The only response was the creak of the steps to her babbling, and she gulped again.This araneaen probably didn’t give a fig about the medicinal gardens at the donated historical home.
“If-if you play sports, there’s a softball team now, the Cockatrices, and the Chimeras, only that’s for Ketterling.I heard we’re supposed to be starting a Grumsh’vargh team, but of course, that’s mostly for orcs ...”She realized they’d nearly reached the top of the landing, and that the silence of the foyer had followed them up the stairs.Her would-be tenant said nothing.Of course he’s not interested in sports, you absolute twit.Look at him, he might blow away on a windy afternoon!
She’d never been very good atpeople.
The art of conversation had somehow been missed as she was taught how to brew elixirs for luck and love, salves for healing, and poisons for cursing.She neither sparkled nor entranced at dinner parties, and often found more in common with the household cat than she’d ever done with her fellows.It had been easier when the aunts were still alive, encouraging her studies and shielding her with personalities that filled every room of the house, even when no one was home.It hadn’t mattered that the whole world was speaking with a subtext she couldn’t quite grasp — herbs and powders communicated in a way she always understood, and the aunts filled the uncomfortable edges of the world with love.Great aunt Authricia, with her booming contralto voice and high crone status, and sweet Willow, her mother’s twin, always so patient, always ready with a story to make her feel better after junior coven meets.She’d forgotten, ensconced as she’d been in the safe haven of the world they’d created in the four walls of this house, thatpeoplewere an unnegotiable part of the world outside her doors.People made things complicated, and complications were something, Ladybug had decided, she could do without.
The big house had seemed emptier though, once she’d been cast out.A tenant might be the answer to more than one of her problems.
The attic apartment had already been shown to a talkative gryphon whose endless questions left her with a slight tension headache, and a tall, soft-spoken mothman with a serious air and slight stammer, brand new to the area, who, regrettably, decided the space was too small for his needs.When the mothman called her the same evening she’d shown him the apartment to decline, it had been a mighty blow and she'd just begun to despair when the whispery-voiced araneaen called.Stop being ridiculous!No one cares that much about gardens but you.He doesn’t care about gardening or Grumsh’vargh, and he’s not going to die.He doesn’t even look that old!Black with white markings, he might have been striking if he were a bit healthier.High, finely sculpted cheekbones and a strong chin seemed to be carved in alabaster, and his ebony eyelashes were impossibly long, she saw, glancing swiftly back.His human-looking upper body was bone-white from what she could see of his arms and face, and his hair, sparse as it was, the same black as his withered, segmented carapace.The spindly legs that held him didn’t look strong enough to bear his slight weight, and she'd wondered if he’d make it up all three flights without needing to rest.You can put a chair on the landing.It’ll be fine.
Despite his infirm appearance, the spider-like man’s eyes, raising unexpectedly to meet hers when she didn’t continue at the top of the staircase, were striking — unclouded and sharp, six glimmering obsidian orbs of varying size flanking two human-shaped eyes of vivid, cobalt blue.He seemed unhealthy and weak, far too thin, desperately in need of a hot fire and a good meal, but his eyes ...his eyes made her shiver.Her foot raised, seeking the step it expected to find and coming down on nothing but the solid ground, much further away than anticipated.It shouldn’t have been at all surprising, considering she’d reached the top of the landing, but she desperately hoped the arachnid took her odd little hop to be a particular custom of witches, and not the stumble that it was.
“There’s a small kitchenette up here, but the space is rather limited ...please don’t ever hesitate to use the kitchen on the first floor.”Ladybug smiled as brightly as she was able, hoping her conversation handicap didn’t bleed through her sales pitch as she showed him around the apartment.“There are two separate rooms of this main space, one for a bedroom and the other could be a home office or gym, or a game room ...”She trailed off, realizing she'd needn’t have worried about her conversation skills.He had not returned her beaming smile, only pulled the shawl around him a little tighter and surveyed the space silently.“There’s also a full bath, but–but it was designed for humans, so I-I don’t know if that would be acceptab — ”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” he cut her off, speaking at last, the deep rasp of his voice raising the hairs on her neck.“This will do.How soon is it available?”
“Oh, well ... the first of the June is just a few weeks away, and I was hoping to have a tenant ready to move in by then — ”
“I can pay,” he interrupted, cutting her off once more.“I can pay for the remaining days this month if I’m able to move in as soon as you’d permit.It would be ...most appreciated.”
Ladybug blinked, taking in the huge araneaen in the attic’s dim light, streaming in from a small window near the top of the peaked roof.Her assessment in the foyer had proved correct — he towered over her, even in his hunched state, seeming particularly outsized in the attic’s smaller confines.The beams above their heads were exposed, the corners of the space dark and shadowed.The tiny kitchenette was serviceable if one never planned on making anything fancier than a one-pot meal, and the bathroom was a hasty add-on of Liliputian proportions.It was an undesirable living accommodation, she was forced to admit ...but there was something desperate in his tone.He has nowhere else to go.As soon as the thought entered her mind, she knew it was true.That had to be it, had to be the reason he was so eager to call this dark, shadowed, poorly-appointed space home — and she was in no position to turn him away.Don’t go feeling sorry for him.He can move in right now if he wants, as long as he can pay.
“An-zan ...Iamsaying that properly, aren’t I?I don’t mean to cause offense if I’m not; I just want to be certain — ”
“Anzan,” he confirmed in that low, reedy voice.“And you?”
“Oh!I-I’m Ladybug.I mean — well, that’s just a nick — Elizabeth is my actual name, Elizabeth Alice Amaranth Brackenbridge the third, but no one has ever actually called me that.I used to be Lilibet when I was just a baby, but then my aunts called me Ladybug when I came to live here and I’ve been Ladybug ever since.”A dull fire heated her neck as she babbled, the space too tight beside him to be able to swing her foot up to her mouth effectively.Shut up, shut up, shut up!She was unused to giving her name to people, for no one ever really asked.The cashier at the Food Gryphon didn’t need her name to check her out, nor did the nice girl who sat at her favorite farm’s welcome table need it to point her in the direction of the monthly herb sale.She went out often enough, enjoyed the local shops and restaurants and festivals Cambric Creek regularly hosted — but she attended alone, as she did most things, and had little need to say her name aloud.“You-you can call me whatever you’d like, I suppose.And you can move in today if it would suit you.I’m very glad you responded to the ad, Anzan.”
There was an almost imperceptible drop of his shoulders beneath the shawl, a tiny slump of relief that assured her she’d made the right call.He’d followed her back down the steep staircase, his many legs moving with the same slow measuredness they’d displayed on the ascent, a relief when he made it back to the foyer without incident.He nodded soundlessly when she gave him the keyring possessing a key for both the front and side doors, obliging her to tip her head back again as she wondered which of his many eyes she was meant to look at, settling on the human-looking pair as he signed the lease in a spindly script.
She leaned heavily against the heavy storm door once he was gone, the foyer once more seeming spacious and bright, the original stained glass window above the first landing of the wide, walnut staircase spilling a rainbow of color across the hardwood floor.It’s going to be fine.It’s all going to work out.
Taking a tenant was the answer to her immediate problems, she was sure of it.The sagging roof, the sloped steps, the chimney crown ...she’d be able to fix it all.Without the accreditation of the coven, the healthy list of clients she’d inherited along with the house had begun to fall away and once the gossip began to spread, she knew more would leave.There was money in the bank, of course, and Jack Hemming himself managed the family’s meager investment portfolio, but she was loath to begin dipping into her inheritance now.You’ll wind up a pauper when you’re eighty if you’re not careful today.Already, her list of orders for the month seemed shorter, and once word about what had happened got out ...The giant Victorian had been the aunt’s pride and joy and the envy of many a witch in the circle, and at least she'd still have that.This araneaen was the unlikely answer to her prayers.
The coven could keep their brooms and boiled babies.
She'd be just fine.
It wasn’t until that evening that she remembered she ought to start locking the side hallway door, cutting off access into the lower floors from the outer staircase.You can’t be too careful, and he is a stranger, after all.The edge of something under the door caught her eye, unusual with this being a rarely-used stairwell.An envelope sat on the other side of the threshold, too thick to slide beneath the jamb.Inside, she found it stuffed with bills, crisp and new, as if they’d been freshly printed.It took her counting it three different times, pausing to do the mental math and then rechecking herself, realizing that it accounted for the rest of the month, that same day included.She raised her eyes to the ceiling above her head, wondering if he had indeed moved in already.There’d been no commotion of movement on the steps all afternoon, no moving van in the street, no slowly measured creaking, no evidence of her new tenant at all.The giant old house, its dimly lit attic included, was silent.
* * *
June
––––––––
That had been in theSpring, when the cherry blossoms lining Main Street were just dropping their blooms and Cambric Creek was gearing up for its Midsummer celebration.
Ladybug was determined to attend the community festival and the Litha celebration to follow; to give thanks to the Dark Mother and celebrate the Holly King’s imminent return, to whirl in the bonfire’s smoke with a crown of summer flowers temporarily taming her frizzy curls.She would drink cup after cup of the bright yellow concoction being stirred in several cauldrons around the community park, bright lemon, sweetened with honey, and eat her fill of sweets and savories dotted with a rainbow of green and red and orange garden vegetables, crowned with sugar-dusted flowers.A lovely celebration for a lovely time of year, a renewal of her observance of the sabbaths, putting the disastrous spring rituals well behind her, once and for all.
She’d not spotted Anzan at the Midsummer festival — not at the street fair or the parade or the outdoor Biergarten, nor did she see him at the Litha celebration that night.There had been no sign of her spidery tenant around the bonfire or at the night market, and although she had given serious thought to attending the skyclad ceremony under the stars, she’d gone home alone, not fancying the thought of being persuaded to practicing the Great Rite with a stranger in a field, not when the air hinted at rain.
She had no idea which goddess the mysterious araneaens acknowledged, she realized, walking home that night.Perhaps you can ask him the next time you pass him on the stairs, try your hand at getting to know him.It was a foolish thought, for she had never passed him on the stairs, not once since he’d moved in, had never come across his groceries in the cupboard she’d cleared for him in the kitchen, or saw him coming and going.He’d never had friends or family over that she’d seen, and she’d never heard any amorous activities taking place above her head.She could almost be persuaded that the attic was empty, or that her fears had been confirmed and the poor thing had withered away to dust ...but the rent was always paid on time, always a neat stack of fresh bills in a plain white envelop, left outside the side stairwell door.He’s not dead if he’s paying the rent.
Regardless of his silence, there was something comforting in the knowledge that the hunched, whispery-voiced araneaen was just above her head, even if he was an unseen presence.It had been just over a month since the day he’d signed the lease in his wispy, spindly handwriting; a month of knowing he was there, a month of her wondering what it was that he did, how he supported himself, if that tattered carpetbag had been stuffed with cash or if he was possibly running an illegal money-printing operation out of her attic.The latter didn’t seem to be the case, as she’d never had a problem depositing his envelope of bills each month, and she was certain the snooty elf who was the bank manager at Cambric Creek First Union would have been all too happy to tell her, a lowly witch, that she was trying to foist counterfeit bills upon them and summon the police.She didn’t know what Anzan did, nor what he ate, nor what goddess he worshipped, if it was a goddess at all, but she knew he was there, and it was nice.The big house felt less empty and she, in some small way, felt less alone.
She’d gone out once more that night, after returning from the Litha celebration, creeping out the back door as quietly as she could, entering the back garden and letting her robe drop to the flagstones before stepping gingerly into the grass to stand bare beneath the moon’s soft glow.She disliked the noise and the sensory overload of the community fireworks and was glad she’d been indoors for that part of the night, her nose twitching at the smell still lingering in the air.It would most certainly rain that night, and the gathering clouds nearly blotted out the moon completely, but when they edged aside, allowing the white light to shine down, she turned her face up to it, eyes squeezed tightly shut, trapping her tears in her lashes.
