Silk

“I wouldn’t have left you,” Niki said. “I wouldn’t really have left you.” And the last of the spiders squeezed themselves into the cracks between the floorboards and were gone.

“Come on,” Daria said. “There’s nothing else you can do.”

“There never was much, was there?” and Daria didn’t have an answer, helped Niki up and to the window. Mort waiting there, and Daria buttoned Niki snug inside Theo’s coat while he cleaned the last of the glass away.

“Give me your hands,” Mort said, reaching for her. “Wait,” Niki said and bent down, shaky, and picked up something that Daria couldn’t see off the floor, blew out the candle and then the darkness smelled like hot wax.

“Now,” she said, taking Mort’s hands. “Now, I’m ready.”

EPILOGUE

Exuvium

“This breath is mine

Say goodbye

Fuck off and die

Say goodbye

Say goodbye”

“Iron Lung”

Yer Funeral

T he week before Christmas, and they sit together in another diner, another truck-stop breakfast. Fifty miles east of Denver and they’ll see the mountains by noon, Mort says. Niki picks at her waffles and hash browns, brown foods, getting maple syrup on the shredded potatoes and grease on the waffles. Not as hungry as when she ordered it, not really hungry at all, anymore.

“Anyone want this?” and Mort says sure, so she hands her plate across the table to him. Theo forks away the top waffle, and he scrapes the rest on top of his own breakfast. Daria stops chewing her last mouthful of sausage and looks at Niki.

“You feelin’ okay?” and Niki nods her head. “Yeah. I’m fine. Just not hungry. I’m going to the restroom,” and she slips out of the booth, leaves them sitting there under the steer horns mounted on the wall and the moth-eaten jackelope with plastic holly and mistletoe tied in its antlers. Walks past the men sitting at the bar, truckers and locals, and they watch her, uneasy mix of disdain and lust on their sleepy, sunworn faces. Past the cash register and gumball machines, the hall that leads back to the toilets. Out the door into the Colorado morning as clear and cold and dry as wine. Niki puts her hand into the pocket of the coat that Theo let her keep, shiny black vinyl lined inside with fake fur the color of blue Play-Doh. Checking to see that it’s still there, her solid bit of certainty, like she’s checked times past counting in the weeks since they left Birmingham. Her new secondhand boots, a gift from Daria, scrunch in the parking lot gravel, scrunch past pickups and the van, and soon she’s walking on chalky dirt and scrubby patches of grass and cactus. Thirty or forty yards, and when she looks back, Daria is following her across the roadside prairie; she stops and waits for her to catch up.

“Where you goin’?” and Niki shrugs, looks west, and the sky and the brown earth seem to go on that way forever, azure Heaven and the World below and her trapped somewhere between.

“I just needed to walk.”

“Sure,” Daria says. “Would you mind some company?”

“I’m okay,” and Daria apologizes, turns back toward the truck stop. “No,” Niki says. “It’s all right. You can stay.”

“Thanks.”

“You know we’re almost out of cash again,” Niki says.

“We’ll all get jobs in Boulder. It’s a college town; I’m sure there are plenty of shit jobs. Don’t worry about the money, Niki.”

“Daria, are you still scared?” and Daria looks east over her shoulder, the wind through her hair that’s faded ci

“Yeah,” she says. “I don’t think it just stops. You wa

“No,” Niki says and takes the ball bearing out of her pocket. “This is far enough, I guess.” The constant caress of her fingers has almost worn away the ink, but she can still read her name in Spyder’s handwriting.

“What is it?” Daria asks, and Niki doesn’t answer, holds the steel ball in her palm. It glints in the bright sun like old chrome, and for a moment she just lets it catch the light, silver and the bright scars lacing her arm. And then she squats down and digs a shallow hole in the ground with the fingers of her other hand, puts the ball bearing inside and pushes the dirt back into place over it. She stands up and taps the spot with the toe of her boot until it’s smooth again.

“Nothing, anymore,” she says, and Daria puts her arm around Niki, and together they walk back to the truck stop.

“Heaven’s net is wide;

Coarse are the meshes, yet nothing slips through.”

Lao-tzu, Tao Teh Ching

About the Author

Silk was Caitlín R. Kiernan’s first novel. She has since written six others, including Threshold, Low Red Moon, Murder of Angels, and Daughter of Hounds. Her award-wi