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“Did Kostya do that to you? Did he s?”

“How funny you are! No, of course he didn’t I am a recluse spider It is an apt name, and indicates the poisons of s did I not ask them to…”

THE

DRESSMAKER’S

TALE

ANOTHER CREATURE’S TALE IS LIKE A WEB: IT spirals in and out again, and if you are not careful, you may become stuck, while the teller weaves on

Did I become stuck in Kostya’s tale, or did he becoin withthe strand ill snare him

The first thing I relass with a few dozen others as brown and ss, perhaps not One cannot really sht have been brothers and sisters, we easily ht have not Who can say? But what I saw fro table with a tall cup standing on it, holding up a stack of books, a cup of horn, all twisted red and black and yellohite

Each day he would scoop so in rose and snake scale and whatever else he could think of He would pour thisand considering each concoction Now, even as an infant I was a clever thing, as spiders must be to find their web rafters and their suppers so soon after their mother crawls back into the dark We are born with the knowledge of poison beating hard in us—we taste it; of course we taste it Do you not know the taste of your own mouth, your own spit, your own blood? So do we, and knoell He could have been at no other trick than poisoning, with so s brush

ing weakly at the rim

I have no grudge against poisoners, being one reatly desire to become a tool of his trade And so, when he calass, I was ready, and scurried up his reaching ars in hi web strand, before he could even cry When I aive, and this too I gave gladly to hi shriek of triumph, and two red points of blood on his cheek

I avines—I have since been very careful, in case allin their skin Out snarled holly and thorn apple and ivy, reaching to find and strangle and save But I am too small for such blunt limbs, and they never touched me One lashed out, a blackthorn branch, and shattered the cup of horn, which had held so many spider broths—and a terrible, sorrowful sound filled the roo that had once dreahter than love I shuddered as it died away in the room’s stale air But I cannot really mourn a cup

Away fro corpse I and so been captive since as near to birth as makes the difference of one strand of thread to another, I was not properly socialized, and unsure of what a spider ought to do with her time

I asked the crickets in the Glassblowing District, and they said:

“We suspect it is proper and right that a spider should rub her legs together and ht air and draws reen and black and handsome!”