Woven Dreams (or The Spider's Tea)
"The Exchange"
Bonnaventure stood in the shadows cast by the doorway of the theater and her smoldering and unrequited love. It had been years, but it still smarted. To give her love so freely and completely to the One. It should have been him; he should have been the one. Again, as it had been with others, he’d staked his love elsewhere—into the sloshing depths of intoxicizing bottles and nowhere else.
It was futile—to waste an ounce or speck of thought on the lout, but for some reason, he was suddenly showing up in her terrain, in her realms: it was to all ends unacceptable. There were over five hundred time-faded, moth-kissed, burgundy velvet seats, four rows of balconies, and eight opera boxes that had matching heavy velvet drapes—there was not a seat in there that she would allow to be afforded to that flea.
Despite this very real and justified belief, there was nothing Bonnaventure could do to stop his coming. Most especially because she did not want him to see her. She had to leave.
She hated the very idea of it—so absurd it was, she was surprised she hadn’t yet choked on the thought of any of it.
Try as she had to avoid it at any cost, the reunion could not be stopped.
It was simply pouring when she stepped outside. It was dark and she was getting soaked and she did not care. He would not be invading for long—not her theater, not her usual tranquil thoughts. His presence made her ill, it made her irritated and it made her impatient. She did not even hate him—though that was a great wonder and a surprise. In truth, she just knew and felt that he was infectious and negative and her world had no place for such monstrosities.
By the time Bonnaventure had come to her twin brother’s home, her dark ringlet curls had become elongated and matted to her. Her candy cane-striped sweater and red dirndl skirt were twice their weight with rain. Her feet, still encased in her heavy boots, sloshed around in the water they’d taken on. It was a good time to be where she found herself.
There was a loud welcoming of music from within the church-turned-abode and there was no need to knock—she never would have been heard. Into the din she went, warmth and dim light and a dozen faces greeting her. Friends of her brother, all. Some she knew, most she did not. Still, she was afforded hellos and nods as she went through the room. She did not see her brother at first, the smoke and candlelight tricking her eyes too much. She had to close them.
“Bonnie.”
Brotherly arms wrapped around her from behind and after a moment, she turned to face her twin.
“You look like you need an ear,” he commented. “And dry clothes.”
He took her hand and a lantern and they took a spiral case to another floor, her reserved room and stash of clothing at the end of a long hallway.
“Beau, I need the spiders,” she said as he unlocked the door for her.
Beaureguard knew exactly which spiders she spoke of and what her need for them was. He responded simply:
“Is that right?”
Beau set the light on a table in the middle of the glass turret of a room while she pulled a crimson silk dressing gown from a cherry wood armoire and stepped behind a changing screen to put it on.
Without his questioning, Bonnie explained her need of her request. And, having experienced his sister’s anguish and the constant torture of what her emotions had been wrought by, he absolutely understood.
“But, Bonnie—“ and he took her face in his hands as she came to him. “The spiders?” He gave his twin a cautioning look. “Are you sure? I mean—are you sure?”
“Never more sure, Beau,” she answered, unfaltering. And he saw from her stormy blue eyes to his calming brown ones that she could not have possibly been surer of anything in all the world.
Beaureguard sighed and kissed her forehead before nodding.
“You know where they are.”
Bonnie nodded back in reply and then left her room, and Beau behind to lock it again. She found her way through the semi-darkness to the pinnacle of the house. There was a small, sparsely lit room up there, though it was illuminated with magenta light. It was Beau’s favorite room of the house and though it was not even locked or barred off from the rest of the house, it was rare that anyone aside from Bonnie or Beau went there. As it usually was, the room was empty, but whoever had been there last and Bonnie suspected it to be Beau, they had left the music playing softly in the background.
It was perfect.
Bonnie went to the small nook in one wall where the light was violet and she sat on the floor, her back against one of the shorter walls to wait. As she sat there, Beau’s black cat brushed up beside her, purring and flirting and she rewarded him with pets and kisses. The feline meowed only once, a deep bellow of a meow and brushed her hand with his face. Just as she’d expected it of him and just as she needed him to, a stiff, thick whisker was left on her hand.
“Thank you,” she whispered, giving him another kiss and he left immediately.
Bonnie had now only to wait.
But hardly long at all.
At first, there was only one—black and large, with very long, thin and garden-spindly legs. And then another followed and another, each one patiently dropping on silken line from the ceiling, prepared to wait to take its turn.
Bonnie held her hand up for the first spider and it crawled onto the back of her hand.
What will you sacrifice? It seemed to ask, poised and waiting.
“I have already sacrificed,” Bonnie said softly. She saw the image of her former lover in her mind and he had caught up with her there at the theater that night. He had insulted and humiliated her. In front of his friends, he had jeered and scoffed at her and made her very small.
I don’t know who you are, she had said to him, keeping the composure of a queen. And he had barked at her words and called her names, called her a liar and made himself even uglier to her than his dependency already had.
I’ve never seen you before—
“So I have already sacrificed,” she said again. The spider crawled onto the top of her hand, at the ready for her.
So you have, it seemed to say.
Bonnaventure wrote the exact words she had uttered at that horrid charade, onto the spider with her twin’s familiar’s offering, a glowing pink being left behind where there had once only been the black. The first spider crawled away, carrying Bonnie’s written words with it, and quickly it was replaced by another and another, each one always seeming to ask:
What have you to sacrifice?
“I have already sacrificed.”
And so you have.
Continue....