by Liam Hogan
Spider spun.
Summer had arrived early, everyone agreed.
Spider spun, and spun.
Already unseasonably warm, if this kept up it was going to be a real scorcher.
Spider spun and spun and spun…
Even Witch, for whom cobwebs were interior decoration, tired of getting her tall hats and equally tall hair tangled in doorways and along corridors.
“Take it easy, Spider,” she suggested and then ordered her eight-legged familiar. “It’s too warm to work so hard!”
Spider kept spinning. Spider might have explained why, if Spider had been sure anyone would listen. Properly listen, not just nod listlessly and flutter hands in front of flushed faces while daydreaming of sparkling waterfalls and sea breezes. Pay attention even after Spider pointed out the blazingly obvious: how hot and dry it was. Listen as Spider urgently warned what would inevitably follow. But who listens to a spider, even a magically oversized and long-lived one?
The skies remained cloudless, the winds refused to blow, and every morning the sun rose bright and early, and every evening the sun, having pummelled the senses all day long, set later and later, and the temperature crept up another notch.
Spider spun even more furiously. There were rooms in Witch’s surprisingly spacious cottage–bigger on the inside than the outside, unnaturally–that you could hardly enter, so crammed were they with cobwebs.
Witch might have made good one of her threats, had she not been languidly reclined on the porch, dressed in her thinnest midnight gossamer, sipping never-ending iced teas and watching the rattan fan sweep slowly back and forth, barely stirring the torrid air. It was so hot she even slept out there, the cottage an oven, a furnace, validating her choice, yet again, not to build her home out of candy, else she might have come to a very sticky end.
“Perhaps this heat is man-made?” mused the man who had turned up to enforce the hosepipe ban. “Or magical?”
“Fan faster,” was Witch’s only reply, idly wishing some other busybody jobsworth might turn up before too long, so that she could enchant them as well. More fans might keep her, if not cool, then at least merely tepid. Whether a weather witch, and which weather witch might be involved in these sweltering conditions was far too tricky a thing to think about. Her wickedly sharp brain was a puddle, oozing slowly out of her ears.
And still Spider spun, until the entire cottage was cocooned in a veil of ghostly white. Witch hoped it might reflect some of the incessant sun, but if it did, it was hard to tell. All around the grass was brown, the trees were shedding leaves and small branches, and everything was just so very bright.
Just when it seemed it couldn’t possibly get any hotter, the heavy air became even more oppressive, more unbearable. Witches might not sweat, but by then Witch was glowing buckets. She wondered if it was too late to head into the mountains, where the last of the winter’s snow clung to shadowy ravines. Or would have, if desperate farmers hadn’t already tried to cart it down, most of it melting away long before it got anywhere near their desiccated crops.
The sultry, stifling afternoon turned dark, but not with clouds. With insects. With flying ants. Thousand upon thousands–millions–billions of them. Swarming out of the cracked ground like a black tide, quickly taking to the muggy air, somehow all triggered to emerge at the exact same time. A multitude of queens and their eager consorts setting off to make new nests, to invade new territories, to conquer the whole world.
Only Witch’s cottage, with webs over every window, every door, in every corner of every room (even the octagonal one where Witch practised her most impressive spells, which had a lot of corners) was protected. Webs that trapped so many ants, and vibrated so often, that Spider gave up responding to them, and just methodically worked through each web she’d spun, clearing them of their struggling harvest, before starting over again from the beginning.
As the blotted-out sun set, the storm that had been threatening for so long finally broke, thunderous flashes, flashing thunder, rain hot and heavy and sudden, the parched soil hungrily soaking it up, the run-off thick with winged insects.
The torrent drummed down, everywhere from the summer palace to the lowliest hut, and everyone was kept busy picking ants out of their food, their drink, out of their hair and clothes and off their chairs and beds and tables… But not Witch. She slept through the storm, the first proper night’s sleep for over a month. By morning, it was like the ants had never existed. Even the thick tapestry of webs had mostly vanished, as if they too had been washed away by the rain.
Witch pulled a black shawl from the wardrobe. It wasn’t exactly cold, but such a relief not to loathe the clinging touch of any fabric, even the most delicate.
Spider hung, exhausted but happy, smiling down at her stuffed larder. Flying ants, wrapped in spider silk, neatly stacked. Ants enough to last the rest of the summer and beyond, to last through a winter that was, at this moment, nothing but the idea of a winter, and all the way into next spring.
And if that wasn’t enough to give a spider a warm fuzzy feeling, Spider didn’t know what would.
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About the Author
Liam Hogan is an award-winning speculative short story writer, with stories in Best of British Science Fiction and in Best of British Fantasy (NewCon Press). He volunteers at the creative writing charities Ministry of Stories, and Spark Young Writers. He does not have a dog. Details http://