Content warnings

Spider imagery. Body horror.

My gait is wobbly; new locomotion on seven segmented limbs leaves me stumbling behind the others. Their silken spinnerets glisten in the after glow of the shuttles dropping us back off after our follow up procedures. We scuttle on new-grown legs with tender muscles grown from the effervescent venom. My legs are newer, and my future ahead of me hides their wince from the inflamed spinneret gland grafts.

I am a replacement, a far more junior treaty girl than the others. When I was waitlisted, I thought that I would never get out of the human-only town on the other side of the world, where everything is made of concrete and yellow vines. The excitement sent me running through Housing Complex C’s long halls shouting before it sunk in that my spot was only open because another girl was dead.

My muscles sting and cramp trying to keep up with the others, and so not by choice, I slow the rhythm. My body thanks me for the repose. It’s challenging to choreograph these new joints and new muscles, and even harder to move with the elegance of the native arachnids. Their lands here are green and tendrilled, different than us even on their terrain. The furled ferns erupt from everywhere, and they weave them with their silks into capsules and rooms. Soon, the other girls will use those spinnerets to make their houses once their abdomens are surgically expanded and healed. My cousin has built such a house. Her time grows nearer, and I still have not returned to visit after she scolded me on my arrival. It was so like her, to feign torment when she was no longer in the special role.

Did you never read my letters home? Whatever possessed you to get on that shuttle has damned you, like me. The others heard her, and they told me that the abdominal surgery uses more arachnid medicines than we are used to, and that it can make you forget things. It can make you angry. The stem cell grown ovaries are larger than a human’s and make hormones that we must adjust to. I turn away from the path through the vines and the ferns that will take me to the lodge house, an opulent long building compared to the housing complexes built in the human village. An arachnid solider watches from a perch high in the taller fronds when I cross into this area. Here, the human hybrids are established, and they are no longer aspirants. Her head is large and bulbous, eyes move in tandem, separate groups fixing on me, on other things that my two human eyes cannot perceive. I focus on the elegant movements the physical therapist practiced. I pause on the threshold of my cousin’s capsule.

“I want to go back home.” My cousin’s voice is weepy. “Please let me come home.”

“Little one,” my mother’s voice. The last time I saw her was when I slammed the door in her face and raced to get on the shuttle. “Little one, let me hold you.”

My cousin towers above my mother as she bends to lower her huge abdomen to the floor. Her human arms reach out towards her, and she cries softly when she realizes that they can’t embrace each other. My cousin’s sutures are a blaze. Bright red skin puffs around golden yellow spider silk, spun from a royal surgeon, not the regular medical team the shuttles take us to. The surgery was successful; the pimple-like growths covering her expansive new stomach skin are the trichobothria coming through.

“Aunty, aunty, aunty,” my cousin wails. My mother clamors over a giant fiddlehead and grasps the human hand. “I don’t know why I wanted this.”

They continue to talk, to make plans for an escape, and I cannot believe what I am hearing. This is treason, or worse, theft from the Jeweled Weaver. The money that she has spent to transform us cannot be repaid by any human labor or currency. My cousin tells my mother that she is sorry about me. That she made me come here. My mother makes a hushing sound that once upon a time lulled me to sleep. At dawn, before the shuttles come for me and the others, they plan to meet at the rise over the bay, a steep cliff that my cousin will carry my mother down through before my cousin is missed in her duties. My mother says there is a secret place where failed hybrids go to hide.

She asks where I am, and my cousin tells her. I stumble backwards as my mother spins towards the exit. The articulated movements I force out of my aching legs propel me into the welcoming embrace of tightly furled fronds.

Months ago, before I boarded, the emissary of the Jeweled Weaver read my oath to me, pupils studying every alien movement of my face. Loyalty. Fealty. Body. My cousin was the first of our family to become a member of the court, a future surrogate for the holy kingdom of arachnids. She was not the first traitor, though, this honor fell to my mother.

Using every ounce of effort, I traverse the thick foliage to another set of pathways, set away from the human hybrid area. These are lined with golden head fronds, and arachnids with emerald and sapphire spots sparkle in meager torch light. My human eyes are slow to adjust to the dim lights, but they still find the mother web. Loyalty was given. I will not be so far behind. My future is laid out ahead of me.

Nichole L. Lightner

Nichole Lightner is a horror writer and managing editor for the Drabblecast, living in the edges of Appalachia. She's teasing out dark hymns from broken records when everyone in the house finally goes to sleep. You can find more of her work in Maudlin House, 34 Orchard, TwinPies Literary, and Thirteen Podcast.