“Aye, a giant spider sculpture. It’s usually perched on a rooftop or next to a building’s entrance. It’s black, and it’s thirty feet tall. So between the three of us, we should be able to spot it, no problem.”
As Gavin had explained on our way up, at the turn of the last century, several prominent art patrons who supported angels had commissioned giant spider sculptures to be placed in key international cities, marking the entrance to Magnificat to help ensure that the safe haven could be more easily found. The spiders were installed in Bilbao, Spain; Seoul, Korea; Tokyo, Japan; Ottawa, Canada; and London. There was an additional army of traveling sculptures that moved around the world as they were needed, from St. Petersburg to Havana, Paris, Washington, D.C., and even Kansas City, Missouri. My home state.
The giant spiders were created by a French sculptor, Louise Bourgeois, and named Maman—“Mother” in her native tongue.
“Am I the only one who finds this vaguely disturbing?” Hunter continued. “Aren’t spiders more of a demon thing? Why would angels want to use them?”
“Well . . .” Gavin started. “In many cultures, they are signs of good luck. They decorate their Christmas trees with spider webs in Germany.”
“Yeah, I’m not buying it,” Hunter replied.
“The spider was really nice in Charlotte’s Web,” I said, trying to help Gavin out. It didn’t work.
“Never heard of it,” she answered.
“You’ve been to Scotland,” Gavin said, trying a new angle. “I know you’ve heard the story of Robert the Bruce and the spider.”
She perked up a little, obviously remembering. “My mum used to tell me that story when I was little.”
“Who’s Robert Bruce?” I asked.
“Robert the Bruce was a great Scottish warrior,” Gavin answered. “One day, he was sitting in a cave in the Highlands, depressed about recent defeats, when he saw a spider try to spin her web in the mouth of the cave. Every time she tried to make a connection between the roof and the wall, she failed. But she never gave up. She just kept trying until she got it. Supposedly, Robert was inspired by the spider and decided to press on. He won several big victories, and was crowned King of Scotland soon after.”
“So the spider is supposed to remind us not to give up?” I looked at Gavin.
“Yes, you’re to stay strong, both of you,” Gavin concluded. “No matter what.”
“No Matter What” seemed like an ominous destination. One I didn’t want to visit.
The Golden Gallery wasn’t golden and was hardly a gallery. Instead of a sightseeing promenade, we stepped out, single file, onto a crumbling stone ledge less than two tennis shoes wide, ringed with a rusted guardrail that reached just above my waist. The wind repeatedly whipped my hair into my eyes, and made the protective fence in front of me wobble. I didn’t feel very protected.
As Gavin and Hunter circled around out of sight, I pressed my back firmly against the wall and gazed out between the two front towers of St. Paul’s—one had a clock in it and the other one just had a big hole where a clock should be. Across the horizon, construction cranes lifted their heads like mechanical giraffes. A massive Ferris wheel pushed its enclosed bullet-shaped buckets on an infinite ride. And a big, brown river I assumed was the River Thames slithered lazily past to my left. I wondered why they pronounced it “Tems,” like “stems,” in Britain, instead of how the word looked. I counted four bridges crossing it; the nearest one, all shiny gray steel, seemed like the newest.
I shuffled my feet a bit to get a better look at the closest bridge. It began at St. Paul’s and swooped across the river to a large building that resembled a factory due to its bland, brown fa?ade, lack of windows, and huge smokestack-like square tower. The bridge itself was narrow. As I squinted, I saw that it was covered with people, not cars.
Why would so many people want to walk from the cathedral to a factory that they would build a whole bridge for it? Then I saw it: an enormous, black, spindly spider statue. Maman! It was perched right next to the factory, rising up from the grass, facing me, practically staring me down. Dozens of people gathered around its legs, taking pictures and pointing. Surprisingly, especially considering my distaste for modern art, I didn’t find Maman to be ugly or scary or particularly villainous. Instead, she was elegant and otherworldly, like she had just crawled out of a fairy tale.
“I found it!” I yelled. “The spider. I found it!”
Gavin called out from my left, and Hunter from my right, when I heard an all-too-familiar screeching overhead. A sudden breeze hit my face, and I closed my eyes, half expecting to be torn off the ledge by demon claws. Instead, Gavin grabbed my hand.
“It’s okay,” he soothed, as I physically flinched. “You’re fine. We’re fine. There’s Hunter. See, everyone’s accounted for.” His voice was calm, but his eyes darted around the sky. There were two of us girls, who knows how many demons, and only one of him.
“Where is it?” he asked.
I pointed. “Over there. By that factory.”
“That’s not a factory,” Hunter said. “It’s the Tate Modern. The museum of modern art.”
It made perfect sense. Where else could you put a giant spider in plain sight? I had thought about the zoo, but as I looked at the towering, black arachnid, I realized it would probably scare the pants off small children. Yes, the modern art museum was perfect. But perfectly far away.
“So that’s it? That’s the entrance to Magnificat?” I asked. “At the Tate?”
“It would seem so,” Gavin said. He was studying something intently, but it wasn’t the spider.
“What?” I asked.
“The bridge,” he said. Unlike the other heavier, squared-off bridges along the river, the bridge to the Tate was all swoopy and loopy, like a treetop bridge supported by giant concrete Ys.
“That’s the Wobbly Bridge,” Hunter declared.
“The what?” I asked.
“Well, technically it’s the Millennium Bridge, since it opened in the year 2000, but it swayed so much when people first walked on it, they had to close it for two years. So we all call it the Wobbly Bridge,” she explained.
I leaned toward Gavin. “The quickest way to the Tate is over that bridge, isn’t it? And it’s an open-air pedestrian bridge. We’ll never make it across,” I concluded.
“I’m not sure,” he answered. “But I know how to find out.” He ushered us back inside and down the stairs.
We stopped at the last observation deck before the floor: the Whispering Gallery. This balcony was inside the dome, but still close to one hundred feet up. It held a ring of seats behind a safety rail so you could sit and ponder the art on the inside of the Great Dome without getting dizzy and falling to your death. Gavin led us both to a seat.
“Why is this called ‘The Whispering Gallery’?” I whispered.
“Because if you face the wall and whisper, someone clear across on the other side can hear you,” Hunter answered. “At least that’s what the guidebook I read today said.”