Ink of Ages Fiction Prize

The Weaver

Arachne was young when she would sit by her mother’s knee and watch her weave. She would spin the wool together, twisting each fraying end into the tapestry. The colours danced together, coiling around each other like snakes as the rich blue nestled into golden hues. It was a difficult task when a child was tugging on your arm, asking you to entertain them somehow. So, Arachne’s mother told her if she sat very quietly, she’d tell her a story.

The tales she wove with her words were far more vibrant to a child’s restless ears. She listened as her mother told her of the struggles of the gods, of Aphrodite’s birth and Cronos’ death. She spoke of the ill-fated flights of Icarus and Phaeton, hands grasping for the sun before they fell, light spilling through their damned fingers. And each story came with a warning. Arachne was never sure if she was supposed to respect the gods or avoid them. It seemed like anything they touched burned.

As the summers stretched on, Arachne grew and her interest in the stories fell away. She’d been warned enough times not to chase the heroism of the likes of Heracles – she could never achieve those heights. Accomplishment for the gods would only bring her danger. So, she discarded her childhood dreams, and learned to weave like her mother.

Perhaps, if she had been bad at it, it wouldn’t have mattered. Perhaps the fates would have smiled on her if she’d struggled. But Arachne was talented, and Arachne was determined, and her talent burned too bright to ignore. People began to ask her to weave for them, to pay her even. It wasn’t like she didn’t need the money. Her mother had died the year before, leaving a cold house behind, and a daughter with no choice but to craft herself some form of stability.

Arachne had made something of herself, and as she sat with her loom day and night, she liked to think her mother would be proud. That was what she told herself when she gave her aching hands a rest, or when the crowd begged her to work quicker. She sent them away with scraps of her soul, and asked them to bring her more work. Even the riches she made weren’t enough. The sheer amount of wool she had to buy for each one was almost too much. She didn’t mind. People liked her work, praised her, hailed her for her talent.

She didn’t realise the ledge she was on until the crowd pressed in around her, raising her name higher than it should have been. As high as Icarus before he fell.

When they began to compare her to Athena, Arachne knew she was ruined.

She wouldn’t be the first to die for the hubris of a god. She worked and she worked, and she waited for her punishment to rain down from the heavens.

She didn’t expect it to come in the form of the goddess herself. An old woman, hands calloused and scarred and eyes as grey as a tumultuous sea.

“You have come to warn me then?” Arachne asked, her voice as even as it could’ve been.

“You know who I am?” The woman asked, her face twisting slightly as if she was straining to keep it in shape.

“I expected you’d arrive sooner or later.” Arachne confessed, “I suppose you’d better come inside.”

The Grey-eyed one remained where she was, but her features began to shift. “Do you believe it? What they say about you?”

“You mean that I am the better weaver.” Arachne stated. She nodded slightly. “I won’t lie to you, Athena. I’d be a fool to, because you’d know, and I know what you could do to me for it. But I fear you’ll do even worse if I tell you the truth.”

“You do, then.”

Arachne tilted up her chin, jutted it out. “Yes.”

“Then maybe we should put it to the test. I call for a contest. You against me. What do you say?”

Who was Arachne to say no to a goddess?

Once she’d conjured herself a loom, Athena wove quickly, fingers slipping through the wool as she knotted it together to tell her tale. Even her weaving was a warning. She depicted tales Arachne recognised – stories of hubristic mortals who held their heads too high. Stories of the punishments the gods dealt. Dimly, Arachne wondered if her name would soon join the list. If she would swim in the stars as a cautionary tale.

The tapestry was indisputably beautiful. It made Arachne angry. These people had been punished enough. They’d been punished further. Perhaps the gods had needed to show their power, perhaps they’d felt wronged. But something about this gleeful way of depicting someone’s downfall felt wrong. As the fire rose to spit in her chest, Arachne began to weave.

She wove a message, too. A message to the gods. She painted their wrongs with wool, showing starkly the stories she’d once been told in warning. Ugly, ugly acts danced through the tapestry. She was sentencing herself too, she knew that, but before her fate she would have passed judgement on the gods. That seemed worth it for a second.

Athena knew that it couldn’t go unpunished. Such blatant disrespect had to be challenged. She no longer cared for the contest as she saw what her family was reduced to. She should kill the girl there. But she saw too, that what she wove was the truth. And she saw the smile on her face as she toiled at the loom.

So, Athena passed sentence, in the most fitting way she could think of at the time. She changed Arachne into a spider, an arachnid who would never stop weaving, albeit with spider’s silk in webs. A girl whose name joined the ones she used to hear of, listening to myths by her mother’s knee.

A girl who faced a god.