George Silkweaver's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The high web held for three nights. On the fourth morning, George felt the threads jerk. A blue flame burst under the burner and hot air punched straight up. His web bulged sideways. Two anchor lines snapped. He clung to the ceiling seam with four legs while the draft shoved his body toward the open floor. The burner clicked off. The web settled, torn on one side, swinging like a hammock over the stovetop. George climbed to the cabinet and counted his losses. Half his silk was gone. The next burn would finish the web, and him with it. He needed warning, and he needed a new anchor point. He crept along the top of the cabinets and scouted the whole kitchen. The wood stove in the far corner sat cold, its pipe rising to the ceiling. Above it, a narrow shelf held empty jars — a spice rack, dust on every slot. No burner sat under it. No updraft. The beam above the rack ran deep into shadow. George marked it as his new site. But he still had to cross the room without being seen, and he still had no way to know when the gas burner would fire. He watched the counter for an hour before he saw her. A striped cat sat on the sill by the stove, green eyes fixed on the knobs. Every time a hand reached for the dial, her ears flicked forward and her tail dropped flat. She did it three times in a row. She knew the sound before the flame came. George worked through the afternoon quiet. He ran a single guide thread from the cabinet lip, along the top trim, down to the beam above the empty spice rack. He tested it twice, then hauled the salvaged silk across in one trip. By dusk he had a small, tight web in the new corner, anchored to solid wood on three sides. He spun a thin trip line back toward the cat's sill and tied the end to a loose splinter near her paw. When her tail dropped, the splinter would twitch. It was not much. It was a second, maybe two. He climbed into the new web and looked down. The stovetop sat far to his left now, its updraft aimed at empty air. The old web hung in tatters above the burner, and he left it there on purpose — a decoy for any eye that came looking. His arc goal had not moved. He still could be crushed, still could be seen. But tonight the floor was not under him, and the flame could not reach him, and a cat he had never spoken to was, without knowing it, standing watch.