"Gotta go! Althee's gone to labor without no doctor," Frank Jr. yelled back, tossing his vet bag into the Chevy. Next thing, Frank Jr. and Mexico Phillips were inside, doors shut, his ignition whining. Frank Jr. backed the Chevy across Mrs. Weaver's garden pinwheels as he overheard the Sheriff out the open car window.

"Ash--you see hide nor hair today of a tizzypoke an a young feller?!"

The last distant words Frank Jr. heard behind him as he sped to toward his beloved bride were Ash Weaver's words...

"...Naw...tizzypoke, y'say?"

B L A C K C L O T H.

U P C O F F I N H O L L E R.

Tomorrow they would inter the scant remains of Old Sisilse Bane. Tonight, under the lid, a gold ribbon strapped around her skull, holding her chin shut. Tonight her pine coffin sat in Jake's front room, for she had no kin to claim her. Tomorrow Grinning Deke's chariot would carry the box up to those dewy snapdragons on Hulep Choat's Peak, to the very spot she had requested. Tonight Jake sat up with Sisilse but tomorrow he must stand with great reluctance beneath that chestnut tree and say holy notions over her. Since Jake Shea had defrocked himself, he now hated to ask a prayer. But Miss Bane had wrung a promise from Jake, years ago; in fact, not two days after he chucked off the preacher's cloth she made her expectation clear. Jake was to put her in the ground. She didn't hold with churches or sanctified churchmen. She did not hold with the Preacher Polk. Meaning, Jake was now acceptable to her. There appeared to be a kernel of logic in her thinking on this, if you knew Sisilse Bane. Tomorrow they would bury her with a fresh green willow switch.

Tonight Jake lit his long clay pipe off the dimming lamp then sewed another st.i.tch into his mothholy cloth, offering up the weeist prayer, just a prayer for easier skies, tomorrow...

V A L J E A N.

"Tain't love I's ex-poundin bout, love ain't got nuffin to do wid it," spake Black Elam, his h.o.r.n.y hand pumping the bellows.

"A body needs a little lovin, that's what Papa Jake says, needs it ter intergrate the humors, and ter live on."

"Yes'm, yes'm Mizz Val, now I ain't the one t'go agin Mistah Shea, but you is a real long gull now, gittin long in years an da way I figgers it--a chile is de thang. Yes'm, a chile be more'n overdue, he be yo owny chancet at nurture in ye ole age."

"Hmmmph."

Valjean wasn't too distracted about the nettles of old age just now and she was more than a long girl; she was twelve stone and nineteen hands high. What she was concerned with was balancing her ledger, Elam finishing Lemuel Baywright's syrupcart wheel, and everybody getting home for supper. The sooner the Shea Clan ate, the sooner they all went to bed.

"s.h.i.t, I'm owny twenty-fer," Valjean got huffy, slamming the ledger, knowing how her mother Odelaida would waylay such an oath from a young lady's tongue. Mama called it her liplock, but it mostly involved her thumb and your lip. Valjean shucked the bowtie then rolled her white cuffs. "What does I care bout rhuematiz n'rockin chairs? Besides, I marry me some jughead an he'll be jist as ole as I am when the rhuematiz comes. Then there's me and some hairy, smelly, fool jughead to do fer. Take me out shoot me, Elam."

Elam knee-lifted the wheel as she came over. "But it's chilren, Mizz Valzy, it's chilren what takes care o'ye and worries bout ye when de shadders grow long. Ye don't wanna end up like Black Elam does ye, a-livin lonely in a shed out back wid yer dogs? Tain't right fer no woman." Again, he pumped up the shimmering coals.

Valjean swung the tongs, s.n.a.t.c.hed the red-hot iron band from the forge then began pounding it onto the wheel hub. "You seem hale. You seem happy."

"Suits a ole n.i.g.g.ah like me. Don't suit you Mizz Valzy."

"h.e.l.l if I kin tote the differnce." Her ten-pound hammer clanked louder. Sometimes love was a secret you couldn't share.

"Womens gots special feelins and sich that needs tendin, everbody knows that. Be needin a baby ter make her blossom and a chile ter give her cause to rise of a-mawnin."

"Ain't so many n.i.g.g.e.rs in these hills," Valjean said, ready for a new conversation. "Why you so all-powered joyful to rise up each blessed mornin ter curry other folk's mules and shovel s.h.i.t afore breakfast?"

Elam ginned his thoughts, making a cool appraisal before dousing the red-hot ring with water from a Cottoline can.

"Dat be true enough, ain't many n.i.g.g.e.rs be tolerated round hyere like Ole Elam is. But black er white, ole man don't need no woman nor chile like a ole woman needs her babies, even when dey ain't babies no mo. De way it tis, years n'years ago, my own Mam was brung up hyerebouts t'coddle a gentle lady and her younguns, back in that bottom country on the fer side of Ewe Spring, not too dern fer off'n Riddle Top. But even once Mam'uz freed and ailin in her own cabin up dere, she needed her baby Elam to come by and tend to her, hep her make her way thoo th'shadders, hep t'lay her in her grave. Dat's how it tis Mizz Valzy."

"But yer still hereabouts."

"Dis be my home. I takes to folks n'folks takes ter me fair enough. Where would I go?"

"They got lots more n.i.g.g.e.rs downcountry, in Roanoke an Memphis I hear." They both lifted the wheel and manhandled it over to the wagon block.

"Mebbe so. Ain't my n.i.g.g.e.rs though. Don't know em from Mistah Jolson."

"Ever been in love Elam?"

"Why Mizz Val, sho--sho I has. I loves dat sad-eyed pooch a-layin on dat feedsack over yonder."

Valjean laughed her deep hardy laugh and Elam let her be. They greased Lemuel's cart and Valjean came through the kitchen door just as Mama Odelaida was polishing off grace. Papa Jake stuck his lip out at Valjean while she snuggled in betwixt Granmammer and J.Pea then reached for the succotash. Honeygirl Gig, looking unG.o.dly pretty and coming of age, kissed Granmammer's cheek to keep from laughing. Mama winked at Valjean, her first born. "Don't look so green, Jake," Mama told him. Being an ex-preacher, Papa was always trying to slip in after grace himself. Soon they were all making up remarkable interpretations of the day's work; smiling, boasting, talking with their mouths full of parsnips, cracklin' bread, and wild sausage besides.

After supper, Valjean went out to Lizzie's stall to give the mule an extra ration of hay. Lizzie's stout hooves and stouter const.i.tution would need reserves of fuel, nonetheless. The mule nuzzled Valjean as if she antic.i.p.ated the night to come.

Later, after the lamps were out, Valjean lay in bed listening to the sigh of Coffin Holler, listening for the steady rhythms of her sister Gig beside her and the snoring of her mama and papa across the hall. It would be past midnight before she was certain all in the house were asleep, the hour when she was safe out of bed. Quietly, her fine hands removed the muslin nightshirt which had hidden strange doings over the last few hours, doings astir in her lean flat body. Valjean belted tight her denims, brushed her stiff curls with vigor. She crept down the stair and out the kitchen door as she had done so many times since Spring; her heart racing as always, she bridled Lizzie then rode the mule down the holler. Escapee and mule would pick their way down through the dark rustlings of Pearlwick Road, dip north through the slew, shying from moonlight or any prying eyes, they would then cut upcountry and across Skawmarrow Holler until they reached the ruin of a grand homestead on the leeside of Old Riddle Top. There, with Valjean's knees clamping, unclamping, urging Lizzie on, the mule's hooves climbed ardently, clipping softly up through a steep stand of pine and yellow locust until she reached the meadow's ap.r.o.n.

Valjean dropped off of Lizzie's back, lashed the brave mule to a lowslung branch. Turning, she peered across the fetch of moonlit clover, eyes wanting, searching. She whistled. The descending, three-note carol of a night warbler. The wind stood still, the clover wrinkled without it and she whistled again.

From the dark woodline across the meadow, the lovely la.s.s appeared in her tattered lace. Barely a figment she was, at first, pale and delicate. But Valjean knew her. The girl who spake poetry, lamenting in a strange language, words that Valjean Shea had never heard. She came toward Valjean, smiling through the clover until she stood breathless, beautiful, gazing up into Valjean's strong grey eyes. Valjean whispered her name, bent and kissed her. Here, they had found a secret worth keeping. Here, they met and loved.

Valjean would take the mule's blanket and spread it on a well-worn bed of clover; proudly, beneath the seething bristles of Riddle Top, they would shed their skins of course denim and lace and find each other's wanting.

O, I S L E S P I N N E R.

Gooooo. Let poor Woodrow gooooo. I can't lift my finger, nooo. I would like to move now, I think, but something won't let me. I can tell yooou, but just barely. I'm not afraid of threads, no, or spinners, no, don't get me wrong. I'm not afraid of anything except utter stagnation. Stagnation scares me a little. And this lake doesn't mooove much. There's no flow to it, no give or take, no fresh water from the mountain creeks above, nothing comes or goes from here it seems, nothing to churn up the rotting depths of this lake. It doesn't move and neither do I.

They told me not to come here; but I had always heard about the lake from my father, the Ignopateramus, and I needed an escape from my family and their incessant horrors. Don't get me wrong. I'm not talking epic horrors, just little day to day butcheries, niggling little things like Sissy-Maw's voice picking away at my intellect and my bald Pateramus' racist prattle; the kind of petty ravings that make you want to deny your birth and declare yourself an orphan. I've had proper schooling, you see, I have developed a social awareness that was withering in that house down in Ewe Spring.

I was borne in Ewe Spring and, much later, spent semester in Baptist Seminary--rejected their findings--then gave two years to the Roanoke Conservatory before Mother Imogene's trust dried up. Sissy-Maw, in her best mammy mode, wanted me to better myself--but not so thoroughly that I would become fed up with her tongue-clucking or deny my heritage, a heritage of the hillbilly grotesque. They, yes they--meaning my brothers and sisters and copious cousins--they adhered to a kind of sneering illiteracy that went beyond the sickly pale. They did not understand the need for mystery. My mystery is the word almighty, the word is my holy writ. I needed to retreat and this book I was writing would fare much better in their absence, I decided. It was a dirty book to them, no doubt, if they were ever to read it. It was about s.e.x and degeneracy with a cast of dumb hillfolk like themselves. It was about a diamond in the coalbin.

I had always heard about the lake on Old Riddle Top. And so I came here.

It was not easy. My old Pateramus did not want me to go and was not forthcoming with the lake's location. Them lock-jawed injuns might have had a name for it, he said, not that he could recollect such a thing. He could drool about it over a campfire amongst his learned brethren, but suddenly he clammed up when his eldest son expressed an interest in this secret lake, this lake with no name. Go to work for Aiken Williams, he said, go work in his sawmill and forget about those babbling books and there probably ain't really no lake to speak of so forget about it. That was his contribution.

I set out on a Sunday morning a few weeks ago, knowing they would all be in services. I stayed behind as always and when shape-notes droned from the Ewe Springs Congregational, I was well up the road with my ma.n.u.script under my coat and a rucksack full of pencils, tins, Ayn Rand and soup cubes. I trekked most of the way up here on foot with little help from the salt of the earth. There were plenty of them sprinkled along the roadside, poor clods in poor shacks with poor fields. A taste of sangroot helped me motivate. But, not once did I beg direction before reaching the cloistered mountain. I accepted only one brief a.s.sist; a short hitch on the flatbed of a Methodist gra.s.s-widow who bent my ear until the Cayuga cut-off. From there on I was cured of companionship, ready to claim that darkling peak. It was arduous. But I, I prevailed. Finally, after a rough, weary day climbing the long road--or should I say--climbing my road up Riddle Top, I came upon a garbling old duff with bad skin who pointed me around the beam and up the right trail---or should I say the wrong trail, the terribly wrong trail to this mountain-logged lake.

I pa.s.sed upward through many gnarled groves of rock and blackjack oak until, almost by fluke, I looked askance from a brutal ledge and saw it. A green glimmer through the trees. With b.l.o.o.d.y hands I found my way off the ledge, lost in sweat, lungs aching, as I took purchase on a queer stand of timber. It seemed to entwine upon itself like dark Chinese noodles; the trees thrust into the mountain, bowered against a sheer stony wall which loomed above the treetops. Deep within that tangle I saw water. Green water.

In moments I had entered this forest, braved the tangle, and stood with shirt and flesh torn on the banks of this lake. It was larger than I expected. The brackish water spread out before me, weak sun shining across the emerald surface, agleam as tarnished bra.s.s, unmoving and unmoved by my presence. As I soon discovered, it was impossible for much strong light to leak over that daunting granite face or trickle past such ingrown trees. But there was enough amber to see the island.

My eyes must have glittered. I dug out my pocket Webster's.

island'i-lendn 1: a tract of land surrounded by water and smaller than a continent 2: something resembling an island esp. in its isolated or surrounded position 3: SAFETY ZONE .

I checked the safety zone. The sh.o.r.es of the lake were farther off, more distant than I thought possible in this earthbound cove--and waiting, yes, waiting at the lake's heart was this island. My island. A safety zone like I had never seen or dreamt of, but the blessed island I had slaved after nonetheless.

Still, I was not so quick to claim it.

I spent most of that first afternoon walking the circ.u.mference of the lake, marking the mushy ground with my brogans and looking for anyone human, subhuman or signs of their flotsam. There was none, or so I fathomed. Only the mosquitoes and tree frogs showed any interest in my pa.s.sing. Occasionally, as I slogged several hours around the vast sheet of water, I would hear the agonizing, deepwater groan of a sad something. Ooooooooooo. Some insect, some reptile or winged spirit, farflung and beastly it called--and my eyes were drawn back across the swampmoss to the island. From whence it came.

Out there, there floated a meaty rise of rock and timber. Kithless rock. Forlorn timber. Scornful as h.e.l.l. As my sad, pitiful something groaned out there, crying out there, telling me it was mine. Ooooooooo...

The day went. Sun was in short supply once I had finally circled the lake. And when I met my old brogueprints--those left when I first arrived on the lake's brink--I was in for a jolt and a half. For there, not far from my old traces, was a heap of oilcloth with a trolling motor peeking out. I tossed back the cloth to reveal the brittle skiff underneath. The johnboat was tired, flaking blue paint, but the motor mount was sound and I felt a quarter-tank of gas. The island lured me of course. My mind was elsewhere and asking. How could I have missed this boat on my arrival? Had I been so taken by this secret lake, this unhallored lake as they called it, that I had overstepped and overlooked my vessel? Yes, it was ancient and leaking no doubt, yet it seemed unshakably sporty for this unattainable place? Who had left it here? I never got the chance or the oracle to ask. Only one thing was sure. A fellow traveler had gone before me and was now somewhere beyond.

But now my light was failing and I had no intention of attempting that island before daybreak. I built a fire then spent an unmolested night in its warmth, sleeping soundly in my heavy fatigue jacket. At dawn, I heated a tin of Red Devil potted meat, bit a ginsang, then tossed my rucksack in the blue boat. I doused the fire then skidded the boat into the water. It was easy. It wanted to go there.

A half dozen yanks on the cord and the motor began to putter out soft white smoke. I had managed a skiff before. This one was no different. And mine was only a short morning cruise, yet more significant a commute than I expected. The lake was large, larger than it appeared; the island seeming to retreat from me as I made slow headway; green felted sc.u.m, parting, barely ruffled by the bow of my boat. Under a greasy new sky the water's face spread out flat as new tissue, undisturbed by any current but mine. I looked at the far sh.o.r.eline swaddled in mist and wondered how I could ever have traversed this lake in an afternoon. I wondered what I was doing on this murky water. I wondered why it bore no appropriate name.

The island received me.

I awoke from my addled musings and saw a pebbled shelf where I could land. Here you go, it said. So I came ash.o.r.e, didn't I, and found this house in no time at all?

Did I say a house? No, not a house really. Let's call it a duck blind, or a hutch on stilts. It sat back in the trees, hidden within the wooded crag of the island. You would never see it from sh.o.r.e, not even from the island's own beach. Yet the front porch afforded a fractured view of the water through sheaths of pinestraw. I did not hail hearty as I approached. It never crossed my mind that anyone was living here. Not in the dead, hollow breath of those windows or behind the splintering, moss-riddled door. Yes, it was a sh.e.l.l, an abandoned sh.e.l.l on pilings high enough to save it from the waters if and when these brooding waters ever rose. Inside it was one room; one table with a rusty drum fireplace, two poplar stump stools, a disintegrating rope bed and a porch vista. The windows were tacked over with Vizqueen, but the plastic had cracked and failed, leaving brown needles and plastic chips salted across the floorboards. Other than this, the place was swept clean, scrubbed well by its last dweller.

So I thanked whoever for their kind consideration. I made haven.

What happened next, in the hours to come, is not so important. What is important--to me anyway--is that I took up residence here; alone I thought, alone with my pencils and my adjectives and this haven isle.

In the days that followed I found that the proper pine bough makes a pretty fair broom, that nothing much nibbled below the sc.u.mmy surface of this lake--whether you baited it with sardines or gallinippers--and I scribbled and chewed ginsang far into the nights. I wish I could kick the sang habit, but it's one of the unfortunate legacies from bald Pateramus and his kin. I packed plenty of ginsang and candles. And iodine. For safe water you needed iodine.

I slept late and was never disturbed. Seldom did I hear a morning finch or killdee, I slept and never dreamed. I had always had an active dream life. But not here. When I arose from the rope bed, usually at mid-morning, I boiled water and made myself a hot cup from my bottle of coffee syrup. Then, I would carry my brew along as I skimmed around the lake with the crude paddle I fashioned from a loosened porch plank. I practiced gas conservation for my eventual return or any emergency.

If I expected intrigue or the chance encounter during these morning ventures upon the lake, my expectations soon withered and died of doldrums. Several times, I landed at various points along the sh.o.r.e then hiked into the surrounding woods. They were ingrown bush and very chilly, dullish and dank, suffering severe light deprivation. Malaise overtook me. In all my excursions I never once laid eyes on beast or breathing soul in those woods. Never once.

Eventually, I would return to the island, and each noonday's sun would find my spoon attacking a scorched Carnation-c.u.m-soup can on the porch steps. Then I set to work. After simmering all morning on thoughts of my heretical upbringing and my spurious lot in life, I was br.i.m.m.i.n.g hot with ire towards that clan what raised me and, yes, I was G.o.ddam ready to write about them. Elbows on the table, I would work until the lake dimmed. I would break out the ginsang root, set match to candle, then work well into the night.

On one late occasion, if I recall, I rubbed my eyes and reached for a new pencil--only to find it tethered to the table by a fine fragile thread. I thought little of this at the time, as the thread stretched, snapped, and I started turning that pencil into a blunt instrument. My fingers cramped and callused, and erasers went untouched as I wrote great volumes without ever looking back.

I did this for almost a fortnight before I saw the first web. The dew-glistened web.

It was a beauty. It was morning. It was spun across one end of the porch, from rail to rail, fine and delicate as a starburst spray. The web met me when I stepped out barefoot with my coffee. I looked for the spider. But no spider sat in attendance. Yet, this ornate, silken web had been stretched by some artist overnight; corner to corner, it filled the frame. I had to leave it as it was. Who would I be to rupture such majestic architecture?

I headed back inside for my shoes, but some glissando of light caught the prismic threads, catching my eye as well, and I returned to the web. Stranger still, I wanted desperately to touch a thread. I only wished to sense it with my finger. Would it suffer the brush of skin, I wondered? Or would the web dissolve like cotton candy?

I never found out. I reached out my finger then someone called my name.

"Wooodrow, come hoooome to us-s-s-sss."

A man's voice echoed from the lake.

"Wood-rooow-w-w--"

It might have been my brother Ned's voice, or my father's. I couldn't be sure. He echoed again. He made me drop my cup.

Coffee splattered my feet as they skipped off the porch.

"Woodrow-w-www."

I dashed down through the trees to the boat. I landed fast, but neither Ned or Pateramus were anywhere to be seen--though the lakesh.o.r.e was under heavy prowl. Yes, far across the water--something stirred against the green mural. My eyes zeroed, I saw him clearly. A panther. A sterling panther stood across the moor, flexing cypress grey haunches, almost black. The eyes shone silver. The cat was appraising me from the strand where I had launched the johnboat. I glanced about, but only the cool panther was watching. There was stillness over my sombre lake again, and an alpenglow hush. No one spake my name. Least of all, that stealthy panther who broke the idle gaze, turned slowly and padded off into the brier.

Had he lost stock in me, so quickly? Had he scared off my visitor? Was I still asleep and dreaming? "No," I heard myself murmur. It was the panther. It was the panther who paid the call.

Perhaps--just perhaps, I had bitten too much sangroot and worked too late into the night. Perhaps I had a fever. Sure, I took the boat across--in my shoes of course, and yes, I searched the woods to no avail. But for the rest of that day, I was nagged by a sense of abandonment. As though that creature were kin to me and had lost all hope.

With bitter resolve, nonetheless, I returned to the island by dusk and wrote with growing despair; deeper and deeper, long into the stagnant night. About two a.m. it began to rain heavily. I lay down my pencil, battened the hatches. I fell into my bed of rope.

When I woke again, the deluge had stopped. I was sure it had flushed the web from my porch. I was wrong about that. Yesterday's web was still there, glistening wet and holding strong.

And now, a new, super web was spread betwixt two pines in the yard. It was quite impressive, this new design, almost as broad as my outstretched arms. It set my mind on a brighter path.

The next morning brought three more, each web stretched in grand style betwixt limbs and trunks and saplings. The original masterpiece persisted on my front porch and still no glimpse of a spider. But no voices either, no visitors to speak of, and this was good. That day I explored the island again, searching for the spider or spider's nest. I had explored my zone upon arrival, but this time it stood closer inspection. The isle was only a teardrop shape of clay and pine with stony outcroppings down most of one strand to the fir tip. You could pace it from end to end under five minutes, and this I did again, and again, and again, taking inventory of the insect life. As I walked, I heard flies but never saw them. The cicada clicked high in the trees but kept its distance. As I walked I felt finely spun threads, invisible to me, that brushed and broke across my face. Against strained sun, I caught a glint of thread, a single thread, so thin and tenuous you felt a good breeze would snap it: I detected this thread spun from a pine bough at water's edge, stretching out, out over the sumpwater to a point G.o.d knows where. Either it spanned out to a branch or piling in the lake, or to some mind-boggling anchor on the faraway sh.o.r.e. How it was spun there I dare not guess.

I came up spiderless. But worse, while I was tramping my island, turning stones and forcing aside each stubborn limb, an ancient melancholia crept over me. The lonely abandon of this place came to roost in my soul. I found myself pining for my home, my Sister-the-Hun and Pateramus and dumbcluck cousins. I remembered their smiles, their outrageous a.s.saults on the mother tongue, warm dinners and holidays. I caught glimpses of my father's hands carving a child's toy--my Sissy-Maw, who had nursed me and a motherless house, shooing gnats from the copper cleft in her oft-mended bra.s.siere.

This fondness would pa.s.s as soon as Woodrow got locked in their bosom again. But they wormed into me all the same, and they wouldn't let go. Wistfully, I began to dwell on that long-gone, restless panther and the idea of heading down to home. I went back up to the shack on stilts as my temper shifted to spiders who teased and spun with such arrogance then hid from me in the minutiae of nature. I hate a perfectionist. I hate smug humility.

When I returned to my ma.n.u.script that day, the vein was dry. I found that I could not craft another paragraph from the antics of my clan, my emotions were in such a love hating storm. I could not muster the venom necessary to continue, so, after a cold supper I set the book aside. I took fresh paper from my pack, whittled my pencil to a point. Then I began to write about the unseen. The spider. And the lake. And the webs, visible and invisible.

When eerie daybreak sheened through the window, I broke down and chased a few fitful hours of rest. By mid-morning I felt hot and awake and I stepped out to discover two more tour de forces. Two spectacular webs to be sure, spun betwixt trees on my walk down to the boat. They billowed. They taunted. My festering envy rebelled against these silvery patterns, sleep had abated nothing, redemption was not mine, and now my spectres seized me. With the boat oar plank I tore apart those new webs. Then I returned to the shack, thrashing at the others, obliterating each and every silk brainchild, including the web on my porch. I tore and swore and worked myself into a dither. And once our creeping beauties were decimated and defaced, I tossed aside my weapon, went inside and went straight back to work.

Again, I wrote with fervid intensity, about a questing fellow who rejected his given life, who sought manhood and wisdom and a dollop of grace; who made his way through the forest to a forbidden lake, a secret zone where he confronted the sneaking skeleton-legged demons that dwelt there. I may never have seen them, but I wrote of them with conviction and savagery. I wrote until I collapsed dreamless, spent as a flat bullet.

My eyes opened a few hours later and my pages were gone.

How the spinner or spinners had toiled so swift and silent is forever beyond my grasp. I only know what I beheld as I swept webbing from the barren table then rushed out onto my porch.

The door ripped away the gauze. Sunstrains filtered through white canopies of web upon web. All around, choking the shack, those trees spread their webbed veins and sucked away my breath. My island looked like a sticky, sugary tabernacle; a cathedral with fleece tapestries splayed in concentric patterns, up into the highest reaches of those limbs, whorled in mad complexities that bespake some G.o.dlike mind who spun each Creation as He might spin His lacework. Ooooooooo. I cried. One wing of the porch was completely enclosed, tentacles of web sucking from the corners of the roof out into the festooned trees.

The trees who kept my ma.n.u.script.

For there, up there, was each penciled page, each word I had agonized over. My parchments were cast skyward as if by a frosty gale, yet no wind or water moved here, they hung up above me, white leaves scattered in a high-webbed glory, and yet, and yet, no spidery G.o.d came forth to claim them.

But make no mistake. They were well beyond my touch. My grasp, it said, was pitiful, human. I was defeated. At the mercy of a sect of trees and an unholy spinner.