Greetings, Talebones Readers!
I felt that I needed to shake some thoughts loose onto the page this week, so I decided to write a shortish, folktale-esque piece that’s been on my list of ideas to explore for a while.
While not a rough-rough draft, this one is closer to an exercise than some of my other stories. Just playing around with an idea that wanted attention, and grateful for the space to do so!
Long-time readers may recognize some of the characters in this story, but don’t worry; no previous work is required to enjoy this one. (However, if you enjoy this piece and you want to see more, links to the previous relevant tales will be included at the end.)
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It started with the chickens.
Lizzie Kemp knew her chickens. Despite their dozens, she knew them all by voice and by feather. So when she noticed a lack in the summer henyard one morning, she did a headcount and—sure enough—she came up short by five hens.
One is an accident. Two is a worry. Three is a pattern.
But five? Five is a problem.
She spent the day looking for signs. Feather-falls, blood, signs of a struggle, bits and pieces of hen. It was as if something had lowered itself down from heaven, snatched up each bird quick as you like, and disappeared into the sky. A hunter with wings, perhaps? But What hawk or eagle hunts at night?
Strange.
That evening, over supper, Lizzie sat at the table with her stepmother Hannah and Hannah’s daughter Gwen, seven years old. They sat as they had every night for many years. But tonight, Lizzie had news.
“We’re missing five hens,” she said.
Hannah frowned, the serving spoon poised over the buttered green beans, fresh from their garden. “Five?” she said.
“Five,” said Lizzie.
“Five,” little Gwen repeated solemnly, because she longed to help and wasn’t sure how.
“That’s a problem,” Hannah said, as she dished out the beans and potatoes and biscuits slathered pink with her strawberry preserves. “What could have done it?”
“I don’t know,” Lizzie said, and the thought disturbed her. She liked to know things. It was why the folk in town whispered behind their hands whenever she passed by. Twenty-two and never married, still living with her stepmother in the cabin in the forest her beloved father died in. Twenty-two and spending too much time in the woods or kneeling by the lakeside, mumbling to the green growing things. She knew what the townsfolk said, but it didn’t bother her.
Witch is as good a name as any when you don’t much mind what they call you. And anyhow, she knew which of them stole through the woods under cover of darkness to ask her for help when the town doctor’s book-knowledge failed.
“You give the woods your gifts,” Hannah said. “It’s always kept the bargain.”
Lizzie nodded. She was quick to pay the forest back whenever she had to take, leaving offerings from her hunts and harvests for the woodland phantoms to find. The woods had been faithful, and she saw no reason why the spirits of the place would forsake her and her family now by stealing her chickens.
“Must be something new,” she said, thoughtful, her fork tracing tracks in the pink preserves on her plate. “Something passing through.”
“Something big,” Gwen said through a mouthful of biscuit.
Lizzie glanced at her little half-sister. “Maybe a lion,” she said.
Gwen’s eyes went big and she smiled big, too. “Or an elephant.”
“What would an elephant want with chickens?” Hannah asked. “They don’t eat ‘em.”
“Maybe it’s lonely and just wants friends,” Gwen replied.
Lizzie laughed. Hannah swept a lock of her daughter’s nut-brown hair behind her ear, fond with a mother’s fierce affection.
“I just love the way you see. You’ve got good eyes to see with,” Hannah said. “Keep those good eyes and never change, little girl.”
Lizzie stood from her plate, still half-full. “I’m gonna sit out tonight by the henhouse, to catch the thief in the act.”
“Can I wait with you?” Gwen asked.
But Lizzie shook her head. “I’ll need you to get your sleep so you can help me with the lion’s hide when I bag him.”
Gwen groaned, understanding she was being left out of this particular task.
“You be careful, now,” Hannah said.
On the way out, Lizzie grabbed her hat and picked up her father’s shotgun from behind the door.
*******
After dark in summer all was warm from the day, no breath off the nearby lake, just twinkling stars overhead and close-knit trees. Lizzie sat on an upturned barrel in the shadows outside the barn, keeping her unflinching gaze on the henhouse. An unlit lantern sat by her feet. Her vision was keen—she had good eyes, as Hannah would say—but the darkness was complete and every movement caught her attention, snared her breath.
Lizzie leaned against the barn, but gently. The old building was aging fast, wood softening, joints buckling. The whole property was full of the obvious signs of Josiah Kemp’s passing: sagging fences, softening rooftops, cracked and creaking stairs. Josiah had been a capable carpenter, but age and illness had caught up with him in the past few years. And while Lizzie and Hannah could take on small repairs, some of the problems had worsened beyond their skill.
None of the men in town would be caught dead hired on to work for the Kemp women.
It was near midnight, Lizzie guessed, when something shivered through the yard. A feeling, more than anything. A primal tension as the passage of something out of the ordinary interrupted the night’s usual rhythm.
Lizzie sat up and gripped the shotgun. Josiah had taught her how to use it well before he ever met Hannah, back when it was just father and daughter against the wild world.
That was a long time ago. How things change.
A large piece of night detached itself from the trees above the henhouse, lowering down, and Lizzie squinted hard against the gloom.
What the hell is that?
She raised the shotgun as the shape landed softly on the henhouse roof, dwarfing it but not crushing it. A long, spindly limb lifted a section of the roof where the disrepair had left a gap.
Cursing softly, Lizzie centered her aim at the bulk of the shape—well out of the way of the henhouse itself—and fired. The world exploded into chaos. The hens within the house screamed, the shape reeled, the woods erupted with the cries of panicked creatures rushing from the sound. The cabin door opened, golden light spilling down the porch and into the yard, but Hannah wisely stayed put.
The dark shape crumpled in on itself and slipped backward behind the henhouse. Lizzie took up the lantern and lit it, running around the side, the chickens squalling within, to make sure she could catch up with the wounded thing if she needed to. But she needn’t have hurried. It was lying there in the overgrown grass and ferns behind the henhouse, curled up like the husk of a dried leaf.
It was a spider. A spider near the size of a bull.
Lizzie stared at it for what felt like a long time, until she managed to tear her eyes from it and lope back to the cabin, peering up at Hannah framed in the doorway.
“Come and see this,” she said. “You won’t believe it.”
So Hannah followed Lizzie back down the steps and around the henhouse. But when they got to the place where the creature had been, there was no creature at all.
Instead, there was a man lying in the ferns. A thin long-legged man haloed by a pool of blood. His chest rose and fell weakly in the light from the lantern. Alive.
“Well,” Lizzie said, puzzled. “He sure wasn’t here before.”
“What was here before?” Hannah asked.
“Not him.”
“Even so, he’s here now. Let’s do what we can,” Hannah said.
So stepmother and daughter lifted the man and carried him up to the cabin where they laid him on Lizzie’s bed. No strangers to the art of nursing—had they not carried beloved Josiah Kemp safely to heaven in their arms when he had passed only a year prior?—the two women fell into easy rhythm, removing the stranger’s shirt, washing the wound on his shoulder with good well water, poulticing with yarrow and sage that they chewed and spat into clean linen.
They worked quietly so as not to wake little Gwen, who slept sound. They worked diligently until the stranger’s wound was bound and he rested calmly.
Lizzie sent Hannah to bed, said she’d stay up in case the stranger woke, and she sat nearby on her father’s chair, smoking her father’s pipe, holding her father’s shotgun on her knees. All in case the stranger woke in a rage…or transformed once more into what Lizzie alone knew to be the truth.
*******
It was deep in the night when the stranger opened his eyes. In the glow of the lantern his gaze flashed green like an animal hidden in the trees.
“And how came I to be here?” he said.
Lizzie looked down at him and mumbled around the pipe’s stem. “Speak soft, I’ve got family sleeping. You stole my chickens. Et ‘em too, I suppose.”
The man blinked. He had an odd face. It was young and old all at once, and everything about him was thin as a rail.
“A hungry man will do wrong,” he whispered. “And apologize, if given the chance.”
“You ain’t a man at all. I know what you are.” Lizzie tapped the shotgun barrel with an absent hand. “Some kind of monster. I saw you.”
The man nodded. “A beast of ill-repute, it’s true. But Longshank never harmed a hair on the head of anyone. Feathers, yes, but not a human being. No beings with hair on their head.”
“Longshank. Is that your name, then.”
“Lemuel Longshank.”
“And what are you doing here, on Ferris Island?” Lizzie asked. “There probably ain’t a land big enough for your belly, and an island this small is worse still.”
“No land, no. Always wandering through, always passing through. Never welcome anywhere. Only here as a guest.”
“Guests act proper,” Lizzie said. “Guests don’t steal their hosts’ chickens.”
Longshank nodded, a flicker of sorrow passing over his face. “Yes, yes, yes, it’s true. Poor manners, I’ve made of it. A hungry man will apologize for his wrong.”
“Apologize all you like, but there’s still a matter of missing chickens.”
Longshank winced in what appeared to be genuine shame. “What justice will you make of me?”
Lizzie shrugged. “I’ll have to think that over. Sleep now. In the morning we’ll talk more. But mind you stay in the shape you’re wearing now. You slip into that eight-legged shape of yours and I won’t hesitate to kill you dead.”
Longshank nodded, eyelids heavy, mumbling himself back into sleep. “Yes, yes, yes. A worthy justice. Yes. Slumber now, and no spider-shape for Longshank. Not indoors. A good guest, I promise you. Ever a good guest…”
*******
In the morning Lizzie and Hannah took turns with their chores, never leaving the sleeping stranger alone in the cabin. Little Gwen, for her part, lingered as close to Lizzie’s room as she dared. She was fascinated and frightened by the strange man in equal measure, and somewhat disappointed that the chicken thief had not been a lion after all.
The man woke again when Lizzie offered him a biscuit for breakfast.
“For Longshank?” he asked, then lowered his voice quickly. “Are any sleeping now?”
“Just you,” Lizzie said. “And yes, a biscuit for you. Do you eat biscuits?”
“I eat anything,” he replied, then glanced quickly at her. “Excepting the present company. My hosts. I am a good guest. I promised.”
He took the biscuit from her fingers, warm with preserves, and ate it very quickly.
“My name is Lizzie Kemp,” Lizzie said. “That there is my stepmother, Hannah, and that is her daughter, Gwen.”
Gwen was hiding around the corner, peering into Lizzie’s room where the stranger slept. Longshank smiled at her, a gentle smile.
“Pleasant meeting,” he said. “Very pleasant. Hello.”
Gwen vanished around the corner.
Longshank finished the biscuit and sighed. “Very good. I thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Lizzie said, then sat back in the chair and folded her arms. “Now then, I’ve been thinking much about what to do about you.”
Longshank’s stare was solemn. “The chickens, yes. Justice for the chickens.”
“Hannah and I have decided that you can stay here until you’re well enough to move along, and you’ll come to no harm as long as you remain a good guest. But once you’re up and about, you can’t stay on the island. You understand that, don’t you?”
Longshank nodded. “There’s not enough here to sustain me.”
“Maybe. It’s mostly that other folk around this island may not be as kind if they catch you stealing their livestock,” Lizzie said. “You understand what I mean?”
Longshank’s eyes softened. “More than you know, sweet Lizzie Kemp. Longshank has escaped many a scrape.”
“Then you’ll move along? When you’re well enough?”
“I will,” he said. “Out of respect for the kindness of Kemp, I will.”
*******
For all his strangeness, Longshank healed quickly. Unnaturally so. Lizzie didn’t like to wonder too much about why that could be.
Within a day or so he was up and out of the bed, too weak to do much else but sit by the woodstove—long legs stretched out, long fingers folded in his lap—and talk. But oh, did he talk! He talked of his life, of his travels through the country and the world and the strange things he had seen. He spoke of his insatiable appetites, not just for food but also for knowledge. He had read many books and spoken to many different kinds of people, and he knew much about the world.
He had lived a long time, it seemed. Longer than natural. But he never once mentioned his true form in polite company. He guessed, correctly, that Lizzie would not have approved.
Gwen in particular was enchanted by him. He showed her how to play shadow-puppets on the wall with his long fingers and didn’t mind telling her the same jokes and stories over and over again, ever patient with her questions. Hannah was amazed by his tales of travel, of exotic places she had never heard of before. But even Lizzie, in spite of herself, was fascinated by the stranger. She found that she enjoyed listening to Longshank speak. He was odd, yes, but gentle and good-humored, and a decent enough storyteller.
The summer evenings felt long and luscious with his stories to season them.
“He has good eyes,” Gwen pronounced one night, as Lizzie was putting her to bed. “Mister Lemuel has very good eyes.”
And Lizzie had to admit that the child was right.
Soon, Longshank insisted upon sleeping on the floor beside the woodstove, to give Lizzie back her own bed. And when he was strong enough, he would accompany the Kemps at their chores around the farm and help where he could. He seemed to bloom in the fresh air, a wild weed not content to be grown indoors.
But more and more he cast his eye around the yard, and out to the woods. A restless yearning would enter his voice when he spoke of his wanderings. And even when he sat in the cabin, his gaze would flicker to the windows, to the stretch of summer blue and the sun-gold spires of the trees.
*******
One night, near a week since the missing chickens, Lizzie woke to a soft hand on her cheek like the stroke of a feather. And she heard a voice like a dream:
“A hungry man is grateful, Lizzie Kemp.”
She opened her eyes to see Longshank leaning over her, eyes eerie in the dark, but she felt no fear.
“Longshank will fulfill the bargain now,” he whispered. “And out out out I’ll go.”
Lizzie shook her head. “I hope you don’t. I hope you’ll stay.”
“A guest, only,” Longshank said, his strange eyes bewildered. “Isn’t that what you said? To leave the island when all is well?”
“I did.” Lizzie didn’t know how to explain. She had never quite felt like this before. “But I reckon I was wrong. I think you should stay.”
Longshank leaned back a little, as if to put distance between himself and his confusion. “But how will I live?”
“You’ll live careful, just like the rest of us. You’ll live kind. And we’ll help you.”
He blinked. “No cabin can hold me. It’s too close, too warm.”
“You can sleep wherever you like,” Lizzie said. “Only stay nearby. Eat good, and do good, and be near.”
The long, thin man stood up tall, casting his eye to the black window where night called to him, silently. But when he turned back to Lizzie, his gaze was soft and sweet.
“A hungry man is grateful, Lizzie Kemp. A hungry man will show you.”
And then he was gone.
The cabin door opened and closed, and Lizzie felt the night breeze nose in, looking for skin to shiver. She waited in the dark for a long, long time, but Longshank did not return.
*******
The next morning, when Lizzie rose early to feed the animals, she knew something was different the moment she stepped off the porch.
She looked around. In the pale dawn light the changes in the yard were subtle, but the more she looked, the more she saw, and the more she realized what had been done while she slept.
In the night, Longshank had worked to repair the places where Josiah Kemp’s passing was felt deepest. Using webbing silk thick as rope and sticky stuff like strong glue, Longshank had mended the fences, replaced the shingles, shored up the walls, sealed up the cracks. It had taken him hours to do. It had taken him all night.
Lizzie imagined him, all eight long legs and eight good eyes, scuttling from rooftop to rooftop around the farm and fixing what had long been broken.
A monster, yes, but grateful.
As she cast grain around the yard for the chickens and pulled water from the well and harvested from the summer garden in the early morning, Lizzie felt those good eyes on her back, watching from the trees, a free thing on eight long legs.
She felt his presence like a spirit in the woods, and she knew that he was near.
To the wind she whispered, “I’m glad you stayed.”
END
Author’s Note:
Lizzie Kemp and her family have appeared in two previous stories here on Talebones:
Behind the Door (available only to Councilmembers; also included in The Orchard Hounds collection)
The Third Rabbit (free to read)
Lemuel Longshank previously appeared in my serialized novel Freelance and Fishmaids (currently available only to Councilmembers).
CLICK HERE to explore all of the cross-genre Ferris Island Tales!
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Oh my, oh my! I discovered this as a restack by a stranger, I was drawn to the multiple-organs and the subject matter and clicked. I had just created a benevolent personal trainer spider character in my latest post, and I've always had a soft spot for eight-leggedness. But Lemuel Longshank is just an astonishing discovery in the treasure trove that is Substack. A BFG-esque man-giant-spider who beautifully emotes regret and gratitude. A character that's left an imprint on my easily distractible mind. A gentle masterpiece. I am now a subscriber and a lifelong fan.
Longshanks is a great name for a spider monster. A very charming tale.