Spider silk

Once upon a time, there was a monastery atop a hill surrounded by mulberry bushes. The monks of this monastery harvested mulberry leaves and sold them to the Silken Guild, whose artisans used them to produce silk. When the monks found out how much gold the Guild made from silk, they decided to start producing silk themselves. Within the catacombs beneath the hill, the monks established a clandestine workshop to weave their own silk, which merchants from the surrounding villages would surreptitiously come and buy for a discounted price.

Watching this unfold from the barn where the mulberry leaves were stored was a little spider named Narach. Narach loved nothing more than to weave her webs, but every time the monks had seen her work, they had cursed and swept it away with their brooms. Narach made her home in the rafters of the barn so her webs would be left in peace, all the while dreaming of the day she would weave something that people would love instead of hate.

One evening, Narach resolved to go down to the monks’ workshop and join in the weaving of silk. She scuttled down from the rafters and past the piles of mulberry leaves to the workshop’s secret entrance, a trapdoor at the back of the barn. Crawling through a gap in the trapdoor, Narach found herself in a vast tunnel beneath the earth. She began to hear a faint clicking sound. Narach followed the tunnel until she reached a vast chamber with a low ceiling held up by earthen pillars and lit by flaming torches. Along the edges of the chamber were rows of looms, while in its center Narach beheld the source of the clicking: hundreds of hairy, white worms atop wooden benches chewing hundreds of mulberry leaves.

Narach clambered up onto one of the benches, causing its silkworms to stop chewing and look at her, their eyes widening with a mixture of fear and disgust.

“Do not be afraid,” she told them. “I mean you no harm.”

“Of course you do,” one of the silkworms replied haughtily. “You’re a spider. Why else would you be here?”

“To help you weave silk,” she replied.

The silkworms chittered mockingly.

“We do not need any help, especially from the likes of you,” said one silkworm.

“A spider? Weaving silk? How preposterous,” another snorted.

“But I weave webs out of silk every day,” Narach protested.

“Nonsense,” the silkworm replied. “That substance you weave is not silk. If it is, it is entirely the wrong sort. Our silk is worn by Popes and princes. Yours is only fit to decorate the corners of dark rooms. We have no need for spiders’ webs here. Now begone, before our masters find you and deal with you like the vile creature you are.”

Filled with shame and anger, Narach fled the chittering chorus of laughter, crawling back down the tunnel, out the trapdoor and up onto the eave of the barn, where she wove her web of revenge. Narach spent the night weaving a word, finishing her work just as the sun incarnadined across the horizon.

Dawn brought the carts of the Silken Guild, which stopped in front of the barn to be loaded with leaves. “Captain,” an escorting guard exclaimed, pointing towards Narach’s creation. The captain stopped speaking to the monk beside him and looked up.

“Silk,” the captain said, before turning back towards the monk. “What is the meaning of this?”

The monk looked up at the web, his eyes widening with wonder. “Incredible. I have never seen anything like this before. This miracle of God is beyond my comprehension.”

“Perhaps He is trying to tell us something,” said the captain. “Are you weaving silk here, Father?”

“No!” the monk exclaimed. “We merely supply our mulberry trees to the Guild. We would never presume to weave silk ourselves.”

“We shall see.” The captain turned to one of the guards beside him. “Lieutenant, search the barn.”

The lieutenant and three guards walked into the barn and began fossicking through the mulberry leaves for any signs of silk. Narach clambered down the wall and across the barn floor until she was in view of the guards, then scurried through the trapdoor. The lieutenant strode towards the tower of mulberry leaves obscuring the trapdoor and toppled it with a firm push.

“Captain!” the lieutenant shouted. “Over here!”

The captain strolled over to the lieutenant, the monk following meekly in his wake.

“Very good, lieutenant. Now let’s see what’s inside.”

One of the guards lifted the trapdoor and held it open.

“You first, Father,” the captain said.

The monk stepped into the tunnel. The captain, the lieutenant and the other two guards followed closely behind. Narach crept alongside the men as they followed the dimly-lit tunnel to the chamber where the silkworms labored.

“Well,” the captain said triumphantly, turning to the monk, “you have been busy.”

“Captain, I can expl-"

“Only members of the Silken Guild are permitted to produce silk. You have forgotten yourselves. Now you shall pay the price. Guards…destroy this workshop.”

The captain’s guards nodded, then took flaming torches from the walls, before setting the looms and the tables of silkworms alight. As the chamber filled with smoke, the group exited the tunnel, then the barn.

Once they were outside the barn, the captain turned to his guards.

“Burn it,” he commanded.

The guards tossed their torches through the barn’s open door. Two torches landed among the piles of leaves, while the third landed at the base of the barn’s rear wall, tongues of flame lashing upwards until one of them took hold.

Within a few minutes, the barn was transformed into a pavilion of undulating orange and yellow fire. Narach watched the conflagration until the barn collapsed, then released a balloon of gossamer thread and became airborne, floating away on the warm, rising wind.