Photo by Alex Simpson on Unsplash
‘One of the most important methods I use is to imagine a historical development for our ideas different from what actually occurred. If we do this, we see the problem from a completely new angle.’
(Ludwig Wittgenstein)
The oak levers of the loom clicked as they bowed and rose in an idiosyncratic sequence. Through the eyes and hands of the girl, the threads were being woven into a story commissioned by the second-richest man in the country town of Lydia. Snail purples intertwined with ochre reds while glistening strands of fool’s gold bedecked the heads of the founding fathers of the town like medieval halos of the saints. Threads whiter than the snow that never fell in Lydia made up the pure skin of their faces while threats looming on the horizon were cast in shadow. In a cloth just a little shorter than she was, Arachne was telling the history of her town according to notes scribbled on the back of a church pamphlet. Bacon grease smeared the final note concerning the punishment of those who defied the First Baptist Church of Lydia. As any girl trying to finish an assignment before a deadline would do, Arachne was making up the rest.
Arachne knew that history was a tale told by the victors and human relationships and choices were far too complex to follow a logical line from one act to the next. The very fact she was sitting at a table loom in a single bedroom shack on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi with her father knocking at death’s door and her mother trying to keep the door shut on the other side was proof enough of the complexity of the fickle machine of causality.
Arachne felt the nymphs of the swamp watching her through the windows. As encouraging as they could be when she began a new piece, a look of disappointment and impatience fell upon their watchful wet faces by the time Arachne neared the end of her labor. Arachne reached her arms and stretched to the tin roof in false praise as she tried to ignore the faces of the nymphs fogging the windows.
—I know, I know. It’s never good enough. But what did you expect? Tellin’ the truth doesn’t put food on the table. Daddy taught me that much. But that’s about it. Oh, why don’t ya’ll just come inside. Huh? I kinda’ appreciate the encouragement but right now you’re creepin’ me out. Get! Go on, now. Get! Remind me of stray cats sometimes. Ok. Fine. I’ll do it. Just a little bit a’ true fun at the end. Rich fat ass probly’ won’t be able to make it to the end fore’ he falls asleep after I give it to ‘em.
Arachne looked back at her work and followed the town’s narrative from the time when they first won it from the Indians, the granite rock that marked the church’s foundation, the naming of things by bearded men both grave and august, the peach trees springing from the earth by miracle, the verdant peak of the Lydian hill the townsfolk called a mountain, mortals given Biblical names doing noble deeds, foreign faces resembling birds and beasts, the ancient oak that still stood half-dead in the middle of town and women everywhere giving birth to children to carry on the narrative without end.
Arachne frowned at the contained chaos. She grabbed a pair of scissors next to the loom her grandmother had made long before even her dead mother was born. With a handful of her wavy black hair in her right hand, she cut. When she felt the strands resting in the crook of her hand, she let the hair fall and it scattered across the table like a thousand and one exhausted suppliants. In the midst of the golds, greens, reds, whites and purples of the cloth; her black hair would provide a punctuation the second-richest man in Lydia would never expect. In spite of the cruelties of time, Arachne knew this was a chance to play a game far more real than the greasy facts of her commission. She listened for any signs of consciousness behind the door where her father was passed out. Nothing. Arachne leaned over the loom and began to weave herself into the narrative of Lydia.
Nothing in the universe was ever finished. There were soft beginnings but time was the great reckoner. By the time Arachne had run out of time, a good portion of her hair was now a part of the relatively finished piece. The nymphs had fled back to the swamp without saying a word while Arachne rolled up the cloth and walked out into the damp evening with her bob haircut fluttering in the wind.
Flip-flops had always been a hazard when Arachne trudged along the muddy road leading to the center of town. But her father always insisted that only animals walked barefoot. What he could not see his ears would probably not believe on hearsay so Arachne did what any sensible girl would do. She pulled off the flip-flops and placed them under the haggard Sweetgum Tree where last year’s seeds were piled like decaying porcupine fetuses. Something about fresh mud, the feel of what the rain did to the dead earth, made Arachne feel that the world was still malleable, even if creation resulted in a horrifying golem.
About halfway there, she looked up and watched as the great artist of the sky stirred Her paint. A congested gray cloud with streaks of black rose up into the mineral blue as it spread across the sky-scape. It was the times when Arachne needed them most that the nymphs failed to appear. She doubled her pace and almost broke into a run as the sky turned yellow and the first rumblings of thunder scattered the starlings and morning doves deeper into the swamp.
Even a few centuries of expansion and entanglement of the mammoth live oak she sought shelter beneath failed to keep the rain from finding Arachne. When she leaned against its weathered trunk, the water running through the wooden rivulets of its bark only directed little nameless rivers down her back. The yellow sky had turned to darkness and Arachne was as far away from her destination as she was from home. She clung to the cloth that rested beneath her red t-shirt now crimson from the rain. She closed her eyes and called to the nymphs. Rain. When she opened her eyes, a distorted lantern light was drifting towards her.
Kudzu lined the tilted walls of the ancient house. Where the tree branches failed to penetrate the rotten wood of the structure, weeds and haggard bushes found their way in. Arachne felt like she was in a cave as the water trickled, dripped and poured through wherever it could. The rot and mustiness of the place only added to the magical qualities of the old woman seated in a rocking chair before her. The lantern that found Arachne was now between the rocking woman’s feet and cast long shadows that watched from their two dimensions as she spoke.
—Let me see what you have under there. It’s hard for an old hag like me to find anything new under the same old moon.
—Where ya’ from? You don’t sound like you come from round here.
—And you don’t seem like you should stay.
—Ain’t got a choice.
—If you’re breathing, there’s still a choice. Now, c’mon. Let me see what you have. Humor a poor old woman. My eyes are not the best, I’ll tell you flat.
Arachne reached under her sopping shirt and pulled out the rolled up cream cloth. In spite of the storm, the cloth was only damp, not soaked through. She uncrossed her legs and stood up from the maple floor and handed the bundle to the old woman. Her arthritic fingers clasped the gift like a crab would a hunk of fish flesh from the shallows. One gray eye closed as the dark brown of the other inspected the cloth as it fell open. Arachne stared at the sparse gray hair that remained on the liver-spotted scalp of the old woman. The sounds of the storm marked the time as the cloth told its secrets in silence to the one-eyed crone.
—The queen of the arachnids would be envious. But such skill and detail should never be wasted on tales told by idiots. I like the style but the story is shit.
—I was just followin’ what Mr. Joseph told me to.
—Joseph? Of course, it was. Jesus will tell you the next crap to weave to look like truth. But I do see one truth here. It’s yours.
—Well, I didn’t have any black thread so I—
—Oh! I know it’s your hair. That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about this part, the end. No mouth-breathing son of a bitch could come up with this.
Arachne clenched her teeth to make sure she was no mouth-breather. Confident in that, she watched as the old woman rocked faster and faster as the floor sounded like it was about to give way. Thin cracked lips mumbled as a single tooth stood from the crone’s lower gums like an oblique tombstone without a name. She appeared to be reading words from the cloth Arachne had failed to include. The rain fell harder and a bolt of lightning struck something within a mile. By the time the sound subsided, the old woman was laughing.
—What’s so funny?
—You’ll see. Come in, from without there!
The towering front door burst open and seven nymphs danced into the room. They were neither young nor old and were clothed in the sparkling water droplets that followed them. Arachne’s jaw dropped but she did not dare to breathe. In spite of the thunder, the song remained the same for the nymphs as they circled Arachne in a counter-clockwise direction as the old woman watched. Faster and faster the seven nymphs spun like tiny planets manically orbiting the sun of Arachne. The girl smiled and then laughed as the forms of the nymphs were now a whirlpool of waterworks playing with the lantern light. There was no time or space, just the dance and the water.
When the dance diminished and the nymphs scattered throughout the ruins of the house, the old woman was standing. With both skeletal hands, she held out the cloth before her. Arachne blinked a few times to clear her eyes of the water and then she saw. The cream cloth was blank except for the dark dance of the seven nymphs, the old woman, the crescent moon and herself. The moon hung over the outline of the house that held the characters Arachne had woven into the piece with her own hair. But now the scene was located at the far left-side of the cloth rather than punctuating the end. What had been a whimsical end was now a woven beginning she was sitting and breathing in. The nymphs startled Arachne when they spoke in unison from the shadows.
—Tis time, Hecate. The moon breaks through the clouds and calls for us.
The crone nodded and walked slowly towards Arachne with the cloth in her hands in some kind of offering. Arachne stood up and held out her open hands. The gray eye of Hecate spun like a galaxy contained in her socket. When Arachne felt the cloth in her hands and closed her fingers around it, Hecate and the nymphs vanished. Moonlight poured through the broken windows of the ruins. Arachne tucked the cloth back under her damp shirt and walked to the opening where the door used to be. As she stepped out into the night, she knew that nothing but the trees and the swamp were waiting.
Hayden Moore was born and raised in Georgia and has lived in New York City for the past twelve years. In the past six months, he has been published three times for his short stories: twice in Corner Bar Magazine, once in Metonym Literary Journal. He lives with his wife and cat on the waters of Jamaica Bay in Queens.