The Cave of the Weaver VOL 1. CHP 4 VERSE 8.

Volume One: The Road Out

Chapter Four

Verse Eight: The Cave of the Weaver

Harley  leaned back into the cracked faux leather seat and stared across the steering wheel at Big Mack's front window and the closed sign on the front door. He sighed, "They never never taught us how to find the Witch Doctor. For all that trouble, we haven't heard anything new."

Maia looked up at him, "You can walk now and you can use that Boneshaker thing and stuff."

Harley listened and then nodded, "True, we have new skills. But we don't know how to find the Witch Doctor. We've lost our guides to their own treachery. And we have a new horrible nightmare creature that is apparently chasing us, or at least enjoying the process of tormenting us- I'm not sure yet. And Marion and Fitzroy are still out."

"Marion hasn't talked much lately, has he?" Maia asked. 

"You noticed that too, huh?" Harley said and Maia nodded.

"Yeah. Do you think he's okay?" Maia asked.

"If he's in anywhere near the same situation as we are, he's probably fighting for his life."

They sat silently for a long moment. Harley knew that nothing he'd said was likely to sound comforting to Maia, but he didn't know what else to say. He wasn't about to lie so that things would sound better, that never helped in the long run. So he sat silently, and Maia obliged by sitting silently as well.

A tap on the driver side window jolted them both back to attention and nearly gave Harley an aneurysm.  He looked out the window to see Big Mack grinning wildly at him. Harley muscled the window down.

"You're still alive! And you've got all your bits! Any unholy tattoos or curses I should know about?" She asked. 

"I can walk through walls and summon a mythical morning star. Does that count?" Harley asked.

Big Mack blinked and her mouth opened, then closed. Finally she said, "I'm not sure whether to laugh or ask if you're serious."

"Let's go with laugh." Harley said, "I don't know if I'm serious these days." 

"Generally when the Coven wants to talk to you it's serious all right. Serious trouble. I wasn't expecting to ever see you again. I figured for sure they'd take you out to the Spider Stones. And well, that would be it. Folk don't come back from the Spider Stones, at least not in one piece. Or normal and sane."

"You know that they're witches?" Maia asked, leaning across the seat to look at Big Mack.

"Everyone knows they're witches in this town and everyone is afraid of the witches. People go missing who cross them. That fracking set up was a scary thing to watch go up. Inspectors and lawyers and all sorts of outside folk would show up, and the coven didn't like it. And then somebody else would show up to find out what had happened to this lawyer or that inspector. I'm amazed that they got the thing built at all, for all the good it'll do them."

"What do you mean? I thought you said they just had a big grand opening party?"

"yeah, but the company that's financing the drilling, Salt and Sons, they just filed for bankruptcy  protection and there's a securities commission investigation on one of the other businesses, Pandora something or other."

"I've heard of it." Harley said slowly. 

"So yeah, the operation is officially open, but with the price of oil so unstable and the company providing the money falling apart at the seams, nobody is sure if the place will actually do anything. And we're all pretty sure that the coven did it. They're probably behind the missing kids too. That's why I was so worried when they took an interest in you guys."  

"People think that the coven is making children disappear?"

"That's the rumour, not like anybody will say it to their face though. hey, did you want breakfast? I assume that's why you're lurking outside my restaurant this early. I'll get you some food and tell you about it while I get the place ready to open."

Inside the Diner, Big mack busied herself setting up the free standing tables and laying down table clothes and turning on appliances and generally getting things ready. Harley noted the absence of any other employees, but decided not to mention it. Big Mack started on a trucker's breakfast of sausage and bacon and eggs for Harley and quickly had a scrambled egg and hash browns breakfast for Maia. 

"So," Harley said, sitting back into a booth where he could watch Marion and Fitzroy, "Missing Children?"

"Not like, little kids, you know?" Mack said as she bustled around, "More like teenagers, but some as young as twelve or so. They just don't come home generally. It think we're up to somewhere around two dozen. Nobody knows for sure, but the kids general got seen talking to a member of the coven before they disappeared into the ether."

"Did anyone go to the police?"

"Oh yeah, but nobody found anything. Like they just up and walked away."

"And you guys suspect the coven, because they're creepy and the kids were heard talking to them before they disappeared?"

"Well and one other thing. One kid always were a baseball cap that was found near the Spider Stones. That was enough for the Sheriff to bring in the whole coven for questioning, but nothing else surfaced and just because you know it was them, doesn't mean you can prove it."

"What are the Spider Stones?" Maia asked. 

Mack looked up from her work and her expression made Harley think Mack now regretted mentioning the stones, "They're a circle of eight standing stones outside town. They're called the Spider Stones because laid out to make them look like a spider constellation. Built on private land owned by some corporation, everything is anonymous. The Corporation isn't public, so the town couldn't find out who owns it. The company is called Weaver Public Works and Services. Seems designed to sound innocuous. I know a wolf in sheep's clothing when I see it."

Maia cautiously pointed off away from the fracking site to the other side of town, "Are the stones over there?"

Mack turned to look, and Harley could see her calculating from their expressions," That looks right, yeah. Did you see them earlier? I thought you folks came in from the other side of town?"

"Mr. Harley," Maia said softly, "I can feel them from here, and I think there's something there."

"You aren't seriously going out there?" Mack asked, "You just walked away from the coven untouched, and now you're going to the stones?"

"Oh, we're already touched," Harley said, "I think you're right Maia, this is our only lead. We should investigate."

"I'm going to tell you again that you shouldn't." Mack said, "That isn't a good idea."

"These days, nothing we do is a good idea." Harley answered. 

The Spider Stones, Mack had explained after being pressed, were behind a set of billboards on the side of the road. It took Harley less than five minutes to drive the Cricket out to the site in question. 

Harley and Maia stepped cautiously out of the Cricket and walked carefully around the three billboards mounted along the highway, apparently designed to hide the bizarre landmark behind them. behind the billboards they found eight standing stones, not a large as Stonehenge, but substantially taller and wider than Harley. They appeared to be cut from a black limestone and were erected radiating out from a central point that had been carved into a circular depression and partially filled with quartz pebbles that then radiated out into eight lines that circled around the stones and came back to conclude at the depression. The whole effect made the name: Spider Stones abundantly clear.   

Maia felt the ground open up around her and the void spread beneath. She felt herself falling and looked up to see the stones above her as she disappeared into the darkness. As she fell she could hear Harley's voice, "Oh come on. Not again. I can't carry all three of them by myself."

Maia felt herself settle into the cold of the void and in the void she felt the familiar strands of spider webs spreading into infinity in all directions.

"At last," The voice said, stretching the vowels like violin strings the darkness,"Little mother has arrived. I greet you little mother. You are finally all here and now your initiation into this new cycle begins. It have been a long time. We have missed you."

"You're the Weaver again." Maia said carefully.  

"I am still the Weaver and I am always the Weaver. Just as you are still and always First Mother, no matter how many times you are called upon to play that role."

"I'm not a mother. My mother is dead."

"The death of the old mother is a recurring part of the False King's story. He must destroy the mother to give dominance to the false father."

"Are you going to help me?"

"I am going to offer you a deal. The same deal that I always offer you. I will help you find your way in the story. I shall give you power. In exchange, you shall weave my stories for me, and weave me back across the cultures of the land. You shall resurrect me and give me new life."

"Is this like the stuff with the witches and how they got power from the thing they called the Primal one. That kind of stuff?"

"Very much so. And though I do not wish to degrade the Primal One, my dear niece. I am much more than she and you are much more than her agents in the story. If we do this right, then you are one of the heroes of this tale, and heroes can bend a story like nothing else."

"What if we do it wrong?"

"Then the False King is the hero and things do not end well for you. And I scuttle back to my hole until the story finds you a new vessel."

"If I help you, will you help me find the Witch Doctor."

"I will indeed."

"If I help you, can I help save Fitz and Mr. Marion?"

"Right now? Yes. In the future, only the story knows."

"I don't like this plan. I want another."

"The story has been crippled, little mother. Good options have been torn from us like a lamb isolated from the flock by a pack of wolves. We have no good options. You can act or you can be a victim. Choose little mother."

"I don't like you."

"That is good."

"Is this what happened to the other children who disappeared? The ones who spoke with the coven and stuff?" 

“The coven fed me discontented souls, young folk like yourself who were frustrated that the story they lived in offered them only servitude and eventual death. I do not know what the witches hoped to accomplish by this. I think they thought that they were paying me tribute.”

“What did you do to them? Did you eat them or something?”

“I did something far worse. I told them about the old story and I taught them how to leave the False King's story behind. They are gone, because they left the False King's story behind, and most likely then entered the battlefield. I sense some of them out their still, fighting for a better story.”

“Just some of them?”

“I will not lie to you little mother. You are my most trusted ally throughout our many tellings of the story. I wish you to be this again, and so you will receive only the truth. The vast majority of people who fight against the False King's story are dead. Most do not die quickly. Most do not die well. Many others could have filled your role. They are dead. But now here you are, and you must make your choice.”

“I don't know. I'm just a kid.”

“Your mother has died in vain then.”

Maia's whole being shuddered, she could feel her hurt and her anger rippling out across the vast infinite web in the void around her.

“That wasn't far.”

“The story so very rarely is fair. The False King took your mother from you to preserve his story. Our story wove her death into a sacrifice to save you, the First Mother who will restore the old story. You can let your mother be a casualty that the False King leaves in his wake. That is one story. Or you can fight to make your mother's death a noble sacrifice. It is not fair. She deserves more, but it is what he gave to her. What will you make of her death: casualty of war, or sacrifice for her children's future?”

“Fine, you have a deal. But I hate you.”

"I understand, but it will do. Now let us be bound once more as we have always been and we will be again. Be my agent in the story, and bring the story back to the tribe. Arise First Mother and be whole again."

Maia felt something wrap around her, like threads or strands of spider web, but she could see nothing in the darkness. The strands bound her tightly, but did not restrain her, rather she felt them merge into her and become extensions of herself and of her awareness. She could project her awareness out into the vast darkness and feel other bits of the story. She could see other versions of what she recognized as herself. The moment and the awareness overwhelmed her and she tried to cry out, but found herself unable to do even that. She gasped for air, and found that she seemed no longer to have a body or form at all. She was the threads and was lost within her own expanded awareness. 

"You struggle little mother, but you will re-adjust, and then you will adapt and take back your tools." The Weaver paused,  "Can you hear me little mother?"

Maia could hear the Weaver, but had trouble focusing her attention just upon the Weaver's words. She struggled and finally found her voice, "Yes. I don't like you, now." She managed.

The darkness chuckled and Maia could feel the Weaver's amusement radiate throughout the story, "But you seek the Witch Doctor. And the witchdoctor is a storyteller. Like your friends. The link between your Dreamer and Walker and the Witchdoctor is unbreakable."

"But Mr. Marion is still asleep and Mr. Harley can't see the witch road. Fitz could see the Witch Road, but he's out too and I don't know how to do that."

"You did it just fine when you fled from my nephew. And now I have reawakened your awareness of the whole of the story. It is yours and the Storytellers will teach you how to navigate this new home that I have given you."

"Who's your nephew?"

"The Pale Shepherd, and you could sense him. Simply do what you did there, but do so with your guides. You will find a line of thread stretching from them to your Witch Doctor and you can follow it to him."

"Why do I have to do it?"

"Because chance has dropped you into that part in the story. And now you must take your place int he story or die. You are mortal, but your character is not. The story alone is eternal, because the story is not bound by reality. The story is not bound by its medium. The story is information and information is free. All a story requires is a pattern and it can survive. The story is the only thing that escapes death and the only thing that may be transmitted from the death of one world into it's newborn replacement. When Rome fell, stories survived. When Babylon fell, stories survived. No King or emperor from ancient times has survived to the modern era, but their stories have survived. Zeus and Odin and Isis and Aphrodite have found new worshipers in your modern era because their stories survived and they survived in stasis like divine water bears in the void that exists when a story is not told, and each burst forth like a newborn phoenix when some archaeologist or would be Neo-Pagan again read their story and breathed new life into them."

"So is that my job? And why do I have to do it?"

"It is your job. And it is your job because of who you are. They always say that evil only has to win once. That good has to remain vigilant and never waver. But you know the big secret? They are wrong. The conditions for life exist everywhere. Life evolved around pitch dark deep sea vents. Life evolved in the inhospitable Eoarchean Era of Earth's history. Life was. As soon as life was possible and in all places where life could find even the tiniest foothold, life began and life continued."

"But what about the False King? I thought and I don't know, but isn't he destroying everything and stuff?"

"What about him? The Mayans found the False King and were just about done with his teachings by the time the Europeans arrived. The Anasazi and the Hohokam both learned the error of the Locust Path and walked away from it. Life is a self-cleaning system. They say evil has to win once, but they are wrong, evil has to corrupt every generation to such an extent that no rebellion can occur. Evil must overwhelm again and again, because if any hope survives and grow then Evil will be overthrown."

"Then why does it seem so hard?"

"Because it is hard. Evil fights to completely dominate, and when it does win, it hides all evidence that there was ever another way. But it is lying. And more importantly. It is not even evil, it is just self-destructive and afraid. But there is another way, and that other way always wins eventually. If you lose here today, you only lose this round."

"What does it mean to lose this round?"

"It means nothing changes until somebody else learns that there is another way. And if you fail loudly enough, you may spawn new rebellions. And so even in defeat you may be confident that you have done some good for tomorrow. But, and this is important, although the Locust King can only win in the short term, that short term can be quite long to human minds. The damage that the path of the Locust can do to the ecosystem can persist for generations and even millennia and the people who find the old path the Free Path may be a very different people on a very different planet, a much quieter planet than before. Life recovered after the Permian Extinction, but for nine of every ten things alive at the time, the Permian Extinction was the end of the story. And each time the Locust King get to tell his story, the human song hangs in the balance and risks being silenced forever. The next people to walk the circle of the free path may not be human. So, the stakes are still very high, even if victory is inevitable."

"You're making people disappear and you're scaring parents and I lost my mom and I'm scared of my dad. Doesn't that make you a bad guy? And how can I trust you?"

"I'm not going to tell you why you should trust me. I don't want an agent who trusts me. We are beyond time and beyond your understanding. You breath life into us, but we are beyond what you make of us. You would be a fool to trust me. I have given you what you asked, and I have told you many secrets. Perhaps this makes you think you should trust me. And so, to keep you from becoming too comfortably in the presence of an ancient spider god, I will not let you go."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, that I am not sending you back to your little ragtag group with your hard won information. I am leaving you here, in my web, to find your own way back. You are my agent, or at least you will become so if you prove yourself worthy to be so. Good luck little mortal. Good luck little mother."