“Ten ah?” it asked after a moment, and the spiders formed a new figure. It was a circle, the shape of the ini. The woman with Ellen Carver’s fingerprints looked at it for several moments, tapping Ellen’s fingers against Ellen’s collarbones, then waved Ellen’s hand at the wall. The figure broke up. The spiders began to stream down to the floor.
There was scuttering from behind it, a sound too low to be heard . . . but it heard it anyway. It pivoted on Ellen’s knees and saw the recluse spiders returning. They came through the Town Office door, turned left, then streamed up the wall, over posters announcing forthcoming town business and soliciting volunteers for this fall’s Pioneer Days extravaganza. Above the one announcing an informational meeting at which Desperation Mining Corporation officials would discuss the resumption of copper mining at the so-called China Pit, the spiders re-formed their circle.
The tall woman in the coverall and the Sam Browne belt got up and approached them. The circle on the wall trembled, as if expressing fear or ecstasy or perhaps both. The woman put bloody hands together, then opened them to the wall, palms out. “Ah lah?”
The circle dissolved. The spiders scurried into a new shape, moving with the precision of a drill-team putting on a halftime show. T, they made, then broke up, scurried, and made an H. An E followed, an A, another T, another E—
It waved them off while they were still scrambling around up there, deciding how to fall in and make an R.
“En tow,” it said. “Ras.”
The spiders gave up on their R and resumed their faintly trembling circle.
“Ten ah?” it asked after a moment, and the spiders formed a new figure. It was a circle, the shape of the ini. The woman with Ellen Carver’s fingerprints looked at it for several moments, tapping Ellen’s fingers against Ellen’s collarbones, then waved Ellen’s hand at the wall. The figure broke up. The spiders began to stream down to the floor.
