Chapter 18: The Burrow's Reply
The nightmare was a silent one, which made it worse.No gnashing teeth, no hissing shadows. Just an expanse of empty garden, the beanstalks towering like skyscrapers, and a profound, echoing alone. Mavis was calling, his voice swallowed by the immense green, and no answer came. He ran, but his legs were lead, the soil sucking at his feet. The safe door—the back door to the house—receded into the distance, no matter how hard he sprinted.He was unseen. Unheard.Irretrievably forgotten.He woke with a gasp, his tiny lungs burning. The dark of his wall-bedroom was absolute, no comforting stripe of nightlight from the framed hole.Panic, hot and liquid, flooded his veins before his brain could catch up. The dream-logic held him: he was alone, he was exposed, he had to get to safety now.Instinct took over.He didn’t think.He moved.
He was out of his cotton-ball bedding, through his archway curtain, and across the cold laminate of Travis’s floor in seconds.The climb up the bedsheet was a frantic, clawing ascent. The vast landscape of blankets, the mountain range of Travis’s sleeping form, all of it was just terrain between him and the objective.His heart was a trapped bird beating against his ribs.Burrow. Burrow.Burrow.
Travis was dreaming of humming too, a low, resonant frequency that vibrated in his chest.The shift from sleep to waking was a violent, physical wrench. A scrabbling, tickling pressure at his hip—a distinct, purposeful weight parting the loose weave of his sleep pants and sliding inside.
“Yah!”
The yelp was out before he could stop it, a full-body jerk of surprise.His hand flew to the waistband.
Then he felt it.The frantic shivering. The desperate clutch of miniature hands against his skin, lower down, seeking purchase.The rapid, hummingbird pulse he could feel through his own flesh.
He froze.Breath held.Mind clicking into a sharp, protective focus.Mavis.Nightmare. Burrow.Travis forced his muscles to relax, sinking back into the mattress. He lowered his hand from his waistband, spreading his fingers flat on the bed instead.A gesture of openness.Of safety. He could feel Mavis now, properly nestled, the tiny body pressed flush against the vulnerable space between his legs, face buried, slender limbs curled tight.The trembling was seismic.Travis waited. Let the silence stretch, heavy and warm.Let his own body heat seep into the terrified creature against him. He focused on breathing slow, deep breaths, making his abdomen a gentle, rising hill.
The tremors began to subside, minute by minute, ebbing like a tide. The clutching hands loosened their vise-grip on his pubic hair. He felt a shift, a nuzzle, the cool tip of Mavis’s nose pressing an apology and a thank you against his perineum.
“You found the burrow,” Travis murmured, his voice a sleep-rasped whisper in the dark. “Good job.”
A shuddering sigh was the only reply, warm breath ghosting over Travis’s skin.Then, almost unconsciously, Travis began to hum. The same low, tuneless rumble from his dream. It vibrated up from his diaphragm, through his pelvis, a steady, physical reassurance thrumming directly into Mavis’s hiding place.
He felt the final tense wire inside Mavis snap.The tiny body went completely limp, a warm, trusting weight molded against him. The panic had passed.The nightmare was just a memory. Here, in the dark, in the most intimate shelter they had, there was only the hum and the shared, slowing heartbeat.
Travis kept humming, his hand still splayed open on the mattress, a pledge in the silent room.
Travis kept humming, his hand still splayed open on the mattress, a pledge in the silent room. He hummed until his own breathing deepened and his senses dulled, only waking when the first grey light of dawn revealed the rumpled sheets. Mavis was a warm, dormant lump against him, having never moved from his sanctuary. Travis smiled faintly, a soft ache of affection in his chest.He lay perfectly still, not wanting to disturb the peace.
Sunlight, bold and yellow, eventually painted the ceiling.Travis blinked, his mind turning to the day’s obligations. He shifted his hips slowly, a millimeter at a time. “You alive in there?”
A muffled grunt answered him. There was a stretch, a tiny yawn he felt more than heard, and then Mavis was crawling carefully out. He emerged from the waistband of Travis’s sleep pants, fur rumpled and eyes bleary, squinting in the bright room. He looked embarrassed, whiskers twitching.“I…thanks,” he muttered, not meeting Travis’s gaze.
“Any time,” Travis said, his voice easy. He sat up, letting Mavis scramble onto his thigh. “Rough one?”
“The worst.” Mavis busied himself smoothing down his chest fur.“Just…lost. It’s stupid.”
“It’s not.” Travis reached out a single finger, running it gently between Mavis’s ears. “You want to talk about it?”
Mavis shook his head, leaning into the touch.“It’s daytime now. Daylight rules apply.” He offered a weak, defiant smile. “What’s the agenda, big guy?”
“Well,” Travis said, swinging his legs out of bed, “I need to finish weeding and turning the garden bed. Planting day is Saturday.” He stood, stretching his arms high until his spine cracked.“You can stay in, watch a movie on the tablet, totally safe. Or you can come out with me. Your call.”
Mavis watched him from the vast plain of the mattress, his tail tip flicking. The memory of the cat scare was a fresh phantom in the room.He glanced toward the window, then back at Travis.His expression shifted, hardening into a decision. “I’m coming with you.”
“Yeah?” Travis couldn’t hide his surprise, or his pride.
“Yeah. Can’t let the fear win, right?” Mavis said, puffing out his chest a little.“Besides, someone needs to supervise your technique. You’re too haphazard with the trowel.”
Travis laughed, the sound bouncing off the walls. “Deal.You’re the foreman.”
An hour later, they were outside. The garden air was rich with the smell of damp earth and green growth. Travis knelt at the edge of the prepared bed, a bucket for weeds beside him. Mavis had scampered off into the dense foliage of the nearby spirea bush, a miniature explorer cataloging insects and checking for aphids. Travis kept one ear tuned to the rustling, his eyes scanning the sky intermittently.
He worked methodically, pulling tough-rooted tendrils of crabgrass and shaking the soil from their roots. The sun warmed the back of his neck.From the bush, he heard a tiny, triumphant voice. “Got a whole battalion of ladybugs here! We’re defended!”
“Excellent news, General,” Travis called back, smiling.He paused, looking toward the bush.A simple, pragmatic thought occurred to him. Just in case.His hands, dusty with soil, went to his belt buckle. He unfastened it with a soft click and pulled the leather tongue free a few inches, creating a significant slack in his jeans.It was an unspoken invitation, a prepared route to safety should a shadow cross the sun. He didn’t announce it. He simply returned to his weeding, the gesture another silent promise in the daylight.
The rustling in the bush continued, a small, brave sound against the wide open world.
The rustling in the bush continued, a small, brave sound against the wide open world. Travis finished weeding, his bucket now full of tangled green roots and dark clumps of earth. He brushed his hands on his thighs, leaving smears of soil on the worn denim.
He stood, his knees popping, and reached for the garden fork. The tines sank into the earth with a soft, gratifying crunch. He began to turn the soil, breaking apart compacted layers to let the air in. His back was to the spirea bush now, his shoulders working in a steady, rhythmic pattern.
He kept his ears tuned for Mavis. The tiny rustles and murmurs were a comforting soundtrack. He heard a gleeful, “Ha! A whole tunnel system!” followed by the skittering sounds of an excavation. Travis smiled, leaning into the fork. The work was physical, simple, and it absorbed his focus. The rich, loamy smell of overturned earth filled his nostrils. For a while, there was just the sun, the soil, and the sound of his friend playing.
Within the shaded universe of the bush, Mavis was a king. He scaled twigs like towering redwoods, his tail providing perfect balance. He dug into the soft mulch at the base, uncovering a labyrinth of pillbug highways and earthworm burrows. He followed a glittering emerald beetle, whispering mock threats about calling in the ladybug air force if it touched a leaf.
It was a symphony of small wonders, each one a defiance of the previous day’s shadow. He felt clever, capable. The garden was his too.
He was investigating a curled, dead leaf, pondering its potential as a sliding board, when the world shifted. The leaf itself seemed to erupt. Something swift and leggy and alarmingly large launched from beneath it, landing on a twig mere inches from his face.
It wasn’t a cat. It was something entirely, horrifyingly different.
A wolf spider. Its body was a thick, hairy walnut, legs spanning a terrifying distance. Eight glassy, unblinking eyes fixed on him from multiple angles. It didn’t move with the hesitant curiosity of a beetle. It poised, perfectly still, a machine of pure, predatory calculation. The speed of its appearance was absolute, a magic trick of pure terror.
Mavis’s breath vanished. Every instinct from the cat scare fired at once, but this was closer, denser, alien. Freeze. The command screamed in his brain, locking his joints. His heart hammered against his sternum, a frantic drum solo of pure panic.
The spider’s front legs twitched, adjusting its stance with microscopic precision. It was evaluating. It was deciding.
The burrow. Travis.
But Travis was meters away, his back turned, the steady thunk-thunk of the garden fork a world apart. The open grass between the bush and Travis was a vast, exposed desert. Mavis’s eyes darted to the man’s back, to the deliberate slack in the jeans belt line. The invitation. The promise.
He couldn’t make a sound. A whimper might trigger the thing in front of him. He had to move. Now.
The spider took one deliberate step forward on its twig. The decision was made for him.
The decision was made for him. Mavis sprinted.
He launched himself from the twig, not down into the mulch but out into the blinding open air. His paws hit the grass, each stride a desperate rebellion against the instinct to freeze. The world blurred into green streaks and the distant, blue denim of Travis’s jeans.
The spider gave chase. He heard it—a dry, skittering rustle accelerating through the grass behind him. It was fast. Horrifyingly fast. His lungs burned, his heart a frantic piston against his ribs. The distance to Travis yawned, an impossible canyon.
“Travis!” The scream ripped from his throat, thin and piercing.
Travis heard it. The garden fork froze mid-arc. That wasn’t a playful shout. It was raw terror. He whirled, soil spraying from the tines. His eyes scanned the grass, finding the tiny brown bolt of fur and the larger, scuttling shadow giving chase. Ice flooded his veins. He dropped the fork with a clatter.
“Mavis!” he called, moving his body to intercept.
Mavis pushed harder, every muscle screaming. The skittering sound closed in. He could almost feel the vibration in the ground. Travis was crouching now, hand outstretched, his face a mask of worry. The slack in the jeans belt loop was right there. The burrow.
He didn’t leap for the hand. He aimed lower, for the dark opening of the denim waist. He gathered his last ounce of strength and launched. For a horrible second, he was airborne, the ground and the spider vanishing beneath him. He hit the rough fabric and scrabbled, claws catching.
Travis’s hand swooped down, not on Mavis, but past him, cupping the air just above the grass where the spider halted, confused by the sudden giant intervention. Mavis tumbled through the gap, into the warm, dark sanctuary. He didn’t stop. He scrambled down, into the soft cotton labyrinth, until he was buried deep, pressed against Travis’s hip, his whole body shaking.
Outside, Travis stood slowly, his gaze fixed on the spider now retreating into the bush. His breath came out in a sharp, controlled exhale. He carefully brushed his hands together, a mundane gesture belying the adrenaline coursing through him. His other hand came up to rest gently over the denim where Mavis hid.
“Gone,” Travis said, his voice low and steady. “It’s gone. You’re safe.” He could feel the tremors through the fabric. “You’re in the burrow. You made it.”
A muffled, shuddering sob was the only reply. Travis stayed crouched, a sheltering statue in the garden, his thumb moving in slow, circles over the cloth. The sun beat down, oblivious.
The sun beat down, oblivious. Travis remained crouched, a human monolith in the middle of the yard, until the violent shivering against his hip began to soften into occasional tremors. He waited for the muffled sobs to quiet. The retreating spider was a forgotten detail. The only reality was the fragile weight in his jeans and the absolute stillness he offered in return.
“Okay,” Travis finally whispered, his hand still a steady pressure over the denim. “I’m gonna stand up now. Just going to finish the tilling. You stay right where you are.” He moved with deliberate slowness, unfolding his body from the ground. The garden fork lay where he’d dropped it. He picked it up, the wooden handle gritty in his palm.
He pushed the tines back into the soil. The rhythm was different now. It wasn’t the mindless, energetic work from before. Each thrust was measured, each lift of the clod deliberate and soft. He was a giant moving in slow motion, hyper-aware of the passenger tucked against his skin. The fork sank, turned, lifted. Soil crumbled and fell. It was a lulling, physical mantra.
Inside the warm, dark cocoon, Mavis gradually unclenched. The smell of Travis’s skin and clean cotton overwrote the phantom scent of dry chitin and grass. The tremors died away completely, leaving a hollow, wrung-out exhaustion. He was safe. The proof was in the steady, rocking motion of Travis’s hips with each step and thrust, a gentle waves on a private sea.
He didn’t want to go back to the walls. Not yet. The thought of being separate, even by a few feet of plaster, made his tail coil tight. Here, he was encapsulated. Here, the world couldn’t get in. He shifted, arranging himself more comfortably in the soft valley of fabric near the inseam.
Travis felt the movement, a slight readjustment of weight. “You alright in there?” he asked, not pausing in his work.
“Yeah,” came the muffled reply, closer to his thigh now. “Don’t stop.”
So Travis didn’t. He worked the garden fork through the last unturned section. The sun climbed higher, warming his shoulders. Sweat traced a path down his temple. He welcomed the burn in his muscles; it was a honest, simple feeling. Beside him, a sparrow landed on the fence, cocked its head, and flew away. Normal things. Safe things.
With a final, satisfying turn, the last patch of earth was broken. The bed was ready. Travis leaned on the fork, breathing deeply. He looked down at himself, at the slight, telling bulge in his jeans. “All done,” he said softly.
He carefully pulled the fork from the soil and walked the few steps to the tool shed. He rinsed the tines with the hose, the water shockingly cold on his hands. He slid the fork onto its hooks inside the dim shed. Each action was quiet, precise. When he turned, Mavis was there, having crawled out to sit on the crest of his thigh, just below the belt line. He looked weary, his fur still slightly matted from panic-sweat, but his eyes were clear.
“Hi,” Travis said.
“Hi.” Mavis didn’t look away. He placed both hands flat on the denim, as if steadying himself on a cliff. “That was worse than the cat.”
“It looked worse.”
“I hate spiders.”
“I know.” Travis kept his hands at his sides, letting Mavis have the space. “You want to go inside?”
Mavis thought about it. He glanced toward the house, then back at the vast, terrifying garden. He shook his head. “Not yet. Just…sit?”
Travis nodded. He lowered himself right there in the grass beside the shed, his back against its sun-warmed wooden wall. He stretched his legs out in front of him. Mavis moved with the terrain, settling into the soft dip of the crease of Travis’s thigh, a warm weight in a beam of sun. Travis let his head tip back against the wood, closing his eyes. The adrenaline was finally draining, leaving a pleasant tiredness.
For a long time, they just sat. A bee buzzed past. Clouds drifted. The fear of the burrow was gone, replaced by its simple, physical reality: Mavis, choosing to stay close, and Travis, becoming the landscape he rested on.