I thought about the way the drugs would fly through my veins at supersonic speed, electrifying my body with a delicious thrill that was like no other.
‘Shh,’ Hester hissed, nudging her brother. ‘Don’t say things like that. You could have died, Otis. The spider might give us compensation for our suffering.’
‘Oursuffering, Hes?’ he asked.
Hugo’s hand increased its pressure on mine but I was lost in my imagination as I remembered how spider’s silk would rub up against my magical powers and … and … and…
‘Did you say fiend?’ the spider asked. ‘Those who have been corrupted by magic of the blood?’
‘I’m afraid so,’ Hugo replied.
The spider hissed. ‘That is unfortunate. I thought they had all been destroyed generations ago, but I suppose that evil always finds a way.’
I was brought back to reality with a bump. I shook my head free of my traitorous, self-defeating thoughts and gazed at him. ‘Why would you think that?’ A sudden new tension filled my body. ‘Why would you think they’d all been destroyed?’
‘I often heard whispers from the villagers who lived near this place. When I was small, I often ventured into their dwellings and watched them. I heard this whisper from several of them a long time ago. But it was many, many moons ago,’ he admitted.
The spider’s eyes swivelled around, watching each of us in turn as he expressed his confusion. ‘I heard that one of your kind possessed the means to rid this world of every fiend, so I assumed they had already done so. Why would you not destroy them if you had the means to do so? Fiends are indeed devilish and dangerous. They should not exist.’
All four of us were staring at him in shock.
‘What means?’ I asked, my voice little more than a desperate whisper. ‘What means would rid us of every fiend?’
‘I do not know,’ he answered. ‘I did not hear the details.’
‘How long ago was this?’ Hugo demanded.
‘As I said,’ the spider told us. ‘Many moons.’
Hugo persisted, anxiety colouring his words. ‘How many moons exactly?’
‘I do not keep track of time in the way that you do,’ the spider said mildly. ‘Your lives are fleeting but I have been in these woods for a very long time. And it has been a very long time since I have been to the village below.’
He lifted his enormous head and seemed to gaze off into the distance. A ball of frustration tightened my stomach, but then he spoke again. ‘I heard of it after these woods were first coppiced but before themagna pestilienciatook hold.’
Hester buzzed in my ear, ‘Huh? Is he still speaking English?’
I checked Hugo’s expression; neither the brownies nor I understood the spider’s words but, from the look on Hugo’s face, he did.
‘You said one of our kind possessed these … means,’ Otis said. ‘Do you mean a brownie? Or an elf?’
The spider tapped one of his legs, then another. ‘I mean one of you,’ he said. ‘All of you. Your kind with two legs.’
That didn’t exactly narrow it down. It felt like we were being handed the keys to the kingdom – but before we could grasp them, they were falling into a bottomless drain in front of our eyes. ‘Can you remember anything else about these whispers?’ I asked.
‘I cannot. It was a very long time ago.’ The spider regarded us solemnly. ‘I sense a change in you,’ he said. ‘In all of you.’ He wasn’t wrong. A new sense of possibility seemed to cling to us all even though my frustration at the lack of hard facts and answers was almost painful.
‘We should go,’ I told him. ‘Thank you so very much for your help.’
He nodded. ‘You are welcome.’ He turned his glittering eyes on Otis. ‘My sincere apologies again, Tiny Two Legs. My children will help you find your way out of these woods.’
‘Thank you,’ Otis whispered. ‘I am glad we met you.’
I was too. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.
The spider chittered for a final time, as if he were chuckling. ‘My kind have no need for such labels,’ he said.
He turned away and bent towards the ragged gap in his web that I’d created with Gladys’s help. He clearly had some work todo in order to repair it. ‘Fare thee well,’ he told us and then, in a quieter voice, ‘If you truly are locked in battle with a fiend, you have my deepest condolences.’
