When his mother returned — with a basket half full of some brown, smooth seeds — he told her about the trapdoor spider and begged her not to tell his father. When his father grew angry, his slaps could leave bruises that took weeks to disappear. But Ulf was not angry. He listened with grave attention, then beckoned Niall and made him point out the place where he had seen the spider. With Veig, Thorg and Hrolf standing by with raised spears, Ulf threw several large stones to try to lure the spider out of its den. But nothing happened; the creature could probably tell from the vibrations in the ground that the enemy was too numerous. After that, the men avoided the stretch of ground between the cactus groves.
It was more than a week before Niall was again left alone in the burrow. Before leaving, his father made him promise to stay inside, and not, on any account, to move the stones and branches that covered the entrance. Niall, who was afraid of his father, promised in all sincerity. What he had not reckoned on was his nervousness at being left alone. Only a few rays of light filtered into the darkness, and as he lay on his bed of grass, he began to imagine that the trapdoor spider was creeping towards the burrow. A slight sound overhead convinced him that he was under observation. He lay perfectly still, trying to breathe silently. Finally, he crept towards the entrance, stood on the stone and peered out. His field of vision was restricted to a few feet, and nothing was visible; in any case, he was convinced that the spider was waiting overhead, on the roof of the burrow. After standing there for half an hour, his legs began to ache, so he crept silently back to his couch and lay holding the spear that always stood at the entrance to the burrow for instant defence.
About an hour later he heard a sound that made his heart beat violently. There was a scraping noise from the wall behind his head. He sat up and stared at it, expecting to see it crumble and the hairy legs of the trapdoor spider to emerge. He reached out and cautiously felt the wall; it was hard and smooth, having been cemented by the saliva of the tiger beetle. But could it survive an attack from the other side? As the noise continued, he went and stood on the stone inside the entrance and prepared to push aside the branches and run outside. But when he tried to enlarge the hole, he realised that his father had wedged a twisted piece of acacia wood so tight under the lintel stone that it was impossible to budge. And while he was pushing at it with gritted teeth, he thought he heard a slight sound from the roof of the burrow. His imagination immediately conjured up a second spider, waiting there to pounce.
The scraping noises from behind the wall had ceased. He tiptoed over to it and placed his ear against the smooth surface. A few minutes later, the noises began again. As far as he could judge, they were several feet away. He tried to recollect everything his grandfather had said about burrowing spiders: for example, that when they encounter a large stone, they are often forced to change the direction of their tunnel. Perhaps this had happened to the creature on the other side of the wall. As far as he could tell, it seemed to be moving parallel to the wall, not towards it.
The noise continued, sometimes stopping for minutes at a time, then starting again. He began to evolve a plan of campaign; as soon as the wall began to crumble, he would thrust in the spear with all his strength, before the creature had time to enlarge the hole. . .
The tension was giving him a peculiar sensation in his head, a feeling of pressure as if his heart was trying to force more blood into his brain. It was not unlike the sensation produced by the narcotic juice of the ortis plant. His heart was thumping powerfully and steadily against his ribcage. He soon noticed that if he paid attention to this feeling of pressure inside his head, and to the beating of his heart, he seemed to be able to sense the precise location of the creature behind the wall. By now, he had been listening for more than an hour, straining all his senses. The initial feeling of terror had disappeared — since it was clear that there was no immediate crisis — but the non-stop focusing of attention had produced a heightening of the senses, a feeling of being more wide-awake than he had ever been in his life. It was as if a tiny point of light were glowing inside his head. The sensation was so interesting that he forgot his fear of the invisible enemy. Instead of thumping against his ribs, his heart was now beating slowly and quietly. When he concentrated on its beat, he realised that he could control it — make it go faster or slower, louder or quieter, at will. This realisation brought a strange feeling of harmony, a kind of inner richness. And underneath all this, like some dim, shapeless cloud of happiness, was a curious sense of optimism about the future. This was perhaps the strangest thing of all. Niall had never consciously thought about the future. Living in the desert, among people who never spoke more than they had to, there was little to stimulate his imagination to daydreams. He took it for granted that he would be trained as a hunter as soon as he was old enough, and would then spend his life looking for food and praying for success in the hunt. The hunter’s life is centred on an obsession with luck, and therefore on a sense of being at the mercy of chance. The sensation that Niall was now experiencing was too vague to translate into words, or even thoughts. Yet its essence was the certitude that his life was not totally at the mercy of chance. Somehow, it was more important than that. This sense of power inside his head — which he could intensify by pulling a face and wrinkling up the muscles of his forehead — aroused a glow of optimism, an expectation of exciting events. He knew that for him, fate held something special in store.
The scraping started again, and he transferred his attention to it, but this time with curiosity rather than fear. Half an hour before he had listened with a kind of inner shrinking, as if he preferred not to know what it was. Now the fear was still there but he was somehow up above it, as if it were somebody else’s fear. As he listened in this frame of mind, he could sense that the scraping was made by some creature whose legs and mandibles constituted a digging instrument. And that clearly indicated a beetle, not a spider. Then, with sudden clarity, as if his mind had reached through the intervening yards of earth, he seemed to see a brown scarab beetle, little more than six inches long, burrowing its way down in search of long-buried vegetation. His other self — the lower self — suddenly breathed a sigh of relief, and the point of light went out inside his head. He was no longer two people, only one, the seven-year-old boy called Niall who had been left alone for the day, and who now knew he was safe. That other Niall had been an adult, the equal — perhaps the superior — of his father or Jomar. And the memory of his existence remained clear and objective, nothing in the least like a dream. It was the boy who seemed in some way unreal.
Niall continued to have nightmares about the trapdoor spider until the day he saw it destroyed.
About a, month after he had seen it capture the darkling beetle, he was sitting in the shadow of the organ-pipe cactus, watching the spider’s nest. The spear lay at his feet. He knew that if the spider decided to attack him, it would be useless to turn and run; his best chance would be to face it with the spear. The thought terrified him; yet some deep instinct told him that he had to learn to face his own fear. In the past weeks he had seen it capture insects, birds and even a gecko lizard.
A big pepsis wasp, about six inches long, buzzed lazily around his head and flew away as he waved his hand at it. It was an attractive creature, with a metallic blue body and great yellow wings. Niall had a vague impression that it was a flying dung beetle.
A moment later, he held his breath as the wasp buzzed slowly above the spider’s trapdoor, flew around in a circle, then alighted on the ground a few feet away. He strained his eyes, expecting to see the flash of movement as the spider emerged. But nothing happened. The wasp sat there, obviously unaware of its danger, cleaning its forelegs. Niall, staring unblinkingly with total concentration, caught the tiny movement as the spider raised its trapdoor slightly to look at the intruder. Then it closed it again. Perhaps the spider had dined too well to be interested in a wasp.