Mythos: The Greek Myths Reimagined (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #1)

by Stephen Fry

The crowd of onlookers followed her in appalled silence as she made her way out of the cottage and toward the tree. Arachne was swinging at the end of the rope, her dead eyes bulging from her head. “A talent like yours can never die,” Athena said. “You shall spin and weave all your days, spin and weave, spin and weave . . .” As she spoke Arachne started to shrivel and shrink. The rope she dangled from stretched itself into a thin filament of glistening silk up which she now pulled herself, a girl no longer but a creature destined always busily to spin and weave. This is how the first spider—the first arachnid—came into being. It was not a punishment as some would have it, but a prize for winning a great competition, a reward for a great artist. The right to work and weave masterpieces in perpetuity.