The Gamble

“What if I fall through?”

She clicked her pincers together three times, like a quick knock at the door. “You doubt me so?” Her voice was teasing, nearly kind. The silken web beneath my feet quivered slightly as her spindly legs stepped around me. “If you fall through,” her eyes bore into me, prickling my skin, “you’ll die.”

I swallowed. Dew stuck to the threads ahead, bouncing lightly with the breeze. The web itself connected across three trees, hundreds of feet above the forest floor. All I could see of the ground was a light blanket of mist, occasional swirls signaling movement below. Silver light from the moon glistened off of it, reflecting back at me. No birds chirped. No voices spoke. The only sound I could discern was the constant scream of cicadas, so never-ending that the hum became part of silence itself.

“You promised it was safe,” I said. I meant to sound confrontational, demanding even. But my words were flat paired with my exhausted shaking of my knees. My gaze locked onto the nearest connecting branch.

Her pincers snapped harshly. “I never said you would fall.” She crawled ahead, not once turning back. “I’ve brought you this far, haven’t I?”

And where was that, exactly? The breeze hastened, dragging loose wisps of my hair across the scabs on my cheeks. She had brought me farther than I could have managed on my own, true enough. That meant nothing when it came to trust– trust is a commodity bought only by the deluded.

I took a single step. The middle of the web hung ahead of me.

“You really best move,” she called. “Who’s to say when they’ll realize you’ve gone?”

Another step forward. “May I ask a question?”

She laughed, followed by two sharp clicks. “My permission hasn’t stopped you before. Ask whatever you’d like, and I will answer if I please.”

I continued walking and spoke, “You seem… unbothered by this. Have you helped others?” Subconsciously, my hands left my sides, hovering slightly away from my body as I balanced across the thread. While it did stutter with every movement, it was stronger than I’d have ever expected. Each strand was really hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny hair-like fibers that wrapped around one another to make one facet of a larger whole.

The spider turned to me. It was odd to watch, since she didn’t quite have a neck. Instead, she spun and swiveled her whole body in place with all eight legs shifting in sync. “That depends on what you mean by ‘helped.’”

My bare feet stuck slightly to the web each time I picked them up. The thick layer of calluses on my soles kept me from feeling the texture, but the resistance pulled every step. “Well, I’m not in King Bragen’s court. That seems like helping.”

She rolled all eight eyes. “Bragen is a fool.” She continued speaking while turning back to walking, “He allows too many Changelings to do as they please, collecting humans like gnats.” A scoff. It was then I noticed the tiny lumps here and there at the junctures of her web. “He’s forgotten how… problematic a herd of humans can be once they’ve become frightened enough.”

“How many others are there? Like me?”

“In his court? Dozens, hundreds likely that I’ve never seen.” She tapped along towards the other side, the tips of her legs barely moving the web at all. “You are not a rare breed. But it does me no good for Bragen and his ilk to succumb to their gluttony. Others exist in these woods, victim to his choices but absent from his consideration.” Her pincers clicked continuously as she spoke now. “You’re one of the older ones I’ve seen. His habit has been tolerated far too long.” She paused again, maneuvering to face me.

Perhaps she was letting me catch up, since now she was quite a ways away. She stood in the middle, framed by the glistening beauty of her creation. Her black abdomen soaked up the moonlight. If my eyes were stronger, I might think she were purple, or a truly royal, deep blue. But all of it blurred into a hazy, dazzling smear.

“How old are you?” she asked. “Do you know?”

“Does it matter?” The stained burlap shift itched my thighs horribly, and I couldn’t help but miss the nudity of court.

“Your naivety is flagrant, thinking it doesn’t.”

I stopped mid-step, balancing on my left foot. The jab hit its mark. My pride was goaded. “I never say it didn’t. I only asked if it did.”

She stood silently, unmoving. The cicadas themselves slowly faded to a whisper. “You must think me rude,” kind, gentle, reassuring. “I never asked for your name.”

I eyed the sharp curve of her legs, all of the joints and their connections. Everything about her was so delicate, separate. With a single pull, pieces of her body– abdomen and all– could be yanked apart. “And I never asked for yours. May I have it?”

Her legs extended briefly, making her taller, before she settled herself flat against the web. “No.” The word dragged out. “But you may call me Vayron.”

I nodded my head politely, still balanced. “You may call me Moss.”

My age mattered a great deal. And I knew it, just as well as Vayron. Any human capable of surviving as long as I had in the Fairy King’s court mattered, for better or for worse. Each year would only shift me closer from liability to threat.

“Well, Moss,” Vayron’s body shivered from front to back as she seemed to settle further, “Do you know how old you are?”

I set my right foot down gently. Dew droplets bombed to the forest floor at the mild impact. “I do not know.”

Fairies cannot lie. Fae creatures cannot lie. But I was not fae. The sun, the trees, the fabric of time– they are not bound by the laws of words and can be as deceptive as they’d like.

“Hm,” Vayron hummed. “Shame.”

I continued moving, getting closer and closer to her opalescent frame. Her calmness unsettled me. Everything about her demeanor spoke true to her nature: a lure, an assassin, a spinner of truth. When she spoke to me through the bars of the kitchen window, though, there was no question I would follow. When she grew from the size of a wasp to that of a horse, I did not bat an eye. When she told me to climb, I climbed. And now, telling me to walk across her web, I walked.

She unsettled me, but not more than the two-legged beasts haunting the world behind me.

I met her in the middle, the crossroads of all fibers, strands, and threads. She didn’t shift, but I could track each of her eyes following my every move. Her pincers twitched, one inch closer, then an inch apart. Never meeting in the middle.

“Lead the way,” I said, unblinking.

Her pincers spread wide as she angled herself to face below. “Down.”

The familiar bitterness of betrayal stuck to my teeth. I dragged my tongue against them, disappointed in myself for even tasting it. “You said I wouldn’t fall.”

“You won’t.” She sounded so pleased with herself, so smug, that I wanted to reach for her eyes and pop them one by one, as I’d seen others do over and over again. “You’ll jump.”

I expected her to lunge, to attack, to somehow force my hand. But nothing.

“If I fall, I’ll die. Is there a different result if I jump?”

Vayron remained silent. It infuriated me.

The cicadas’ scream disappeared entirely. True silence, total and complete, meant death. It meant the jaws of the world were wide open, poised to swallow you whole, and if the others were quiet enough, they would not get dragged down with you.

“Will you follow me?” I asked, fighting the clenched tension of my jaw.

Silence. Her body looked half its size, balled up the way she was.

I did my best to think of all the possibilities. She could attack, I could attack, I could jump, she could…

“What’s below?” Her lack of answers did nothing to discourage me. Really, they just made me more fervent for the right question. I could see what was across. Trees. Branches. More networks of climbing and slinking through shadows. Below? I hadn’t thought to consider what lay in that direction, besides a very sudden death.

Vayron’s pincers remained wide. Poised.

“How many humans have you killed?”

How many others came before me, lured from one long death to another, shorter misery? There were no human-sized trappings in this web. Only the smaller marks of insects, perhaps Hobgoblins and the occasional Sprite. Were their bodies all below, stacked upon one another in a broken, dismembered heap?

“I have never killed a human,” she finally said. She took a deep breath, and the tiny hairs on her legs, once flush to the skin, fluttered outward. “And I don’t believe I’m about to.”

And with that, she lunged.

I jumped.