October 13th – Vachel Lindsay – ‘The Spider and the Ghost of a Fly’ (1914) – Read it here. Catch up on the challenge here.

I enjoyed this short poem – a bite size thing I read about four times.

It reminded me of a really old cartoon about two flies on honeymoon and the evil spider luring them into his hotel – I don’t know if anyone else remembers that one, it was called ‘The Cobweb Hotel’ (1936)

The images of the poem – the doomed love, the inevitable destruction of the lover, the disappointment and heartbreak, and the femme fatale ‘spider’ – worked for me.

I didn’t know anything about the poet, and had never heard of him before, so I looked him up; there’s a lot of discussion around his poem “The Congo”, for example, criticised by contemporaries like W.E.B. Du Bois, who had praised his story “The Golden People”. His poems never gained academic interest and his popularity faded after his death. There is more about him here.

Here’s an extract from The Poetry of Betrayal, Part 1 of the Egg & Gwen backstory that is only available to my Ko-Fi members. The full novella is 18K words. This is how it ends – but there is more to come, particularly Egg’s experiences as a nurse in the Great War (1914-1918), and how she met Gwen again, and their reconciliation before they move to Pagham-on-Sea as ‘companions’. So this is the crush-to-lovers-to-enemies part of their arc, which is in draft and could be expanded.

I’ll work on this and more of the Egg & Gwen story for something to go on general sale, but until then, it’s all Ko-Fi member-exclusive.

[Chapter 8 of 9]
The Island

The next day, Gerry put himself and the girls into his automobile, and they set off for the lake, where Gwen explained there were pretty row-boats and plenty of swimmers, and they should bring a picnic. 

Gwen did not mention the sleepless night she had given Egg, and seemed entirely unfazed by it, although Egg had told her it was the first time anyone had touched her like that.

Egg was still in a daze, thinking Gwen was the loveliest, most exciting creature in the world, and yet still did not quite trust her.

She didn’t know what to think. Could one even have a ‘best girl’ instead of a best boy, outside of school? Forever? Not outwardly, of course, but that didn’t matter so long as there was an understanding, like in the novels she wasn’t meant to read. If yr Arglwydd Dduw wished to voice any objections, He ought to do so in tongues of fire right now, or else Egg would have to exercise her own interpretations, as was her right as a Nonconformist, and add the usual kind of courting to the long list of things she did not conform to.

Egg clutched her hat with one hand and held on to the seat with the other, while Gerry yelled over his shoulder that it was a twin-cylinder engine and an improved model to one that had taken out the 1907 Tourist Trophy Race, which Egg had never heard of. Gerry drove as if he was determined to take out the race for 1912. 

The speed was thrilling. Gwen only encouraged him to go faster, and Egg’s stomach did somersaults on the dips in the road, as they sped along at a faster whack than she had ever gone in her father’s cart. 

They went inland for a few miles, horn sounding at sheep and walkers and farmers alike, much to their annoyance, as well as other motorists, who seemed equally annoyed, and finally came to the spot Gwen was so excited to reach. 

She had almost forgotten the real reason for the trip. It was all she could do to recall the mysteries of the visit in order, and fix them in her mind; Gwen had kissed them all away, winkled them out of her thoughts with those dainty, clever fingers, and left her blank as a washed slate or a page of untouched paper.

How Gwen could go about her day like this, as though everything were normal, Egg couldn’t fathom. Well – let her, then. It wasn’t as if Egg didn’t have other things to think about, too.

As Gwen chattered gaily to Gerry and they unpacked the picnic, on the shore of a picturesque lake fed by a merry river, Egg forced her thoughts into sensible things.

One: the mirror – but that’s solved, she thought. The only mystery really is what Gwen wants to do with it.

But seeing wonders was a temptation of its own, so she ruled this out as a serious mystery. 

Two: Gwen mentioned ‘She’, who seemed to know me, and cannot be conjured by the mirror, so who is ‘She’? And where?

This did seem to be a real mystery, so Egg mentally re-numbered it as Mystery One. 

Two (actually two, this time, or possibly 1b): what happens on this island, and what happens if I can’t say the right words? What if the mirror englyn doesn’t work after all? Will we be stuck on an island that disappears, or stolen off somewhere else?

That made her shiver, despite the warmth of the sun. 

She determined to focus on her composition now, and hoped an englyn would be enough – if it required a cynghanedd, then they would be in trouble. She needed considerably more time to compose twenty-four lines of complicated internal rhyming schemes and set numbers of syllables than she did to compose only four.

“You’re so serious, darling!” Gwen teased her, pulling her down to the blanket. “This isn’t a test of your skill. I’m the one who should be nervous.”

“I wish you’d tell me what’s really going on,” Egg complained. “You keep changing things, and saying one thing when you don’t mean it, or saying another when it’s not really true. I can’t keep up with you.”

“I haven’t told a lie,” Gwen said, eyes wide and hurt. “And I have tried to, but I can’t. Really. She won’t let me.” She said the last part almost under her breath, but Egg heard it distinctly.

“Can’t you write it?” Egg asked, lowering her voice, too.

Gwen shook her head. “You’ll see why not. But not yet. She wants you to know. She knew someone from your family once, long, long ago.”

“Gwen, why am I here? Is that the only reason you invited me, because this – this She person insisted?” Egg glanced around for Gerry, but he was stripping off his scarf and goggles, and rooting about in the automobile for the flasks of tea.

Gwen recoiled from her with a sharp, indignant hiss. “Of course not, silly! How could you think so?”

“I don’t know,” Egg said, fighting the maelstrom of emotions that were quite outside her realm of experience. “I don’t think I know you very well, and at the same time, I know you far better than I expected to, and I don’t know how to—”

Gwen kissed her full on the lips. 

Egg was so startled, and so delighted, she couldn’t say another word. 

“There,” Gwen said, as if this settled everything. “Don’t be such a date. Unwrap these sandwiches, would you?”

If Gerry had seen anything, he didn’t pass comment on his return with the tea flasks. “Ladies, shall I be mother?”

Gwen held up her cup and smiled at him, squinting up as the sun blazed down on them, and Gerry gallantly poured the tea and set up a parasol. 

“There we are.” He threw himself on the grass in the full sunlight, arms behind his head. “Don’t mind me. We shall take a boat out shortly, there’s plenty of time.”

“What are waiting—” Egg started to ask, and Gwen kissed her again. 

Gerry closed his eyes, a smug smile playing on his lips, and Egg forgot all about the picnic. 

After a while, which wasn’t long enough for Egg, they did indeed find a row-boat tied up at a spot along the lake shore, and somehow Egg ended up being the one to row. It made sense – she was far stronger than Gerry, and it hadn’t even occurred to her that Gwen would do it. 

“Perfect timing,” Gerry said as they were out a little way, with no island in sight. “Keep close to the shore, but keep left.” He checked a silver pocket watch and tucked it back into his breast pocket. 

Egg didn’t question this. She hoped nothing would happen at all.

The trees grew more thickly around the lake to the left, and as Egg rowed them around the edge, trying not to bump into rocks or drift into the shallows, not entirely certain of what she was doing, the wind caught up and set the branches shivering. 

Nobody said a word.

Cascades of dry applause echoed around them, as the leaves shivered and shook.

Lines of Skene’s translation of Cad Goddeu, The Battle of the Trees, came to Egg’s mind, his translation of The Four Ancient Books of Wales deemed of enough merit to have in Tregaron’s school library, although Egg doubted the headmistress had actually read it herself. It wasn’t very poetic, and Skene didn’t have the ear to reproduce the rhythms of the original, Egg thought uncharitably, but the English lines still stuck in her head.

When the trees were enchanted,

In the expectation of not being trees,

The trees uttered their voices

From strings of harmony,

The disputes ceased.

“Don’t go any deeper,” Gerry warned, checking his pocket watch again. “Hold steady.”

Egg focused on the strokes, and the poetry. 

To her left, the trees bowed in the wind and whispered, and she almost fancied she heard words in the rustle of the leaves, the susurrus intonations of dry, sibilant voices. 

If I come to where the boar was killed,

He will compose, he will decompose,

He will form languages.

What will we form, if we’re killed? Egg found herself wondering. Is that how things rot in the Otherworld, can things die there too? I think it’s a cycle, an endless cycle… like the cauldron of rebirth in the old stories… but we’re flesh and blood, and all that will come from us is food for the worms.

It was such a terribly morbid thought, she missed a stroke and had to readjust her oar. 

Auntie Olivera had a copy of Thomas Stephens’ The Literature of the Kymry at home, and there was plenty more about the poem in there, but once Auntie had seen the author refer to Myrddin as ‘fictitious’, it had been placed somewhere out of the way, to gather dust. 

There was a difference, Egg was told severely, between something being fictional and not being true, and the author of that scholarly tome clearly did not know what that difference was. Egg was not entirely sure that she understood it, but if Lewis Carroll’s White Queen could believe six impossible things before breakfast, then so could she. 

All these things swirled in her mind, all mixed up, anything to distract her from the cacophony of the trees, and Gwen’s infinitely distracting presence opposite her, and the looming spectre of the unknown. 

“Listen,” Gerry said, breaking through her determined thought-jumble. 

They were all very quiet, and Egg put up the oars briefly to let them bob while she listened, the hair rising on the back of her neck. 

A low humming was coming from the trees, and spreading across the water. Egg twisted around to see what the other two were gaping at. Ripples were spreading across the surface of the lake from the shore, as if something large but invisible had entered the water some yards back, and was slowly, lazily, making for their boat. 

“Row,” Gerry whispered, and there was a gleam in Gwen’s eyes that showed she was not frightened but terribly excited, and Egg felt a surge of anger at being put in this position, where something might tip them into the water and pull them under to drown, and all the time be too cowardly to show itself.

A mist was gathering.

Egg put her back into it, pulling longer strokes and letting the oars bite deep, bracing with her feet and compressing like a loaded spring. The boat shot off, and Gwen’s cheeks grew pink with the thrill of it, and Gerry was quite pale beside her. 

“There!” Gerry said, pointing off to the right. 

Egg manoeuvred them in a curve, and there, right in front of them as if it had been there all along, was a densely wooded island wreathed in mist. 

Something shot behind their boat as it turned, making them rock. 

“Row, Miss Pritchard, for the love of God!” Gerry cried, while being a fat lot of good himself, and Egg rowed for all she was worth. 

There was a dark shape in the water, just below the surface, that she could just make out in her peripheral vision. 

It seemed to keep pace, but the mists swallowed them, and they lost it in the shallows of the island’s shore. 

Gerry jumped out with a splash, trousers rolled up to his knees, and heaved the boat further into the shallows. He helped his cousin out first, then Egg. 

Egg looked back over the lake, but there was nothing to see now but the rolling grey wisps, building into a thick blanket. She couldn’t see the lake shore anymore, and there was no shape in the water. She recalled Gerry’s story of a traitress and her maidens all drowned, and Gwen’s Aunt’s tale of a naked maiden with a dark shadow spreading under the waves, where her legs ought to be. 

“What was it?” she asked. 

“A drowned girl,” said Gwen, and there was a cruel twist to her smile that seemed too wide and too big for it, as if it wasn’t her mouth at all. 

“Stop it.” Egg brushed by her to investigate the spot they had landed up in, but the others didn’t follow her. “It was probably an otter, that’s all, and we were frightened for nothing. Where are we? What is this place?”

“Say your englyn,” Gwen entreated, clasping her hands in front of her. “Say it quickly.” 

Egg started with the Lord’s Prayer, in Welsh, of course, and the englyn she’d composed for the mirror, and she repeated that four times. The Lord’s Prayer was only necessary once; the Almighty was not moved by repetition, but the poem needed a little more emphasis, a repeat for each line, or it felt incomplete. 

In answer, the mist seemed to lighten and thin around them, retreating to the lapping water and not encroaching any further. 

“It worked,” Gerry whispered. “I mean, I was sure it would, but it’s one thing to think it, and another to see it, don’t you know.” 

“Oh, darling, you really are a bit wet. I’m amazed you even came at all. Come on.” Gwen picked her way across the little beach to the trees, and waved them over. “Tie the boat up, this spot is perfect.”

“Perfect for what?” Egg didn’t trust Gerry to tie the boat properly, but his firm knots made her reassess her prejudices. 

He shot her a supercilious look, eyebrow raised. “Does this pass mustard, Miss Pritchard?”

Egg flushed. “It will do.” She turned from him and followed Gwen, who was making herself comfortable in a spot where she could look out over the small bay where they had landed. “Won’t you please tell me what we’re waiting to see?”

“It’s my Becoming,” Gwen said sweetly. “And I must have two witnesses, or I shall not survive it. Gerry has got quite good at reanimation, in case something should go wrong. But I think with you here, nothing shall.”

“Reanimation?” Egg repeated. “You mean… like Frankenstein?”

Gerry laughed. “Oh, not at all. That’s all very impractical. Not to mention incredibly hard on one’s shirts. All that surgical butchery.” He pulled a disgusted face.

The first part of what Gwen had said caught up with her and overshadowed this information. 

Egg turned back to Gwen, trying not to show how flustered she was. “What are you Becoming? What on earth do you mean?”

“I was chosen from birth,” Gwen said, serene. “I was born with the caul, you see, and my mother drew her last breath the moment I drew my first. It passed from her to me. It’s a very great honour to be a vessel.”

“A vessel… for…? Not the things in the mirror, surely? Do they enter into you?”

“One in particular.” Gwen smiled, and her eyes seemed a different shape, a different size, a much clearer, more piercing shade of blue. “I have already accepted her, but now I must welcome her with witnesses, and others may try to get in. They can be frightfully jealous if they have no vessels of their own.”

“But – who is she? What is she?” This was the closest Egg had ever come to being frozen to the spot, a wicked chill shuddering through her, but she was not afraid for herself. She was afraid for Gwen.

Gwen only smiled, as if they were talking about commonplace things like a new girl at school, or a replacement for the Latin master.

“She is immortal in our world, only if She lives within another living body. Together, we could do great things. I am strong enough to hold Her, but I must also accept the mantle of power, and it might be too much. That’s why I have Gerry, in case someone needs to bring me back, and why I have you, in case the horrid things from the other side try any funny business.” Gwen gave a little shrug, hands delicately folded in her lap. “Isn’t this exciting? You don’t mind, do you? I did tell you it was dangerous. I was sure you would understand. But I couldn’t possibly explain. Not until we were here. She wouldn’t let me.”

Egg didn’t know what to say, but there was no opportunity for further words.

Gerry held his hand up, checking his pocket watch again. “It’s starting,” he whispered.

A low humming, the same note as before, came from the trees on the island.

It was a single tone, but so loud and so constant that Egg began to hear different tones and strange rhythms embedded within it, resonating in her breastbone as it rang through her ears. It wasn’t intolerably loud or even intolerably high-pitched, but so insistent and queer that she clapped her hands to her ears and still heard it boring into her head, as though she did not need ears to hear it at all. 

It filled Egg with a terrible desire to do something awful.

What, she didn’t know.

The humming filled her with vibrations that made everything feel too tight, too restrictive. She wanted to strip her clothes off, corsetry and all, and fling herself into the lake. 

She wanted to take an augur and bore holes into her skull, to release the pressure building behind her eyes and forehead. 

She wanted to throw herself on the ground and tear open her arms and chest to release the awful sound from her bones, and bleed and bleed and bleed until the sound was no longer a part of her. 

She wanted to take Gwen by her pretty throat and squeeze until her eyes popped like ripe berries, until the humming stopped. 

The wind sent a stray leaf careering into the side of her face, and the unexpected scrape of it brought Egg to her senses.

Gwen had her arms spread wide, and her beautiful face upturned to the sun, her buttercup curls straying from their pins and winding into loose tendrils around her face. She was pale as a daisy, pink-tinged as a rose, her dress the shade of blooming lavender, a maiden made of flowers. 

Soulless as flowers, Egg thought, dazed, remembering the story of Blodeuwedd, the flower-girl. And she shall be an owl, the loneliest of birds, the shunned huntress of the woods, and never again be softness in the sunshine.

“No, she is mine!” Gwen said, in a harsh voice so unlike her own, and a change came over her. The appearance of blossoms fell from her skin as the wind picked up, as if they were blown away, and a shadow surged to the surface, a dead, pale being looking out through Gwen’s eyes, wearing her skin, turning her hair to dusty black, and her eyes to an arctic blue. 

“No. This vessel is mine. None of you can have her.”

Egg realised they were not alone. 

She was pressed around on all sides by things she couldn’t see, angry waspish things, all of them ignoring her and Gerry, who was trying not to move or make a sound. He had his pocket watch open, and Egg wondered if it was a watch at all, since she had not seen its face. She hoped he knew what he was about, as she had no idea what to do.

The humming intensified. Egg couldn’t bear it. It was a sound that wanted possession of her, mind, body and soul. She recited her englyn to herself, over and over, forcing the invisible crowds to part around her and give her room to breathe. She could feel things older than time, pressing against her flimsy net of words and finding weaknesses, trying to get at her, to get at the three of them, and take them for their own.

“I welcome none but you,” Gwen said in her own voice, staring into space above Egg’s head. “None but the striker of the fatal blow, she who began the Battle of Camlann, none but Gwenhwyach.”

As soon as the name left Gwen’s lips, the hum became a scream.

Egg felt her englyn break, syllables unmoored, lines flapping freely, as she forgot the words. 

The air sucked at them, rocking them where they sat.

Egg closed her eyes tightly and held on, but all she could think of were the first two lines of the Lord’s Prayer, and nothing else.

Ein Tad, yr hwn yn y nefoedd

Sancteiddier dy enw.

Ein Tad, yr hwn yn y nefoedd

Sancteiddier dy enw.

Ein Tad, yr hwn yn y nefoedd

Sancteiddier dy enw…

Egg had been the tender age of eight during the Revival of 1904, and she had grown up with the passion of the ministers, chapel twice a week and three times on Sundays until she won her scholarship to Tregaron School for Girls, and Auntie Olivera telling her of an elderly deacon in the back row so overcome with ecstasy and holy terror that he shouted out, “No more, Lord Jesus, or I’ll die!”

Now Egg understood how it must have been, the terror in that place, the feeling of being on the very limit and edge of what a person could stand, that any more pressure would burst her flesh and render her entirely spirit, and that she would watch something else stand in her place, wearing her body while she wandered free of it, lost forever. 

She was not sure that this island would permit people to go to heaven. She was also certain, in a sudden moment of conviction that rendered her iron and steel and stone, that she would not allow anything to steal her life from her, eternal or otherwise. 

Her insecurities were gone.

Egg opened her mouth, not knowing what would come out, and turned her prayer into poetry. 

The humming stopped. 

The air was dead. 

Egg’s ears rang with the sudden, empty silence, the wind also ceased, the trees unmoving. 

Gerry clicked his pocket watch closed, and tucked it back into his pocket, looking pale. 

“Gwendoline?”

Gwen blinked, as if restored by a good night’s sleep. She smiled her same smile, stretched, and stood up. 

“I feel wonderful. She is safe inside me, now.”

Egg didn’t like the sound of this at all. She knew nothing of this person, this dead thing under Gwen’s skin, but the name sounded familiar.

She stood up, dusting off her skirt. “Gwen…”

“Don’t worry. You did wonderfully. I knew you would.” Gwen’s smile suited her now. If before there had been some vying for supremacy, now there was pure symbiosis, a melding of forms and souls, and Egg had the strangest feeling she was looking at two people at the same time. “Don’t worry, darling. She likes you, too.” 

That made Egg shudder.

Gwen laughed. “I promise, when we’re alone, it will only be me.”

Egg wanted to believe this, but she didn’t feel reassured. 

“We should leave,” Gerry said, making for the boat. “The island will disappear as the mist clears.”

Sure enough, the mist was thinning, and Egg could almost see through to the other side, where the lake shore was waiting for them. 

They got into the boat and began to row out into the lake, just in time – as Egg looked back, only once, thinking of Lot’s wife as she did so, the island was no longer there. They bobbed in the empty lake, for all the world like three people on a gay boating trip, as if nothing preternatural had ever happened. 

[Chapter 9 of 9]
Parting

“You will be simply marvellous,” Gerry told Gwen when they returned to his car. “You’ll restore our fortune, I know it. Just think of all the tiresome rich old men you can enslave, and the empires we can build together.”

Egg turned cold at Gwen’s tinkling laugh, a twist of terrible jealousy and hurt in her heart. Had they gone through all this, only for Gwen to throw her over for some greater scheme? And hadn’t Egg known this all along, known that Gwen was using her for her own agenda? And yet she had still accepted the invitation like a lovesick fool, and now Gwen had put them all in harm’s way and come out the other side unscathed, or at least, with the outcome she had desired from the first, and now – where did that leave Egg? 

She was quiet all the way back to Aberystwyth, where they went for tea at the hotel once more, and walked for a little while along the seafront, and Gwen bloomed as gentlemen doffed their hats to her, and glowed brighter than ever. 

“Don’t look so glum, Pritchard,” Gwen teased, threading her arm through Egg’s. Egg noted she had dropped the terms of endearment. “Everything went perfectly.”

For you, Egg thought. I’m sure everything will always go perfectly for you.

“You and I aren’t like the others,” Gwen whispered in her ear. “We can make our own way in the world, and the world will bend to us. We have powers, and we should use them.”

They passed a sign that read VOTES FOR WOMEN, and Egg took a pamphlet on their way passed.

“Isn’t that frightfully selfish of us?”

Gwen tittered. “Don’t moralise, darling, it’s so boring. Let other people have their struggles. What do they matter? We can do as we please.” 

Egg couldn’t stand to hear Auntie’s passion reduced to something petty and small.

The way Gwen said it made everything sound so pointless, an offer of an empty world where Evan’s sacrifice for her schooling meant nothing, just as Auntie’s fervour meant nothing, and her father’s quiet debates and steady convictions meant nothing, either.

Egg couldn’t have that.

She released Gwen’s arm.

“I think I should like to go home,” she said.

“If you like. But it’s far too late for regrets.” Gwen smiled at her. “You’ll see. When you accept how powerful you really are, you’ll see. I can wait.”

Mysticism, the Otherworld and miraculous sights were all very well, and the ordinary kind of girlish wickedness that everyone got up to after lights out, but this was a level of real wickedness that Egg couldn’t stomach. 

“I don’t think so, Jenkins,” Egg said, and Gwen drew herself up and stared at her. Then she turned on her heel and caught up with Gerry, walking some way ahead, leaving Egg alone near the lady handing out suffragette leaflets.

No tears, stop your silliness, Auntie Olivera admonished her as Egg tried not to break down on the promenade. Pritchard women don’t cry. That nonsense won’t get you anywhere.

She sniffed back all the confusion, but the events of the day were so strange and awful, and Gwen had confirmed all her worst fears by saying exactly the wrong things, that she may as well have scooped out all Egg’s insides like a fish and left her out in the salty air for the gulls. 

Serves you right for wanting to be wicked, said imaginary Auntie Olivera, who in reality would also make her cocoa and put her to bed after her admonishments, but Egg wanted to be punished.

She was furious with herself.

She had known from the start that Gwendoline Mostyn-Jenkins was a special sort of trouble, and she had walked straight into it with both eyes open.

Not again, Egg vowed. You’re a nasty piece of work, Jenkins. You won’t catch me out twice. I’ll not use my powers for anything but stopping you being so selfish, and whatever other little schemes you cook up. You’ll be sorry you ever tried to use me like this, you’ll see.

Thus ended Egg’s trip to Aberystwyth, cut politely short on the pretext of a fictitious telegram relaying a family emergency, which Gerry claimed to have received while his Mama was out. Egg was grateful for that, even if she still wasn’t sure if she liked him.

Soon Egg was back on the train and weeping bitterly all alone in her compartment, letting out all the emotion she couldn’t show once she got home, if only because she couldn’t explain any of it.

As she ruined her handkerchief, drenching it through and through, Eglantine Valmai Pritchard determined that this was the only time in her life she would cry over a girl, and certainly the only time she would ever cry over Gwendoline Mostyn-Jenkins.

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