From that day on, Black Spider began learning the art of doll-making from the old man.
Of course, that did not mean he was taught some grand secret art from the very start.
First he learned the basic concepts of doll-making: how to distinguish and handle base materials, how to render texture, the center of gravity, and so on.
The underground workshop was stocked with a great many basic materials for making dolls, so Black Spider was able to actually try building puppets himself.
At first, Black Spider did nothing but whittle away at blocks of wood to make crude dolls.
Before long, however, he was shaping quite convincing forms, and could turn out passable likenesses not only of humans but of beasts such as foxes, weasels, snakes, hawks, and spiders.
Up to this point, though, they were less puppets, less marionettes, than mere dolls — lumps that copied the form alone, without any joints capable of movement. The only thing worth noting was that their delicate rendering imitated reality rather well.
Even so, at this point the old man could not help but acknowledge Black Spider's ability.
“Well, I never. I too was once called a genius under heaven, but I have truly never seen anyone learn as fast as you.”
Black Spider's keen senses ran on an entirely different track from an ordinary human's. Points that a human craftsman would take a long while to barely perceive, Black Spider grasped almost intuitively.
Of course, even allowing for such innate differences between humans and beasts, it was also true that Black Spider's outstanding insight strayed somewhat beyond common sense.
Black Spider himself, however, seemed to give it no thought. He simply immersed himself in doll-making.
So the old man began teaching Black Spider applied knowledge as well, beyond the basics.
How to construct a doll's framework, the principles by which joints operate, the concept of the meridian schematic — theories that would let a puppet truly move.
Even reasonably clever scholars found their heads aching and the matter hard to grasp once they reached this stage.
Black Spider, however, needed only to hear the old man's explanation once, and he would realize it within his mind's eye and understand it at once.
And so, one day, Black Spider succeeded in making a proper puppet outright.
That puppet was a small spider made of wood. On the outside it bore no particularly delicate carving and gave a blunt, roughly made impression, but the reality was otherwise.
Into that small body, barely larger than a man's palm, so many parts and joints had been fitted that it could move as freely as a living spider.
So when Black Spider manipulated it with his threads, it felt as though another, tiny Black Spider had come into being and begun to move.
In any case, Black Spider named it Wood Spider. As the name said, it meant a spider made of wood.
The first one he made became Wood Spider Unit 1.
After that he built four more Wood Spiders, gradually increasing their size, and named them Units 2, 3, 4, and 5 in the order they were made.
Not only could each unit move independently, but at times they could pass through force accumulation and force release and cross their motive power with one another to perform complex movements.
This came about because of the puppets' outward form.
Unlike when he first handled the hunchback puppet, the Wood Spiders had been modeled directly on Black Spider's own shape, so they could move very naturally from the outset, and thanks to that, delicate work that had once been difficult became far easier to perform.
When Black Spider worked the finished Wood Spiders all at once, it was as though a mother spider were leading her young. The sight was so natural that Hye-ju, watching from beside him, clapped her hands in wonder.
In any case, thanks to them he could now begin repairing the hunchback puppet in earnest.
Until then Black Spider had been moving the hunchback puppet while attending the old man's lessons, and so he had not been able to repair the hunchback puppet itself.
But now that the Wood Spiders existed, he could set the hunchback puppet down.
And so the wooden spiders bustled about and began repairing the hunchback puppet that lay obediently on the workbench. They trimmed the damaged sections and powdered the face that had been faceless.
As they calmly worked it into shape, the puppet's form gradually began to take on a proper look.
At a glance, that appearance seemed to resemble Elder Gok as he had been in life.
Naturally, the old man, a master of doll-making, quickly noticed that this form had been taken from a real person.
“Is this the puppet's original master?”
[It is.]
The old man's gaze studied the puppet's form. Come to think of it, it was a peculiar thing. Why would anyone deliberately build a combat puppet — for which fidelity of movement mattered above all else — in the shape of a hunchback?
If it had been modeled on the Puppet Master's own figure, that roughly explained it. A puppet was, after all, easiest to handle when modeled on one's own shape.
It had likely been a wretched life. A life born with a crooked back and given over to handling puppets. To such a man, puppets would have been everything he had, and himself as well.
A doll was, by nature, a thing born of lack. At least, that was the thought the old man held.
With what feelings that Puppet Master had handled a puppet modeled on his own deformed appearance, the old man could not guess. He only thought that both of them had led wretched lives.
Yes, a wretched life. The old man's gaze turned toward the doll standing in one corner of the workshop. The figure of a beautiful woman dressed neatly in ceremonial robes. A being who had once been, to the old man, all the world.
“…….”
The old man fell silent.
***
In any case, Black Spider's skill kept improving after that, and the outward form of the repaired hunchback puppet now felt truly human at a glance.
Of course, since the original itself was a combat puppet built for battle, a close look would reveal various drive joints and seams and give away that it was a doll; but with an outer robe thrown over it and a woven hat set on its head, it looked like a stooped old man of peculiar impression.
And when Black Spider carried it on his back, it looked as though a person were driving a great spider like an ox or a horse.
In other words, a means had been prepared for Black Spider to move through human society alone, without the help of Gaeddong-i, Gwak, or Hye-ju.
There were limits, of course. Anyone with a sharp eye would sense that something was off, and above all it was fatal that the puppet could not speak.
He could converse in writing through the engraving board Hye-ju had made for him, but Black Spider knew well that this would not work in every situation.
Moreover, the changes to the hunchback puppet were only outward; the problem of its durability remained exactly as before. In the end, unless he could obtain thunderstruck jujube wood, he was only marking time.
In any case, while learning doll-making, Black Spider had also kept up the shoe repairs in his spare moments, and thanks to that the old man's cobbler's shop had become famous as the shop where a spider assistant worked, so that the number of customers had grown several times over.
CLACK, CLACK!
“Oooh.... Ooooh....”
At the sight of the small wooden spiders moving about and mending shoes, the customers' eyes went wide. Once one pair of shoes was mended, the next customer was already waiting.
Thanks to that, the shop's income leapt far above what it had been. Even so, the old man showed no particular sign of delight.
“Bah, tsk. It will all go out again on the chickens that fellow swallows down anyway.”
The old man grumbled. He was not truly annoyed, though. His gaze turned to Hye-ju.
The gloomy child who had once always been sullen and dispirited, hiding her face behind messy hair, now went about smiling brightly all the time.
There was no need to look far for the source of this change. It was Black Spider. That one jet-black spider had slipped quietly into their daily life at some point and changed them this much.
Then, one day.
All of Yulu County stirred with excitement over some joyous occasion.
From what was said, the wedding day of the granddaughter of some lord's household was drawing near.
[Let's go and see it too!]
Hye-ju pestered the old man so. In the past it would have been unimaginable. More than ten years had already slipped by since he had picked up the small child abandoned on the roadside and raised her. Hye-ju was no longer a little girl.
At some point she had shot up and taken on the bearing of a grown young woman. She no longer hid her face behind her hair, and her skin, scarred in childhood, had recovered somewhat as she grew, so that it was striking rather than shabby.
She fell short of being called a beauty, but one of the young men who frequented the shop had already taken a great interest in her.
He felt the passage of the years. The old man suddenly fell to coughing. It had been going on for about two years now. Perhaps the trouble was that he had spent whole days in the stuffy air of the underground workshop, teaching puppet arts to that spider Black Spider.
The old man did not resent it, of course. His life had been crumbling away, and at its very end he had come to enjoy a small, quiet life like this.
And so the old man left the shop. The enormous spider carried the old man and the young woman on its back and walked along with a jaunty swagger.
It would have been rude to go too near a celebration, however, so they took a place at a suitable distance and watched the wedding from afar.
The old man simply watched in silence, while Hye-ju clasped her hands and flushed.
As the banquet went on, the bride, dressed in splendid ceremonial robes, began a graceful dance before her parents.
It was a daughter's last dance, offered in gratitude to her parents before she left home. Watching it, the parents' eyes reddened.
The old man watched the sight in silence. Black Spider watched impassively as well.
The powdered, finely dressed woman's dance spun round and round. The shape of the robes she wore was quite familiar.
Black Spider traced back through his memory. The beautiful female puppet kept deep in the underground workshop wore ceremonial robes exactly like those.
“…….”
The wedding ended and the feast soon began. But instead of joining it, the old man, Black Spider, and Hye-ju quietly returned to the shop.
Black Spider stretched out his divine awareness and searched the underground workshop. Over the past two years, the entrance to the workshop, once always shut, had come to stand always open, so that Black Spider or Hye-ju could go inside and stay whenever they liked.
If there was one thing that had not changed, it was the female doll kept quietly in the corner of the workshop.
Hye-ju had at least wiped away the dust that had gathered on it with a clean cloth so that it gleamed, but that was all.
Since the old man never said a single word about that doll, neither Black Spider nor Hye-ju ever mentioned it carelessly.
Black Spider's divine awareness traced over the doll. The more he traced it, the more astounded he was. Had he never learned doll-making, he would not have known.
He realized that with his present skill he could never render carving and texture this delicate and fine.
It was a masterpiece. Black Spider did not know why the old man left such a masterpiece neglected. He could only guess that, once it was finished, it had turned out to be of no particular use.
Black Spider's hunchback puppet, after all, had excellent combat functions and a clear use as a weapon.
This female doll, however, merely imitated the human form to an extreme degree and had not a single other function.
It was like a shell. Only the outward appearance of a human remained, while the inside was empty, unable to serve as a person.
The words the old man had spoken on that first day he opened the underground workshop came back to him.
That unless a soul was placed within it, a doll was nothing more than an object.
Black Spider still does not understand what those words mean. Then if a soul is placed within it, is a doll no longer a doll? Does it become a person?
Then what on earth is a soul?
Of course, Black Spider already knew what a soul was. At the very least he understood the context in which humans used the word soul.
It was another word for the human mind.
Then is a doll a shell that holds a human soul — a vessel, in other words?
There was no telling. Black Spider did understand, however, that the old man never spoke nonsense. At least where dolls were concerned, the old man always spoke only the truth.
Then the ultimate essence of the puppet arts was, perhaps, to place a soul within a doll.
But perhaps because the old man himself did not know the method, he was leaving this doll be like this.
In any case, time kept flowing on. The old man's cobbler's shop still bustled with customers, and Hye-ju became a young woman in full bloom; she seemed to be quietly and sweetly keeping company with a steady young man from the neighborhood who often came by, and then one day it was suddenly settled that she would marry him.
By this time the old man's lung disease had worsened, so that he could no longer even mend shoes properly and merely sat quietly in one corner of the shop; even in that state, he could not hide his joy at the news of Hye-ju's marriage.
He grumbled sourly, of course, but after all the years they had lived together, Hye-ju could feel every bit of his true heart.
And so, not long after, Hye-ju's wedding was held as well.
It was no match, of course, for the wedding of the lord's granddaughter that had set all of Yulu County astir. They put together a simple feast, and neighbors and regular customers attended as guests.
As the ceremony proceeded, Hye-ju, her face powdered and dressed in clean ceremonial robes unlike her usual self, stepped up to the ceremonial ground and began to dance slowly before the old man.
And behind her, another woman followed and began to dance the same dance beside her.
“...Who is that?”
The guests stirred at the woman's sudden appearance. No one knew who she was. Her features were so exceedingly beautiful that all anyone could do was marvel.
The two women danced side by side. As though they had rehearsed together beforehand, their movements never interfered with each other and flowed smoothly into one another; now and then a silver thread seemed to glint faintly in the empty air.
And the old man, watching from directly in front, opened his eyes wide. His gaze trembled. He could say nothing; there was only something surging up inside him.
“...Hye-ju.... And Hwa-yeong.... My beloved daughters....”
The old man murmured. Regret gathered at the corners of his eyes and a single sorrowful line ran down.
More than twenty years ago.
The old man's daughter, who had suddenly passed away in that happy season just before her own wedding, had come back and was dancing before him.
The old man knew, of course. These movements, the threads that glinted now and then behind her — he knew that the one dancing before him was not a person but only a doll, and that what moved it was an enormous spider cursed fiend, chilling to look upon.
Even so, it melted. Something knotted inside him seemed to melt away. What it was, even the old man did not precisely know.
Resentment toward the heavens that had taken his daughter? Bitterness over the years he had poured entirely into doll-making out of obsession and madness over her?
Rage at himself, who had despaired upon finishing the doll only to learn that his daughter would not come back alive?
He did not know. In any case, it melted, and only now did the old man finally begin to weep bitterly.
The guests grasped the situation as well. This dance was, from the first, a rite offered not by a bride but by a daughter to her parents as their child. So both of those women must be daughters of the old cobbler.
And so that strange wedding at last drew to its end. In truth, strictly speaking, neither of the two women present at this wedding was the old man's daughter by blood.
One was a child he had picked up and raised, and the other was merely a doll the old man had made with his own hands.
But what of it? It did not matter in the least; it was simply a day on which even the bright weather blessed this wedding.
***
The old man did not last out the winter of that year and departed on the long road. He was not assassinated by someone as Elder Gok had been.
His body had simply run out its time and faded according to the providence of nature, so although it saddened Hye-ju, it was not an agonizing thing.
Before he departed, the old man had left Black Spider one message.
“There is a sect called the Grand Heaven Sect at the foot of Mount Daeung. I have heard that my younger brother, who gave himself to the cultivation of immortality in his youth, lives there; so if obtaining thunderstruck jujube wood proves too difficult, go and give my name and declare yourself my disciple, and you may have a chance at his help.”
Then he closed his eyes, and now the old man lay quietly buried beneath a burial mound together with the doll of the daughter he had made.
The old man's name was carved into the gravestone, and from a distance a great spider carrying a hunchbacked old man on its back watched it impassively.
The spider's name was Black Spider, and the name of the old man riding on its back was Gok Hon.
Since the puppet had come from Elder Gok, its surname was Gok.
And from Elder Do he had learned that a soul must be placed within a doll, yet since he still did not know how to grant a doll a soul, he had given it as a name for the time being.
And so Black Spider set out on the road with Gok Hon on his back. The direction was west, where Mount Daeung stood with the Grand Heaven Sect upon it.
Winter went and spring came. A spider arrived at the foot of Mount Daeung and looked up at it. It was not a famed and celebrated mountain, but its spirit stood tall.