The Prince of Skin

Woe betied the soul who strays too close to the reedmace in Strikken.

No mercy will be shown in the stalks and thickett once the taste for fowl is all and hunger grows for choicer meat.

But Strikken is remote and dank, beyond the haunts of Men, who shun it and for good reason. Long a bog to be avoided lest your life be forfeit in its sickly quag without bottom or worse still.

Worser things reside among the endless reeds, where ravenous creeps and their conniving Queen have spun their homes for centuries devouring duck and swan and a sometime wolf.

But waterfowl tastes bitter and the lobs of Strikken yearn for sweeter tissues between their teeth, that which is only found in the  human villages and towns around the giant fen.

And so began the entanglement of dreamers caught loafing by the mire, quickly draped in cobs to digest at leisure, soup bags hammocked between the shafts for all to suckle but it was simply not enough.

There weren't enough of them to calm the frothing fangs of her, the Queen of Legs, who's appetite was vast, as was her desire to liquify a village.

A baby fell into the bog. A human baby dropped within the sea of sedge, it's cries reaching the hairy ears of the Queen. The child was brought and rather than consumption, by order of their ruler, it lived among the spiders, a hatchling warmed in webbing, his skinny pink limbs and blood-red birthmark stroked and drummed by curious spinners and wet-nursed by the Queen of Legs herself.

Her rich royal milk worked wonders and as the years struck ten the baby grew into a boy. A spider boy, the dreadful gangly son of Strikken Fen, the Prince of Skin.

No ordinary boy was he, but a terrible weld of man and spider-kind, his many legs long and spindly, his arms like men's, the mass of eyes hidden beneath a mop of hair, his needled teeth tucked within a rippling mouth. 

The Queen of Legs adored her Prince of Skin, her other vassals jealous of her affection for the human thing, but they obeyed or faced slow digestion in her interminable guts.

But the hunger grew, the pang for men, the urge to chew and chew on them.

It was he who planted the idea. He should gain entry into the world, pretend to be a boy. Once accepted he would engender and ensnare, bring home a careless human for the family to enjoy.

Dressed with stolen clothes stitched by spider fingers, a cap of husk and his legs, save two, tied up with silk, he stood before the Queen.

"Go, my Prince of Skin, and fetch us something plump to sink my teeth in!"

And so he left, eight legs of him, for the hamlet by the hill, consorting with revellers within the Inn, who in the darkness thought him strange but offered him some beer and cheered as he gulped, his queer pulpy mouth curling. It was here in a corner he befriended a lady, her beauty spent by bruising, a sadness ruled her corpulent frame, for the cruel removal of her only child by her violent and terrible husband, the Father, who beat her so. The Prince gave her what she craved, a caring ear, a tender lap, the soft whisper of the spider fen. He felt for her and his anger grew as she told him of her brutish man.

It was then she saw the blood-red birthmark on his hand and knew her baby had returned. She told, as a Mother only can, of how she loved him and the merciful Lord above she thanked.

In turn he told her of his fenland crib, his kin, his spider Queen and he, the Prince of Skin, who had been sent for meat for her to drink. He must not go back empty-handed home. 

A figure issued from the drinkers and demanded coin from the tearful woman. She stuttered and he hit her full across the face. The boy rose, all six feet of carapace and skin, and easily stayed the second blow.

"No need for that dear Father!"

He whispered whilst injecting him with Queen milk venom. He slumped and caught, the boy and mother, carried him out of the inn.

"He's drunk again", she laughed, a seasoned actress.

"Best let him sleep it off!"

And so the Prince of Skin and his human mother dragged the hateful man all the way to Strikken Fen, where once introduced, the Mothers two struck a silken bargain. They would each care for the boy, share their homes with him, at once a human son and and too, the Prince of Skin. 

To celebrate they all stuck their tongues inside the writhing man, who's busy fists were at once stilled as his thick warm blood was slopped and spilled into the mouths of the happy hungry Mothers and the smiling skinny Prince.