Lovely Lady Spider

Lady Spider. That’s what everyone called her, the woman that lived at the top of the hill. Everybody was scared of Lady Spider. Even though they did not know her. It was mostly her appearance that was fearful to them. When she came into town, she never spoke to anyone. And she stood taller than most of the townsmen, but was as thin as a small child. Her limbs were much longer than what they should’ve been, and her fingers so long and spindly that it seemed like she could weave webs with them. This appearance gave her the name, and she became what parents spoke of to children whom misbehaved. She was not an ugly woman though, even with her gaunt appearance she was incredibly beautiful, much more than most of the women in the town. Perhaps it was her rare black eyes, and constant silence that made the townspeople fear her, they were unable to understand her. Her strangeness was what brought people to tell stories about her, telling their children that Lady Spider would take them away in their sleep if they were naughty, and that Lady Spider was a demon whose home was filled with skeletons of the people she had eaten, that Lady Spider had stolen away missing pets at night to feed on as her midnight treat. Nobody dared talk to Lady Spider, the silent woman who made children cry when she came into town. One time people said they saw Lady Spider enter the house of an old man who had become ill and could not move from his bed. The birds did not sing that spring day, and townsfolk feared that they would discover him dead the next morning. The next day the old man appeared in town, completely cured of his illness. When the townspeople asked him of Lady Spider he only replied Lady Spider, “Such a strange woman…” Thinking now that she was a witch the people of the small town ran poor Lady Spider out of her home into the forest on the edge of the town. And she was never heard of for a long time, although people still spoke of the strange Lady Spider that lived at the top of a hill. Then, one day, when Lady Spider was only thought of as a myth, the town was swept with an incurable illness. It spread and spread until everyone in the town had become ill. All of the townspeople now had marks of spiders on their bodies from the illness, and no doctor could cure them. They blamed Lady Spider then, that it was her that had made them sick. That it was her that was making them die. The nights were still after that, all of the townspeople praying for their death to come in the peacefulness of sleep with no hope.
Then, after all hope in the town was lost, on a night that the Cheshire Cat’s smile hung lowly in the sky, she returned. She returned to the hill on which her house once stood, the moon illuminating the town below her. And for the first time, Lady Spiders lips parted, and the words she spun formed into the most perfect melody which traveled down to the sleeping town. The melody crept into the bedrooms of the townspeople, to those who waited to die. And although the town slept, they heard Lady Spiders song clearly, if not more so because of their slumber. Lady Spider sung so beautifully that they could not tell if she even spoke the same language, or whether that mattered or not. When Lady Spider finished singing she lowered her head and spoke in a whisper that echoed throughout the town. “It was the Lady Spider you feared, but when the spider was away the bugs came to play…” And when the town awoke the next morning, they had been completely cured. None were near death, none still held the mark of the spider. It was as if they had awoken from a dream. They remembered the Lady Spider came to them in their sleep. That she returned to save them. But just as she had returned, she had disappeared. And the people in the town spoke of Lady Spider once again, not as a bad woman who harmed young children, but as a silent beauty whom had watched over their little town, and kept evil away. And as time went on, even after the little town no longer stood there, the townspeople could still hear Lady Spiders song carried from the hill she had once stood on. For that night when she had parted her lips to sing, her song became the wind of that town, so that even after she had left her melody would always protect the place she had once called her home……

End.