Eight legs, fleeing. Eight babies cling to my back.

Over my black exoskeleton, my children scuttle on sticky feet, pitter-patt-pitt, trying to hide from you.

Your torches shine violent orange in my eight eyes.

You drove us from my cave with your foul smoke and shouts.

But I’m fast.

I charge through the dark forest, trampling shrubs and shaking pines with the thomp-thump-thom of my legs. Needles fall like sharp rain. We’ll be okay. I just need to reach the seaside cliffs where I grew up.

On horseback, you chase, whooping your lust for the silver shine of web. The spider threads that weave your clothes, your ropes, your silk pavilions. To deepest forest, you hunt my babies, yearning to confine them, milk them, pull endless thread from their tender bodies. You’ll enslave my children until they wither and lose the will to live.

I will not let that happen.

Your crossbows thump and whine, cutting the air.

I’m too armored, too grown. Your weapons glance harmless off my sides.

Yet with a small thud, you pierce deeper than my heart.

A wooden shaft sprouts from my daughter’s forehead.

She’d peered over my back, curious. Dead, her body tumbles to the pine carpet.

You cannot have her.

To save her from molestation by your hands seeking her silk inside, I devour my daughter’s corpse. In my maw her carapace cracks, crunches. It’s more than I can bear. Hollow agony. Emptiness into which I further consume, chewing off my own leg. The one that carried her to my mouth.

The taste of my flesh, my pain, washes down her memory. Enough so I can stumble forth, missing one middle leg. Fleeing for the seven babies that remain.

* * *

Four legs, running. Four babies cling to my back.

Thrice more your weapons found my children.

Three more bodies, lovingly tucked into my stomach. Three more legs consumed.

Stupid, this self-destruction. I stagger inelegant over fallen trees, chonk-chunk-chon. On my back, my babies legs flail sharp, tick-tek-tik, barely holding on.

I’ve sabotaged their survival. I’ve slowed myself, half my legs consumed.

Sometimes loss compels destruction.

After laying my egg sac, I’m dying. No second chance. These children are all I am. Their tiny legs carry my hope—the hope of my species, nearly extinct. Each death gouges our future. Each my fault. My failure to protect. Horror too huge, horror demanding my body reflect the damage to my soul.

Ungainly, I lumber through sharp moonlight and shadow. Pines thinning, air thickening. Sea mist cools my wounds. Potent, this salt-and-seaweed scent of hope.

I won’t maim myself further. Whatever happens, I won’t succumb to the selfish desires of pain. Young lives are too important.

The limestone cliff is just ahead. A sharp precipice, breaking the land but hiding the sea—fusing rock to sky, a dark horizon that’s close enough to touch.

Behind is whooping and violent orange light.

Ahead more torches flash, cutting off my escape.

A trap. An ambush.

Nets drop from the trees, tripping me. I throw out my forelegs. They explode like pine trunks in frozen winter. I fall hard, rolling. A pair of babies scuttle off my back, finding safety on my stomach. But two of my sons are crushed. White ichor fountains from their abdomens—pre-silk they’ll never get to spin.

Wearing a cloak of crimson-dyed spider silk, your leader shouts, “Capture the young spiders first! If the mother resists, hack her apart.”

You cannot have my babies.

To defend, I attack. I swing my shattered legs. Too broken, they rip from my body and roll like black logs, thumping, sweeping your horses off their feet. You fall, screaming, and your torches die against the mist-damp ground.

With mandibles sharp, I chew your ropes, freeing me from the net. With only two legs, I cannot run. But I could reach out. Crush you moaning men. I could end your lives, as you’d end mine.

No. Never good has vengeance bought. And if my kind is to die by your hand, I shall not stain the world with further violence.

The seaside cliff, the safety of my childhood, is almost within reach.

First, I must protect my dead sons. Their eight legs fold inward like wilted flowers. Into my swollen belly, I consume, suffering the pain without distraction, without mutilation. My final two babies need all that remains of me.

Torches and shouts from behind, those of you who drove me from my burrow. A mob too many to fight.

We must escape.

Already, those who laid in ambush reach for fallen crossbows and swords.

We have little time.

My final defense is silk. I hate giving you this treasure, but web I spray—binding you to horses, to trees, to yourselves—silver threads in moonlight.

Towards safety, I crawl.

* * *

Two legs, scraping. Two babies cling to my back.

Across broken shale, I shove slowly forward, skrom-skrum-skom. My remaining babies make no sound, frozen atop my head.

Hooves pound behind. The one I spared, crimson-cloaked, cries, “Split the mother open and harvest the pre-silk she swallowed!”

A cold sea breeze rises beneath me as my head dangles over the cliff.

Finally.

On silk threads, my son and daughter lower themselves over the rocky outcropping, instinct guiding them into darkness.

Thank goodness. Sheltered, they’ll survive decades, devouring gulls at night—carrying our species into the future.

Of me, one final effort is required.

You cannot have my body. You cannot have the corpses of my babies, borne within me once more.

I plant my hind feet. The last two of eight, they won’t support my weight without breaking.

Nevertheless, I leap, rising over the horizon.

To those hunting, I hope I appear as one of their mothers, bipedal, stomach swollen like I’m pregnant.

My legs rupture. But I’m over the cliff, falling.

Falling through moonlight that smells of salt, seaweed, and hope. Falling into the ocean’s dark embrace—into the refuge of forever, our eternity beyond pain.

* * *

Ⓒ Brandon Case