by C. Gockel
He’s almost steady when he hears a hiss and a squeak, and then all of a sudden, Mr. Squeakers pops out of nowhere and lands on his chest.
He stares at the mouse, the mouse stares at him, nose twitching.
“I’m coming!” says Amy. Mr. Squeakers, turns around quickly, stands up on four back legs, lifts his four front legs, and starts hissing.
About six feet away, Amy draws to a stop, her eyes wide. “Bohdi, are you okay?”
Gritting his teeth, he tries to move. “Upper body…can’t move.”
“Oh my God! Your spleen, did it rupture?” Amy says.
Lifting his head, Bohdi blinks at her. And then he understands. “No, my spleen is fine,” he says, his skin heating.
“But my grandmother said your spleen—”
“Is perfectly fine!” Bohdi snaps. Dropping his head back he grumbles. “That’s just a bogus thing Steve made up to get me out on medical discharge.” Just when the Marines was getting interesting, too. Bohdi liked the Marine Corps Explosive Ordnance Disposal program. Of course, someone was bound to find out he wasn’t really a citizen and kick him back to the infantry anyway, so…
Amy takes a step forward, and Mr. Squeakers gives another hiss. Amy pulls her foot back. She looks up briefly, bites her bottom lip, and then she looks down at Bohdi again.
Her voice weirdly steady and about a half octave lower than normal, she says, “Can you move your legs?” She’s speaking like a doctor, he realizes. Cold and professional. It’s kind of sexy.
Bohdi wiggles his feet, then his legs, and finally his butt. He smiles. “Yep, It’s just my upper body.” Walking parallel to his body, she says, “I think I know what’s happening.” Stopping, she turns, and walks slowly toward his feet. Mr. Squeakers sinks down to all eight legs and gives a cheep.
“I don’t have my first-aid kit, so I can’t cut you out of your coat,” Amy says.
“Cut me out of my…” Bohdi frowns and then he wiggles his shoulder blades inside his winter coat. They move, it’s just his coat that is stuck. “Hey, yeah,” he says with a grin. “You’re right.” Lifting his chin, he looks down at the zipper. “Can’t you just open it?”
“We don’t have time for you to struggle!” Amy snips.
Bohdi blinks at her tone, wiggles his hips, and feels a familiar lump. “My knife is in my pocket if—”
Amy doesn’t so much lean down as dive. Mr. Squeakers hops off Bohdi as she does. Hands on either side of him, she crawls up his body. “Which pocket?”
Is that a note of frantic worry in her voice? Bohdi looks up in the sky. It’s a beautiful crystalline blue, empty of everything but a few distant clouds. “Left,” he says.
Amy sits back on his knees and puts a hand in his pocket. Bohdi feels his skin heating in an actually rather nice way, blood rushing to a place that he’d rather it didn’t go.
She pulls his knife out of his pocket, and quickly inspects it. Just to take the edge off his discomfort, he gives her a grin. “Why, yes, that was a knife in my pocket. I’m not just happy to see you.” She glares at him as she pries it open.
Bohdi lifts his eye to the sky again. “I don’t see any dragons.” Which is kind of odd. They’re in an open place and kind of helpless. Why aren’t there dragons?
“Archaeopteryx,” Amy mutters, not looking at him. “Bracing myself on your right shoulder.” She crawls forward, until her hips are just above his, and Bohdi tries to shrink back into the canopy as much as he can.
As she puts a hand on Bohdi’s shoulder, he can’t help but notice she’s trembling. So he’s not the only person who’s discomfited by this. That would be flattering, but she’s holding a really sharp knife.
Levity is obviously required. “Braving a belligerent thunder god, going to other realms, and fighting dragons. This is farther than I’ve ever gone to be tied up by a cute girl.” Bohdi’s actually only gotten tied up once, and it was without any effort on his part. He can’t remember if the sex was good… He was pretty drunk at the time.
Amy doesn’t reply. She just mutters something about archaeopteryx and lifts her bracing hand so she’s hovering over him. She grabs the wrist of his coat and puts the knife to it. She’s still trembling.
“I don’t bite,” he says. He smiles and bats his eyelashes. “Unless you ask nicely.”
Slicing through the coat, Amy snarls. “I am not worried about you biting me!”
“Just trying to make you laugh,” Bohdi snips.
“Don’t!” says Amy.
“A sense of humor makes everything better,” Bohdi says, as she cuts the fabric down to his chest, and then down to his hips.
Sitting back on his knees again, she surveys her handiwork. “Is that enough for you to get out without touching the web around your upper body with your hands?”
Bohdi shifts, keeping his upper body on his winter coat, and easily slides his right arm free. “Yep,” he says with a grin, raising himself to a sitting position. Even though he’s only wearing a sport coat, and it’s morning, it’s warm enough.
“Good, let’s go now,” says Amy.
“Shouldn’t we—” talk about this.
“No,” says Amy, as she dips her chin and slowly shakes her head from side to side.
“What about—” Thor.
Amy interrupts. “No.”
Shrugging, Bohdi twists back to his coat, and says, “I need my wallet.”
“You really don’t,” says Amy, sounding distinctly agitated. Mr. Squeakers gives an uneasy peep.
He really does need his wallet; it has the picture of his parents in it, and even if he has copies, they’re only copies. Jaw tightening, he sits back up, and smirks. “But it’s where I keep my condoms.”
Hopping up, Amy glares down at him. “You plan on having sex with giant spiders?”
Bohdi’s jaw drops at the randomness of her reply. “What?”
Amy looks at her mouse, “Squeakers, let’s go!”
With a cheep, Mr. Squeakers hops along until he’s in front of her, then turns around and looks at Bohdi.
As Bohdi scrambles to his feet, Amy says, “Walk only on the web where Mr. Squeakers hops, or you’ll wind up getting stuck again.”
“Uh,” says Bohdi, standing up and looking around. For the first time he gets a good look at the “canopy” they’re on.
Marion and Steve have inflicted enough American football on him that he thinks he can safely judge the “canopy” to be about two football fields wide in every direction. In one spot, it wraps around one of the weird columny things. Here and there, it rises in sharp peaks a few meters high, and then falls into shallow valleys. White and very bright, the canopy looks like pictures he’s seen of the arctic. Occasionally, irregular shapes like giant cocoons pock the surface.
He squints. About half a football field away, long silvery sticks are popping out of the canopy floor, followed by a round sort of ball with six red lights set into it, and then a body and more sticks and…
Amy’s rather weird suggestion that he have sex with large arachnids and her continued reference to webbing suddenly clicks in his brain. “Giant spiders!” Bohdi shouts.
Amy, now a few paces in front of him, turns back and grimaces. “I knew they would come back! Hurry, this way!”
Bohdi scrambles after her. It doesn’t take long to catch up. Despite having eight legs, Mr. Squeakers isn’t particularly fast; they’re barely at a jog. Bohdi turns to look behind and instantly regrets it. The giant spider is zig-zagging across the canopy, but even with its uneven path, it’s rapidly gaining on them. His eyes go wide as two more spiders pop their heads out of the canopy a little further back from the first.
“Do you think we should maybe carry Squeakers?” Bohdi says—and promptly runs into Amy.
“Oompf!” she grunts. “I don’t know how to tell the difference between sticky and non-sticky web.” She says. “Squeakers?”
The little creature darts to the left toward one of the oblong shapes. Amy and Bohdi follow.
<
br /> “Where’s Thor?” he says.
“More archaeopteryx came,” Amy says, a little breathlessly. “They went…” She gestures westward with an arm. “That way.”
Bohdi looks back again. “Um…the spiders are getting closer!” The creatures are almost at their landing point.
“I know! I know!” says Amy.
Bohdi turns to see the oblong cocoon shapes they’re rapidly approaching. They’re probably twice his height, and six times his height in length.
Most of the web on it is so smooth it’s like fabric. As they close in, he realizes it’s slightly transparent. Bohdi stops in his tracks.
“Uh-oh,” Amy pants, taking the words right out of Bohdi’s mouth.
Under the layers of silk, he can just barely make out the shiny wings and long lizard-like neck, head, and jaws of one of the dragon creatures. He swallows. It’s not a cocoon…it’s a coffin.
“So that’s why…the archaeopteryxes…left us alone,” Amy whispers, between pants.
“Do you think being eaten by a spider is less painful than being eaten by an Arche…dragon?” Bohdi says. He’s not even winded. If he survives, he’s thanking Steve for all those boring workout sessions.
“Probably,” pants Amy. “Some creatures that suck blood have an analgesic in their saliva. In a dragon’s stomach, you’d be burned by acid before you asphyxiated.”
Bohdi’s lips purse, and then Amy stops so suddenly, Bohdi bumps into her again. Eyes wide and worried, she says, “Or was that a rhetorical question?”
“Rhetorical.” Giving her a gentle shove, he says, “Still, that was fascinating.”
Mr. Squeakers skitters to the top of the cocoon-tomb-spider-burrito-thing. Amy might be muttering something as she tries to follow him. Bohdi can’t really pay attention…all of his attention is on the new giant spiders poking their long spindly legs and glowing eyes out of the canopy up at nine and three o’clock. He turns his head around to see the ones directly behind them. They’re only about ten meters away, so close he can hear them chittering. “Oh…” fuck.
The expletive dies on his tongue. All but one of the spiders turn around and tilt their butts at them. “Are they going to shit on us?” Bohdi mutters.
Just pulling herself up the cocoon, Amy turns her head. Eyes going wide, she screams. “Hurry! Over the bump!”
Bohdi doesn’t have a chance to ask why. A bolt of spider silk as wide as his arm thunks against the cocoon beside him.
“Climb!” says Amy.
Bohdi jumps up beside her, hoping he doesn’t land in anything sticky. He doesn’t. But most of the web is too fine to find a toe hold; he has to support himself by holding onto thick bands of silk that run vertically along the cocoon at regular intervals. He blinks…which is a lot easier than he expected. Wow. Steve’s insistence that he work out is actually proving useful. He’ll have to buy the guy a drink when—
Thunk.
Something sticky splatters Bohdi on the cheek. His eyes dart to the side. A large bolt of silk has just hit the cocoon an inch from Bohdi’s elbow. With a grunt, he frantically pulls himself up and swings a leg over the top of the dragon’s silk tomb.
Several bolts of silk hit the cocoon, Mr. Squeakers starts squeaking frantically somewhere near Bohdi’s head, and Amy gives a cry from below. Bohdi looks down to see her only half way up. Her forearms are trembling, a bolt of spider silk attached to the back of her jeans. He hears himself curse. His heart pounds in his ears. Grabbing hold of a thick strand of silk, he lowers himself upside down. His eyes light on his knife in Amy’s back pocket. “Hold on!” he hears himself say. More silken bolts land on either side of him, and one lands on his back with such force it knocks the wind out of him. In an odd, sort of half-conscious way, it registers that he isn’t stopping even though he’s close to petrified, his fingers feel stiff and cold even though the day is relatively warm.
Amy nods, just barely, her whole body shaking. Bohdi grabs the knife out of her back pocket. He blinks. The silk bolt has hit her precisely on the other rear pocket. With a flick of the wrist, he cuts the pocket away and then pulls her up as much as he can, the bolt of spider silk attached to his sport coat keeping him from completely retreating.
He hears Amy beside him, panting as she throws a leg up over the top of the cocoon. “You’re stuck!” she says.
Frantically trying to wiggle himself out of his sports coat, Bohdi can only nod. A loud chittering catches his attention. He glances toward the sound. The spiders that had been shooting bolts are turning toward him. Closing his eyes he wiggles more frantically. “Run!” he shouts to Amy.
She slips down the side, finally deciding to pay attention to him. It doesn’t feel as good as he thought it would.
And then he hears her yell, “Hold on! I’m pulling you!” He feels pressure around his knees and he looks up to see spiders charging through horizontal beams of silk. Each has a body the size of a grizzly bear with limbs as long as boa constrictors. They’re so close, he can see their carapaces are shiny and slightly reflective. Each spider has six crimson eyes…and they have eyelids. He watches in sick fascination as they blink one eyelid at a time. Below their eyes are mandible things that remind him of the sharp prongs of an earwig. The mandibles click together rapidly as the spiders chatter. One of the spiders darts forward.
Bohdi shrinks as far as he can into his coat, and then Amy gives a mighty yank on his legs. His jacket goes flying off, he feels a cool rush of air, and he goes slipping backward. He lands on top of Amy, in a tangle of limbs.
“Thanks,” he mutters.
He hears Amy gulp. “Don’t thank me yet,” she whispers.
He lifts his head. Coming straight toward them are six more spiders, a few turning, obviously preparing to aim their own silken bonds.
Above his head, he hears chittering. Looking up, he sees the eighteen eyes of their original three pursuers.
“There’s a hole in the canopy,” Amy whispers.
Bohdi’s eyes shift downward. Just a meter in front of them are several layers of canopy billowing in the breeze. Ripped by the dragon in its death struggles, maybe? The layers’ flutters reveal a hole, just barely big enough for a human to fit though.
“Mr. Squeakers, can we go that way?”
The eight-legged mouse hops forward into the hole and cheeps.
“Down the rabbit hole?” Amy says.
Whistling sounds in his ears. In the periphery of his vision, Bohdi sees a bolt of silk shooting at his head.
Without a word, he and Amy dive toward the hole as silken strands streak past where their heads had been just moments before.
Amy hesitates. Bohdi doesn’t. Grabbing the edge of the gaping hole, Bohdi somersaults through without even looking. His feet connect with something solid and then slip apart. Still holding on to the webbing above his head, he looks down and blinks. He’s surrounded on all sides by spider silk of different weights and textures. A braided, cylindrical beam of silk, broad as a tree trunk, is beneath him. He lowers himself down until he’s straddling it. Amy looks through the hole above him, still sitting on what he now realizes is the roof of a giant spider nest.
Bohdi hears whistling from outside. Grabbing Amy by the arms, he pulls her down. Silken strands crisscross in the sky where her body had been. She lands in a heap right between his legs, and he wraps his arms around her before she teeters off the beam they sit on. Above them, silken strands pelt the loose fraying pieces of silk they escaped through, sealing the exit through the roof.
Looking up, Amy whispers “Did they just trap us?” Her chest is heaving, and Bohdi swears he can hear her heart pounding.
Maybe it’s his heart. “Uhm…”
“It’s not over until it’s over,” Amy whispers—or maybe chants. Bohdi can feel her body shivering even through the thick winter coat she’s still wearing.
“We have to think,” he murmurs. Bohdi was never the strongest in Boot Camp, or the fastest, or the most experienced with guns when he arrived.
Whenever he was assigned a challenge, the way he always succeeded was by using his brain.
He quickly surveys their surroundings. The light filtering through the roof above is actually quite bright and sparkles and glints in the web. It reminds Bohdi a little of sunlight underwater…or the world after an ice storm. Above, the web had been like a sheet, but here the thinnest strands of net are as thick as sapling trunks. They spin outward at forty-five-degree angles from the thick strand Amy and Bohdi are sitting on. More such thick beams and supports crisscross beneath the roof. Bohdi tilts his head. “We’re in the rafters…”
“I think you’re right,” whispers Amy. “And this space is too small for the spiders… We may be able to make it if there are more nooks like this.”
“Make it where?” says Bohdi.
Gesturing down with a hand, Amy says, “Down. When Loki was almost caught by spiders, he was on the ground—it was a wide-open plain. We could run there. Here if we get cornered…”
“Down it is,” says Bohdi, mostly because he has no other ideas.
Mr. Squeakers, who had been sitting just in front of them, gives a cheep and jumps off the beam, a little bungee cord of his own silk trailing behind.
“Did he understand us?” says Bohdi, gaze riveted to the path the spidermouse took.
“Yes,” says Amy.
He blinks. “That’s one smart mouse.”
She nods her head, and her ponytail tickles his nose. She’s sitting between his thighs, and very close. “Yes,” she whispers. “I’ve discovered magical creatures are generally smarter than you would expect based on the relative size of their prefrontal cortex. I think it has something to do with the magical matter in their nervous systems.”
The circuits in Bohdi’s brain immediately light up. Magic has strange relationships with space and time. “So, do magical animals have extra capacity stored in another dimension of space…or is it stored in a different place in time?” he asks, and then nearly groans. Wrong time, wrong task, brain…
In front of him, Amy twists in his direction, her gaze connecting with his. “I know,” she says, excitedly. “That’s the big mystery, isn’t it?”
