[Junior Jedi Knights] - 02(18)

Anakin tried to struggle, but the spider was too heavy. The creature studied him as he fought, then languidly sank her needle-sharp pincers into his body. Anakin felt pain, and then the venom coursed through his veins, numbing and paralyzing him. At least he was still awake, Anakin thought. So was Tahiri. The purella pulled both the Jedi candidates along the rocky passageway, their bodies limp with poison, but their minds racing to figure out a way to save themselves. Anakin’s eyes rolled from side to side-they were all he could move. He saw Tahiri looking over at him, her large green eyes wide with fear.

The purella continued to drag them deeper into the mountain. Then, quite suddenly, the creature stopped. Anakin lay in the tunnel, unable to move, as he watched the spider wrap Tahiri in its supple red legs and carry her through a crevice in the rocks. Minutes later, the awful creature returned and dragged him through the same crack. Anakin was carried across a thick black web and deposited next to Tahiri and a small raith. The raith was still alive, but hopelessly entangled in the thick black web of the purella. Through the only light in the cave-a surprisingly bright, eerie orange glow that came from the purella’s eyes-Anakin saw that the raith had stopped struggling.

He also saw that the more the rodent had struggled, the tighter he’d been bound in the spider’s web. Anakin wanted to tell Tahiri that when the venom wore off, she shouldn’t struggle. But at the moment he couldn’t move his mouth. He grimly hoped the venom would wear off before the spider decided it was dinnertime. The purella moved away from her prey to the far side of the web. She would wait for the venom to wear off the Melodies. Then they would try to escape, as her prey always did, and the sticky strands of her web would bind them.

Once they could no longer move, she’d have all the time she wanted to savor their warm flesh. She studied her burned leg and the scorched part of her underbelly. She hated when they fought her, like the one had done with the fire. He had hurt her, and she didn’t like to be hurt. But in the end, that one would suffer much more than she had. Oh yes, she thought to herself, he would suffer.

Anakin felt sensation returning to his fingers and toes. Feeling slowly crept up his legs in sharp pricks, swirled across his rib cage, prickled in a stream of warm pain the length of his shoulder blades and neck, and eventually danced all the way to his scalp. But he lay still.

“Tahiri,” Anakin said breathlessly, “don’t move.”

Tahiri nodded, but didn’t reply. She’d also seen the raith, and knew that her struggles would only entangle her further in the sticky threads that glued her body to the web, except for one arm that had fallen limply across her belly. Part of one of Anakin’s legs had fallen bent at the knee, but otherwise he too was completely trapped in the purella’s deadly snare. Anakin had an idea. If he and Tahiri were glued to the sticky black threads, why couldn’t the spider be caught in her own web? He’d watched the purella navigate through the web, careful not to touch any of its threads with her bristles.

What if he and Tahiri could make the creature lose her balance, topple into her own trap? He looked over at the purella, folded in the corner of the web. Her glowing orange eyes were fixed on them. If only they could topple the immense spider onto her back, where thick red bristles rose.

“Tahiri, can you rock the web without getting yourself stuck any more than you already are?” Anakin breathed out of the side of his mouth.

“What do you have in mind?” Tahiri murmured back.

“We’ve got to try to trap that thing in its own web,” Anakin said softly.

Tahiri turned her head minutely and met Anakin’s ice blue eyes with determined green ones. Slowly, Tahiri raised her right arm and began to pump it up and down. The purella watched her movements, but didn’t rise. Tahiri pumped harder, and the web began to shake. At the same time, Anakin pushed with his left foot, the joint of his free knee hitching up and down. They worked together, and the web began to rock. As it moved, the Jedi candidates pumped their free limbs harder, bouncing the web up and down. The purella rose. Her prey was beginning to struggle, to bind themselves in her snare.

The quivers in the lines drew her toward them, as a spider is always drawn to the tremors of prey in her web. She moved slowly, keeping her delicate balance within the strands of her web.

“She’s coming!” Tahiri cried.

“Keep bouncing the web,” Anakin replied. He pounded his foot against the strands. The web was now steadily rocking. The purella paused, unaccustomed to so much motion within her web, to struggles of prey that lasted so long. Her body rose and fell as Anakin and Tahiri pressured the web into waves. Then the spider began to move forward again, the hairless base of her legs dancing through the gummy strands until she stopped, less than a half meter from her prey.