Twilight had turned the sky a deep purple when the tall woman arrived at the short, wrought iron gate. She took a few long moments to look over the rustic house beyond, a small smile creeping onto her face. It was a fairly large house – no mansion, of course, but large for local standards. Its thatched roof was in generally acceptable repair, and the windows were all intact. Soft firelight flickered through those windows on the lower floor, and a vaguely unpleasant aroma of what must have been an attempt at dinner wafted outward from the house.

As the woman reached for the gate, she heard a shriek from inside the house that made her smile grow. A moment later, a loud thud resounded, and the woman shook her head slowly. She opened the gate, its hinges screaming out her arrival like some kind of bell. The noises from inside the house ceased, and the front door of the house swung open even before the woman had walked up to it.

Standing at the door was a young, wide-eyed girl staring up at the woman with a strange expression of awe. She said nothing, and made no move to invite the woman in or to stand aside for her. The woman wanted to say something to her, but it would have been rude to speak first, and so she simply waited, hoping that the girl would recover her senses. After an awkwardly long wait, a male voice sounded from inside.

“Who is it, Nanca?”

“Don’t know, Papa!” The girl yelled back, then continued to stare at the woman.

A few moments passed before a man, presumably the girl’s father, appeared behind the girl. He was a large man, plainly dressed in workman’s clothes, and he was wiping his hands on a frankly filthy dishrag. He looked the strange woman up and down with a suspicious eye, then tossed his head slightly in her direction.

“You here to take care ‘o my spider problem?” He asked.

The woman smiled more broadly. “Yes,” she said. “I understand that you have quite the infestation, and have been inquiring about ways to solve this issue.”

“S’right,” the man said, then held out his hand. “Name’s Bilke.”

The woman hesitated for just a moment, having no desire to shake his hand after seeing what he was wiping it with, but ultimately it would have been too rude to refuse.

“You may call me Sannia,” she said, maintaining her smile despite the handshake.

The man nodded and pulled away. “Thanks for comin’,” he said gruffly. “Nobody in town seems to know much ‘bout spiders, and none’ve ever seen ‘em this bad before. It’s real lucky that you happened by. When Mada mentioned he’d spoken to ya, and you’d said you knew ‘bout spiders and things, I practically begged him to send ya over here.”

“So he said,” Sannia replied.

“Yeah…” Bilke said. “Anyway, we were just about to sit down t’ dinner. You can join us if you want.”

Sannia didn’t like the idea any better than she had liked the thought of shaking his hand, based on the odor the presumed dinner was emitting, but politeness demanded she accept. The man ushered his daughter, who was still staring at the stranger, back into the house and motioned for Sannia to follow. The interior of the house was somewhat worse than the outside, with dust and cobwebs in every conceivable corner. Sannia simply smiled.

Bilke led her into a dining room and indicated for her to sit down on a low wooden bench running along one side of the table. He then turned and bellowed, seemingly as loudly as he could, that dinner was ready. A moment or two later, two more children ran into the room, two boys, one older and one still quite young. Both stopped dead as they entered the room, and both stared at the stranger much like their sister had, although the older boy’s eyes were fixed perhaps a bit lower than his siblings’ were. Eventually, the two boys sat down at the table opposite Sannia, while the girl, Nanca, sat down beside her. While the father went into the kitchen to get the food, neither Sannia nor the children said a word.

Dinner was a dismal affair. There was some sort of indefinable meat, some sort of potato, and something that once may have been cabbage. Everything was stewed. Sannia picked at the meal uninterestedly for a long time while the children watched her almost obsessively. Bilke paid no real attention to anything but the food on his plate.

Sannia spent the considerable time in between bites to look around the room. While the conditions could not truly be termed as squalor, there was little in the room to suggest any sort of wealth or even comfort. The floors were mostly bare, covered only occasionally in old, tattered rugs that badly needed sweeping. Nothing adorned the walls apart from occasional hanging cobwebs and clumps of dust that had not yet fallen to the floor. The only thing that caught her eye, the only thing standing out as strange, was a large jar, inlaid with what looked like real gold. And bizarrely, it was resting in the chair at the end of the table opposite Bilke.

After the food on his plate was mostly gone, Bilke finally slowed down and started talking, directing his comments to Sannia. “So, we should probably discuss your fee. As you can see, we really need your help, but I can’t afford much.”

Sannia held up one hand. “There is no need to worry. My price is more than fair.”

“To you, maybe,” Bilke said skeptically, “but what do I do if I can’t afford it? These rotten spiders are crawling through my walls, across my floors, through my kitchen…”

This last comment made Nanca shriek, just as Sannia had heard from outside. The girl pulled her legs up reflexively and cowered, turning toward the stranger for some degree of comfort. Bilke gave his daughter a sympathetic look, then shook his head. “Anyway, I need you to do something about this, but…”

“Again, there is no need to worry,” Sannia assured him. “I know that it may sound strange, but I have no desire for coins or for baubles.”

Bilke’s eyebrows arched. “Huh? Whatda’ya mean, ‘no desire for coin?’ You need to eat, don’tja?”

“Not as much as most,” she said with a smirk. “Besides, there is something else that I find far more valuable, and far more fascinating.”

“Ooh, what?” Nanca asked her before her father could.

Sannia glanced over at the young girl and smiled. “I am a collector. Like any collector, I am constantly seeking new additions to my collection, ever rarer and more fascinating examples of that which I seek.”

“And that is?” Bilke asked.

“Stories,” Sannia said with a genuine smile. “I collect stories. And if you can provide me with a suitably interesting one, I will be happy to take care of your spiders for you.”

Bilke stared at her for a long moment, as his children shifted their gaze from his blue eyes to her black ones. Finally, the man sighed. “I’m not sure what I can tell you. I don’t really have any stories.”

“Oh, I suspect that you do,” she said, and then indicated toward the gilded jar on the seat near her. “I would guess that the story of this object is one that I would find most interesting.”

“What, that?” Bilke asked, surprised. “I thought you wanted rare stories. Anyone in town could tell you about the Jar.”

“Perhaps,” Sannia admitted, “and I may well decide that the story does not suffice for the service I shall provide. But I come from a place very far from here, and that which may seem commonplace to you is as yet foreign to me. Besides, if the tale is so common, it should be easy to tell, and you may be getting a bargain.”

Bilke laughed slightly, then shrugged. “Alright, then. Well, I mean, what do you wanna know?”

Sannia frowned slightly. “You could start by telling me what the Jar is.”

“That’s Mama’s honor!” Nanca said suddenly, a great big grin on her face. Across the table, the older boy proudly nodded his agreement, as the younger boy was playing with his food.

“Her honor?”

“Uh huh,” the girl confirmed with an enthusiastic nod.

“Mama was a hero,” the older boy said. “She saved the town!”

“She ‘was’ a hero?” Sannia asked.

“Of course,” Bilke said, then a look of realization came onto his face. “You really aren’t from around here. Makes sense, I suppose. Alright, I’ll see if I can tell you the story.”

The sun was directly overhead when the ceremony began. It was the morning of the summer solstice, and the heat was beginning to set in throughout the long days, but on that morning, a cool breeze was running through the town. The people had started to gather nearly an hour earlier, and with each new townsperson to arrive, the din of casual conversation and laughter grew. By the time the Electress arrived, the townsfolk could barely hear one another talk.

Most of the townsfolk were dressed in their usual work clothes, dirty and torn from their work in the fields and the forest and the shops, but the Electress was different. She was wearing a ceremonial robe of green and white, with a sheer veil covering her face. She looked very different than she would on any other day of the year, but the ceremony demanded certain things of the participants.

The noise only began to die down as the Electress reached the edge of the crowd. She did not say a word; she didn’t need to. The crowd parted before her and filled in behind until she reached the stone pedestal that was positioned in the very center of the town square. She stood beside the pedestal for a long while as the people grew silent – not just quiet, but preternaturally silent. Then, with one sudden motion, she raised her left hand.

From the other side of the square, a woman named Dorare appeared. She looked somber as she carried her late husband’s honor in both hands, walking toward the crowd and the pedestal. As they had for the Electress, the crowd moved out of her way, and she quietly shuffled through until she stood directly across from the robed Electress. She stared directly at the other woman’s veil, while the Electress’s eyes presumably stared back.

After a suitable pause, the Electress made an exaggerated gesture toward the pedestal, and Dorare lifted the gilded jar onto it. The woman brushed a few emerging tears away from her eyes as she stepped back and faded into the crowd. The Electress raised both arms above her head and slowly brought them together. As she did, the crowd began to chant an ancient invocation from a distant past. The language of the chant was lost long ago, but generations of repetition kept the indecipherable words alive.

The chant grew increasingly loud as it continued, but everyone, man, woman, and child, contributed to the sound. Nobody remembered what the chant was supposed to accomplish. Most theories centered on a calling out to the Watchers, a plea that in this, the most vital of all moments, they would be sure to pay attention. Others thought it might have been the remnants of a deep magic, or an attunement to the very vibrations of the world itself. Nobody knew the meaning; they merely knew the words.

Once the invocation was completed, the Electress brought down her arms abruptly, and the crowd suddenly silenced itself. The Electress looked around briefly, and then spoke, her voice loud, though slightly muffled, through her veil.

“The month, the day, and the very hour has come upon us once more, and once more, we must select our hero. A year a prosperity, of blessings, of joy and of peace awaits us upon the strength of our savior. A year of hardship, of blight, of sorrow and of strife awaits us, should the honor of our hero fail. We are a people, and as a people we must rely on one another, and on our honor, to protect and to save the rest. This is our way. It has always been our way, as it shall ever be. Oh, blessed Watchers, we implore that you watch us now.”

There was a collective, murmured affirmation from the crowd. The robed woman nodded once, and threw her arms wide.

“As the Electress of Hollow Vale, I call upon us all to begin the selection!”

Nobody needed instructions on how to begin. The process had been engrained in them from their very first year. Knowing the ritual was as expected as speaking the language or understanding table manners. Moving in a strange spiral that would look chaotic to any outsider, the heads of each household moved up to the jar and reached in. From the jar they pulled a single small stone and kept it clutched in their hand. They moved forward and back, getting out of one another’s way in a bizarre choreography, until every household had drawn. Then, with a silent signal from the Electress, they revealed their lots.

At first, as always, eyes fell to their own selection first. Once they had registered what they were seeing, people started looking around, to those outstretched arms of friends and relations. Finally, though, all eyes fell on the open palm of one man. In that one man’s hand, which trembled just slightly – though not so as anyone would notice – was the single black stone from the gilded jar. The rest of the town stared at that man intently, for they knew what it meant.

That man was Bilke.

After a long moment, the Electress, with a shaking voice, called Bilke over to the jar. “Our thanks and our congratulations, Bilke. The time has now come to choose who in your family shall have the honor of being the Hero of Hollow Vale. How many in your family?”

Bilke stared at the woman’s veil intently. “Five,” he answered simply.

“Very well,” she said, then motioned toward the jar. Bilke dropped the black stone back into the jar, and four other men stepped forward without being asked and dropped their lighter stones in, as well. After a pause, Bilke, signaled for his children to approach. His smallest son went first, and Bilke had to lift the child up for him to reach. His daughter went next, followed by his elder son. Then Bilke hesitated, and looked to the Electress. “Draw for your wife, Bilke,” the Electress said. “Keep her stone in your left hand, and yours in your right.”

Bilke nodded, and reached in first with his left hand, and then with his right. The crowd seemed to collectively hold their breath as Bilke signaled to his youngest son to show the stone he had drawn, and a sigh when he revealed a white one. Nanca and her older brother did the same. The black stone, clearly, was in one of Bilke’s hands. The Electress moved over to him, tried to speak, but failed. After a long wait, he opened both hands. The black stone was in his left.

A murmur erupted through the crowd as the Electress stared at Bilke’s eyes, and he stared at her veil. Neither spoke. Eventually, a man approached, the mayor of Hollow Vale. “I don’t know if this has ever happened before,” he said, though only those closest to him could have heard him over the murmuring crowd. “I suppose,” he paused, then continued resolutely, “I suppose we shall need a new Electress. Setti, for the protection of the town, we honor you.”

“No,” the Electress whispered. “It isn’t…”

She was never able to finish her sentence.

Out of politeness, Sannia restrained herself from reacting too much to Bilke’s story. It was not the story itself that troubled her; she had heard similar stories in other places, though perhaps not quite the same. Rather, it was the nonchalant manner in which Bilke told the story that was upsetting, in addition to the jovial mood of the children as they listened to it. But Sannia’s place was not to judge the stories she collected, merely to collect them.

After it was clear that Bilke was finished, Sannia nodded and stood up from the table, her meal barely touched. She nodded once toward Bilke, and turned toward the front door.

“Hey!” Bilke said, hurrying after her. “What about the spiders? Do we have a deal or not?”

Sannia turned toward him and smiled. “I accept your story as payment. Rest assured, I will take care of your infestation before you know it.”

“How?”

“Were I to tell you that,” she said with a slight smirk, “I would be out of a job.”

“But what if it don’t work?” Bilke insisted. “I mean, no offence, but I’ve seen nothin’ of what you’re plannin’ to do. If I can’t find you to…”

“Then what will you have lost?” Sannia challenged him suddenly. After a moment, her smile softened. “I have made a bargain with you, Bilke, and I will uphold it. Before you realize it, the spiders will be gone from this place.”

He stared at her for a long moment, but he knew it did him no good to argue. Instead he simply nodded, thanked her, and showed her to the door.

Sannia left the house, walking down the path, through the squeaking iron gate, and off toward the forest’s edge. The house was still in her view, though only barely, when she stooped down and lay one hand on the ground. Almost instantly, a spider just slightly smaller than her palm crawled up, and she lifted him toward her face.

“Are you all out?” she asked the spider.

Although the spider was incapable of speech, she could sense its answer instantly. As she had imagined, they had all left the house during the dinner. Sannia smiled, and allowed her human legs to melt away into the arachnoid lower body she had been born into.

“Let us go home, shall we?” She quickly covered her companion, more like a child to her, in ætherweb silk, and then ‘walked away.