Chapter Fifty-Four
Frida jerked back, dropping Dian’s hand with a yelp. Dian had not moved, but staring up at her from within a particularly knotty patch of cobwebs was the sleepy face of a tiny jumping spider.
‘Moth?’ Frida gasped.
The spider blinked at her. ‘No. Obviously.’
Frida’s eyes widened. The relief and joy at thinking Moth was alive quickly turned to confusion.
‘Not Moth?’ But of course, the longer they looked at each other, the more certain she was that this was indeed not Moth at all.
This jumping spider had a green tinge to the fur below their eyes, and an orange spot on their back, unlike Moth, who’d been pitch black with snowy spots.
Leaning closer, Frida saw that this spider was rounder too, with thin short arms instead of Moth’s boxing gloves.
The higher pitch of their vibrations made Frida think that this spider was female. She cocked her head wonderingly.
‘I’m Frida,’ she said, scrubbing at her tear-stained face.
The spider rubbed her pedipalps together. ‘I know,’ she said, her tone wry.
Hope, treacherous, started to blossom inside Frida’s belly. Her heart beat a rapid tattoo. ‘Please, will you tell me who you are?’
‘Mushkila Gloficus Globe Twirler the Fourteenth, at your service,’ the spider answered, without hesitation, her delivery bone dry. Frida liked her immediately.
She sank back on her heels, a grin breaking on her face. ‘Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mushkila Gloficus Globe Twirler the Fourteenth.’
The spider sniffed. ‘You may call me Mush, I suppose. Dian does, anyway.’
Frida burst out laughing at their tone of long-suffering despair, the impossible sheer magic of it. ‘Are you related, by any chance, to Behemoth Artilius Twirel Night Weaver the Tenth?’
Mush sighed, in a tiny desperate way. ‘I suppose so, yes. Behemoth the Tenth was our ancestor. His long winding stories have been passed down through many generations,’ Mush said dispassionately, clicking her arms together and tiredly beginning to weave a little web.
‘You’ve been passed down through many generations too, Frida Rose. ’
The spider knew Frida’s name.
‘Dian wished me to tell you something.’ Knit, knit, knit, went her legs. ‘At my discretion. If I thought you were worthy of it.’
Frida saw stars. The lump in her throat was so huge, she couldn’t speak. She was nodding so much, she felt like a puppy dog on a dashboard, with no idea what to say. She wiped at her tears so hard she almost took off a layer of skin.
‘I was listening to your rousing little speech,’ Mush continued. Knit, knit. ‘Until,’ she sniffed, ‘you tried to drown me.’
Frida found her voice. ‘I’m sorry! I really didn’t know you were there.’ Then her cheeks flushed. She hadn’t known anyone had been listening to her ramblings.
Mush made a non-committal snort. ‘An excuse, that sounds like.’ She surveyed her work.
Her web didn’t have the light that Moth’s had done, and the threads were weak and fragile, but it was a web.
It was something. Shaking her furry legs, she slowly disentangled herself and, with a huff, looked back up at Frida, her eight black eyes reflecting the floating stars of the embers. ‘Their name is Ioelwsthyithuaawn.’
Frida wasn’t quite sure if she’d heard what the spider had said. For a long moment, she stayed utterly still. Had the spider just done what she’d thought she’d done?
‘Their name . . .’
‘Is Ioelwsthyithuaawn, yes.’
‘Ioel-y-wsthtye . . .’ Frida trailed off in despair.
Mush clicked her pedipalps in irritation. ‘Exactly. I told them you’d never be able to say it, but they claimed it would work just as well if you spoke the meaning. It seems like a cheat to me, but there you have it.’
Frida waited, her heart in her mouth. Her whole future resting on this single, tiny, deadpan spider.
Mush glared at her for another few seconds, before her eyes warmed into a smile. ‘Forest,’ she whispered gently. ‘Their name, Frida Rose, is forest.’
Their name is forest.
Frida couldn’t move.
‘Well?’ Mush drawled with a sweep of a pedipalp. ‘I thought you were in a hurry.’
Frida let out a cry, which quickly entwined with a wail of joy. The spider chuckled as Frida launched herself at her ravaged fairy, still prone amidst the soil and the grass.
‘Forest,’ she breathed. ‘Ioel . . .’ She struggled with the syllables, brushing tentative kisses across their cold cheeks. Their jaw. Their eyelids, so fragile and bruised. ‘Ioelwsthyithuaawn.’
Did she imagine it, or did they stir?
She tasted her own tears, and a little bit of rain too.
‘Forest.’ She was laughing as well. ‘Forest. It’s me, it’s Frida. It’s ok to wake up now.’
A soft moan emerged from the fairy.
Frida held her breath. The warm shadows of the ivy rustled above her as the sound of raindrops seemed to blaze, like a million bells, echoing Dian’s name. Their soul.
Ioelwsthyithuaawn. Ioelwsthyithuaawn. Ioelwsthyithuaawn.
She looked upwards and stared, astounded, at the hawthorn.
Not the Hawthorn of Higgleton Common, but something different, something more, something new, something quick and bright and all its own, not belonging to the zoo at all.
Out of the bones, out of the corpse, new young branches sprung.
Green buds started to form, leaves unfurled, and quick thorns stretched.
Coils of magic wrapped up and up and up.
Everything smelt of moss and petrichor and almonds, yet the pinkish embers, which seemed to catch in Frida’s throat, tasted of sulphur and smoke and fire-blasted deserts under the stars.
The tingling that had begun in Frida’s skin spread to her bones.
With the verses of a thousand different trees and plants and thorns speaking into each thundering corner of her heart, the magic climbed until she thought she might reach the very spaces between the stars themselves.
But when a light touch brushed her hand, she looked back down.
The tinkling song that filled her ears poured straight from the molten centre of the Hawthorn, the tree at the heart of the world.
‘Hello,’ she murmured with a smile. Ioelwsthyithuaawn, forest, Dian. Together, the words seemed to encompass all of them, every wondrous part of this magical, fairy.
They smiled back at her broadly. There was a flush to their cheekbones and she ached to smooth away the crease between their brows.
Yet only moments before, they’d looked leached of life.
Now vitality bloomed in the rosy curve of their cheeks, in the tantalising dark of their eyes, the plump line of their lips.
Heat pooled in Frida’s belly, settling in the base of her spine as she registered their steady heartbeat.
Somewhere, Mush was laughing, dry and witty.
Frida felt like laughing too. She felt high as Dian slid their fingers through hers and propped their head up.
At the feel of their calluses against her own, she almost moaned. Was this real?
Dian gazed at her for a few more moments, then lifted their face towards the canopy. ‘Look,’ they whispered. Their voice seemed to brim with tears.
Frida craned her neck and together, they watched as those strange pink embers fizzed like bees.
The broken, thorny branches of the hawthorn continued to knit, faster and faster.
And around them, all the little creatures were waking up.
Eyes winked open in the undergrowth, and sleepy voices restarted their burbling conversations.
Mush was at her weaving again, working to fix the gaps in Dian’s armour. The webs were luminous.
Dian hadn’t let go of Frida hand.
Frida didn’t let go of Dian’s.
And the hawthorn erupted into bloom.