The Barn at the Edge of the Wood

One long and drowsy summer, in the barn at the edge of the wood, a spider fell in love with a boy. Not just any spider, but a spider with a talent for weaving messages into webs. And not just any boy, but a boy with a talent for killing rats.

Spider watched the boy each day as he worked in the old yellow barn from morning until night. She would prop her chin upon her two front feet and pine as the boy shovelled and swept and sang each day away. Each night when the boy went back to the house that smelled like burning wood, Spider hummed his songs and spun beautiful webs for him. Each morning, the boy swept her beautiful webs away with his broom.

Rat, who had been watching Spider with interest all summer long, sensed her yearning for the boy, and an opportunity for revenge. "If you love the boy so much, why don't you just tell him?" Rat wrapped his ratty hands round the tip of his cane and regarded Spider with keen black eyes.

"How can I?" Spider climbed to the top of the barn door with plans to cover the opening with her most radiant web ever. "Humans don't understand us the way we understand them."

"Why don't you spin him a note?" Rat's beady black eyes shone in the light of a firefly before he stuffed it whole into his mouth.

Spider scratched her head with a long back leg. "Oh, I know just what I'll do." She scurried down the wall and over the green barrel and under the upside down wheelbarrow and emerged with a dusty package of colorful candies. "I'll spin him a love note."

“B-E M-I-N-E,” read the boy the following morning and smiled his crooked smile, and Spider felt her heart skip eight thousand beats. Then the boy turned and went about his chores, paying no more attention to this web than any other. At sundown, he knocked it away with his old straw broom as he cleared the dust from the rafters.

"Try something more eye-catching," said Rat and tipped his hat with the point of his tail.

Spider scratched the spot between her two middle eyes; she was tired from spinning all night and pining all day. "Eye-catching," she repeated and selected the brightest pink candy from the package. "This one is eye-catching," she said and went to work.

"A-M-O-R-E," read the boy the following morning and ran his pointer finger over the dew-covered letters. "Amore? That's an odd word." He brushed away the web with his hand and smeared the sticky silk onto his trousers.

Spider's cheeks burned. "Odd is not eye-catching." Spider stomped her feet silently, slunk into the corner, and folded into the small space between two floorboards.

"Try to be more direct," advised Rat later as his yellow teeth gnawed the remains of a rotting ear of corn.

"Be more direct," repeated Spider. She leapt for joy once she found the very most perfect candy for her next love note to the boy.

"Y-O-U-R-E S-W-E-E-T," read the boy, letter by letter, scratching his chin and squinting one eye until his cheeks flushed pink. "Oh!" He paused and tilted his head. "Why mystery writer, so are you."

Spider's heart sang the whole day long, but when the boy went home to the house that smelled like burning wood, Spider felt lonelier than ever. What good was it to toil all night writing the boy love notes if he could never answer them, if he could never truly be hers? She said as much to Rat, who of course, offered Spider a resolution.

"What if I told you that I could make you into a real girl?"

Spider knew that Rat was magic, because of course all rats are magic. But she also knew that rats are greedy and never bestow their magic without a cost. Although, Spider thought wistfully, I would give just about anything to have the boy. "What would I need to do?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing much," said Rat as he picked mold from under his nails. "Just make him fall in love with you. That's all."

"That's all," repeated Spider. She squinted all eight of her eyes. "And what if he doesn't?"

"Then, you must bite him."

"I couldn't!" Spider reeled backward, nearly falling from her perch atop the orange boat paddle. Because of course, Spider's bite was deadly to humans. "Oh, but I really, really just couldn't. How would I?"

"Suit yourself." Rat turned and whipped his tail, smirking as he hobbled toward his rat hole. "That's the deal. I'll give two days to decide and not a minute more."

The next day it poured rain and the boy didn't come to the old yellow barn. But the church rang its bells as it did every Sunday morning and Spider stayed curled in her nest, stewing.

"How long would I have?" Spider asked when the shadows grew long and the sun sunk low.

"Until the next time the church rings its bells."

But Spider was not ready to make the bargain with Rat just yet. With so much at stake, she wanted to be certain. Needed to be certain. And there was only one way to be certainly certain: the boy must agree. Spider rifled through the candies for just the right one.

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"P-R-O-M-I-S-E," the boy read the note slowly and knit his eyebrows together, then shrugged. "Okay, I promise." The boy scrubbed his hair away from his pink cheeks and melted Spider's heart. Spider followed Rat into his lair and drank the potion and said the magic words and waited.

When morning came, Spider grew and grew and grew until she was almost as tall as the boy. She imagined herself with long shimmering hair and eyes the color of an evening sky. Spider had never been happier, for she knew once the boy saw her, he would surely love her.

When the boy arrived in the old yellow barn, he searched everywhere for Spider, tugged open windows and doors and flipped over buckets and bales, until he saw her, perched high on the top of a rafter wearing a silver cloak spun from silk.

"Well hello." The boy squinted up at Spider, who was hidden in the shadows. "Are you my mystery writer?"

Spider, who was ordinarily quite humble, swung proudly down from the rafters on a thick yellow rope.

Gasping, the boy cringed and turned away. "Go away," he said, repulsed.

Spider ran from the barn to peer into the pond. Looking back at her from its glassy surface was not a long shimmering haired girl with eyes the color of the evening sky. Looking back was a hideous girl with hair the color of mud and eyes the color of sludge. Spider curled into a ball at the edge of the pond and wept until the sun was nearly set.

"Why are you crying?" asked Mouse, who was nibbling the edge of a fern.

"Look at me." Spider gaped at Mouse with her sludge eyes, puffy and red from crying all day. Spider told Mouse how she loved the boy and explained that, in all her eagerness to be with him, she forgot to specify to Rat exactly what kind of girl she wanted to be. "Oh, all hope is lost," cried Spider.

"Not to worry," crooned Mouse and peered at Spider over gold-rimmed glasses. "All is not lost." Mouse, who hated Rat and who was also magic because of course all mice are magic, reminded Spider that beauty is only skin deep. Mouse told Spider that a worthy boy would see past an ugly exterior and love her as a friend first, and then once he knew her true nature, he would surely fall in love with her. Wise Mouse then cast a new spell decreeing that if the boy should come to love Spider as a friend, then Spider would become the beauty she had dreamed of on the outside and still maintain her true nature on the inside. As the sun set, Spider shrunk into her old self and worked the rest of the night weaving a new message for the boy.

"F-R-I-E-N-D-S." The boy read the message, scoffed, and set about his work. But he didn't object when Spider picked up a broom and swept the barn and fed the animals and helped him with all his chores. Despite ignoring her all day, the boy paused at the barn door and muttered "Thanks," before he trudged back to the house that smelled like burning wood.

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"B-E-S-T D-A-Y," The boy read the message and grunted. Although he didn't make quite as horrid of a face when he looked at Spider, he didn't smile either. Undeterred, Spider tried to talk to the boy all day, remembering Mouse's friends first advice. In the beginning, he ignored her. But Spider was persistent and determined to make the boy love her, so she poked and prodded and tried everything she could imagine to make him talk to her so he might come to know her true nature.

"Killin' rats and fishing," said the boy finally, after Spider asked him what he liked to do for fun. "Frog catching is okay, too. When it's real hot, I like to go swimming in the pond behind the barn."

"How exciting! I've never fished or swam or done any of those things," said Spider who seemed so genuinely interested that the boy asked her if she would like to join him on Saturday. Spider's heart soared as she spun her web that night; she couldn't wait until the sun rose so she could see the boy again.

"YES." Spider spun her answer in a heart-shaped web that covered the entire ceiling of the old yellow barn. The boy almost smiled when he read it the following morning, and for that whole day, they talked of nothing but pickerels and crawdads and the right hook to use and the best time of day to catch the big ones.

The boy and Spider spent all day Saturday fishing and catching frogs and swimming in the pond and the boy admitted he'd never had so much fun doing those things alone as he had doing them with Spider, even though they hadn't killed a single rat. As the sun set, and Spider and the boy sat rocking in his old row boat under the enormous August sky, he stared into her murky eyes...and a pretty voice called from the shore. There stood a girl with long shimmering hair and eyes the color of an evening sky. So the boy rowed to shore and left with the girl with the pretty voice and shimmering hair and sunset eyes and barely waved to Spider, leaving her all alone to tend to the boat and her hurt feelings.

But not for long.

"There now." Rat scurried out from under a rotting log and offered Spider a dirty tissue. "You know, you'd feel so much better if you'd just bite him and get it over with."

Spider considered Rat's advise as the sun set and she shrank back into spider form. She crept home to the barn, and up the wall, and under the loft where she could hear the boy and the girl giggling in the dark. Spider slinked through the straw, and along the boy's trousers, and up inside his shirt, and bit down hard on the pretty girl's pretty finger.

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Before church, the boy visited the old yellow barn, distraught. He grabbed Spider by the shoulders, looked straight into her murky eyes and said "My heart is broken and you, my ugly friend, are all I have left to love." As the church rang its bells, Spider transformed into a girl with long shimmering hair and eyes the color of an evening sky, with a heart as black as a raven.