After that we said our goodbyes to Yuugi and left the marketplace behind. Yamame lead us down the same path out of town we had taken before, diverting only slightly to locate a well and pull Kisume out of it before we proceeded. Together, the four of us headed for the bridge.

We proceeded mostly in silence, but in relatively high spirits. Even Renko, though still obviously regretting last night's indulgences, seemed to be at least somewhat cheered by the prospect of escape. Before long we came to the bridge where, as always, Parsee stood guard, leaning against the railing. Perhaps it was my imagination, but she seemed to be in a slightly better mood than when we had seen her last. She greeted us as we approached.

"You're taking those humans out of here now? Well then go ahead already." She said brusquely.

"You missed a good party last night, Parsee. If you want to go, it's probably still going on." Yamame said as we walked onto the creaking boards or the bridge.

"A party full of selfish louts who make noise regardless of who's around them, drunks who show off how much fun they're having and people like these two being all affectionate out in public? I'll pass. They'd all just be flaunting their easy lives in my face to make me jealous."

"You seemed to be getting along pretty well with Yuugi yesterday, Parsee. Aren't you the one flaunting your relationship in public?"

"What relationship!? I'd thank you for keeping that meathead indisposed so she isn't here taunting me today, I suppose, but as soon as I saw you the first thing out of your mouth is how much fun you've all been having without me. Just go already. Enjoy your freedom and leave me alone on this bridge like always."

"Alright, have a nice day, Parsee." Yamame called as we passed her by. As soon as we were off of the bridge and on the far shore, she turned and whispered to us, grinning broadly. "Oh, good job, Renko, draping off of Merry like that. I'm sure that got her fabulously jealous."

"Jealous?" I interjected, adjusting my shoulder again as Renko leaned her weight on me "of what?"

"Of you two. You're obviously close and she gets jealous of anything that makes anyone else happy."

"Ugh, I don't feel happy at all right now. Merry will have to be a lot nicer to me to overcome what I'm dealing with. If you want to go back there and try though..."

"Don't be silly, Renko. I'm already half carrying you at this point, what more do you expect?"

"You could talk nicer to me, for one. Or you could comb my hair or give me a back rub. Have pity, Merry, I'm sick."

"A hangover is not a disease, Renko."

"This one is. It's awful. That Oni sake must be cursed or something. Do your mindreading act on me, and you'll see just how bad it is."

"I'm not a satori, Renko."

"Well neither is Parsee, but she can affect people's minds. Actually, how does that work? How does she make other people more jealous if she can't read their minds to find out what they're jealous of?"

"It's those green eyes of hers," Yamame answered from ahead of us. "She can see the presence of jealousy with them and If they look at you, then the jealousy in your heart becomes amplified. I don't know if Parsee knows what you're jealous of or not, but she can see it there and make it worse. The stronger that jealousy inside someone becomes, the more it sustains her. She's actually kind of nice in a way, staying out on that bridge and stoking her own jealousy to feed herself rather than coming into town and feeding on anyone else."

"Hah, she's like a vampire who refrains from eating anyone. Or a vampire that drinks their own blood, I guess? Could they do that? Ugh, I dunno, my head hurts and thinking about this is making me nauseous."

"So stop thinking, Renko. You're too hung over. You can figure it out after we get back to the surface and you've had a chance to get some water and proper rest."

"How am I supposed to do that, Merry? I'm an intellectual being: I think, therefore I'm Renko. Aughh. She's an interesting case though. She keeps to herself most of the time, sure, but she must see everyone who passes in or out of the city. That gives her a lot of privileged information. I really should go back and talk to her, just sometime when my head isn't packed full of hornets. Ugh." Moaning faintly, Renko pulled down on the brim of her hat, trying cover her face with it, before wincing in pain and moving to gingerly massage her eyes while trying to keep pace with me instead.

"Well, you can worry about that later, we're nearly there," Yamame said. Sure enough, the tunnel we were in was beginning to slant upward. Before much longer Kisume and Yamame emerged into the bottom of the immense vertical shaft, with Renko and I close behind them. Far, far above, a circle of blindingly intense light shone, impossibly distant, looking more like the moon hanging in the heavens than anything we might be able to climb toward.

"By the way Yamame," I asked looking up at the sunlight far above, "what were you doing in this shaft when we first met you? You aren't in the habit of going up to the surface, are you?"

"Oh no, not at all. I've never been back since we left. Kisume and I hang out here all the time though, it's our hunting grounds. Every now and then an animal falls down the shaft or a bird tries to fly in or sometimes people like you even fall down here. Most of the time they fall to the bottom, but I try to catch them in a web if I can."

"Other humans have fallen down before us?"

"Yeah, once a decade or so some lonely human will try to commit suicide by throwing themselves down this shaft. If I can catch one of those, it's much better than letting them go to waste."

I blanched, compelled to ask a question, but dreading the answer. "...What happened to those humans?"

"Kisume and I ate them, of course. No point in taking someone to see Yuugi if they're just going to cry and beg for their life after trying to commit suicide."

I couldn't help but take an involuntary step back. We had just spent most of a day hanging out with Yamame, and had even slept a night at her house, but as much as I might try to understand her circumstances and frame of mind, I couldn't allow myself to forget that she and Kisume were dangerous and reviled youkai. Experienced killers and man-eating monsters, the both of them. Looking at her smile happily back at me, the thought of just how narrowly and how frequently we had avoided dying in the last 24 hours weighed heavily on me.

"Oh, relax!" She said, clapping me on the back. "You two have already proven yourselves and made plenty of friends down here. If you come back again, I'll make sure no one eats you. Not much anyway. Maybe I could charge you a hand for my protection. I'm kidding. Lighten up, Merry. Come on, let's get you out of here. Welcome or not, this isn't the place for you, you'll be happier up on the surface. Just try not to fall in the hole again, I can't guarantee I'll always have a web set up here."

"Alright," I said, trying to sound brave as Renko leaned woozily against me. "What now?"

"This!" She smiled fiercely, her eyes glowing faintly, then, without further warning, she spit explosively at me. What came out of her mouth was not saliva or mucous but a thick, tangled mass of airy, featherlight and extremely fine silk. The moment it hit me in the chest it stuck to me and I staggered back in surprise. She spit another gob of the stuff at Renko then stepped forward, rapidly picking at the fibers and pulling them apart with nimble fingers. At first it looked as if she were just shredding the silk, hooking her nails into it and throwing broad loops over her shoulder, but within the space of perhaps 30 seconds it became clear that she was somehow spinning and knotting the silk with her fingers, stretching it out into long, twisted cords. The gob of silk that had stuck to me was quickly becoming a web of ropes. It didn't feel wet or gluey, but as she gave one of the cords a tug the loops all constricted around me and I found myself once more inexorably bound and wrapped, just as I had been the first time we encountered her. I stumbled backward and fell to a seated position, the impact cushioned by the softness of the silk. By the time I realized what happened, she had already moved onto Renko and was doing the same.

As she pulled the cords taut around Renko, sealing her into a cocoon of her own, Renko flopped over and landed on her side with a groan. "Ugggh. Oh, gentle please," she pleaded.

"Hold it together, human. If you throw up on my shoulder, I'm eating you. Now, let's go!" Saying that she hoisted first Renko and then myself onto her shoulders once more, then kicked hard off of the ground, flying into the air.

The wind whistled past us as the force of her acceleration pressed us into her shoulders. Bit by bit the circle of light far above grew steadily larger. What had been a tiny circle of light the size of a coin grew to eclipse my hand, then steadily larger, to the point where it nearly filled my vision. As the smell of trees and earth slowly began to register in my nostrils, we drew to a stop and Yamame threw out another line, looping it over a crag jutting out from the edge of the wall. Stretching the silk of the line, she twisted up another cord and affixed it to the rock wall on the opposite side of the shaft, creating a line that spanned the whole of the chasm. Lowering herself downward, she tested its hold with a foot, then settled in place, balancing like a tightrope walker, seemingly undeterred by having to carry us on her shoulders. She wiggled one foot out of its boot and stood barefoot on the line as the boot stuck to the strand and flopped over. "This is as far as I can take you," she explained as she manipulated the strands of the webs with her toenails. A moment later she had woven several more threads which disappeared up under her skirt into a complex knot tied along the anchor line. The foundations of a web. "Past here is the realm of the surface."

Kisume rose up from below, the rope attached to her bucket ascending into nothing and grabbed a thick loop of silk that Yamame passed to her with one leg. Flying off to the far side of the shaft, she affixed it to a wall then stretched the line to another point. Quickly a small net-like grid was taking shape as Yamame picked and tossed loop after loop plucked from the thick thread she was standing on with her feet. Each loop fell breezily downward and as soon as it touched one of the taut anchor lines it stuck fast, bonding together. Once several of these loops had been set to create a wedge of dense, crisscrossing webs, Yamame let us both down from her shoulders, easing us into a hammock-like cradle of silken threads, still bound in our cocoons. "Now, I've just got to get you the rest of the way up."

Renko blinked up at her, lying bound and immobile in the netting. "I suppose we could try to set up a pulley or something if you could throw a line around a tree on the surface. I don't know the tensile strength of this silk though, or how well it deals with fraying."

"Oh, it would slice through a tree trunk before it would fray, but to be honest that sounds like a lot of work," Yamame said. She bent down and removed Renko's hat, then tucked the brim of it between two strands of her cocoon, securing it to Renko's body. "Wouldn't want you to lose this. Don't worry, I'll get you up there. Tsuchigumo are strong."

"Wait a minute, what are you planning?" Renko asked in a panic. Yamame only smiled and ran a finger down the length of Renko's cocoon, trailing a thin thread past her feet as she did so, leaving perhaps two meters of slack.

"You'll be fine," she said with a cruel smile as her hand seized the end of the cord. "In Gensokyo even humans can fly!" With that she whipped her arm in a huge overhand circle, yanking Renko's cocoon off of the netting by her bound feet, whirling her through two tremendous revolutions then hurtling her body upwards with terrible force toward the lip of the chasm high overhead.

I heard Renko's panicked scream dopplering above me as the long cord of her cocoon twisted down from the air, collecting itself into a neat coil in Yamame's left hand. I lost sight of Renko's form somewhere above the rim, as she disappeared into daylight. Kisume happily waved farewell from inside her bucket.

"Is this what you meant by 'a little bumpy?'" I asked in alarm. "There has to be a better method than reverse bungee jumping!"

"Maybe, but if we did that, I couldn't win my bet with Yuugi. She bet Renko wouldn't scream. I already won that one. For you, the bet was whether or not you'd pee yourself. Good luck, Merry!"

"Wait a minute! What if I climb? If you give me a safety rope, I could climb! Don't throw me up there!"

"Relax. I'm no match for Yuugi, but us tsuchigumo are plenty strong. You won't die. Unless I miss. So try to stay aerodynamic."

"How? Are you trying to terrify me? Wait, which side of the bet with Yuugi were you on?"

"Bye, Merry. Come visit us again some time. We all had a lot of fun with you underground."

And then there was a wild sensation of motion. My head and neck were pressed firmly against the silken windings. To my surprise there was no sense of going upside down as I spun through the loop -I was moving far too fast to register it. There was simply an overwhelming feeling of breakneck, impossible speed and the sound of my own voice drowned out by the rushing wind as I soared into the sky.

"Kyaaaaa-" The echoing sound of my own mindless scream was swallowed by the vast pit as the thread unwound, twisting me as it did so, propelling me in a wrenching spiral. The bit binding my hands to my sides was the very last to come off, keeping my arms pinned until just before I was blinded by the piercing sunlight. After so long underground, the moment I shot up into the open air and light was wildly disorienting. Even if I hadn't been spinning and shooting through the air at the time, I don't think I could have made sense of what was happening to me as my arc flattened then curved toward the ground. The last coherent though I can remember having as I sailed through the air was "so this is what it feels like when Kirby is fired out of a cannon."