But nothing came. He searched through the leaves in hope that one of them might be moist enough to chew for its water, but their undersides were speckled with the bright orange of a poisonous rust. I’m defeated . . . again, he thought as he felt his dry tongue, trapped inside his drier mouth, and tasted its own bitterness.
Defeated—the word echoed in his brain. He fell to his knees on the flat of some sand grains and felt an unbearable heaviness, as if he carried a boulder of the Great Jag on his back. He hesitated to lie down, thinking he might never get up again, then willed himself to kneel for a moment longer to pray. He looked up between the spaces of the leaves to the sun-bleached sky above and the promise of an evening moon.
Hulkro, Your ways are mysterious, but if ever You loved me, I ask You to send water, then show me the way. Pleckoo removed the sweaty mask from his face, then gathered bits of crumbled leaves around him to use as a crunchy pillow. After closing his eyes he chanted the round of Hulkro’s names until he fell asleep, hoping he would not wake before morning, with its blessing of a quenching dew.
Sometime later, Pleckoo woke and looked through the leaves to see a graying sky. As the sun was dying in the West, the tattered phantoms of rain clouds thickened into a dark and soggy blanket. A moist breeze gently tossed the mallow’s leaves and then there was the sharp, fresh aroma of a coming storm.
It can’t be rain! Pleckoo thought. Too soon in the autumn for that. Then he heard it—the soft plop of a drop. He left the shelter of the mallow to see a dome of water on a sand grain that had broken into smaller beads that shrank as they seeped into the ground. He went to lick what he could when a second drop fell and sent up a brief crater bursting with tiny tendrils of smaller drops. He ran towards the flattening moisture when a great drop landed on a fallen leaf and broke into domes that held their shape. He approached the closest drop, puckered his lips, and sucked. It was sweeter than aphid syrup, a taste of the Promised World. More rain was falling, creating a broken maze of crystal domes that shrank before they disappeared. Returning to the protection of the mallow plant, he saw the ant had roused and widened its mandibles to suck in a drop that suddenly doubled when it combined with one nearby.
Pleckoo’s stomach was full and his head was clearing, but his panic spiraled as the sand’s grains upended and shifted in a fierce downpour. Soon, a thick layer of water was over the ground. As he paced, the moisture was sucking at his boots and his cape grew heavy as it soaked up water. He had no shelter with a pitched roof he could retreat into: he could only look up at the stems of the mallow as its leaves bobbed in the pelting rain and hope it was enough to protect him. Climbing up and into the plant, he looked down at the ant as she strained against the rope that bound her. As the water rose, the ant’s legs paddled above the sand as she drifted left and right on her tether.
Pleckoo coughed as he shook himself free from water that beaded and bunched on his head and shoulders. He needed to climb higher, but his feet slipped in the crook of the stems as his armor and clothing grew weighty with dampness. Going higher, he sheltered under a leaf that filled with rain, then lowered over his head like the heaviest hat before it spilled out its load, then shot back up. The sky was turning black and promising a long, dank night of struggling for breath and staying aloft. He sat in a crook of the plant’s stems and slumped against one, using his legs and arms to grip it as rain collected on him in an enveloping sphere, drowning him as he fought to break through its surface tension. Dizzy and panting, he was stunned when violent flashes of lightning broke through the leaves and were followed by a shocking burst of thunder.
Hulkro is angry! Pleckoo thought. He’s destroying the world and starting it over!
A second flash of lightning showed him the fast-rising water. The ant was not dead but twisting and turning on her rope as the rain splashed thicker and harder. Pleckoo’s heart thumped in fear as water enclosed his head again. He shook himself hard to break free and breathe.
A sharp and howling blast of wind came up and he felt the tilt of the plant as the gusts tore off its dying leaves, then blew him out of its slippery stems. As he scrambled to climb back up the plant, the wind-driven rain hurled down with a renewed violence. He pulled himself back into the tangle of stems when the wind smacked him out and down, smashing him into an upended sand grain that gouged his forehead and bloodied the hole of what had been his nose. Pain radiated in unbearable throbs through his head when he fell facedown and plummeted into a depth of water as deep and as black and as unending as death . . .
I’ve drowned! I’m dead! he thought as he sank deeper and deeper into the depths of some sudden lake. He hit its silty bottom when the water vanished and left him on a dry land of black sand and weeds that screamed in a freezing wind. He sat up and looked at Demoness Lair Spider, pushing up from the Trap Door to the Netherworld.
“Worm awaits you,” she said from the mouths of both her heads, “and will judge your duties to caste.”
Lair Spider snatched him with the web between her claws and spun him into a capsule before she retreated with him down a tunnel that went deep and cold and darker. She slipped through the portal of a vast palace with black crystal walls, then crawled with Pleckoo, rocking between her fore-claws, through an immense chamber lit by fungus torches. He looked out of the webbing when Lair Spider reached a long, crooked spiral of stairs and began a nauseating descent. Pleckoo bobbed in the tangled hammock, paralyzed with fear, when he was set before the muck-covered throne of Judge Worm, who coiled up and out from His loam-filled seat. Stretching His segmented body, He bent down His tapered end to nuzzle and sniff Pleckoo, who squirmed in the webbing.
“Pleckoo,” Worm said from the tiny opening at the end of His undulating body. “You are dead now, your soul before me. Have you been dutiful to your caste?”
“I have no caste!” Pleckoo shouted.
“What? No caste?” He said through a chuckle. “Everyone has a caste.”
Worm’s chuckle turned into a hissing laugh. Pleckoo could see that in the back of His throne were two portals, one that seeped a bright, yellow light and the sweet scents of sage and primrose. On the other side was a dark portal whose flap muffled the howls and sobbing of a trillion tormented souls.
An angel appeared from the glowing portal, wearing a black-and-orange mask like the one Pleckoo had adopted. On his back were the wings of a milkweed butterfly. He unmasked and revealed the mirror image of Pleckoo when he was younger and at his handsomest, with a winsome and upturned nose. Pleckoo gasped as he watched the angel take flight, twirling as he flew up, then hovered over the throne. Worm bent His end to hear the angel’s whispers, then shook it in deepest disapproval. The angel lowered slowly to stand before the portal to the World of Rewards, his arms folded under a somber face.
The other portal opened. A black mist seeped out and filled the palace with the sour stench of maggots feasting on human flesh. Pleckoo held his breath and tried not to inhale, but the stink of the World of Eternal Punishment was deep inside his nose and left it chafed and bleeding. A winged demon stepped out of the portal with skin of chitinous black and garish indigo stripes. On his back were the fiery orange wings of a night wasp. Pleckoo looked at the demon’s face and saw his mirror reflection with its missing nose, but as if it had been freshly ripped off with dripping blood. The demon buzzed its wings and flew up to Worm’s end to whisper its report. Pleckoo watched as Worm wriggled in the loam of His throne, then suddenly rose up and lashed like a great, thick whip at him. His blob-shaped head burst from out of its end and revealed its circular mouth of razor-teeth.
“Pleckoo,” Worm said in a throaty hiss. “You defected from your mound. You wandered south into the Dustlands to worship Hulkro. You abandoned the duties of your caste.”
“It is true,” Pleckoo said, his body shaking in the webbing.
“But Hulkro does not rule the Netherworld. I do. Where is Little Termite now?”
“High above, in the night sky, where He rules over all.”
“You have said He is the only god—yet here I am, deciding your fate for eternity.”
“You are nothing more than a dream I will wake from at any moment.”
Worm’s hissing laughter filled the palace.
“Pleckoo of Cajoria, of the midden caste. You stand before me as the greatest of all transgressors of the Divine Laws. Not even your commander, this Tahn of Hulkren, was as great a sinner, for his people had become ignorant to the One Great Truth. But you were born a son of the Slope, a descendent of Ant Queen, and given the honor to serve Her. Yet you turned against your goddess, the one whose drop of blood is carried in your most humble veins. You warred on Her descendants and murdered hundreds of thousands of them defending Her Slope.”
“I . . . will . . . wake from this dream!” Pleckoo shouted.
“You are not dreaming. You are most dead. And you are being judged.”
“When I die, I will not face You,” shouted Pleckoo. “I will rise to the World Above Clouds, to the Battlefield of Stars, and see the face of the One True God. I will join the First Prophet where we will feast and drink and battle through eternity.”
“You mean Tahn, the false prophet, the lunatic worshipper of Termite as Moon.”
“Hulkro exists . . . and is the only god.”
“My cousin Hulkro exists. But He was thrown out of the Tree Palace of Ganilta, never to dwell there again.”
“You are an illusion spewing lies!” said Pleckoo.
“You lie to yourself, Termite worshipper. Tahn does not feast and drink in a Realm of Stars with endless concubines. He is here. With me. Would you like to see him?”
The flying demon flew through the stinking portal. A moment later, it split open and a massive ball of buzzing night wasps rolled out of it. The wasps untangled, flying up to reveal a man who screamed on the floor and gasped for breath as his body lay in paralysis.
“Pleckoo!” wheezed Tahn, who barely raised his head. “Renounce me, renounce Hulkro! Save yourself from this!”
Smaller night wasps dropped down from their larger, hovering sisters to cover Tahn’s naked body. They sank the hooks of their mandibles into his skin, cut it into patches, and then ripped it off to expose his muscles and organs as he screamed in agony. One wasp severed his liver and kidneys and tossed them up to her larger sisters to swallow. A second wasp crawled towards Tahn’s face and yanked out his eyeballs with the spikes of her claws. His screaming diminished by half as one lung was plucked from inside his rib cage, and he was silenced with the removal of the other. Blood flowed from his dissected body as his heart beat inside the emptied rib cage. Pleckoo spasmed in shock to see that Tahn was still alive, still twitching, as his muscles were severed, then stripped from the bones of his arms and legs. Finally, a wasp broke open the rib cage to gobble down the heart. The skeleton went still as the rest of the wasps lowered to the floor, and gathered in a disc to march over the bones. The wasps spun away from each other, flying up to reveal Tahn, completely intact and ready for another destruction.
“Pleckoo, renounce me!” Tahn screeched as the smaller wasps converged on him, ripping open his abdomen and yanking out his intestines. The wasps used his guts as ropes to wrap around his feet and hands, then lifted him to fly through the portal. As it opened, the agonizing screams of the Trillion Damned filled the palace.
Pleckoo wanted to muffle his ears, but his arms could not rise. Worm stretched over him, looking down at his face with invisible eyes. “Renounce Tahn. Renounce Hulkro,” He murmured with a genuine kindness. Pleckoo felt something moist and warm as Worm’s end kissed his ear, then whispered inside it. “The gods are merciful, Pleckoo. Renounce the Termite and save yourself.”
“No!” screamed Pleckoo. “I am a warrior for the One True God!”
Worm whipped away as the dark portal’s slit parted again. The night wasps crawled out of it, marching towards Pleckoo with their mandibles scissoring, their antennae lashing, and with wings of actual fire that turned the palace into a scalding kiln. Two wasps cut through the threads of the capsule, then grabbed Pleckoo by each ankle. He saw his reflection in their massive eyes as they crawled backwards, hauling him up the stairs, and bouncing him over its rough steps and through to the Place of Endless Suffering. His first breath inside was a painful intake of a poisoned air that scorched his nostrils and burned his lungs. His back roasted on the scalding sand and he felt a thousand blisters bubbling and popping.
“Save me!” he screamed as his agony intensified. “Save me, Hulkro!” But his words had become flames that scorched his throat. Strange, knotted antennae were probing his face when he realized a roach was behind him. Sitting on the roach’s head and driving it was his Demon Twin and Eternal Tormentor. The roach clamped its mouth over Pleckoo’s head as it pinned down his arms with its front claws. A swarm of smaller roaches scurried over Pleckoo’s naked body and stripped off his skin in ribbons. As his blood cooked on the sands, Pleckoo convulsed in an expanding agony. He felt his head being chewed off his neck.
Blackness, then silence.
Pleckoo felt himself reforming, his hearing returning, and realized he was kneeling on the saddle of an insect crawling on fine, golden sand. Around him was a meadow of dew-spattered clover and fragrant poppies that swayed overhead. In the air he sniffed the bright scent of honeyed turpentine. The insect halted, rose up, and Pleckoo slid off its back. The sky turned a rich and deep violet, and a billion stars popped and glittered from its vault.
Pleckoo got to his knees to look at the insect that had rescued him. It was a termite with lacy wings twice as long as its body. As it climbed up a stone, it glowed warmly when it reached the top and splayed its wings. Its head took on a human aspect.
“Pleckoo,” said Hulkro in the voice of a gentle father. “You have been tested and won. Never forget these visions. Be haunted by them, always, as they haunt all on the Slope and keep them in poverty, and in endless labor and as prisoners of their castes.”
“Great Wood Eater,” Pleckoo whispered. “Why must you always test me?”
“It is a privilege to be tested.”
“Will You test me again?”
“You shall be so fortunate.”
Pleckoo was quiet.
“Lord . . . have I seen the worst of it?”
“Certainly not.”
Pleckoo slumped.
“You will fall even further and see much worse . . . before you fulfill your destiny as my Most Favored Son and Holy Emperor of All the Sand.”
Pleckoo watched as the Termite grew and grew, His glow becoming brighter and blinding. He flew from the pebble and flapped his way up to fix Himself in the night sky. A cloud like a soft mattress floated over His face as He transformed into the Waxing Moon, the symbol of Holy Promise to the Faithful. A figure rose from the mists of the cloud, clad in a golden armor. Pleckoo wept to see Tahn, raising his hand and warmly smiling.
“Go forth now, Pleckoo, and fulfill your destiny,” Tahn said.
“Why did we lose the war?” Pleckoo asked.
“You lost a battle. You will win the Holy War. You, Pleckoo, will bring the truth of the One and Only God to all peoples on the Sand, to the Seed Eaters, the Beetle people, and this benighted Dranveria and beyond, where millions are condemned by ignorance.”
“And the Slope?”
“The Slope must be destroyed. To make way for the Pure Land.”
“I will go forth,” said Pleckoo as tears flowed in a stream from his eyes. “My God and my Prophet have not abandoned me.”
“We have not. Never forget that, no matter your hardships.”
The cloud curled around the moon and Tahn disappeared.
Pleckoo’s relief brought a gush of tears that thickened and turned into a rising dome around him. He was drowning, trying to break out of the water, when he coughed so hard the dome burst and he fell facedown in its puddle . . .
Pleckoo rose up out of the receding water, gasping for breath. He felt a throbbing, bleeding bump on his forehead.
Looking around him in the darkness, he realized he was back on the Sand, under the mallow plant where the ant, maybe alive, was still tethered. A crack of thunder warned him of continuing rain.
“I have not been abandoned,” he said to himself as he climbed back into the mallow plant, smiling as he recalled his vision and Hulkro’s words. You will fall even further and see much worse . . . before you fulfill your destiny as my Most Favored Son and Holy Emperor of All the Sand.
Chapter 4
The Meat Ant Princess
Pleckoo swayed and bobbed as he clutched at the stems of the uprooted mallow, while the wind-blasted rain surged and ebbed through the night, the day, more nights, more days. His fingers had burst through his steering gloves and were bloody from sinking their nails into the stem he clung to. He chanted Hulkro’s names throughout the storm, and when the wind eased and the rain weakened, he fell into an uneasy sleep, waking often to shiver and return to his chanting.
On the sixth day, he woke with a start when he slid out of the plant and fell through its tangles to the moist ground. The rain had stopped. As a brittle, pink sunshine faintly glimmered on the wet sand, he felt a little bit of hope. Turning to the ant, he saw a weak twitching of its antennae at the roots. She was alive, and somehow, so was he. After another long and rainy night he was strangely wracked with thirst, and fell to his knees to suck up some water trapped between sand grains. Next he wondered what he might eat to fill his grumbling stomach. “Feed me, Lord Termite,” he prayed aloud. Looking back at the ant, he wondered if he might be able to ride her; then he looked at his ragged steering gloves, which were stained with the green of the mallow’s stalk. He sniffed his fingers to find only the plant’s musky stink.
Slowly, he approached his mount, which lowered her antennae after she found an oily remnant of kin-scent. He climbed to the top of her skull and probed the roots of the antennae with the shreds of his gloves. No response. I will have to sit here and wait until the sand dries, and see if she can sniff out a trunk trail, he thought. But which direction would she take me? Or will she wander off on a food find? Using his sword, he cut the tethers to the mallow and resumed chanting.
The Prophet of the Termite God Page 3
