stopped dead at the mouth of it.

“You cannot be in earnest,” I said. “This old bum shall not fit through that hole. That cave was never built for a lady with wool clippers.” But the brownies pushed and pushed, mumbling all the while, and so down I went — upon my hands and knees, skirts scraped through dirt and pine needles, twigs catching in my hair — grumbling the whole way in.

Inside, I could see nothing at all. One brownie crawled in behind me and struck a single match. Something silver glinted, high to my left. Before I could ask what it was, a second brownie drew another match from his boot and lit it too — and now I saw it plain: a cocoon of spider silk, hanging in the dark, and something within it wriggling.

Something mumbling.

I looked back at the brownies. “What have you gotten me into?”

They only pointed. This. This.

The cocoon jiggled harder, the mumbling rising into something nearer a scream. “Hold still now,” I said, and drew my shears from my pocket, and began, very gently, to trim.

‘Twas then I heard the chittering. I looked up, and there she was — a spider a good quarter my size, glaring at me from the shadows, chittering low in her throat. I put up my hands, shears and all.

“Seems to me it lives still,” I said. “And my friends here would have me do something about that. Will you take a trade?”

She backed off a step, considering, then bobbed once. Yes.

“Right, then. What have I got, what have I got—” I searched my pockets. A little ball of single-ply yarn, three colors twisted together. I held it up. “The strongest silk you’ll ever spin with. Naught caught in a web made from this shall ever pull free. Yours, for whatever’s within that cocoon.”

She rose up upon her back legs to look closer, and I very near lost my nerve entirely. “Oh, gracious,” I muttered. “I am haggling with a spider.” She put one leg forward, then drew it back, then forward again, and I hadn’t the first notion what to make of it.

“I know not what you tell me,” I said. “So you’ll take the trade?”

She rose up tall — taller than I liked — and I confess I flinched hard enough to near sit myself down in the dirt, certain she meant to spring upon me. But it was only her way of saying yes.

I set the little ball of yarn upon the ground between us, careful not to touch her. “There. Our trade.” Then I turned back to the cocoon and cut it fully open.

Within was a nymph, no bigger than my hand, weeping and sticky with silk. “I have you,” I told her, easing her free. “’Twill be a fright getting the silk off, but I have you.” I tucked her into one pocket, the empty cocoon into the other, and stood, brushing off my hands, and gave the spider one last nod. “My thanks to you.”

Then I turned upon the brownies. “You shall walk behind me. I’ll not be crept upon by anything else with eight legs, and this whole business was your doing.” A great deal of high, indignant mumbling followed, but I cared not one whit.

Down upon my hands and knees I went again, and scooted out of that cave just as fast as I could manage.

More to come from Grayscroft. — M.G