The Widow's Story

Once upon a time I made the most wondrous White Webs, oh osprey. They gleamed in the sunlight and in them I drank the finest life juices. I was the colour of no colour, oh osprey, I was pure. This colour of your feather, here, the black widow rested on a white tip. I loved my husband, though he was foolish and fat. We had many children. I was happy, oh osprey. I was happy.

Once upon a time, oh osprey, we spiders lived together. We made webs together and joked together and ate together. My community lived in a glade in a glen far to the east of here. There was a mountain to the south and hills to the north. The mountain was peaked with the colour of no colour, oh osprey. I have seen many since, ones larger and grander, yet that mountain I loved. The winds that came through the glen were soft and regular, and food was abundant. I was beautiful, oh osprey, I was known as the Queen.

She resumed her work and her story after a long moment's pause, threading layer after layer. But a few of my fellows grew jealous of me, oh opsrey. The Golden Orb-Weaver wanted to have the highest webs, the largest, the most dazzling. She plotted with the most dangerous and cruelest of us, who was called the Wolf or the Webless. He is sly and had many burrows in our land. His eyes are sharp, like yours, oh osprey, and every day he saw me high above him as he hunted.

She paused again, a thread hanging limp from my plumage. Have you ever spied the nest of a golden eagle, oh osprey, and coveted its shelter, the young it holds?

Yes.

Have you ever driven another eagle from her nest?

Yes.

So you know how it is, then. She busied herself once more. I do not resent the Webless or the Weaver, not anymore; I no longer hate them. I now understand that the Wolf is very lonely, and lonely beings do regrettable things. The Orb-Weaver is obsessed with beauty and therefore stupid. I pity them both.

The Webless one day spoke to my husband. He told him of a kill he'd made and dragged into his burrow. It is up the mountain, he said, hidden in a secret spot behind a copse, teeming with life. They would feast and then later they would hunt together. My husband agreed and the Wolf leaped away and waited for my husband, leaped away and waited, again and again. By the time they got to the copse, for there was a copse that hid a healthy spot to hunt, my poor husband was exhausted. Come, called the Wolf, soon we shall feast. He led him into his lair, where in the middle lay a very fat horsefly. Eat! he cried, and as my husband gorged his silly self the Wolf pounced upon him and sank his fangs into my husband's back and the Golden Orb-Weaver came out from where she had been hiding and wrapped him in a golden tomb. The Wolf then hitched him onto his back and carried him down the mountain to our glade. He called all of the other spiders to him. 'Here I have a present for our queen!' he called, and they all agreed it was a very fine capture, large and rich in smell. They dragged it up one of the tall pines from which hung my web and gifted it to me. A sac of gold, they said, a tribute fit for a Queen.

The Widow left her spinning and retreated into the nape of my neck. She curled up there and sat silent for a long time.

My husband was delicious, oh osprey. His was the sweetest life juice I have ever tasted. From that day on I was cursed with the hunger for my mate's blood. When I was done I asked who had prepared such a feast for me, and the others told me it was the Webless and the Weaver. How extraordinary, I thought, for those two I thought had little to offer. I was proud and I had eaten of my husband and so taken his foolishness into me. I asked the others to bring those two to me, so I could thank them. They were slow in coming, perhaps fearing a trap themselves. I sat in my center for two days, content, as the winds tore holes in my web. I did not wonder after my husband. Finally, the two tricksters came to me. They were very nervous, the Weaver winding along my web delicately, the Webless bumbling and getting stuck. I thanked them and then I begged for more. They agreed, slowly, and the next day brought me a fresh golden gift.

It was my son. I know all of this because the Webless told me, one night, as we sheltered from a storm together long after I he had fed me half my children. He had watched me, with malevalent and pointless delight, grow fat and lazy on the blood of my kin. My White Web fell into disrepair, and one day it broke altogether and I tumbled from it and lay in the leaves, too engorged to move or make another. No more presents came for me. I watched the Orb-Weaver thread a lustrous Golden Web where mine had been. I dragged my weight to a burrow of the Wolf and he, knowing I was too weak to fight, told me what he had done. Remorse did not drive him to explanation; he was a desultory being. I spent a year in grief for my husband and my children, living underground in old gopher holes and feeding off whatever I could chew. At some point I began weaving again, and made webs thick and labyrinthine. I caught ants and tunneling bugs; I learned how to live a new life, and I grew terrible and ferocious. I had entered into the dark and so darkness I became. When I reemerged into the daylight after many winters had passed, the Wolf did not recognize me. I pretended to be a stranger, and we spoke at length and I realized something else had shifted. He spoke to me very differently; I was alluring to him in my blackness, where before I was repugnant in my purity. I decided to use this as a weapon. It was only the second time he had told the story, again to me. I asked him where the children were of this Queen. Had they known? Yes, he replied, they had known, and they had fled his venom and none had cared to warn the mother. He also admitted to finding a taste for their blood and continuing to capture them for his own meals. I thanked him, and then spoke with other spiders, and told them the story. They came together and exiled the Wolf. Ever since, he has never had a home for long, and is now also known as the Wanderer.

That was the last day the spiders worked together; the story had seeped into their nerves. They had been there and watched their Queen be dethroned; they no longer trusted one another. They fought and squabbled and broke apart. The Orb-Weaver was queen of nothing – but I was not done with her.

I had found one of my lost children, who had heard the Wolf was gone and had returned to the glade. He was grown now, and much resembled his father. I pinned him, told him who I was and what had become of me, and as he shrieked I raped him and then I ate him. I grew pregnant with many children and on a moonless night, just before dawn, spewed my spiderlings into a drewdrop. As they kicked and drowned I drank the drop. That evening I gave birth a second time to a cluster of small spiders I called Dewdrops. I nursed them and fed them and told them stories of revenge; I made them sly like the Wolf and the Weaver. When they were old enough, I led them in the night up the tall pine the Wolf had dragged my husband up so long before. We found the tendril of the Golden Web and at dawn they invaded and the Weaver fled. Ever since, Drewdrop spiders have invaded the webs of Golden Orb-Weavers.

I was not finished, oh osprey, I was still filled with hate. I searched the hills for each of my children of the colour of no colour. The males I seduced and I gave birth to many new children, colourless and black. The ones the colour of no colour I ate. All colourless spiders I ate, until there were none left, only my black self and my black children. Some of the kinblood I consumed spread from my stomach through my organs and to my skin. There it marked me. There was a pause as she considered herself. I think it looks like a web with four attachments and one struggler in the middle. She emerged from my feathers and displayed her abdomen. What do you think, oh osprey?

It looks like an angel, I answered, without thinking.

What is an angel?

I don't know. And I didn't; I was as ignorant as she.

Anyway, my venom had grown strong. I taught my children to build thick webs in corners; I had lost the craft and taste for glittering White Webs. We multiplied across the lands and were feared.

That is how I became known as the Widow, oh osprey, and now I live with you here by the sea.