Episode: Twenty-Eight

Horatch stretched his legs out along the bark and watched the boy cringing. Milyi didn't see it, failed to note how delicate their situation had become. But Horatch knew. He saw barely controlled terror in the clenching of the boy's hands, in the constant working of his jaw and the twitch of his fingers.

They rattled, and in that drumming, Horatch heard the Wisp's influence. 

He couldn't lose her now, not this close to the city. Not with the Great One mending in the next clearing. If the boy knew that, if he ran to tell his masters--Horatch would see him dead first, but that killing would lose him his candidate. He saw that much in the girl's wide eyes, in the way she leaned toward the boy when he spoke. 

Trouble.

"Tell me about your village, Saku." Milyi crouched beside the fire, hands on her knees and eyes fixated on the rapidly recovering boy. "Did you have a trade yet?"

"I was learning to hunt." The boy smiled for her, but his eyes darted to the tree, to Horatch. "What about you?"

Horatch twitched his legs and watched the enemy. Milyi would balk at leaving him behind. She'd mutiny at feeding him to the Great One. What was he to do? If he left her now, not only would he fail Niatha, return home empty handed and fully shamed, but he'd miss the girl's company as well. 

She was his. That was it, his candidate, and the boy had no claim to her. The Wisps never would, not so long as Horatch had a breath inside his carapace. 

"My grandmother wouldn't let me hunt." Milyi's laughter filled the clearing, drowned out the crackle of the fire. "But she made me try everything else."

"Milyi is a dancer," Horatch said. Best to remind her of that now. The skill would be her salvation later, would keep her off the fangs of whatever Great One summoned her to its burrow. Best to keep her focused on that. Horatch meant for his candidate to return from the summons alive. "She's very good."

"Really?" The boy leaned forward and put his hands on his knees. "Show me."

"Oh no." Milyi's long hair danced from side to side. She giggled again, and despite her words, when the boys hands began to drum an awkward rhythm against his thighs, Milyi stood and swirled her skirts. The Wisp spy found a beat, hammered it with all the grace of a second instar with a missing limb, and Milyi moved to the side of the fire and began to dance.

She'd definitely survive the summons. Horatch knew talent when he saw it...and the lack of it when he heard it. The boy's drumming faltered too much, but Milyi made up for the lapse by clapping, by stamping her feet and evening out the rough music. 

Her hips swayed. Her arms rolled like a wind through the fronds. She closed her eyes and twisted her body, and her brown feet pattered against the ground, making better music than the boy's hands could, making her own song. 

Underneath its drumming, Horatch heard another patter, deep, mighty. The Great One, moving! Had their moment come already? If Milyi could answer her summons now, before they reached the city...no other candidate would have done as much. 

He hugged the tree and listened, watched the girl and prayed. But the Great One's motions told a different story. Horatch felt the desperation in it, the pain. He needed to supervise the girl, his girl, with the spy. But more than that, he needed to quell the restlessness thrumming from the next clearing over. 

Damn. He bolted up the tree trunk, left Milyi to her dancing for only a moment. Once the foliage hid his movements, Horatch leapt between the fronds, flew to the spot where they'd left the giant spider only to find the clearing empty.

No! The jungle parted in a swath of mangled brush where the Great One had made no gentle passing. Horatch scurried after it, followed the obvious trail, the trail any fool could see. The foliage bent and twisted. The canopy gaped. From above, that gash would lead the enemy straight in.

And the Great One had made little progress. Horatch found it only a few spans farther along, jerking it's leg free from a vine and leaning heavily to one side. Its frustration vibrated through the jungle. Fury at a body that no longer obeyed the massive mind's commands. 

Horatch drummed to soothe it. He begged it to stop, to still itself again, to wait for the girl. He could fetch her soon enough. 

She cannot come. 

Horatch drummed assurance. Yes. He could bring her now.

Our hands cannot reach us. We must leave the burrow. Must find our hands. 

The Great One had left its hole with this intention. Horatch felt it, felt the desperate need that should have come as summons only. The candidate always traveled to the burrow. The joining must happen where they pair were safely ensconced. 

But the Great One's thoughts were muddled. Its body had not survived the Wisp attack unscathed. It pulled one foot free, jerked forward only to find another stuck and resisting. 

Must find our hands.

Perhaps the poison had dulled its thoughts as well. But then, it had left its burrow long before the Wisps had done their damage. Horatch drummed again, pleaded Milyi's case, her talent and her proximity through his toes. 

Our hands cannot reach us. 

Horatch tapped and pleaded, but the Great One freed its mighty foot and moved forward again. The gigantic body still leaned. The paralysis still had an effect on the spider's movements, but it continued, as ever, toward its goal. Single-minded, once the summons was upon them. And if that drove the Great One away, then Milyi was not the correct candidate for it. 

Their time had not yet come. 

He stopped his drum, watched the orb of the Great One's abdomen vanish into the jungle, and sent a prayer after it. He wished for its safety and a success that Horatch felt was utterly impossible. Then he dashed to the nearest tree and back through the canopy to the firelight and the girl whose long journey would not end today. 

She'd moved around the fire. Now she danced close beside the boy. He'd stopped drumming, and his body leaned out. His attention fixed on the girl's movements, and both of them swayed together, entranced, synched in the dance. 

Failure. Horatch could see that from the highest fronds. He'd failed to stall the Great One, and here, with Milyi and the Wisp spy's laughter singing a happy chorus, he'd failed all over again.

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Episode Twenty-Five

Milyi squatted beside the river, soaking the red cloth until her fingers numbed. The boy slept now, but his sweat had soaked through his garments. He'd wandered in and out of lucidity for most of the night, and Milyi caught snatches of his story through his mumbling. She'd gathered he'd fallen and that he'd lost someone important to him.

A woman he called angel. 

Through his fever, he'd called to her so fervently Milyi hadn't been able to help crying for them. The boy's face, so clenched with emotion, impassioned and tortured at the same time. He had soft skin, brown and bright as the inside of a bark strip. His eyes, when open, shone with so much intensity--she'd stared into them, hadn't been able to resist searching for some hint at his mystery in their depths.

 Such strong hands,  and yet, the odd wounds. 

"You should have left him in the river." Horatch vaulted from the edge of the jungle. He landed on a boulder near the water. Not on her shoulder, she noted. The T'rant had kept his distance since Saku. 

"You saw the colors...and the stings."

"I should have left him to die?"

"It would have been more humane."

"Why?" She dragged the cloth out of the current, red as blood, as a Wisp's wings. Horatch knew more than he meant to tell her, as usual. This time she needed to know, however. This time, she'd had enough of his riddles. "What do you know about him? About this?" 

She flipped the garment and icy drops sprayed across the rocks. Horatch remained in the shower, and when the drops pattered against his snowy carapace, Milyi cringed against a flash of guilt. He'd saved her life. He'd defended her when her own people refused to. 

"Horatch, I need to know. That boy...his body is covered in..."

"The Wisp poison does not kill your kind." His voice came like a breath of wind, softer even than the babbling of the river. "Not unless they choose to. More often, the stings are very calculated."

"How do you know this? How is it my own people don't know this?"

"Because your people have chosen to forget. Or perhaps, that choice was taken from them. Milyi, this is an ancient war, and you Hands are caught up in the center. My people would choose you as partners, allies against that color you hold.  The Wisps would use you as a tool, as pawns, thoughtless drones kept subservient by the poison underneath your skin."

"Saku?" She stared at the cloth. The slick fabric darkened under the weight of river water, looking like old blood now. "You mean he's..."

"Under their control, Milyi. The boy is our enemy."

"No." She shook the thought away, unsure why she resisted so fiercely. "You can't know that. He's all alone out here."

Like she was. Was that it? Saku had no people either, and as much as she had come to trust the T'rant, he was not of her kind.

"Milyi, I understand."

"You don't know for sure. You haven't even spoken to him."

"And what would happen if I did? Do you think any of your people would greet me as a friend?"

"I did."

"Because you are special."

"Maybe he is too." That was it. Saku was special. Milyi had felt it from the start. It had tingled through her hands as she pulled him from the river and grown into shivers of revelation as she'd watched over him through the night. The boy was different, too. He was like her. "Maybe Saku is special."

"Would you risk my life to find out?" Horatch tapped a punctuation on the rock with his foremost appendages. "Would you risk the Great One's life to test that theory?"

"I-no." Milyi's belly squirmed. Her memory flashed red and black, death from above. She'd saved the Great One in the end, but it's huge legs still seized beneath him, and he'd barely managed to consume the food they'd pressed to his face, the water they'd dribbled over his bristles. "What do we do then? I can't just...I won't."

"Maybe not," Horatch said. "Maybe the boy is special. But you must promise me, Milyi. Promise me you won't let him near the Great One."

"I promise." Milyi nodded for emphasis. She'd feared worse, had expected Horatch to demand she roll Saku back into the river. Still, he didn't sound thrilled with her, and eventually they'd move on to his city. If the Great One continued with them, would Horatch just leave Saku behind? 

What would she do if he did?

"The Great One cannot flee or fight," Horatch said. "And the boy will be mobile very soon. Perhaps, we can send him away."

"He might help us." She tried again, though she read the T'rant's mood enough to know his answer already. "If the Wisps hurt him, he might want to come with us."

"Let's see." Horatch flipped his legs up and down, not only tapping but actively fidgeting now. His round butt lifted and lowered, flashing its ink patterns like an irritated flag. "I propose a test, Milyi. We'll let the boy recover, let his strength return and then...if you are still interested in his assistance, we'll see what he thinks of me."

"You?" Milyi's throat went dry. It was one thing to believe in the feverish boy, but fully healed...she'd lived among her people too long to expect a miracle. "Won't that be dangerous?"

"Most definitely. But I don't intend to come down and sit in his lap. I am capable of great caution, you'll remember."

She did. Milyi remembered a white streak against dark bark. Had Horatch spoken to anyone else in her village, she had no doubts the T'rant would not have survived the encounter. She wanted to believe in the boy. She wanted Saku to be special, to prove Horatch wrong. 

More than that, she wanted the sinking feeling, the knot of dread growing in the pit of her stomach, to mean nothing.

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Episode Twenty-Four

Horatch chewed the larvae until it was pulp. He resisted the urge to drink this, instead spinning a dense layer of  webbing to scoop the meal into. Once he had the goo packaged and portable, he began the arduous task of dragging it nearer to the Great One. 

Paralyzed, but not dead. Bless his girl. 

The mind of the giant spider tickled at his thoughts. He could wrap understanding around the smaller communications, pain, surprise, gratitude, but the Great One's consciousness was too broad to fully grasp. Horatch thought it was glad for its survival, but he couldn't be completely certain. 

He'd know soon enough, however. All he had to do was get his offering up to the Great One's mouthparts. 

He wrestled his gift across the vines until it was directly underneath the giant fangs and then, on reflex, he bowed his forward segment low to the ground and lifted his abdomen high in a gesture of respect. His homage was echoed only by the Great One's frustration.

It couldn't reach his meal. He would have to bring it up, hold it against the mouthparts that may or may not even be mobile enough to suck. Horatch needed his Hand. He needed Milyi, and the girl had wandered back to their campsite to wash. 

She'd saved the giant, but she'd been in a hurry to rid herself of the evidence. They had a long way to go still, but after the way she'd fought for the Great One's life, Horatch would have happily trusted the girl with his own. 

He drummed of waiting and patience to the paralyzed Great One and scurried to the nearest trunk. Leaping between the trees, he listened always with his toes for the hum that would mean their enemy had returned. He focused on the vibrations of the jungle and the air above it, and he almost leapt down to where  Milyi had built a fire without looking first. 

Almost.

When he saw the flash of red and black, his toes tightened. His tiny claws held fast to the bark, and Horatch flattened his body against it and became only another lump in the shadows. Milyi's voice drifted from the firelight, low and shaky against his metatarsi.

"Horatch?" She called for him, but the red and black beside her held him at bay. "I don't know where he is."

"Still a little cold." An even lower voice joined hers, strange and dark. Definitely another human and yet, the colors, the unmistakable sign of a Wisp. 

"Come closer to the fire...your clothes were all wet." Milyi moved, a blot of black against the background of flames. She snatched at the red and black shape, dragged it around the fire and spread it out. Clothes. Wisp colored clothing. 

"Milyi," Horatch called for her and jumped to another tree to mask his location. 

She looked up at the spot where he had been. "Horatch? Are you there?"

"Milyi, I need you." He jumped again. Spoke from a different tree and then made a third leap. "Help me."

The girl stood and spun in place. Her hair fanned out like the fronds he hid in. Horatch waited for her to work it out. Come to the clearing. He willed her to understand and, eventually, her feet shuffled in the right direction. 

"I'll be right back," she said. "Stay in the heat."

Horatch jumped ahead of her. He reached the battlefield, the trampled patch of jungle where his Great One waited, and then scampered down a trunk. When the girl passed, he leaped to her shoulder. 

"What's wrong?" She'd adjusted fully to him, didn't even flinch when he sprang at her. "Are you okay? I found a boy in the river."

"The Great One hungers." Horatch ignored her revelation for the moment. "I cannot feed him alone."

"What can I do?" She walked without fear to the front of the T'rant's god. Amazing. The girl tilted her head and stared into the wide chelicerae. "Is he going to get better?"

"I think, if we can keep him strong, that he might regain his ability to move."

"Good." 

"The food is underneath," Horatch crawled farther down her arm, nearer to the elbow and waved his pedipalps toward the bundle on the ground. "But it must be held against his mouthparts."

"Oh." She bent down without questioning him. "It's leaking."

"If we hurry, it will be enough."

She squatted and only cringed once when she lifted his package. Green ichor dribbled between her fingers, but the bulk of the meal he'd prepared remained inside the webbing. Milyi lifted it and held it up directly against the Great One's fangs.

"Below there," Horatch said. "Where the red bristles are."

" Sorry." She moved the bundle, pressed it against the mouth, and Horatch held his breath. He tensed and listened for any hint of their success. "The boy would have drowned."

"Shhh, Milyi." He would need to tell her about the boy, about the red and black clothing, but he could sense already that she wouldn't like to hear it. There had been something in her voice, something tender, when she spoke to him. "Is he eating?"

"How can I tell?" 

Before he could answer, the sucking sounds began. The red bristles did not move as they should, but a mighty slurp echoed through the clearing, and Milyi pressed the meal more tightly against them. Perfect. If they were lucky, the Great One's strength would return.  If they were lucky, the red and black would be weak from his near drowning. 

If Horatch was lucky, Milyi would not balk at killing the boy.  But fortune had been very kind to them so far, and today, he had a bad feeling. When it came to his girl and the red and black, Horatch had a feeling his luck had just run out. 

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Episode Twenty-One

The Wisp guards hovered above the carnage while their leader injected its vile cargo. Failure. Horatch had met the first Great One to walk the surface in his lifetime, and he'd let them destroy it.  If it weren't for the girl, he'd have rushed in and allowed the Wisps to spear him as well. Better that than returning to tell this tale. 

"Horatch," Milyi whispered. She huddled near the vines, darting looks between the tragedy unfolding on the Great One's back and the two, hovering demons looking on. "What do we do?"

"Nothing." He tightened his grip on her arm. "We wait until they go and then get as far away as possible before the egg hatches."

"Egg. You mean she's..."

"Yes. And once the larva is in control..." Maybe they should kill him first. Horatch couldn't do it, couldn't harm a Great One even to save it from that. The very thought froze him like a stone. But the girl might be able to. She had the strength to do it, and no underlying reverence to interfere. "Wait until they're finished. We'll decide then."

"Why don't they attack us?" 

"They don't need to." The buzz from above lowered, worked its way up his toes enough to rattle his joints.  "They want us to see it, and if we survive, to carry the message back to my home."

"Message?"

"That there is no point in waking. The Great Ones will be vulnerable again. History will repeat itself."

"I don't know what any of that means." 

He could tell her, but it meant he'd probably lose her.  If she knew about the Great Ones' history, how it affected her people, would she still follow him to the city? Horatch couldn't guess, and they didn't have time as it turned out. The wisp removed her stinger from the Great One's back. She tilted her heart-shaped head, turned a flat gaze on them before lifting off. 

It is done, scout. Again. Tell your gods to stay where they belong. This is no longer their world. Tell them, or else lose them. 

At least he'd guessed that much right. These Wisps would not harm them. They wanted their threat delivered. It would buy him a little time, if the girl would follow orders. They only had one real course of action left to them, and the Wisps were betting he wouldn't take it. 

They were right about that much. He wouldn't do it. 

The  red wings droned and three black bodies lifted from the clearing. The Great One stood, leaking from the wound, completely paralyzed. It's wide, slow  mind dimmed, became even wider and slower, the thoughts spaced out like Milyi's stars and nearly unreadable. 

He only needed its permission fist, wouldn't let her do the deed without the Great One understanding.

Horatch leapt from the girl's arm. "Get your stick again, Milyi. Be ready." 

He drummed against the earth, fast in the way of his people.  Horatch asked his question and waited for a response that would allow them to end his god. He waited, and part of him prayed it would not come, that he would not be the one T'rant in all of history to willingly oversee a Great One's death. 

The mind he touched was vast, too old and too large to focus on individual moments. This was why the Hands were needed, why the symbiosis facilitated the Great Ones waking. Without a small mind to guide it, the Great One would simply return to a burrow and ponder the universe, the movement of time, and other things too enormous for a T'rant to imagine.  They had grown beyond their world, had forgotten in their evolution, to remember anything as base as survival--mating, feeding, defending themselves. 

These things happened as reflexes, as functions of a body whose mind was occupied elsewhere.

Without a Hand to guide them, they were as vulnerable as a spiderling, as blind as a mole, and as large a target as had ever walked their world. They'd made easy prey for the Wisps before, and once again today. 

Horatch heard his answer, one drawn out syllable that came as subtly as a season. He latched onto it before the sigh was complete. 

"Hurry Milyi. We must strike before the larva hatches."

"Strike?"

"The Great One is paralyzed. He won't be able to feed himself, to hunt or move at all. If we allow that thing to hatch, we give him to the Wisps. They would control him, Milyi. Do you understand that?"

"You want me to kill him." She clutched her weapon, but now she pulled it closer, hugged it to her chest. 

"Yes. Pierce him directly behind the eyes. It will be instantaneous, and nearly painless."

"Nearly painless." She stared at the giant, but didn't  move to obey.

"He is in agreement."

"Can't we save him?"

"If the larva hatches, he will kill us. You must hurry."

She shook her head but moved forward just the same. Horatch drummed his apologies against the vines and mentally urged the girl to hurry. He didn't want to scare her out of action, but the Wisps' larvae hatched swiftly. She paused at the first huge leg, and he saw her take a deep breath. 

"Climb up, Milyi. He can't move, and you'll have a better angle."

She shoved her branch up first, laid it across the wide cephalothorax and then used the second and third leg to swing herself up as well. When she sat aboard, Horatch suffered a pang of regret. That sight, a Hand astride the Great One, had been etched into his daydreams since his second instar. The heroic match, the goal of all T'rants. Reuniting the gods with their Hands. 

And today he would help her destroy one. 

"Right behind the eyes. There's a dent in the skeleton."

"No."  

"Milyi!"

"Wait." She turned to face the abdomen instead, squatted down and examined the wound. "Can it bite me?"

"We don't have time, Milyi." They didn't. Still, a spark of hope flared in him despite all logic. 

Nothing could bring a spider back from this fate. Nothing ever had. If they allowed the parasite to hatch, they'd be handing the Wisps a massive weapon, the means to destroy them all. "You have to..."

She shook her head at him again. Perhaps, in hindsight, he should have told her everything. Now, he could only watch her and wonder. Could it work? 

Could it?

Milyi shook her head, closed her eyes, and stuck her hand into the wound.

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