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Tilda’s living room looked like it had been cut out of several different issues of Home and Gardens magazine and then pasted together at random. Each wall shared its own internally consistent visual theme while having almost nothing to do with the next. A much too large chandelier fit for a palace dangled high in the center of it all, banishing completely the unnatural darkness of the frightful storm.

Byron’s tired eyes flitted from object to object and color to color. He sat in one of five vibrant ratan chairs arranged in two small groups. One set rested invitingly around a low rectangular coffee table, while Byron had chosen to sit at the higher, circular table. All of the furniture looked like it had been imported directly from a Parisian cafe, with both the tables having black wrought iron legs and an intricate surface pattern of small pieces of black and white polished marble and obsidian.

The wall facing the entrance to the kitchen was covered nearly to the ceiling in bright white bookshelves with segmented glass doors and gold polished brass handles. The handles gleamed brilliantly in the optimistic light of the chandelier, and behind the glass, Byron could see books of every shape and size. Unlike McNally’s somber collection of red-spined manuscripts, Tilda’s books ran the visual gamut. Some were thin and tall, others short and wide, and each was a different bright color. She had them all arranged in perfect color order so they made together a perfect gradient, with no thought given to their titles or authors.

As if that weren’t enough for the eye to digest, some shelves didn’t contain books at all, but rather a wide variety of found objects. There was an entire long shelf of polished conch shells, their interior alive with fleshy pinks and whites, their exterior stripped and gleaming like rainbow opals. Bits of polished driftwood and different colored ocean glass were strewn here and there among the books, held aloft on custom frames or racks. Tilda had clearly considered the precise arrangement of each object in relation to the light of the chandelier, such that each piece of wood bent and contorted in the light so as to look warmly alive, and each piece of glass cast its own prismatic hue onto the white backdrop.

Directly across from this technicolor arrangement, on the opposite wall, the theme switched dramatically from esoteric library to art museum. From floor to ceiling, in thickly adorned wooden frames, this wall was covered in paintings. Each piece of art seemed to have nothing to do with the other – here a surrealist set of faces hidden within faces, there a series of abstract geometric shapes, and next to that a pastoral landscape stretching out into the blue distance. As Byron scanned from image to image, it seemed the only through-line was intense color saturation. Two dozen paintings burst from the wall, framing another darkened hallway.

Not to be outdone, the wall with the entrance leading back to the mudroom bore its own collage of color and texture, albeit with a significantly more practical purpose. It was filled, up to a Tilda-friendly height, with hooks and cubbies. Onto and into these Tilda arranged every piece of outdoor clothing she owned. There was the shoe cubbies and the boot cubbies, the raincoat hooks and the windbreaker hooks, beside the winter jacket hooks and summer shawl hooks. There was an entire section of square wooden boxes devoted just to hats, each bearing inside itself a single hat for some season or another. Like everything else in the house this wall did not want for color – with each bright white hook or cubby bearing its own brightly colored piece of clothing.

Only one wall in the large, central living room was not covered in colorful things. Instead, it relied upon nature itself to fill its transparent palette. The wall across from the cubbies consisted almost entirely of floor to ceiling windows, except for a glass door cut into the middle of it. The door led out to a fairly large, fenced in backyard. Byron was filled with unease at the sight of those windows, fearing the darkness beyond, the faces in the storm.

A noise drew Byron’s attention back inside. It seemed to come from deeper in the house, from the hallway beneath the many paintings. Byron turned around and paused, searching for its source in the shadowed space. There it was again, a staccato clicking. Byron leaned forward and peered into the hallway.

“Hot chocolate is served!”

Byron’s heart skipped a beat as Tilda burst out of the kitchen through the doorway in the white bookshelves. She carried a small silver tray upon which sat two cups so large they might as well have been goblets. They were filled with steaming hot chocolate. Shewalked over to Byron and sat the tray down on the high round table, beside the Cantos.

“Not to brag,” Tilda began, setting a cup in front of Byron, “but I make the best hot chocolate in the Carolinas.” Tilda settled herself into a ratan chair across from Byron. She picked up her own prodigious glass and took a careful slurp. “Hmm-Hm,” she intoned, shaking her head slowly, “that is some hot chocolate.”

Byron brought the goblet close to his nose and took a tentative smell. The odor of melted chocolate was so intense he could taste the sweet globules of fat on the back of his tongue. The smell was so enticing he could not help but take a sip. It was thick and warm and the rich taste of chocolate enveloped his taste buds.

“Wow,” Byron couldn’t help but smile as he took another sip, “this is great.”

Tilda raised an eyebrow and gave him a knowing shrug. “What can I say? I take my hot chocolate very seriously. None of that powdered stuff.” She took a sip and sighed, “Just chocolate, milk, and sugar. You can’t go wrong.”

Byron nodded, lost in memory as he brought the cup back to his lips. The flavor was an intense reminder of Nan. She was the only other person Byron had ever met who made genuine hot chocolate. For Nan, hot chocolate was an event. Out came the small saucepan. One kind of chocolate would never do, so Nan would buy two – melting a mixture of dark and milk over very low heat. Stirring in milk from the farmer’s market with a thick wooden spoon, soon to be offered to an eager Byron watching nearby.

Byron found himself stifling tears yet again. He could hardly distinguish between the different parts of himself. Waking Byron, sleeping Byron, emotional Byron – they were all beginning to blend together from sheer exhaustion, and the loss of control was disconcerting.

“My Nan used to make it this way,” Byron found himself reminiscing aloud, “every Friday in autumn she’d make a pot.”

Tilda smiled and took another sip. “Good for your constitution.”

Byron paused and eyed Tilda over his cup of chocolate. “That’s what she used to say.”

Tilda smiled again. “Sounds like a smart woman,” Tilda said matter-of-factly.

Byron took another sip, eyeing Tilda suspiciously. That was precisely what Nan used to say. Byron would make an offhand comment about how a 95-year-old probably shouldn’t be drinking melted chocolate and, invariably, Nan would reply “It’s good for your constitution” and take another gulp.

The coincidence unnerved him and Byron placed the cup down on the table and leaned back into his chair. “Tilda,” he began. Just then another round of clicking started up from deeper in the house. Byron turned to look in the direction of the noise, down the darkened hallway.

Tilda blinked and eventually followed his gaze. “Just the pipes, I turned on the heat – too cold out there.” Taking another sip, Tilda leaned forward and opened the Cantos with her free right hand. “So, you said your Grandma wrote this?”

Byron thinned his eyes and watched Tilda like a hawk. From his perspective, the open Cantos glowed as bright as a golden lightbulb. The illuminated text of the page Tilda had randomly opened to shone brightly on the woman’s small hand. Byron leaned forward and looked at the heading on the page she’d opened to somewhere in the middle of the tome. It was upside down, but Byron just managed to work through the dyslexic puzzle. He sounded out the first large word in his head.

Ahl-cheh-mee

Byron had no idea what “Ahl-cheh-mee” meant and found himself wishing, as he had countless times before, that he had an easier time reading.

For her part, Tilda perused the page haphazardly and with only passing interest. “Meatloaf stew?” she said, apparently reading off some page Byron could no longer see, “I’ve never heard of meatloaf stew before.” Tilda passed her finger down the glowing page, reading out ingredients as she went. “Half a pound of leftover chuck meatloaf, (page 34); one large onion; two large carrots; one stalk celery; four cups of chicken broth; one head of garlic.” Tilda looked up from where she was reading. “Have you had this before?”

Byron frowned and leaned forward to close the Cantos. It warmed to his touch, a sensation he was slowly getting used to. “I haven’t made it, but Nan used to once in a while. It was good,” he added, as an afterthought. The clicking sound started up again, but Byron paid it no attention. Instead, he looked pointedly at Tilda. Something about her seemed off somehow. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but it felt like she was hiding something. For the second time that day Byron found himself wishing Korbius was close by.

Where the hell is that Octopus? Byron thought to himself, wondering if his instruction not to eat people had been heeded.

Tilda’s eyes fell on one of the many paintings and she slurped at her chocolate loudly. The noise drew Byron back into the room. He wondered whether he had drifted briefly into sleep for a moment.

“Thank you for helping me today,” he started, scratching at the blue spot under his shirt, which had begun to itch, “you didn’t need to.”

Tilda smiled into her cup. “Of course I did,” she said, “what was I gonna do, leave you out there?”

Byron gave a small, rueful laugh. “That’s exactly what McNally did,” he said, looking out toward the backyard.

“Right,” Tilda said, her tone serious for the first time. “I’m sorry about that,” she said, “I didn’t —” Tilda’s voice petered out. In the ensuing silence she and Byron both took sips of their chocolate and sat awkwardly for a moment. Tilda appeared to grow uncomfortable and took a large swig.

“Anyway,” Tilda said, standing up, “I don’t often have people over. Not since —” she hesitated, as if she was about to say something but then thought better of it. “Not for a long time.” Tilda stood in front of her seat for a few seconds, swinging her hands at her side awkwardly. Byron took another slurp of his chocolate as another round of clicking started up down the dark hallway. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m not being a good host. Let me —”

Tilda was cut off as the clicking grew louder. Tilda’s gaze briefly flitted toward the hallway before settling back on Byron. It seemed to him she looked a little nervous. “I think I,” she began, scratching her thigh briefly as the clicking continued, “—I put the heat on too high. Yeah, definitely too high. Excuse me.”

Without another word, Tilda marched off into the darkened hallway, in the direction of the clicking. Byron watched her go and, once she was out of sight, he put down his cup on the table and stood up. Something was off about this place, and this person, but he couldn’t say what. He was tempted to leave, but it was still raining out and, despite his exhaustion, Byron felt confident he could overpower the small woman if she had nefarious intentions.

Hell, he thought, I could flood this whole house if I needed to.

Right, he was a Cantor – he had to remind himself, he was a Cantor for goodness sakes.

Whatever the hell a Cantor is.

Byron muttered a curse. It had been over a week and Byron still had no idea what the hell was going on. Where was the preceptor, and how was Byron supposed to find him?

Help me out here, Nan. What the heck am I supposed to do?

Byron found his gaze drawn to the tall windows facing the back yard. He walked over to the dark glass apprehensively but was surprised to see how much things had calmed down since they’d raced out of the storm only a few minutes ago.

Although it was still storming out, it was not nearly as intense as it had been. The rain came down at a calm but consistent pace, and the few trees and bushes in the backyard swayed without much violence in the weakening wind.

In the relative calm, Byron could make out the landscape. A small area of well-manicured lawn stretched down from a patio at a slight rake. On either side of the grass tall brown wooden fencing clearly delineated the boundaries of the backyard. The wood of the fence was covered in vines and a great many multi-colored flowers – the latter seeming a bit out of season, but thriving nonetheless. Byron thought he saw a small shack out there, down near the end of the grass, on the right.

Most excitingly – most Ocracokingly – the grass ended at an inviting, calm stream beside which two red canoes rested upside down in the gentle rain. That water would be one of the brackish inlets which crisscrossed the interior of the island and led straight out into the ocean.

Not many private houses abutted one of those inlets, and the ones that did were worth a pretty penny. There were stories of millionaires – even billionaires – flying private sea planes to Ocracoke seeking out these reclusive homesteads, to no avail.

How, Byron wondered, had Tilda come to own this place?

As he thought the question Tilda emerged from the darkened hallway, a smile pasted back onto her face. “Sorry about that,” she said, her voice a little tenser than before. “I don’t usually turn the system on mid-season. Must be bad for the pipes.” Tilda walked over to her cup and took a nervous gulp. “Anyway, I had to turn it all off – so, it might get a bit chilly until the storm ends.”

Byron gave her a tight smile and nodded. “Sure —” he said, mind racing at what Tilda could possibly have been doing in that hallway, because it most certainly wasn’t turning off the heat. “— no problem.”

The two shared another awkward silence before Tilda gave a big nervous smile and downed the rest of her hot chocolate. She came out of the gulp like a diver from a dive. “Ah, delicious. Care for seconds?” She held out her empty mug toward Byron.

Byron’s eyes thinned and he shook his head slowly. “No, thank you.”

Tilda scratched at her hip again. “Well, I’m going make myself a second batch.” She looked very briefly back down the dark hallway before heading into the kitchen without another word.

Byron watched her go, passing through the white bookshelves and their colorful menagerie. When she had gone his attention turned back toward the dark hallway. His stomach itched something fierce and he scratched at it thoughtlessly as he took a couple of steps toward the darkness.

He just had the thought to pick up the Cantos when he heard a soft, familiar noise emanate from down the hallway – the sound of a handle turning and a door opening on its hinges. Then the clicking returned, slow and steady, moving closer from down the hall.

Byron froze in place and began inching away from the hallway. Something was coming, clicking its way on the hard wood toward the living room. “Tilda,” he tried to say, but managed only to mumble incoherently in his strangely overwhelming fear. The noise grew louder still, the click clack of something – somethings – impacting on the wood. Byron’s eyes widened and he gawked in disbelieving horror, backing up toward the bookshelves and grasping for something to use as a weapon.

A spider, as large as a Rottweiler, peaked its many-eyed head beyond the lip of the hallway. It’s two front legs, covered in thick, long black hairs and ending in chitinous talons stretched out in front of it. It’s mandibles worried back and forth, the orifice between them dripping a foul looking white ooze. With an inhuman flick of its terrible neck, the immense spider turned its multi-faceted gaze upon Byron and began racing across the floor, hissing wildly.

“Tilda!” Byron managed to yell, right before the spider clenched all eight of its legs and attempted to burst off the ground in a terrifying jump. Byron tightened his hand on the first hard thing he found and instinctively threw it full tilt at the monstrosity. The side of the polished conch shell slammed into the spiders head just as its feet left the ground, causing the beast to fall a couple of feet short of Byron. The tip of one of its leg talons brushed up against one of Byron’s bare toes.

With a scream, Byron spun around and sprinted for the glass door to the backyard. He twisted the handle and tore the door open, racing outside and pulling it shut behind him in a frenzied motion. The spider began to recover its senses on the ground as Tilda appeared from inside the kitchen. For the first time since he’d met her, Tilda wore a deadly serious expression, looking from Byron toward the Spider on the floor. She said something, but Byron could not hear it through the door.

Not waiting for another second, Byron looked around for some way out of the backyard, but the fence completely enclosed the space, with the stream acting as a natural barrier in the rear.

The stream.

Byron raced down the lawn, his bare feet slipping on the wet sod, his tired heart racing with the renewed vigor of adrenal terror. His stomach itched liked crazy as he sprinted and stumbled toward the two red canoes. He managed to get his hands around the top most boat and was bent over, working to right it, when he caught a glimpse of the space above the wooden fence.

Faces of shadow danced in the darkness, swirling through raging winds and squalls of the still beating rain. Lightning illuminated the nearby houses, but no thunder came. It was as though there were two worlds – the world inside of the backyard and world beyond it. Inside the backyard the storm was more of a drizzle, the gale more of a breeze. But right beyond those simple wooden posts a hurricane still reigned supreme.

Byron didn’t understand and didn’t have time to try. He managed to flip over one of the boats and began nudging it toward the stream, trying his best not to pay attention to the ferocious itchiness of his stomach. He had the front end of the boat in the water when he realized he’d left the Cantos behind in the house and froze for just a moment considering whether to go back.

Right then the glass door leading from inside the house to the backyard shattered into a thousand pieces as the nightmarish spider crashed through it. Its legs landed with eight small sloshing impacts on the grass and it opened its mandibles wide in a threatening gesture. Behind it, Byron thought he heard Tilda’s voice yelling something, but he could not hear what. With renewed fear, Byron turned toward the stream and pushed at the canoe with his full body weight. It slid another quarter of the way into the water before the front tip managed to lodge itself into a submerged tree limb.

Byron panicked, pushing the boat with all his might, but to no avail. His attention toward the stream, the giant spider raced towards him with awful speed, the pointed tips of its horrendous legs carrying it swiftly across the inclined lawn. It bridged a gap of ten feet in under a second and buried two fangs deep into Byrons calf.

Seering pain spread from Byron’s right leg and shot across every nerve in his body. His calf muscles seized up immediately and began to swell, taking his leg out from under him and causing him to fall forward into the stuck boat. He landed awkwardly, crumpled into a twitching ball of agony. He tried to yell for help, but found that his vocal chords were already reacting to the spider’s venom, thickening to the point of uselessness.

With an incredible effort, Byron used the last of his failing strength to flip himself around so he was no longer face down in the boat. He managed to right himself just in time to see the spider’s head reach up over the lip of the boat and look down at him hungrily.

Byron thought he heard a woman’s voice call something out, but he couldn’t be sure. He was having trouble breathing, and the sound of blood in his swollen ears was getting louder and louder. He could no longer move, and he could barely breath. It was all he could do to watch in silent terror as the spider slowly climbed up into the boat, its fangs inching closer and closer to Byron’s face.

I’m going to die, Byron thought, right before another voice interjected itself into his mind.

Master Cantor!

The relative calm of the stream was shattered as the water beside the canoe exploded with the force of a detonating torpedo. A wall of ink-black water smashed into the giant spider, filling its eyes with a black residue. Partially blinded, the creature didn’t see the blow coming as it slammed into the spider’s side and sent it flying several feet into the air. It fell into the soggy lawn on its back, momentarily stunned.

A frenzied mass of angry tentacles filled the air around the boat. Six were splayed out in an aggressive posture toward the spider, while two rested defensively on Byron, feeling him carefully for injuries.

Master Cantor, I came as soon as you called!

Byron tried to speak, found that he couldn’t, and managed a single thought.

Poison

Korbius twisted his gelatinous central mass around, focusing his single central eye onto Byron. He blinked in frightened surprise. All of Byron’s body parts had swollen up to nearly double their normal size.

Filled with tempestuous wrath, Korbius lifted himself up to his fullest inflation, expanding his body several meters into the air – his thick, fully hydrated tentacles splayed out with the grand ferocity of a Hindu God.

The spider righted itself and turned to face Korbius. Despite the difference in size, the spider did not back down.

The two creatures braced themselves, Korbius wetly ululating an Octopodiae war chant, the spider clacking its mandibles at a rabid pace: the latter ready to tear the former to pieces: the former eager to pump the latter with venom.

Each otherworldly monster briefly tensed every fiber of their beings before leaping toward one another into terrible combat —

— only to find themselves floating harmlessly in midair. Stupified, the two beasts stared at one another, hovering several feet off the ground. At the same time each went flying toward one side of the yard and was pinned, inextricably, to the wooden fence.

Korbius cursed to himself, struggling with all his might to get free of his invisible binding and fight for the honor of the fallen Cantor. But no matter how hard he tried, Korbius could not so much as move the tip of a tentacle off of the wooden slats.

Across from him, on the other side of the yard, the giant spider was similarly affixed to the fencing, stomach exposed and its eight legs almost straight and flat against the wood.

Between them both, hair wet with rain and sweat, stood Tilda. She had one hand raised to each creature, palms glowing with effervescent power. The jovial smile lines of her thin eyes were obfuscated by two impermeable clouds of energy, like miniature lightning storms.

She spared an angry glare at the spider, and then a brief look at Korbius, before racing over to the boat where Byron lay dying.

“Oh no.” Tilda looked back at the spider and cursed. She lowered her hands, though her eyes still glowed fiercely, and reached into her back pocket for a long syringe.

Even though her hand was no longer pointed at him, Korbius still could not move. He reached out with his mind.

Foul woman! You have undone Master Byron! I, Korbius, King Of The Octopodiae shall tear your limbs from your torso and devour them!

Tilda shook her head and spared a brief look at Korbius stuck to the fence. Korbius thought she looked surprised, although it was hard to say for sure with her strange, glowing eyes.

Without another word, Tilda raised the syringe to her mouth and tugged off the plastic cap with her teeth. She took a second to find Byron’s heart and then jammed the needle straight into it.

Korbius’s mental scream was so agonized that he inadvertently accompanied it with an audible gurgle. Watching from his perspective, as Tilda administered what looked like a coup-de-grace, Korbius cursed his fate. He was a failure in the most complete sense. Better that he had never survived to maturity than to fail so completely.

Just then the spell faded and Korbius found that he could move again. Filled with rage, he dragged himself into the stream and jetted through the water toward the boat. He exploded from the water’s surface again, ready to maim Tilda horribly, and was about to strike out when he heard Byron take a deep, desperate breath.

The sound stopped Korbius cold. He lifted himself onto several appendages and looked down into the boat in amazement.

Master Byron!

Byron lay there meekly, all his limbs and most of his features shrunken back to normal size, his skin tone returning to normal from almost purple. He heaved air through his lungs as if he had just come up from a cave dive.

Korbius turned toward Tilda. The spider was still pinned to the fence, though it seemed to have calmed down significantly. Korbius fixed his eye on the woman and raised several tentacles threateningly.

What are you, small human?

But Tilda was hardly paying attention. Her eyes were fixed on the space outside the backyard, in the sky. There, several of the shadowy faces had stopped coursing through the storm and now stared with apparent interest in Byron’s direction.

Tilda slowly let the power fade from her eyes – and as it dissipated, the spider came gently down from its spot on the fence. It looked around at the threatening faces and then abashedly scampered away. Korbius watched as it passed through a large doggy door into what appeared to be a small outhouse.

Korbius’s eye flitted from specter to specter. Tilda made to reach for Byron, but Korbius blocked her path with three of his arms.

Tilda looked up in frustration, her eyes periodically glancing at the faces in the storm. “We need to move him, now.”

Korbius did not budge. Instead, he asked again:

Who are you?

Tilda looked Korbius in the eye. All the easy-going joy was gone from her face and, in its place, she wore a severity born of painful experience.

“I’m the woman who’s going to save your master’s life,” she said firmly, “Now help me. We don’t have much time.”

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