#2024MakeAMonster Day 14: Fuzzy

 

Back from #FantasyCon means back on my nonsense. So here's today's #2024makeamonster - short because I'm sick, but hopefully it'll amuse.

FUZZY

Oh, the caterpillars.

They swarm, my little pretties. They hunch their chubby backs and tippy-toe along their leaves, after their sweet bites of green. They hurry, and they ripple.

‘Use a black cat,’ Nan says. ‘Have some respect for tradition.’

But a cat has only four pads of claws. My little fuzzy darlings, they’ve claws in row after row. Atop, they shimmy their glossy black hairs, soft and stiff and glistening in the daylight – but underneath, they’re all hooks.

‘Not much credit on a broomstick,’ Nan says. ‘Doesn’t look like a familiar. Just looks like you forgot to shake it after you swept.’

They’re dark and silky as any cats, my caterpillars. When I pick one up it dips through my fingers like rolling a coin. I can hear the soft rustle of its hairs, each against each. When you untether yourself from the wholesome world, you hear so many things.

‘Pull yourself together, girl,’ Nan says. ‘If you disgrace me l’ll have to take steps.’

When a caterpillar eats, it dips its boot-toe head from side to side of the leaf, nods so solemn you’d think it an alderman. But when it weaves silk, it grapples its mouth parts like a tiny grab. It licks and licks and licks white glimmer into the world.

There’s nothing so strong as silk. I can run up a spider-web now, since I untethered myself from the wholesome world. Well, why should I let myself be weighed to the ground? You think a broom could lift a whole-bodied witch if the solid earth had any hold on her? I can fly, my pretties. I can fly.

‘If you don’t fly right, young woman,’ Nan says, ‘then it won’t be eye of newt that goes in the cauldron next full moon. It’ll be eye of you.’

So I let my pretty caterpillar glimmer its black fur across the back of my hand. It knows who loves it, the sweet thing. It knows who it wants to do one nice little favour.

It raises its glossy head. It casts.

A skein of silk through the air. Light as a whisper. Thin as a thought.

Strong as a chain.

You wouldn’t think a single thread could catch a whole grandmother, whipping it through the air thrashing like a hooked fish. But it was a long time ago since Nan untethered herself from the solid world.

I cast my caterpillar thread, and I catch her, and my pretty reels her in. Down to where a hundred claws wait to hold her in their furred embrace.