by A.K. Aspen

Content Warnings: Abuse, Violence, Blood, Miscarriage, Spiders

I wasn’t always this way—lonely, fragile, hungry. Wasting away in this cave, concealed by the rushing waterfall which hides my hideous form from those who might try to harm me.

Though, they’ve already harmed me… Long before I took this shape.

My tranquil cove lies at the heart of these mountains. This wild and isolated part of the country sees gorgeous warm summers of lush green filled with the buzzing of cicadas and snow-dusted winters that settle the land in an eerie calm. Though the frigid winter cold doesn’t halt the rapid flow of the falls, ice still forms at the edges of the sky-blue pool at its base. The trout come during spring when the wasabi are in bloom, their small white flowers dotting the verdant banks of the basin. In autumn, the cedar and maple transform, displaying leaves of bronze, gold, and fiery scarlet. Their change follows the arrival of crisp evening breezes and passersby like the macaque, who stop for a drink at the water before moving along. Each change moves my spirit in an indescribable way, though none can compare to what I feel when the Autumn Equinox brings its blooms.

Over the many years of living here, I have been blessed to have witnessed the gradual increase of the spider lilies—the higanbana—that grow like a vibrant red carpet around my cove. Their blossoms are radiant, their petals spindling and delicate. It is as if the grotesque form of their namesake had metamorphosed into something ethereal. I remember when the very first spider lily appeared here, commemorating the life that lies beneath it. My heart aches to look at the spot.

I don’t get visitors often. Hardly anyone came to this place before I took up residence, since the rumors persisted even then. But my lady didn’t fear the old gods. She brought me here once, in the first year of my marriage, when our husband had left our home here in the countryside to take his place at the court in Edo. This space was our place of respite, our hideaway from the duties required of us as the daimyo’s wives.

And it was where we fell in love.

At fourteen years of age, I was sent from my family home to be a shokushitsu for our daimyo. As his third wife, I didn’t have all the pressure of responsibility that was forced upon the seishitsu, though I was expected to produce him male heirs. My father was the strongest vassal among my husband’s retainers, a great samurai warrior who had proved his loyalty time and time again. Our union strengthened our family bonds and entrapped me in the world of politics and high society.

At just twenty-three years of age, the daimyo was—at a cursory glance—young and handsome. However, a deeper observance of his mannerisms and countenance revealed his brutish nature. I flinched at his slightest movements. He would stomp about the castle, his feet thump, thump, thumping on the wooden floors and echoing through the building. I often heard his shouts, whether at servants, guests, or sometimes to no one in particular. I endured his overwhelming strength and suffocating breath as best I could. My feelings toward him were cold, and he was quite detached from any feelings toward me. My presence was to serve a purpose, and serve I must.

We were married for only a few weeks when a great illness spread throughout the castle and surrounding village. It took hold of many, and while most were quick to recover, I was not. Once winter became spring, he left for Edo as was required of him by the shogun. Daimyo spent alternating years at the capital and their homes, while their families permanently resided in Edo. His second wife, Keiko, was living there. She had borne him a son in the previous year and was already pregnant with his second child.

I should have gone with him, but his first wife advised against it, expressing her concern for my well-being during the long journey. She had returned just before the disease descended on the town to attend the funeral of a family member and contracted a less-severe case of the illness as well. Our husband allowed us to remain behind, expressing that upon our recovery, we were to journey to Edo and rejoin him.

Aki was her name, like the season I’ve grown so fond of. She was only a few years older than me and had been married to the daimyo for nearly three years. Of his wives, he loved her best—and coveted her most. Like the fall, she glowed a rosy hue, her tall and slender figure a graceful presence, if a stark one, next to our beastly husband. He was accustomed to a life led by the sword, and her elegance brought out his vulgarity.

During the day, Aki would often visit me, assisting the servants in bringing me food, refreshing the moist towel on my head and neck, and even reading to me. In my dark room of the castle, her presence was a warm ray of light. Looking back now, I can’t help but feel that though we were not yet close, our love was like a seed ready to sprout. My body could sense this energy, and my health quickly returned.

During this time, I began noticing one of the servants, an older woman, who always seemed particularly restless as she worked around me. She was of stocky build and had rounded shoulders that left her back in an unfortunate hunch. She muttered to herself constantly, shuffling around the castle with her hands clasped together behind her back. For a long while, I could not hear what was being said. The other servants were deferential toward her and she ordered them around with strict authority.

Once, when I was returning to my room after relieving myself, I noticed her scrubbing away at the threshold of Aki’s room. I waited and watched, listening intently. There was a rhythm to her words… A prayer. She stood and took out a small pouch at her waist and sprinkled something at the spot, then left. I reached down, suspecting what it was, and lifted some of the small white granules to my mouth.

Salt.

Though the castle was dark, I thought that the oppressive air was due to our lord’s presence, since I felt entirely at ease with his absence. It was odd, then, to see someone conducting purification rituals. I began to pay more attention to her and a few times caught her scattering the particles upon the threshold of my room, too, when she thought I was not around.

When I began feeling more like myself, Aki accompanied me in my day to day. She sat beside me at meals and while practicing calligraphy. In the evenings we worked on our poetry together, reading aloud to one another the odes we had written to the forest and its spirits.

We often walked in the castle gardens. Several times, I saw the older servant woman visit the hokora, the small stone shrine nestled underneath the bright pink petals of a plum tree.

I leaned close to Aki, lowering my voice so the servant wouldn’t hear.

“What can you tell me about that woman?” I asked.

Aki looked up from admiring a cluster of daffodils and glanced over to where the servant stood.

“That’s Oto,” she said, watching the woman return to the house. “She was our husband’s wetnurse—practically raised him. She’s worked here longer than any of the other staff, perhaps before even his father was daimyo.”

I nodded, unsure whether to tell Aki about my recent observations.

Without prompting, she continued. “Though I am the first wife, and therefore supposed to run the household, Oto would not relinquish that role after I was married,” Aki said. “As long as she lives, I believe that woman will do her best to stand between our husband and everyone else. Though, I’m not sure what she’s protecting him from.”

Oto bustled her way back into the castle, shouting at some unfortunate servant as she stepped through the door. Aki and I finished our stroll in silence.

Since his departure, we had received word from our husband that we were to set off to Edo as soon as possible. Aki wrote back to him with reassurances that we would soon return once I was fully recovered and that the countryside was doing wonders for my constitution.

Before long, our garden walks turned into long hikes. We would slip out into the forest beyond the confines of our small castle, hitching up our skirts to navigate the wild mountainside. It was late spring, and the ice of winter had fully melted. The branches and undergrowth crunched under our bare feet as we held our geta in our hands. When we reached the waterfall that first time, it was like I had entered an entirely different world, and only Aki—with her long dark locks, round eyes that brightened at the sound of my voice, and giggling laugh—truly saw me.

She told me how the locals believed this place to be cursed. The legends were too old and too many that no one really knew why the cove was damned, but people avoided it just the same. Aki said that she believed it belonged to the spirits, and that the spirits didn’t actually mind the visits of the living, as most people believed.

“Fearing them makes them fearful, so instead, I adore them,” she said, standing at the edge of the pool. She then bowed to the waterfall, laughing as she reached out her hand and splashed me with water.

Our first embrace in early summer was the culmination of months of shy glances over tea ceremonies and gentle smiles while we embroidered. She held me there, next to the crashing waterfall, the grass glittering from its misty spray. As I laid in her arms, I watched a tiny hatchling spider float high through the air on strands of billowing silk, ready to land somewhere new and begin its life journey.

Like that tiny creature, I was soaring. Aki had led me down a new path I didn’t know was possible for me to experience. That summer we spent much time in the woods, my heart full and my spirit renewed. In these moments with her, I completely forgot that this time would not last, that we would soon be forced back to a rigid life that demanded we live together, but separate. Aki and I snuck out only when we thought there weren’t any preying eyes to discover us. We assumed that most people would easily consider us as close friends—sisters who shared a husband.

Though they had been married several years, Aki had born the daimyo no children. When we walked through the streets that surrounded the small castle, I saw her often watching the little ones who played there. Boys competed with their kendamas and komas, while girls held their kokeshi dolls and paired up to make intricate designs of ayatori. Her gaze melted longingly at the children, and she would sometimes stop to join them. I didn’t share her maternal instincts, so I usually continued through the village, greeting its residents on behalf of the daimyo, before returning to the castle.

Once, after one of these outings, I walked past Aki’s room. The shoji door was open, and she was sitting, working on some calligraphy. With her right hand she guided the brush, and her left hand held back the long sleeve of her bright yellow robe. Her elegant movements left smooth strokes on the paper, so second nature was her skill. I caught a glimpse of her face before she managed to catch my presence.

Her cheeks were tear stained.

“Anata?” I called to her.

She jumped up, quickly wiping at her face with the back of her sleeve.

I reached out to try and hold her, but she backed away. Her wide eyes looked past me and I turned to see Oto staring at us from outside the door. The old woman quickly bowed and excused herself, then hurried down the hall, muttering to herself.

Not sure if Oto had heard me, Aki and I decided that we ought to keep our distance for a while. This hardly lasted a week. It was too difficult to stay away.

It was about this time that I sensed I was not alone in my body. The monthly visitor that afflicts women had always been an infrequent guest of mine. When my husband first laid with me, I bled a little then but hadn’t experienced anything since. It was because of my irregularity that I didn’t think anything of these months that passed without event. I began to feel some quiet stirrings within me, but I kept these to myself.

We found ourselves in the forests again, now strolling under changing leaves. Those sensations in my womb became more frequent but I kept my condition a secret. In my heart, there remained some doubt—that this was all in my head—and I feared that announcing it would make it fully real. I feared the experience of childbirth. I feared what would happen if I told Aki.

My darling Aki, who wanted children of her own so desperately. I did not fear that she would despise me for it. She often shared how she loved doting on Keiko’s child and how she looked forward to having yet another little one running around the home.

I did fear that I would be the cause of further pain for her. That my fertility was a reminder of her sterility. That because I did not want to bear his children, she might have felt that I thought less of her for desiring so. That, maybe, I was waiting for my mind to change. So, I did not tell her.

One day under these turning colors, I felt a warning sense wash over me, that this time would soon come to a terrible end. That evening, when we arrived back to the castle, our husband was there waiting for us. Standing beside him was Oto.

Everything that happened next is a blur to me now. Oto’s suspicions of our relationship had been confirmed weeks prior, and we learned that she had secretly sent word to her master of the treachery and licentiousness of his wives who were quite well and had been for some time. His cruelty justified, he attacked us, beginning with Aki. He raged, screaming about how we’ve brought dishonor to his name, that our behavior was betrayal. I threw myself on him, scratched at him, bit him, until he was forced to turn his attention away from her.

Dragging me by my hair, he brought me out to the garden and beat me. I cannot recall how long he continued as I slipped in and out of consciousness. Eventually, after he had left me there, I regained some strength and stumbled out into the woods. With all my heart I wanted to return inside and find Aki, but I knew that I would not be allowed near her. More importantly, I did not want her to witness what came next.

My body throbbed with sharp pangs in the places of our husband’s assault, but a deeper pain had erupted in my abdomen. I made my way in the dark, stumbling and tripping over gnarled roots and jutting rocks before reaching the waterfall. I collapsed near the water’s edge and noticed the blood that flowed from between my legs onto the dirt below me. I laid there in the cold and wept as my child left my body.

My shivering worsened with the spray of the waterfall and chill autumn air. The spots where his punches had landed—my left shoulder, my stomach, my right thigh and hip, and several places on my back—pulsed with growing intensity as my consciousness faded. I stared up at the night sky, the moon casting a soft light upon the glade. In the maple tree above my head, something glinted between the branches. A small, dark shape descended toward me, and as it grew closer, I could make out thin, gangling legs and a round body.

A spider landed on my outstretched arm.

It was a glowing yellow, with black stripes along its legs and back. An intricate red pattern adorned its underside. It remained there on my sleeve, and I simply looked at it, mesmerized by its silhouette.

I awoke sometime later, dizzy, unfocused to the world around me. My body screamed in agony in those same places. There was a dull cramping in my stomach. The world spun, a swirl of pink and orange from a sunrise that hadn’t yet cleared the mountaintops. Cool air passed over my body. I could feel the soft breeze all over, where my bare skin was exposed, though I did not comprehend then that my clothes should have been intact. The familiar thrum of the waterfall woke my senses slightly and I realized that I was parched. I reached out my arms to crawl toward the water when I began to feel something—several things—pushing against me in all directions.

It was then that I dared to look at my bloodied and broken body, and what I saw made me doubt that I was in my right mind.

From the bruised marks of my husband’s strikes, there protruded long spidery limbs.

I recoiled at the sight, first noticing the appendages that had grown from my stomach and right hip, ripping through my delicate robes. Then I saw another at my thigh. The new legs shifted with me, as natural as if I were moving my human limbs. I could feel the ones that stretched out behind me from my left shoulder and back, and with these, I lifted myself up off the ground. Each was the length of my entire body, and I hovered in the air and stared at them, disoriented. My bare feet dangled several inches from the ground, and that’s when I saw it for the first time.

Just below me, where the contents of my womb had spilled out into a pulp of blood-sodden silk threads, a flower with spindly and curling red petals had bloomed.

❀✿❀

A.K. Aspen (she/her) is a genre fiction editor based in New York. She holds an MLit in Fantasy Literature from the University of Glasgow. You can read her musings on her website at www.akaspen.com.