Chapter 8

A couple of days after they got back from their shopping trip, Mark decided to make a new shield to protect their home.

For his first tower, he used one of the trees that had been hit by lightning and it was now missing its top. The tree still reached 40m into the air. It was located on the other side of the shallow gully, on a small ridge and about 50m from their tree.

Mark also got smart. He made two glass spikes and added a copper coating to the base. He embedded several crystals in the top of the glass and explained to Kia what he wanted her to do. She had to climb to the top of the tree and hold the spike in place. She was then to whistle, it would activate the spell, and the spike would drive itself into the tree.

Mark had put the spike into a small satchel he had made for her to wear. Kia nodded that she understood and raced up the tree. He was amazed by how fast she moved for a small animal. He felt her activate the spell and then she raced back down.

He gave her the next spike and said she had to climb their tree as high as she could go and then place the spike against the tree and whistle. He also explained that she needed to stay on this side of the tree when she did it, because of the huge cliff that angled back on a steep slope behind them.

Kia again nodded before she raced up the tree. Mark lost sight of her once she reached the lowest branches that were 10m above him. It was a big tree, and he wasn’t sure how high it actually went. Kia seemed to be gone for a while, and Mark began to wonder if she had run into trouble, at last, he felt the spell activate. Relieved, he waited until Kia returned.

He gave her a big hug, petted her and kissed her on the lips with a big smacking sound that made Kia chitter. She loved him giving her kisses in this manner. She happily crawled onto his shoulder and snuggled into his neck. She spent as much time with Mark as she did with Jean, especially if they were outside.

Mark touched his tree and activated the shield spells. He then went for a walk to see just how far it went. He headed up the gully and was surprised when he didn’t find the edges of the shield by the time he had gone 80m from home. So he kept walking.

He did some rough calculations and decided it may have gone as far as 120m, so he walked so more. He was really getting worried by the time he hit 150m. He was sure the shield had formed. He stopped when his medallion went warm.

Kia hissed and pointed. One of the main purposes of the shield was to keep the aracnzies away from his new home and provide a safe place, so Bess their camla could roam a little more. It seemed that he had found a spider under the shield.

He activated his wand and carefully stepped forward. The net shimmered under the magical light. He moved the wand around and found the aracnzi when the light reflected off its eight eyes. It was crouched down low under a bush waiting. One of its legs rested lightly on the web.

Mark formed a ‘stun’ spell and aimed it at the aracnzi. It jumped when hit by the spell, shuddered and then collapsed into a shivering ball with its legs tucked under it. He removed a sack from his backpack and walking with care around the net, he used it to roll the spider into the bag. He tied the top and then checked carefully in case there was another nearby.

His medallion had cooled, so he felt safe again. He then investigated the net. He plucked the net from the points of attachment and wound an end around a short stick. He then touched his wand to the silk and told the silk to spool. He was soon holding a ball of silk as big as an apple jammed onto a stick.

Pleased with his finds he kept walking. At 200m in this direction, he finally found the side of the shield. He then walked around inside the perimeter, as best he could given the terrain, to see just what was under the area the shield covered.

When he found the next aracnzi, he was able to collect it and its web. He also found two abandoned webs in his zig-zag travels, so he collected them too. He was delighted with the area under the shield as it actually stretched out to 240m on the downward slope.

On the other side of the gully and just downstream of them was a small field. At some time, a landslide had toppled a large tree, and the resulting crash of the tree through the canopy had downed two more big trees and many smaller ones. This was Jean’s view from her windows.

The trees had snapped when they crashed and then slid further down the slope. Many of them had twisted sideways, and they created quite a pile-up by the time they stopped. The rest of the avalanche had been trapped behind them forming a large, shallow, elliptical bowl.

Over the years, dirt and rocks had been washed into, or they had slid into the bowl. They filled it to form a relatively flat area. The grasses and ferns had taken over and blanked the new soil. The wild camla had been topping any new trees trying to grow so that it stayed a small open field.

The grasses had responded by growing into a thick carpet to stop the taller growing plants from stealing their sunlight. The field was only about 40m at its widest by 100m at its longest, but it made a nice sunny spot that the camla liked to rest in.

It had a pool that was about 8m across. It was fed by their stream and was in about the middle of the field. The shallow stream then drained under the broken trunks of the trees that helped form the bowl. The area was also big enough to discourage the spiders from building any webs in it. Aracnzi didn’t like the exposed sunlit area, as they couldn’t hide.

Mark checked the two paths that the camla used to get to the field and found his third aracnzi on the second path. He happily collected the spider for Jean and its web for him. He had a lot of silk on his spool and wondered what he was going to do with it all. He also had plans for some of the wood that formed the mangled pile around the front edge of the field.

Happy the paths were clear, he decided to call it a day and take his prizes back to Jean.

Jean had been busy in her lab.

They had acquired some gnawers for test subjects. Reluctantly, Mark had managed to trap three flickers for her. She didn’t really like using them either. They had gotten quite close to Kia, and they were worried that she would be upset having the others being locked up and experimented on.

Kia only paid attention to the youngest one of the three. She ignored the older two flickers. Jean decided she would only use the youngster if she had to. There were a lot of tests she could do using their blood without injecting them with venom directly.

When Mark walked in, he was holding three bags away from his body. Two of them were squirming. “Looks like I need to stun them again,” he said.

He put the two squirming bags down and opened one of the large glass cages he had made for Jean. He untied the string and tipped the bag, so the aracnzi dropped into the cage and closed the lid. He dropped a spell on the other two bags, and once they stopped moving, he relocated the contents to two more cages.

“Will they do?” he asked Jean.

Jean looked at the largest one that he had placed first as it was recovering and tipped her head, so she was looking at its underbelly. “Oh, wow! She has a male attached,” Jean said.

Mark looked down and could see a much smaller spider attached under the abdomen of the big spider. It was only as big as his splayed hand. “Is that as big as the male grows?” he asked in astonishment.

Jean chuckled. “Yes, and they don’t have cocks either,” she told him.

Mark shook his head, “That’s just sad. So how does he get her pregnant?”

“Well, basically he releases a few drops of sperm and uses a special feature called palps to collect it on. Then puts it into her genital opening. These spiders will often mate about now so that as soon as spring comes, she will lay her eggs,” she told him.

“Their sperm can last that long?” he asked in surprise.

“Yes, she can often lay three or four clutches from one mating or about a hundred and twenty eggs. The females have been known to live for about twenty-five years in captivity. The males don’t fare as well as the females.”

“They take about three to four years to reach maturity and are more vulnerable than the females. They then only live about that long again, and they are not as venomous. At least two-thirds of her offspring will be male.”

“So what preys on the aracnzi here?” Mark asked with interest.

“Well, we have a lot of flying species that like to eat them. Jumpers, gnawers, sliders and small scurriers eat the eggs, young and males if they find them. Their venom becomes more potent as the aracnzies matures. There is also a giant scurrier in these forests that can eat the mature females.”

“They are called Blue Tongues and grow to 2m in length. They don’t seem to be affected by the venom, although if they can, they spit out the sacks. However, being cold blooded they haven’t been able to assist me with countering the venom when it’s injected into people. That’s why I have to use the gnawers and flickers.”

“Well, you now have four aracnzies to play with,” Mark said.

“Thank you, you are my hero,” Jean sighed theatrically.

“So do I get rewarded?” Mark asked with a leer.

Jean grabbed him; she pulled his head down and kissed him. Mark pulled her in tighter and happily returned the kiss. When his hand started sliding down to grip her arse, Jean pulled back and said, “No, I have work to do. I’ll help you with your little problem later.”

“What’s little?” Mark said indignantly.

“Not your ego, that’s for sure,” Jean retorted and laughed at his pout.

Mark then grinned, slapped her bum gently and dropped a quick kiss on her lips before gathering up his sacks and heading out to clean them up so that he could use them again. Jean smiled as he walked away. She decided she would much rather have Mark as her assistant then Pauli, any day.

Since they had been here, Mark had done everything he could to make her life easier and more pleasurable. The inside of the cave looked as good as any home you’d like to live in. He’d even added a window to the bedroom for her. It was like the ones in the lab and hidden by a spell from outside, but it let the light and the awesome views in.

He’d redesigned the kitchen and even installed electrical appliances. Several had been in place before she had come out of the coma and he had since added more. Some she wasn’t familiar with, but Mark happily explained their uses. He said he had the designs in his head and he had a heap of spells that weren’t in any spell book here, which he could use to make them.

She particularly loved his washing machine, as he called it. The variation on her planet was nowhere near as good as Mark’s was. He had also made lights he called LED lights, and they were in all of the rooms. If you walked into the room, the lights came on and went out a few minutes after you walked out of the room or you could just tell them to operate.

He had built a new large fireplace in the room he called their lounge room and had informed her it was a gas and wood fireplace. He could burn wood in it too, and often did in the evenings because he liked the ambience it created.

He’d told Jean that the magma he had tapped into for the crystals had a large gas pocket that he had to trap so he could use the magma. He had designed a system of pipes so he could bleed it off into the fire place and the gas stove he had made.

It also circulated through other pipes he had created in the walls and floor to warm the other rooms. He had even created a room for drying their clothes in. It was behind their bathroom where he had located the laundry, as he called it.

Inside the house area of the cave, they didn’t need to wear a lot since he had the place so warm. He didn’t like being cold. They did have to remember to rug-up when they went outside. Mark had removed some more dead wood from the centre of the tree and turned it into their mudroom.

They kept their outdoor clothes in the mudroom, and he had spelled the room, so it wasn’t a weak point in the tree when they had storms. He had even added a sink so they could wash off any mud they collected without tramping it through the house.

He had created a lovely home for them, and Jean loved it. She wasn’t comfortable in big crowds, despite her heritage. Here she could work in peace. With Mark encouraging her and looking after her, she didn’t want for anything.

She was amazed at some of the machines and equipment that he had made for her, to help with her studies. She probably had the best setup and most advanced laboratory in all of Tara. While the problem with the venom took up her time now, she had a lot of other research she wished to do, and now she had the perfect laboratory to do it in.

Jean jumped when Mark kissed her on the back of her neck. Then his hands snaked around her and slid up under the loose top she wore. He gently cupped her breasts and squeezed her nipples. “Dinner is ready,” he said into her ear before taking the lobe into his mouth and sucking on it, as his thumbs flicked her now rock hard nipples.

She arched back into him as his lips moved down the side of her neck and placed little kisses and love bites down it. The hands were busy keeping her nipples erect and shooting desire down below so that she was soon wet and ready.

When a hand snuck down, and his finger slipped under the leg of her shorts, he soon found out how wet she was. Jean’s legs parted further, and she let him rub and explore her hot and ready cunnie while his little bites and kisses on her neck and shoulder were sending bolts of desire pulsing through her whole body.