Page 14 of Tiger's Tale
“Please, let me,” Nik insisted. “Your back pains you overmuch. I don’t want you to suffer needlessly.”
“You’re a sweet boy,” she said, patting his cheek. Her rheumy eyes peered into his for a long moment, and he wondered what it was she was looking for. Perhaps it was her lost son or a lost memory. Finally, almost sadly, she said, “I can’t stop you if you want to go, but I’ll ask you not to. At least wait until tomorrow, won’t you? You’re safe here.”
Nik frowned at the last, but said, “I know I’m safe with you, babushka. Yes. I suppose I can wait until tomorrow.”
“Very good.” She cackled and gave him a gap-toothed grin. “Then let me work on your tunic today. Perhaps I’ll have it ready for you in time.”
“In time? Christmastide is a month from now. I won’t need it just yet.”
She replied with a distracted, “Yes. Must hurry, then. Must hurry.”
The old widow worked so hard on his tunic that even when it became dark, she refused to stop. Nik lit a candle, set it by her rocking chair with a plate of stew and a slice of toasted bread slathered with fresh butter, and went to bed.
When he woke the next morning, he found her still in the chair, slumped down, deep in sleep, the tunic clutched in her gnarled fingers, and a tiny bit of drool escaping from her slack mouth. Gently, he tried to wake her and coax her to her bed, attempting to take the tunic from her hands and set it aside, but when he pulled, it came away attached to her palms with sticky fibers. The old woman startled and blinked, and Nik swore for a moment that he saw not one pair of eyelids but two.
“What? What is it, dear?” she asked, sitting up and adjusting her shawl around her shoulders.
Why hadn’t he noticed the bump between her shoulders before? The poor woman needed a physician. She was likely in great pain.
“Won’t you take to your bed this morning?” he asked. “You’ve had a long night.”
“Nyet. I’ll be fine. Just let me get my feet under me. I’ll see to your breakfast.” As she lumbered over to the table, her knees and joints cracking like heavy-laden tree branches in an ice storm with every step, and set down the tunic, she asked hesitantly, “Will you be leaving this morning? I wasn’t able to finish your tunic, I’m afraid.”
Nik saw her hands tremble as she took his mug and plate from the cupboard. “No,” he answered slowly. “It looks as if bad weather is approaching. I think I’ll hold off another day.”
“Does it?” she replied, not even bothering to look out the cottage window already lit with the rosy promise of winter sunshine. “I’ll keep on, then.”
They played the game every day for a week, with her working late into the night, her eyes straining to see the thread and the needle, and him postponing heading to town due to some reason or another, until the seventh night. That evening there were no more candles left for him to light, and they’d scraped together a meager dinner using the last of the mash and a bit of goat’s milk. By the light of the fire, they sat together as she sewed. Both of them knew there was no more time to spare. He’d have to go to town for supplies in the morning.
Finally, just as he was preparing to rise for bed, about to caution her to do the same, she carefully folded and set aside the tunic, then announced, “It’s complete.”
Nik thought she’d be happy, and he was ready to lavish great praise upon the garment, but then he saw how heavy tears filled the widow’s eyes, and she rubbed them until they appeared quite swollen indeed.
“Please don’t cry, babushka,” Nikolai said, taking her sticky hand in his and patting it. “If you really don’t want me to leave, I won’t. I’ll go hunting instead. We’ll make do, somehow.”
“It’s not that. Ty khoroshiy mal’chik. You’re a good boy.” With that, she burst into a fresh set of tears. “If only you weren’t. Now my husband and I will have no Christmastide feast.”
“What? Your husband? Don’t you mean your brother? I think you’re confused.”
“No,” the old widow said, then sighed and shrugged off her shawl. “I’m afraid you’re the one confused, my dear.”
As she spoke, her voice changed. It deepened into something sinister. More like a growl than the sound of an elderly woman. Then, to his horror, her head lifted, and her jaw unhinged. Before he could scream, the bottom of it elongated, and Nik found he lost his own voice entirely as his mouth went dry. The widow’s weepy eyes widened, and two sets of lids appeared, which was fortunate, because her eyeballs grew larger and larger until they finally popped out from the woman’s head and hung like bulbous white radishes on coarse stalks.
It was then that Nik realized the orbs gazing and blinking at him as they danced on either side of her cheekbones no longer contained a single eye hanging on the end of the fibrous crimson stalks, but a cluster of jellied, winking pustules. It reminded him of a monstrous arachnid, especially when thick black bristles erupted from her neck and arms.
Gooseflesh stood out on his own arms, and he felt the cold whisper of death dampen the backs of his ears. A bad omen, indeed. Nik scrambled away from her to a far corner of the room, but she lifted a hand and thin filaments shot from her palms. As she twisted her hands in the air, murmuring an incantation, the fibers wove together into a rope that shot toward him, quickly binding his feet, hands, and torso.
“I don’t want you to leave just yet,” the creature he’d lived with for months said in her new voice, one that gurgled and rasped as if she were speaking underwater.
“What... what are you?” Nik asked as she stood, her rickety knees unlocking and bending unnaturally, the joints turning backward as the skin on her arms bubbled and erupted in red scales.
“I am called many things,” she replied as fangs swelled in her upper jaw, the sharp tips glistening with golden liquid. “Some refer to me as a sheetweaver, or a moroi. But you might know me as a kikimora.”
Nik began shaking. Kikimory were nightmarish house spirits that strangled people in their sleep, kidnapped children on the road, and didn’t his mother once tell him a story saying that those who saw a kikimora spinning or weaving would die soon afterward? Well... if that was his fate, perhaps it would be better to embrace it. In fact, he wouldn’t be surprised if it had been the ghost of his departed mother who had cursed him in such an awful way.
“So”—Nik straightened his shoulders, the fear suddenly leaving him—“you’ve finished my burial shroud, then. I suppose I deserve it. What happens first? Should I put on my new tunic? Do you put that shroud on me, then drink me dry? Will you and your—your husband, is it? Will the two of you simply deprive me of my lifeblood, or will you consume my flesh as well? Shall I confess my sins first? That is the least you could let me do before putting me out of misery, don’t you think, babushka?”
The spider woman stopped advancing when she saw Nik’s lack of fear and heard the tone of resignation in his voice. “Why do you wish to confess your sins?” the new creature asked him, sliding a foot to the side so a third and fourth leg could free themselves from the waistband of her dress and deposit themselves on either side of her body. She sighed with relief, and Nik realized she was neither as old as he once believed nor as fat.
