rules. The travelers wound around the rough pumice walls endlessly, and then it felt like they’d climbed two hundred feet in one step. The path went treacherously narrow, only wide enough to walk single file, and then it broadened to a carved-out pavilion with an overhanging roof.
That was where they found Arachne, waiting for them.
She wore an ivory dress and a lapis stole, her hair carefully coiffed and pinned like an ancient Greek noblewoman. And she blocked the only way up the mountain. She held out her hand, expectant.
“Your journey ends here,” she said. “Please don’t make me destroy you. Give me the needle and thread, and you can go home.”
“This isn’t right,” Nell said. “You know this isn’t right, Arachne. Let us fix this. Look, now that I know who you really are—I know what you went through, I understand—”
“You understand nothing. I was wronged. I was wronged, cursed, exiled, punished for nothing but speaking the truth. And then finally, finally, one single, wonderful mortal girl believed in me. She called me her goddess. And then they took her away.”
“There’s no ‘they,’” Seelie said. “It was Dieter Rime. He murdered Patience, to manipulate you. She showed me.”
Arachne’s brow furrowed. She stared into Seelie’s eyes like she was trying to read her mind.
“She…showed you?”
“Patience,” Seelie said. “She’s been dreaming for two centuries, after you wrapped her soul in a cocoon. You couldn’t hear her. I could.”
The goddess wavered, fighting her own disbelief.
“None of this matters,” she said. “I’m going to rewrite history. I’m going to save her.”
“You could end up destroying history,” Nell said.
“And if I do?” Arachne’s open hand waved, taking in the mists, the craggy gray stone. “Maybe it’s time for a change. Let even Olympus fall. I’m not welcome there anyway. They’ve made that perfectly clear. A goddess, with no house on the mountain. A goddess with no home for her children. Maybe I’ll start a pantheon of my own. A new era of gods, to replace the old. That’s the way of things. The Olympians replaced the Titans, and with nothing more than a needle and some thread, I can replace them too.”
Tyler had been deep in thought, studying her, taking in her noble finery. Slowly, he spoke.
“So…the gods all have things they’re in charge of, right? Like Poseidon is in charge of the sea, and Ares is in charge of war.”
“There’s a bit more nuance, but that’s fair to say. What of it?”
“Now, I understand you’re not the goddess of—” He hesitated, not wanting to say the word spiders. “But when you start this new pantheon of yours, what are you going to be in charge of? Not weaving, obviously.”
She started to respond, then paused, catching the deliberate stress in his voice.
“Why ‘obviously’?” she asked, suspicious now.
“Well,” he said, “to be the goddess of weaving, you’d have to be the best, right?”
“And?”
He shrugged. “You haven’t been a weaver for a long time. You’ve gotta be rusty.”
Arachne frowned at him.
“I was the Weaver of Hypaepa,” she said. “The most celebrated in the history of my city and all the lands beyond. Arguably the best in the known world.”
“A long time ago,” he said.
“I have lost none of my skill. None of it.”
“I mean, you say that,” he replied, “but could you really prove it? If you faced off with Athena in another contest, are you sure you’d win? I don’t know.”
She folded her arms. Her frown deepened into a glare. The pumice rock shuddered beneath their feet, the entire mountain responding to the goddess’s anger.
“Tyler—” Seelie murmured.
“Not only would I win again,” Arachne said, “I would destroy her. I would humiliate her so utterly, so thoroughly, that she would never touch a loom again for all of eternity. Does that answer your question?”
The rumbling faded into silence. Tyler held up one finger. “Just a second, please.”
He stepped back, pulling Seelie and Nell with him.
“I had a plan,” Tyler whispered, “and it did not work.”
“Was the plan to piss her off?” Seelie whispered back.
“No. I figured if I got her to talk shit about Athena, she’d show up like she did back in the myth. And then she’d stop Arachne and save us all.”
They looked up and down the mountain path. Gray clouds drifted by. A single raven squawked, wheeling past, then dove out of sight.
“She’s not coming,” Nell said.
“It’s all on us, then.” Tyler steeled himself. “I’ve got one last idea.”
He turned, facing Arachne, and pushed his shoulders back.