The Iron Woman by Ted Hughes

eyes and it blinked. It screwed up its eyes and its mouth.  
    ‘Now tell us who you really are,’ thundered the Iron Woman.  
    The goblinish cloud snapped its wide, flat mouth. It seemed to bristle and grow even darker. Its eyes crowded close together and sheet lightnings flashed in them.  
    ‘I am the spider-god of Gain. The spider-god of winning at all costs. I catch the prize in my net.’  
    And it reared up to a great height, and let out atremendous laugh, shaking its web like a cloak the size of the country. The thing that had been groaning so painfully and sobbing so pitifully was laughing.
    ‘Now you’ve got rid of your lies,’ thundered the Iron Woman, ‘confess who you really are.’
    Both Lucy and Hogarth dropped to the ground. It sounded as though the world had exploded. The vast shape seemed to rear even higher and at the same time to pounce down. To his amazement, Hogarth saw a long bluish tongue flash out of the spider-cloud’s mouth, lash around the Iron Man like a whip, and vanish back into the mouth – taking the Iron Man with it.
    ‘Iron Man!’ cried Hogarth, as if that could help.
    And in that next moment, the long tongue came flashing out again, empty, and whipped itself this time tightly round the Iron Woman.
    ‘Oh no!’ screamed Lucy. ‘Oh no!’
    And sure enough the tongue stopped there – sticking rigidly out full length. It writhed, trying to free itself from the Iron Woman. The cloudy mouth gaped, with squirming lips. The eyes seemed to be climbing down over the great upper lip, to come to the help of the tongue. For the tongue was in trouble. It could not free itself from the Iron Woman. Her fingers were buried in it, like dreadful pincers. The tongue tried to pull itself in through the tightly closed lips, to force her off the end of it. But she was actually climbing up it, hand overhand, dragging the tongue further out between the lips as she clawed her way up.
    ‘Aaaaaagh!’ a miserable wail clanged out, echoing off the far corners of the sky. And the spider-cloud reared up, twisting like a whale coming out of the sea, and crashed down on the town. It reared again and crashed again. The mouth gaped, till the eyes popped like blebs on a tyre, as the thing tried to retch. The tongue stuck out, flailing this way and that. Lucy and Hogarth watched aghast. They could see the Iron Woman was now more than halfway up the tongue, climbing slowly towards the tonsils, deep inside the black gape of that mouth, which now stretched so wide it seemed to be trying to turn itself inside out. The sounds of retching were like incessant thunder, as the gigantic dark shape flopped about the landscape. They glimpsed the Iron Woman forcing her way over the root of the tongue into the cavern of the throat. Suddenly the mouth closed and the spider-cloud slumped over the town, silent and motionless.
    Lucy and Hogarth stood up. Their faces were white. Their hair stuck out in all directions as if they had been rescued from an explosion. Neither could speak. It really did look as though the Iron Woman and the Iron Man had gone.
    But now the cloud was shuddering, and they heard again, just as before, sobbing. Then the Iron Woman’svoice, muffled and echoey, came out of the depth of the cloud:
    ‘Confess who you are. Confess. Confess.’
    With each word came a thud, that shook the hill under their feet. And at each thud, a strange, gonging boom, like a girder falling inside the hull of a ship. And at each boom, the Cloud-Spider jumped and shook, like a bag with an animal inside it.
    ‘It’s the Iron Woman doing her dance,’ cried Lucy. ‘Inside there. Listen.’
    ‘And that’s the Iron Man,’ cried Hogarth. ‘Beating his chest for a drum, keeping time.’
    The Cloud-Spider’s lips were opening wide, blubbery and squirming. Big tears squeezed out between the tightly closed eyelids, rolled down, and splashed through on to the town beneath.
    ‘Mess,’ wailed the great face. ‘Mess.’
    ‘Who