Legend Unknown

She had many names, like her father Anansi, and no name, unlike him or her brother. Sometimes she was Anansewa and others merely Obabaa or Amunkai. Her family traveled far and everywhere there were different tongues and customs and people. They knew who she was regardless of the name. An important woman. A queen.

Then the world changed, slowly at first, then faster, people disappearing, people carried away, far far across the ocean to an unknown place. Even Anansi could not hide forever. She never knew if he went as an adventure or was nabbed in the end. She did not wait to find out. She fled in the opposite direction.

It was not so hard at first. Farther inland there were still tribes who knew and helped her. She did not remain long with any of them. One chief in particular claimed he would stop whoever came for his people. "I will protect you," he boasted. He was a big man, brave and bold, and she knew it would take very little to stay, marry, rule. Part of her heart still warm and vibrant wanted to. Yet another part grown numb with loss dismissed him for a fool and led her to keep moving. He would fight longer than most but in the end it would not matter. Besides, he already had a wife and heir. Better he should look to their safety first.

North and farther north she went, first by foot then by camel, skirting the shore and keeping to the byways. She was no longer an honored guest at every hut and village. Now she had to work her way into a host's good graces, work for her share of food and water, work to afford safe travel and shelter. Her heart chilled further with the chilly nights and only thawed a little in the day's sun. At a large port she looked around with indecision, not sure what her course should be, tiring of her journey. Tongues were as strange as the bread and brews steaming in chaotic overlapping alleys. It was too crowded. Where would she grow pumpkins or raise a cow? Beggars clawed at her stained garments in their desperation. She consulted the stars before joining a caravan headed even farther north, away from the sea and its troubles.

It grew cold. So very cold. She gained a coat with the last of her jewels but could only wrap her feet with strips of castoff cloth. Her companions thought her foolish, strange, mad, stupid. Eventually she gained enough understanding to realize they meant to sell her along with their wares at their destination, a great city that sounded like Yaa twe sen, and it would not be good for her to be pulled along that far. She bided her time and carefully tucked things away like a thief, uncaring, pride and blood frozen, then snuck away into the darkness to find some shelter. They did not pursue; it was not worth their time.

The night gave way to dawn yet the sun had forgot how to warm up in this wasteland. The white wet dust drug at her ankles like a strong tide that never let go. She had no torch. She had no goal. She was all alone.

As the sky dimmed and clouds blurred what little light remained, she found herself drawn to a brighter spot in the distance. Someone must have a cookfire blazing and that meant heat and food.

It was a house she found at last, and what a strange one. High up on bizarre stilts with pointed toes and smoke blowing up as if it was on fire. She didn't care and pounded on the poles, crying out.

A wrinkled old woman with long scraggly hair leached of all color poked her head out and cackled like a bird. "Aren't you a sight? Well come in and let's see you."

She didn't climb and the crone didn't come down, yet they met at the door all the same. And though there was heat and drink within they went straight from her head to her toes without once touching the lump in her chest that barely beat any more.

"Who are you?" the old woman asked with suspicious eyes.

"No one you know."

"You're a strange one, you are, and that means a powerful name. I'll let you keep it. But you'll have to serve me in every other way to keep safe here."

She nodded, guessing as much. What did it matter? Coming so far, escaping so much, dying either way. Better a blunt witch mistress than an unknown enemy beyond.

"What do I call you?"

"I've got a few names myself. I'll tell you mine the day you reveal your's. Otherwise call me what you like, Zolá Déva."

It took her a while to figure out what those words meant. It didn't matter when she did. They were no more her name than any of the others had been. She had no more feeling to insult, no seed to sprout, no light to dim, no zeal to cool. It was all frozen like the world outside.

The witch, the baba as she learned to call her, had few visitors. But there were plenty of times she left the house for untold lengths of time. There was plenty to learn and do. There was always a sharp growl on return but a bit of honey sometimes with it. They kept to themselves, the two strange hags, forgotten by the world at large, tucked in the shadow and snow. Years were as days, months a score and more, the wars passing them by like the nights, knowledge like melting icicles dripping bit by bit to their lair. She still answered to the servant's brand given that first night but had gifted her own tweak back.

"What did you do while I was gone?" the baba asked.

"Nothing you would understand, Four Eyes."

The baba thought she meant far seeing with that kind of talk. She didn't know how the people back home used it.

"I brought this back, see what you can do with it."

There were fewer trips out for the baba, and she complained more about the world when she returned, but often carried the most interesting things.

"Make yourself useful Zolá Déva, or I'll get a real machine and replace you, ha!"

It was an idle threat. The baba didn't understand the things she bartered and traded. Her servant learned to whisper to them late by the cinders. Dark hands sifted through oily parts, fingers once holding rings now flicked dials or played with switches. The pieces and mechanics changed but she had lots of practice learning strange ways. These bits and bobs became her cattle, her fish, her cowrie belt. She named them after the things of this frigid world; it was so long since she gazed upon blue seas or brown sands or green fronds that she forgot them all. Life was fire and ice, life was toil and industry, life was keeping a spider leg's distance from the ground and running threads through these metal creatures to listen for danger.

The baba got sick. The baba could not adjust. The baba let herself go and lay around and groaned about the old ways dying. But the baba's house didn't. Her servant kept it running without orders. The devices helped her. The few spells left got them parts and oil and then the electricity and the batteries. The baba hated it all. The déva didn't care. She just fed the old witch then went back to her own work, now in different webs, stretching from the table out into a new plane where there were no real names at all, and everyone was false and true at the same time, somewhere lonely richies from one continent sent important presents to fake lovers who turned out to be canny survivors of another, cat and mouse turned around.

She gathered avatars and cultivated them like yams, shedding one for another easy as a snake, master to supplicants who did not know whether she was real or not. Sometimes she used the baba's terms, sometimes her own from ages past, sometimes new ones mixed with the old, sometimes words she did not know at all. Others flocked to her and she lured them in like flies. There was no end to her power. She was better than her father, beyond those who tried to trample her, unfeeling, unmoved, arbiter of any and all without pity.

A tiresome girl kept getting tangled in her knots by accident. This one was easy prey. Should be given to a minion to feast on. Had no right to be so clumsy. Gave no reason for saving.

Something tugged though, like it hadn't in ages, like perhaps it never did before. This girl had no tribe for she was bred from many. She had few friends and was squabbled over by her family like bones to be gnawed. This girl might be sold in another time; this girl might still be bought. This girl hovered on the edge of a knife with her desperate poetry etched in ephemeral posts across the global web. She was nothing special. She was everything wrong. She was one of many thrashing to be seen and understood and heard.

One of her lyrics shot like a spear all the way to the strange stilted house in the woods:

No one see this jojo queen
sister lurking behind some screen
heart of diamonds, club of spades,
she drain you dry, ashy Spider Maid.

So many of her titles all rolled into one. So much of her history blurred and changed but shining through. She paced and muttered and woke the baba. She ignored her same as always.

Slowly she peeked into the girl's life. She found pain and loss, grief and growth, all due to the system she'd carved, true ruler of dark and secret works but still running, still falling, still a prisoner to her own numb soul. Could she, dared she, turn back to the sun-kissed shores of kinship ties and mortal struggles?

The cottage was stifling. The ice was melting. That girl was breaking.

"You asked my name once," the former servant said to the baba before she left, having setup a routine for her replacements to provide care.

"And you never gave it," the old woman wheezed.

"I'm the daughter of the lost and the mother of none, a maid and a mistress, slave to the night, and desperate for some light. I'm going to be someone else now."

"They won't recognize you. They won't know you. They'll think you're crazy or worse."

"Well I'm not hiding any more." Dusky lips leaned down and whispered into that silver mane. "I'm a Seeker. There's places, there's life, there's someone to be found. When I've finished I'll get my name. Then you, and everyone, will know it."

She left with warm clothes, warmer wits, and warmest heart. How she went about her next quest and received what she was after, that's a different tale.