Whispers

“On windless nights her river-spanning line vibrates at a frequency no insect makes. The Unspun say it is answering something. Darwin says it is just the river. She has started keeping notes on the river's replies.”

Darwin's bridge line hums at midnight.

“Gardenia found her orb re-tensioned one morning — every radius perfect, the spiral tighter than she weaves it. No visitor, no vibration, no explanation. She has not told the others. She rebuilt it exactly the way she found it, just in case.”

The First Spinner visits the orbweavers' webs and leaves no footprints.

“Once a year, when the light is right, the fossil spiders press close to the thread with no spider and are silent — which, for spiders, is saying everything. Attercopus was seen touching it with one leg. She would not say what she felt. Her leg trembled for a week.”

The Unspun gather where the fossil thread lies and say nothing.

“The tarantella was danced for her, but the rhythm predates every village that claims it. Brushleg tried to drum it once and stopped after four beats, pale. That is not a dance, he said. That is a summons. He has not drummed since without checking the shadows first.”

Tarantella's dance is older than the villages.

“The volcanic rock of her valley is veined with threads no living spider spun — mineralized silk, older than the island. Ingens walks over it every dusk without noticing. The Unspun notice. They have started visiting the valley at night, quietly, one at a time.”

Ingens' valley has silk in the stone.

“She has lived in the same bark crevice for years and knows every sound it makes. Last winter it made a new one: a slow drawing-in, like a breath, like something vast remembering how to inhale. Walnut flattened herself into a knot and waited. The crevice exhaled. Nothing emerged. She has not told Burrower. She tells Burrower everything.”

Walnut heard the crevice breathe.

“Portia has been seen studying the thread with no spider, plucking it the way she tests webs. She has not shared her conclusions. She may not have conclusions — which, for Portia, would be a first.”

Portia has a plan for the fossil thread.

“They say spiders of her age dream in deep time, and Sixteen has begun describing a spinner older than stone. She could not have met the First Spinner. The Unspun have stopped asking how she knows.”

Sixteen remembers something she never saw.

“She marched the whole length of the ancient thread in perfect ant formation, feeling every vibration through borrowed feet. When she returned, she would only say: it is still warm. Nobody has explained that.”

Myrmarachne walked the fossil bed as an ant.

“She has held one burrow longer than the forest has held its shape, and the Unspun visit her the way pilgrims visit a shrine. They ask about the thread with no spider. She answers with silence, which they write down.”

The Unspun count Gaius among their witnesses.

“At the yearly gathering, the Unspun offered Bagheera a filament of the fossil thread — older than any nectar, stranger than any prey. She sniffed it, politely declined, and went back to her acacia. The First Spinner, they say, laughed for the first time in an age.”

Bagheera tasted the oldest silk and chose salad anyway.

“Or so Flea claims, waving her pedipalps in demonstration. The Unspun neither confirm nor deny it, which is the closest they come to belief. Zebra has added it to her fence-post report as: fascinating, probably harmless, under investigation.”

Flea waved at the thread and the thread waved back.

“Sandsix guards the sand above the fossil bed without being asked, and the Unspun have noticed. Attercopus's own thread predates the bed by a hundred million years — so whose silk lies in the stone, and why does Sandsix never sleep facing it?”

The fossil thread has no spider, and the sand remembers why.

“She was asked about the thread in the fossil bed exactly once. She smiled, blessed a clutch of Gooty's spiderlings instead, and spoke of family — which is, the Unspun point out, the one thing the fossil thread was never attached to. Socotra tells the family part at every dinner, and nobody asks about the rest.”

The First Spinner changed the subject.

“Once a year Ornamental visits the fossil beds at impossible speed, and once a year the Unspun fall silent as she passes. Permarachne — who survived the end of a world — is the only one who watches her go. Twotail says the silence has a rhythm, like a lasso winding up.”

Ornamental ran across the fossil and something listened.

“Four ancients the web never caught, pressed in stone with silk glands intact — silk no living spinner can identify. Darwin offered to test a fiber against her river-bridging thread. The Unspun declined, politely, the way you decline something that might answer back.”

The Unspun were never spun, but something spun them.

“One dawn Cellar found a single unfamiliar thread woven through her basement web — older than the house, older than the street. She vibrated it, and it vibrated back. Zebra watched the whole thing from the fence and filed her longest report ever; the thread is gone now, and the basement is quieter.”

Cellar's web caught a thread that wasn't hers.

“Twotail woke to find one of her silk lassos knotted in a pattern she never learned — a perfect spiral, the geometry of the First Spinner's own telling. Ogreface, who hunts by starlight, says the knot points at the fossil bed. Spitter glued it to a leaf for safekeeping — the leaf is empty this morning.”

The rodeo rope that tied itself.

“Once a year the Unspun gather around it and say nothing, which for spiders is saying everything. The silk is older than the stone it lies in, and Permarachne — the one who watches worlds end — stands beside it the longest. When asked what she is listening for, she says: 'For whoever is still tucking something in.'”

The thread in the fossil bed has no spider.

“She was asked about the fossil thread exactly once, by a young spinner who did not know better. She changed the subject — gently, the way one moves a web aside rather than tearing it. Megarachne was present and will not describe the silence that followed. Attercopus has been unspooling her endless thread ever since.”

The First Spinner changed the subject.