Araneae read a page for perhaps the umpteen-millionth time. Her web was spun on the family plot, exactly where many of its fellows had been in the past. Over the years, the spider families had all agreed to use a certain reserved location for each of them living in the dusty little-used room. The room happened to be a secret one, unknown to the humans who currently lived in that castle.
Its last human occupant, a famous wizard named Merlin, had died hundreds of years in the past, taking the room’s location to his grave. It did have small glassless windows high up in one of the stone walls. Recently an electric floodlight had been installed outside one of them, its light bringing many flying insects into the secret enclosure.
The spider, Araneae, wasn’t the first to read the page of an open book lying on a table beneath her web. With little to do while waiting for flying insects, her family had slowly learned to read, passing the knowledge down through the generations.
The page, and its facing cousin, contained a number of spells, laboriously handwritten by Merlin himself.
One that intrigued Araneae and other generations of her fellows was the one to change small creatures to humans, their problem being that the end of the spell was on the next page. What she could see was just enough to tempt her, but not enough to work the spell.
For untold spider generations, her family had tried every sequence they could imagine to make up for the missing words. It was driving her as crazy as it had her mother.
The only thing new to her world was a family of rats that had moved in several generations before. They were a constant threat, tearing up webs as they moved around the room.
Araneae didn’t know what they ate, or why they stayed around without any apparent food or ... well ... what their purpose was in the first place? Did God make them simply to have pests around? Like He'd made locusts which sometimes tore through their webs? Maybe to annoy her personally? At least locusts were good eating, but who would ever want to eat a dirty hairy rat?
As if in answer to her thoughts, Araneae felt her web shake violently. Looking down at the lower left corner, she saw a pesky rat shaking it while trying to get strands loose from its nose whiskers.
“Cut that out,” Araneae yelled at the creature. “You’ll break it.” She ran down to help him and save her home. “You stupid idiot. It’s big oafs like you that cause all the trouble around here. If I coul--”
“Sorry. I’m sorry, miss.” The freed rodent became apologetic, trying to bite at his own back.
Now what would he be doing? Trying to eat himself? Maybe that’s what they ate, themselves or each other? She grinned at the thought. Eat themselves, ha, ha.
"What’re you doing anyway?” she asked, curious, as he kept biting around his shoulder.
“I got a flea,” he told her, “and it’s driving me nuts.” He shook himself violently, trying to get the flea to fly away.
“Maybe I can help?” she asked, smelling a snack in the making. “Back up to my web. Don’t shake though, you’ll get tangled if you do. Maybe I can get it for you.”
The rat backed up, careful not to touch the web. Araneae reached out with four of her legs, parting his fur and searching.
“Aha!” she exclaimed, bringing out the miscreant snack as it wiggled in vain, trying to get back into his fur. “Got it, see?”
The rat looked over to see the flea in her grip. He watched as she shoved the wiggling mite into her mouth, wings and all. He shook his furry head, amazed that anyone could eat those things.
“Thanks, I appreciate it.” The rat backed away, intent on rat business.
“Hey, wait a minute. You can do me a small favor too, buddy. See if you can turn the page on that book, will you?”
“Sure. I think I can, and my name’s Scratchy, not Buddy.” He went over to the edge of the book, trying to figure out how to do the task.
“Go ahead, Scratchy. Lift the corner with your teeth and walk across the old page. That should do it.” As an afterthought, she mentioned, “And my name’s Araneae.” She watched as he did manage to turn the page.
“Bye, Araneae. See you later.”
Scratchy left, while Araneae ran over to read the rest of the incantation.
“Uh.” She struggled to remember the first part. “Uhkih minota gobbledegook. Uhkih, uddeman.” Then, after more concentration, she said, “Uhkih Bama doofwad Bush, make me a human.”
Thump! Slam! Blammmm!
Araneae collapsed onto the table, her new weight knocking book, candelabra, pen-set -- and even the exploring rat named Scratchy -- to the floor. She found her two -- was that only two? -- legs on one side of the table and two arms hanging off the other.
“Who are you and how did you get in here?” A now-tiny Scratchy yelled up at her.
Araneae examined herself and found she was, indeed, a human.
She straightened up onto two bare feet and tried to stand, not an easy task for someone used to eight legs. Araneae first attempted to raise both legs at the same time, hitting her forehead on the table as she fell. She had been used to alternating sets of two.
Scratchy helped the first few times she tried to stand, but barely managed to get out the way of the giant former spider as she fell. After that, he had enough sense to stay under the table and scream encouragement from there. She finally staggered across the room to a dusty bed.
Araneae fell on top of a tattered cover, raising a cloud of dust that blinded them both, also bringing a multitude of squeaking protests from Scratchy’s family. The entire rat family had been watching a DVD on their television at the time and missed the end of a Bruce Lee battle. The problem was made worse in that the family lived under the bed.
She was surprised at the softness of the surface of the bed, having considered it to be as hard as her table. Araneae bounced a few more times for the sheer fun of it, this time not getting squeaks but curses from below.
Shouts of, “quiet up there,” and, “spider, go home,” mixed with her own, “whooop, whooop. Yeaaaaaa.”
After a while, she lay, panting with exertion. Looking over the side of the bed she saw, first of all, Scratchy. He was shaking his head, a serious look on a crinkled furry face. A multitude of other rat heads, the latter silently glaring, appeared directly under her.
Araneae jumped to her two legs and headed to a long unused door in the opposite wall. She took a moment to bend, scooping up her rat companion and causing her to fall yet again.
At least not on me, Scratchy thought, bouncing to his feet to face the human.
“Now look here, Aree -- Aran ... whatever,” Scratchy admonished her, “you can’t go outside like that. You can’t even walk straight. The other humans will capture you again and lock you in another room, just like this one.” He motioned with his front paws. Scratchy stood on two legs himself, and found he could walk better than she could on her two. “See, you had eight legs, and I have four. You got yourself twice as long to learn to walk on only two.” Scratchy leaned forward, overbalanced, and fell back to four legs himself. “See what I mean? Take some time to practice first,” he ordered the huge human.
Even lying on her stomach, Araneae’s eyes were above the rat’s and had to look down. She tried to nod her head but couldn’t. Her new chin was already on the dirty floor.
Since he had often been outside and knew a lot about humans, and their behavior, Scratchy coached her for the rest of the day -- while she practiced walking. Before he was through, the sun had gone down and they were working by the light of the floodlight, coming through the open window.
Araneae found flies and mosquitoes easier to catch in her new form, and that they weren’t very filling. It was good practice though, keeping her bouncing, then crawling, finally running around the room to catch a meal.
To keep from being rolled on, Scratchy stayed under something. He was afraid of being kneed to death, then stepped on, as she learned to walk on two legs.
“We ready to go yet, Scratchy?” she asked, finally, sitting tiredly down on her former table home. The book had landed in a corner somewhere. “I’m still hungry. It takes a lot of mosquitoes to feed me. Maybe I should try for rats?” She made a fake lunge at Scratchy, who ducked under her new legs -- laughing.
The castle, one of old King Arthur’s minor summer homes, made money for the woman who owned it. She ran it as a tourist attraction. It was already supposed to have three ghosts. A mistake, since there were only two in residence -- Lord and Lady Thompson.
The two ghosts couldn’t leave the premises. They were quite happy with their condition, having made an arrangement with the newest owner. The ghosts would occasionally let themselves be seen doing mundane tasks. In return, the castle’s owner -- a prudish Britisher named Myrtle Thompson -- a distant relative -- furnished them with electronic entertainment.
Myrtle, considered it a good deal. The real ghosts brought in scads of tourists and psychic investigators, all paying for the privilege. Myrtle was a frugal woman, living in the basement to save money.
***
Lord Thompson and his wife Jane were sitting at their most romantic location, the roof of the North Tower.
“I never tire of seeing a full moon rising over the river Thames.” Jane had her arms around her husband, nuzzling his shoulder.
She had her, almost transparent, legs over the edge. Of course she was in no danger of falling. They often floated down to the balcony of their living quarters, like new lovers dancing across a ballroom floor. Two glowing figures seemingly waltzing downward, glancing at human investigators studying them with expensive electronics.
He looked over and saw that the investigators that night were those ghastly Colonials, loud and abrasive, not adding to their romance … at all.
“I say, Jane. How about drifting downstairs, dear one?” As they floated home, the beastly Americans flashed bright lights, ruining the romantic moment for the lovers. Holding hands for the ten millionth time, they angled themselves through the first window they passed -- to the increasing flash of camera bulbs -- and walked quietly down the corridor toward the nearest stairwell, starting down to their apartment.
The two were so much in love that they didn’t notice they were walking through Araneae, who was crawling on her hands and knees, backwards, down the circular staircase. It wasn’t until two flights later that Jane remembered.
“I say, Lord Thompson, but didn’t we walk through a naked woman with a rat on her head?”
“Hardly, my dear. They are scarce as hens teeth. I clearly remember in aught-eight, down in Chapador in the south of our Indian Empire, when a naked lady communed with vicious Tige....” They continued home, Jane seemingly engrossed in the familiar tale.
Araneae was left quaking, staring at the stone step and shaking her head, long red tresses flowing across her sight.
“W -- wer -- were those real ghosts, Scratchy? I mean real, real ones?”
“Oh, sure. I forgot to tell you. Those were the Thompson’s. This Castle used to belong to them, a long time ago,” he told her, leaning down, feet tangled in her hair to hold on, to look in her left eye, “they still hang around for some reason.”
“They weren’t killers were they?” She was still nervous. “My papa told me all ghosts are, or were, bad people.”
“Na, I don’t think so. I think they loved the place, and each other, too much to leave.”
The two continued downward. The girl was afraid to try walking down the long stairwell on only two extremely unstable legs. There was quite a difference going from eight to two legs, a huge difference in stability.
She was both curious as to her new environment, and very hungry. Scratchy had told her about food scraps left in the castle kitchen and dining room. Sandwiches and meals were sold to tourists. After closing, the rats could usually find scraps lying around. He hoped there would be enough under the tables for all of them, even Araneae.
***
“Not very much, really, Scratchy,” she told him, chomping on a few stray pizza crumbs. They were under the last table, already finished with scrounging in the kitchen. “I’m still hungry and afraid your family will be angry. We ate all of it.” Araneae stood to lean against a huge refrigerator, and complained, “They’re angry enough at me now.”
She turned around and saw a cupboard door half-open. Looking in, all she saw were boxes of cereal and stacks of colored cans.
“Nothing to eat in here.” She moved them around with her hand, looking for food. “I wonder if this big thing opens up?” Araneae pushed and pulled at the door of a large refrigerator, finally finding the handle.
“Oh! Look at this, Scratchy?” She saw it packed with food. That also surprised Scratchy, since he'd never seen an open one before. They not only ate their fill but Araneae piled food under the tables in the dining room for the rat family to find. Leaving the refrigerator door open, they went back up to her secret room, stomachs bulging. As a spider, she had rarely eaten that well. And it was so much tastier than flies. Well, except for those orange fruit-flies. Those were purely delicious.
***
“Who’s been into my food?” Myrtle screamed at the empty room. She had come up for a snack and found food all over the kitchen, even piled under tables in the dining room. “And the vandals left the door open.” She angrily slammed the refrigerator door.
The woman was angry enough to cook a roast on her forehead. As she gathered up food from under tables, Myrtle scattered rats, seeing them run for shelter. Rinsing it off in the sink and cutting rat bites out, she replaced the food in the warm interior of the reefer. Boiling inside, she called out.
“Lord Thompson? Jane? What happened here? It wasn’t you, was it?” With no answer, she hurried to the Thompson apartment. “It’s their job to guard the place,” she muttered under her breath.
Storming in, she found the ghosts in bed making love. It seems that’s all they ever do, Myrtle thought.
“Eeek!” Jane screamed, while her husband covered himself.
“The idea, young lady. What would your Mater say?”
“Yo -- you’re sl -- sleeping on the job. S -- Some kids or something got in and made a mess downstairs,” Myrtle stuttered, embarrassed. She turned around and faced the door.
“It must have been that naked lady with the rat on her head,” Jane observed to her husband.
“Naked? Rat on her head?” Myrtle asked. “What are you talking about?”
“We saw her crawling down the stairs, backwards,” Lord Thompson explained, confusing Myrtle even further. They had to carefully explain.
“Well, whoever she was, she probably left by now. You two keep an eye out for those bums or whatever they were,” Myrtle instructed the ghosts. “I’ll have to increase security. Maybe even buy alarms or rat traps or something. The dining room was full of dirty nasty rodents.”
She went back to her office in the dungeon to make phone calls, then began getting ready for the next day’s tourists.
***
Araneae and Scratchy spent the day in their hidden room, studying the old spell book. Scratchy found it lying in a corner beside an old chest.
“All kinds of good stuff in here,” Araneae observed.
Many of the spells called for objects they didn’t have, such as bee’s knees. Others ingredients they couldn’t even understand, like Quidgets. Some of the writing was faded and Merlin’s penmanship left a lot to be desired in the first place. With all those thees, and thous, "s"s that looked like "f"s and all that.
The two huddled together on the floor, reading and trying out spells.
“Here’s one I can understand,” Scratchy told her. "it’s only words. Quif, quif, quifeen, let the room be clean.”
All the dust disappeared, bringing squeaks from the rat family under the bed. Scratchy’s mother soon came running out.
“Did you do that?” She had a confused look on her face. “I was sweeping the dust under my rug and suddenly it all disappeared.”
“I did it, Ma,” Scratchy admitted proudly, standing straight. “My first spell, too.”
“Oh, thank you, son. You’ve saved me a lot of work.” She hugged Scratchy, ignoring Araneae. She didn’t much like humans, or spiders for that matter.
The spell also brought angry but low and weak voices. They looked over to see a spider lying on its back nearby, cussing a blue streak. Scratchy’s spell had also taken her web. Indeed, all the webs in the room.
Araneae went over, carefully using one large finger to help the spider turn over. She felt responsible.
“I’m sorry, Helen,” she apologized to her spider friend.
“Now how am I going to eat?” Helen asked her, crestfallen and sobbing. “I can’t catch food without a web. It flies too fast,” she rightly complained.
“We’ll fix it for you,” Araneae told her. “Will you help me get everyone together? All in one place. I’ll find some way,” she promised. The three of them searched the room, herding all the spiders together into one spot. The table seemed like a good location.
Scratchy asked his mother for some of the soft toilet paper the rat family used for bedding, and Araneae brought them a lid of fresh water. Now she had to find a way to feed the spiders.
Araneae, and Scratchy too, were learning that with power came responsibility. They couldn’t go around trying out spells without thinking of the consequences. Now, if they couldn’t feed them, the spiders would have to spin all those webs again from scratch. Normally a good web lasted a long time, with constant cleaning and repair.
Araneae found another spell, one to collect items. The recipe said it could get together all of a certain item into a selected area -- apparently Merlin had used it in his bookkeeping.
Neither Araneae nor Scratchy had any training in arithmetic and the spell was complex, a sort of algebraic equation. They had to specify the area, kinds of articles in great detail, maximum and minimum percentages needed, and all sorts of variables. Asking for roast beef was one thing, but nobody wanted a live thousand-pound cow.
It took the rest of the afternoon to get ready. Scratchy could write a little bit, at least he knew how to do numbers up to one-hundred. Araneae could only count to nine, if she used her nose too. They were very careful, not wanting to fill the room with flies or anything like that. Scratchy would scratch a formula on the dusty floor with his claws, then the two would study it. That went on for hours, until their heads hurt with the effort. Meanwhile the spiders didn’t help much, complaining louder and louder. One had found a stash of mite beer and they were heavily into it.
“Well, you want to say it out loud?” Araneae asked her companion.
“I’m scared, Araneae, what if I make a mistake?” He looked at the long equation. “You were a spider, you should do it.”
“You’re the one who ruined the webs.” She was frightened too, not wanting to be responsible. “Besides,” she had a thought, or excuse if you will, “it’s your writing. You can read it better that I can.” He couldn’t argue that point. Scratchy took a deep breath, so he wouldn’t have to pause in mid-spell, and carefully read it aloud.
“Whee!” A happy shout came from the table. Araneae picked Scratchy up and they went over to see a crowd of happy spiders. Not only did they have the right amount of french-fried flies, but they came complete with potatoes and salads, all in little plates, heated to the right temperature for eating. Small glasses of roach wine stood next to the meals. Merlin had been one badass wizard, Scratchy thought.
“Well, one problem solved.” Araneae sighed “Tomorrow we’ll do the same thing for your family. No more scrounging under tables.”
"Yes, tomorrow," Scratchy said, sighing, "since I'm too tired to go through the whole thing again today."
***
“There, that should do it.” Myrtle finished chaining the refrigerator. The floor of the dining room was dotted with rat traps.
They wouldn’t be too effective though since, when Myrtle wasn’t looking, Lady Thompson snuck around the room, shoving little wooden wedges under all the cheese levers. They would never snap that way. Lady Thompson liked rats and had befriended many over the centuries.
Myrtle had also installed cheap locks on the inside of all the outside doors, not willing to spend any more money than she had to on security. As an added precaution, she had strings crisscrossing the kitchen and dining room. They lead to her apartment downstairs. If a string was disturbed, it would rattle tin-cans hanging down there.
To save even more money, she propped a three-hundred-year-old blunderbuss, primed and loaded, next to her bed.
“I’ll get the vandals,” she said, beaming at her handiwork while snapping a padlock shut on the refrigerator. “I’ll get them, wait and see.” She was still muttering as she went downstairs for the night.
***
Araneae and Scratchy sat at one edge of the table in their room, studying spells. The spiders made a lot of noise drinking roach wine and partying at the other end. Scratchy had amended the food formula to produce wine for them without the food or condiments. He even gave them itty-bitty potato chips.
Normally spiders spent most of their time alone in the center of a web. But it didn’t take long for them to get used to living together. Drunken mud-wrestling spiders made it hard for the two amateur wizards to study. The two were about ready to give up for the night, when there was a flurry under the hidden door. Two rats ran in and scurried under the bed.
“Mama! Mama! Mama, Joey got his tail caught. He can’t get loose,” they heard. It turned out that Joey and the others had been down in the dining room, gathering crumbs as usual. They found all that cheese scattered around the room on wooden boards.
Everything was fine until Joey wondered what a little piece of wood was doing under the cheese. He wiggled it loose. “Snap!” and his tail was caught on something.
Scratchy jumped onto Araneae’s shoulder and they went down to see what had happened. They went right through the Lord and Lady as all four ran into the dining room. Poor Joey was in pain, crying for his Mama while he ran around at random, pulling a rat trap behind himself.
Araneae rushed over and, looking over the trap, pulled up on the metal top, releasing a badly frightened ratlet. She picked the little rascal up while Scratchy examined his brother's sore tail.
“Doesn’t seem broken,” he told the others. “Who would put evil things like that around,” Scratchy wondered out loud, “to hurt people on purpose.” In her hurry, Araneae hadn’t even noticed the strings she broke while running into the room.
***
Myrtle sat downstairs in her tatty green housecoat. She was watching television on a cheap black-and-white set. Because of the thick stone walls, she could only get one channel. Of course she was too cheap for cable or satellite. A single forty-watt light-bulb hung from the ceiling of her room, illuminating an iron bed beside her chair. Built-in wooden shelves lined the room.
She was dozing off when one of her tin cans rattled, falling off a table and onto the floor. The woman jumped up, knocking her chair over. Anger rising, she grabbed the blunderbuss and charged upstairs to catch the intruders.
The Lord and Lady were both present and correct, and there really was a naked woman. This time with two rats on her shoulders. Other rodents stood around, looking up at them.
“Hands up!” Myrtle ordered, as heard often on television. She waved the heavy weapon around the room, looking for other intruders.
As she did, her foot slipped on a pile of cheese the rats had collected. Finger tightening on the firing-lever, the old gun went off. Its iron ball hit a decorative suit of armor, bouncing back. The shot flew past Araneae, completely through the Lady Thompson, and into the kitchen -- where it rattled in the sink. The recoil also knocked Myrtle back down on her butt, dropping the gun to the floor.
Lord Thompson tried to help Myrtle up, but was so excited he forgot to tighten his ectoplasm, and passed right through her. It was Araneae who helped Myrtle to her feet.
“You have strange green skin,” Araneae told her in wonder, fingering the robe. “Loose too. Are you sick?”
“Get your hands off me.” Myrtle backed up angrily. “You can’t steal from me. I’ll call the police.”
“I say, Myrtle. We should talk this over. The lady can help you in many ways.” Lord Thompson had talked to several of the rats earlier. “She’s a real honest-to-god wizard, you know?”
“Yeah, sure. A naked wizard, I suppose. She can’t even conjure up clothing for herself. I’m calling the police.” Myrtle started for her room, and a telephone. All she had upstairs were pay-phones for the tourists.
Myrtle stopped at the head of the stairs. “A wizard, you say?” A thought had hit her tiny brain. A wizard might save her money, like maybe with electricity or something -- or even fix toilets? “Show me some wizard stuff,” she demanded.
Araneae also had a sudden thought.
“Scratchy, would you like to be human, at least for awhile? It feels good to me. You might like it. I’m sure we could change you back later.”
Scratchy fairly beamed. It had never occurred to him, being so engrossed with other spells.
“Sure. Make me human!” He jumped up and down in excitement.
“Uhkih minota gobbledegook. Uhkih, uddeman,” she spoke loudly, “uhkih Bama doofwad Bush, make Scratchy a human.”
And he was. Araneae suddenly had a one-hundred-sixty-pound man on her shoulder.
“Ooffff.” They fell to the floor in a jumble of naked limbs, rats scattering in panic. Even Myrtle had to gasp at the sight of a naked man in her castle.
Myrtle showed the two new humans to a sixteenth century wardrobe. The clothing was under glass and not too dirty and dusty.
Later, Araneae and Scratchy went back up to the secret room, a mob of well-fed rats muttering and scurrying behind them. She unlatched the secret door and opened it. Whereupon they were set upon by a formation of drunken spiders waving sewing needles. “Charge!” was the cry.
The End.
Charlie hvysmker
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