The Illustrated PROPHETS OF THE GHOST ANTS: Part One, The Roach Boy

by Clark Thomas Carlton

  When their morning’s work was finished, Frinbo opened a barrel of honey fermentation. “Drink it up,” he shouted as he dipped in a paddle and slurped up a golden drop. Soon the priests would be conducting a somber ceremony, but for now, all were raucously excited to try on the Fission robes of polished silk that had arrived from Mound Venaris. The priests laughed as they shoved each other aside to gaze in a full length mirror, and boasted about who looked more menacing and godly.

  *

  Anand’s mother, Corra, sat outside her tent using her muscular arms to grate a barley seed. Like all from her Britasyte tribe, she had nut-brown skin and black eyes. She had broad cheekbones and blue-black hair that fell down her back and coiled on the sand. Corra watched as her neighbors gathered for the march to the stadium, all of them pacing with fear. She sniggered as she handed Anand a wrapped meal to take.

  “Why do you laugh, Mother?” he asked.

  “These Cajorites are so afraid,” she said. “If they only knew the pleasures of wandering, they would flee this awful ant mound.”

  “Shhh!”

  “No, Anand. They should hear me. If they are chosen to leave, they should welcome it as a blessing.”

  “What will you do all day? Come with us.”

  “I can’t. I’m not a subject of the King and Queen.”

  Yormu whistled for Anand to join him as Keel accounted for every member of every family. A sheriff prodded all to march to the stadium on the mound’s shady side. They trudged through the rings of shanties, up through the shacks, then past the hovels and houses. Gathering castes of the upper rings turned away as the middenites passed, and parents covered their children’s eyes.

  Anand’s caste was the first to reach the stadium and climb the endless flight of stairs to the pen reserved for them. Inside the pen were two chamber pots that would be filled to overflowing by the end of the day. Anand and his father were pushed to the corner, closest to the pots. They had no slits in the slats to view the events. Anand found a small opening, which allowed him some vision after he worked it with his knife, but the displeasing sight was of more ragged laborers arriving with their caste brethren.

  As the sun climbed, the crafting and trade castes took their seats on benches, followed by merchants in boxes with cushioned chairs. The soldiers appeared, standing in sections according to rank. The generals arrived on mounts of giant soldier ants that had been roused from their dormancy just for the occasion. Commander General Batra was the last to arrive on the tallest ant of all.

  Bands of drummers preceded a train of carrier ants that stretched as far as the eye could see. At its end were the royals, mounted on draped and bangled ants. The entire crowd rose and bowed as Sahdrin and Polexima dismounted to the platform with the Mushroom Thrones. Before she took her throne, the queen took Pareesha from her nurse and presented the baby to the crowd. They fell to their knees and bowed their heads before the newest descendent of Goddess Ant Queen.

  Whirling plumes of fragrant dust floated across the arena then drifted away to reveal the priests. They wore towering miters and their sparkling robes flapped as they walked on stilts. Their cluster parted to reveal Dolgeeno, raising his arms to command that all rise in prayer. “Blessed is our mound of Cajoria. Blessed are all the United Queendoms of the Great and Holy Slope.” His distant words were passed to the people by the caste of voice relayers. Some of these men changed the words into the dialects of the workers.

  As was typical of any assembly, the first events were the public punishments. Carrier ants dragged a wicker cage into the arena. Inside it were two naked, sobbing humans. Dolgeeno shouted over the anguished screams of the prisoners.

  “Before you are Nerinda, daughter of a soldier, and Dulfay, a son of the grain fermenters. They are guilty of copulating outside of marriage and caste restrictions. Their punishment is death by bathing.”

  When Dolgeeno nodded his head, the fathers of the couple approached the cage and cut the ropes that bound it. The cage fell apart and their unscented children were exposed to ants.

  The boy and girl tried to run, but the ants were far quicker. The girl screamed out prayers when she was caught. Ants sliced off her arms and legs, leaving her to bleed to death. When the boy was captured, his head was lopped off. Smaller ants scurried under larger ones and licked the ground for the human blood. As the ants left with pieces of the executed to dump in the midden, their fathers trudged off, covering their heads with the Red Cloths of Shame.

  “Let their deaths be a lesson to all,” shouted Dolgeeno, and a great cheer went up from the crowd. Anand shook his head in disgust.

  The sacks containing the lottery chips were dragged to the sand by trucking ants. At the same time, Princess Trellana was carried out on a palanquin to face the people. She was dressed in a garment made from the rare fuzz bee and her lacquered hair had been sculpted into an idol of Goddess Ant Queen.

  The sheriffs delivered the lottery sacks to the foreman of each caste. Every subject of Cajoria was to take an envelope and wait for Dolgeeno’s cue. Sun was dying when the last sack was delivered to the midden workers. It made its way to the end of the pen, where Anand took the very last lot among the hundreds of thousands distributed.

  Dolgeeno held up a bit of a bortshu leaf. “The gods have decreed that the glory of the Slopeish people should be extended on the Sand. Those of you who draw yellow shards are the new pioneers, blessed with the privilege of accompanying Princess Trellana on her trek to establish a new colony.”

  Dolgeeno tore his leaf and the envelopes were opened. No one dared to cheer the discovery of a red chip but thousands began weeping when they, or someone they loved, received one of yellow. Yormu collapsed with relief when he saw his lot was red. He turned to watch Anand who tore his envelope in two. Nothing was inside it.

  Anand looked at his father and shrugged. He tore one half in quarters and looked in its corners. He did the same to the other half. A yellow bit fluttered as it fell. Anand looked at it, this piece of a dead flower, and knew everything had changed.

  Chapter 7

  The Night of Inseminations

  Anand was elated. At last, he would be on a journey, even if it would be with the loathsome Cajorites of the Slope. His joy vanished when he saw Yormu collapsed against the pen and fighting back tears.

  “It’s all right, Dad,” he whispered, putting an arm around him. “In a few more fattenings of Moon, I can live where I want.”

  Yormu nodded and felt knots in his throat. But I’m afraid for you, he yearned to say.

  Those who had yellow chips made their way down to the arena, in order of caste hierarchy, where they lined up behind the princess. Sun was nearly dead and bleeding when it was the outcastes’ turn. Anand was disgusted to see that both Keel and Tal had drawn yellows lots, ensuring that they would be running the new midden.

  Moon was high in the sky and beginning her descent when the workers were allowed to leave. Anand was sleepier than he had ever been in his life. Keel called his name, and, as he turned, the chamber pots from the pen were thrust into his and Yormu’s arms. “Heard you were thirsty,” Keel said and laughed.

  Corra had set out an excellent supper, but her son and husband went straight to their mattresses.

  “Did you both pick yellow?” she asked, in an all too quiet voice.

  “Just me,” Anand said.

  “Where? How far?”

  “All we know is that it is north of here.”

  “The North is riddled with wasps and lair spiders. And its trees are full of cannibals.”

  “We were told they sent a scouting party, most of which returned alive.”

  “Most? I heard fifty workers died. You are not going,” Corra sputtered.

  “I thought you said it was a blessing.”

  “Not for you! Tell Keel that in six moons you will be a Britasyte man who can leave the Slope and join your real tribe. There’s no point in going to a new colony for just a few moons.”

  “There are no excepti
ons. I will have to wait for the idols keeper to give me my sixteenth chit. Then I can leave.”

  “We will secret you away, have you on a caravan to the Carpenter’s lands in a matter of days.”

  “If I run away, they’ll kill Dad. If they catch me I will be killed. It’s all right, Mother. I will learn the way so our clans may follow. At last I will have tales of my own wanderings.”

  Corra suddenly felt like the shining Sun as she looked at her boy. Nearly every day of his life she had told him he was destined for something great. Now she was certain she was right.

  “When do you go?”

  “Some time after the next rain, when the ant queens fly for insemination.” Anand sniffed the air. It was heavy with the scent of roaches. “You’ve had a visitor,” he said.

  “I have,” she answered through a grin.

  “Are they nearby?”

  “They will be soon, and just in time,” she said with a knowing smile. “A gathering of all the clans! You’ll never guess who’s being honored.”

  *

  Seven days after the lottery Anand woke to the happy sounds of a spring thunderstorm. For the castes that labored outdoors, rain meant a holiday spent inside. By late morning, the storm had passed. The Slope’s poorest inhabitants avoided pools of deadly mud and salvaged their shelters.

  When it was dry enough, the royal messengers fanned through the mound’s flats on their mud skates. One of them came to the midden’s edge and rubbed a cricket leg to summon Keel and the caste’s idols keeper. The two were given important information to pass to the rest of the caste.

  Terraclon was out of his shanty and making mud mushrooms with some midden girls. They were about to eat them when Anand stepped out and offered some proper food, a pickled butterfly egg. The girls looked at him and ran off screeching, “Pollution! Polluted food from a polluted boy!”

  “Have you heard the message from the royals, Ter?”

  “The ant nuptials are tonight,” said Terraclon, his brow ridged with anger. “Princess Trellana’s consort has left Mound Kulfi. Once he arrives, Fission takes place. Those who are leaving must gather their possessions and the tools of their duties. That would be you, I guess.”

  “Why are you so sour?”

  “I’m not sour,” he said, taking Anand’s offering. “Just wondering why you were so stupid as to pick a yellow lot.” Terraclon’s father poked out from their shanty to scowl at his son, who dropped his head and turned to his home.

  “He doesn’t want me eating this,” Terraclon said, and lobbed the egg to Anand. He took it back to his own shelter, wincing as he heard his friend being beaten.

  “The ant queens mate tonight,” Anand told his parents as he entered.

  “Then you’ll be leaving soon,” said his mother. Yormu strained not to weep as Corra looked at the rug they were sitting on. It was a skillful depiction of the evening’s ritual as observed by a rug maker from a lifetime ago.

  “I have always wanted to see leaf-cutter nuptials,” Corra said. “But we have someplace to go while the Cajorites are distracted.” She went to a nutshell chest that reeked of roach scent.

  Yormu held his nose and watched his wife and son lay out the oiled leaf ponchos they wore for secret travel. After night fell, they would sneak off to visit the Roach Tribe, the filthiest people on Mother Sand.

  *

  That afternoon, Sun emerged, harsh and angry, to dry the sand and bake the mud to a hard surface. When He yielded to His sister, Moon, She rose in a cloak of colored mists.

  Below, in the Cajorites’ mound, the blinding castes prepared for the exodus of the virgin ant queens, which were oily and stank of mating-scent. Since their last molting their wings had unfurled to full size. Outside the chamber masses of their sterile sisters roamed the tunnels, anxious to push the queens out to their destinies. The night sky was buzzing with swarms of drones from the other queendoms that were eager to inject their semen.

  The royal family, dressed in evening silks, took seats near the edge of the mound’s opening where a feast had been laid out. “Do we really have to be here?” Trellana asked her parents after yawning. She was disappointed that there were no guests from the nearby mounds to see her gown or her latest gaudy coiffure.

  “Trellana, this may be the only time you ever witness ant nuptials,” said Polexima. “It should be a thrilling spectacle.”

  “I should just die if I were to miss out on any thrills,” said Trellana, and yawned again.

  Drones landed and began clawing at the mound’s opening, attempting to get at the virgin queens. The priests used poles to smack these drones and send them back to the sky. Far below, the blinders slid open the gates and the virgin ants emerged one at a time. Nooses attached to tethers were thrown around the joint that connected an ant’s head to its middle. As the virgins passed, they were splashed with luminous paint. At the other end of the tethers were the human anchors that would retrieve and cage the queens once they had been inseminated.

  Cries went up as the first virgin appeared, her wings fluttering above the mass of sterile escorts. She launched herself in the air, her wings a blur of light as she soared into the cloud of buzzing drones.

  A small drone reached her first. While continuing to fly, he clenched her abdomen with his mandibles and rubbed her underside with his legs to inject his seeds. Other drones crowded onto the tether and it came down in a slow crash, sending the priests running. Slowed by her excessive costume, Trellana was caught by the rope and knocked to the carpets. Her coiffure collapsed when it was dragged through a platter of grub dip. Polexima laughed as servants ran to clean off the princess.

  “Mother, please!” Trellana screeched.

  “It’s funny, darling. Why don’t you show our subjects that you can laugh at yourself?”

  Trellana let out a harsh mock-laugh. She stomped off to her chambers with her handmaidens and a hundred grooming ants crawling after.

  Outside the mound, near a pond marsh, an occasion of far less seriousness was getting under way.

  Chapter 8

  The Roach Tribe

  It had been several moons since Corra had seen her people. As she and Anand got farther from Cajoria, her heart grew light and she sang. She walked briskly, but Anand trotted ahead, turned, and shouted, “Come on, Mother, hurry!” They followed stones and plants, which had been smeared with roach secretion, until they reached the edge of a pond marsh.

  From out of a thicket of flowering clover a massive insect appeared. It was shining and greasy and glimmered with moonlight. It could not fly, but its red-brown body was sheathed in armor-like wings and its triangular head was handsome, like a mantis. It rose up on powerful legs as the shorter of its two pairs of antennae probed Anand for roach-scent.

  Slopeites thought roaches were hideous, but Anand saw them as the most beautiful of insects, and this one’s legs had the thick femurs of a strong rider. Atop the roach was a human, who looked high and tiny as she halted the insect by tightening its reins, which drew together its larger antennae. Auntie Glegina dismounted and ran towards Anand to hug him. He saw that she still shaved her head in mourning for the husband who had been murdered years ago. Her arms reached up for Anand from under a cape thick with roach scent. Glegina’s head was topped with false antennae wrapped with blue ribbons.

  It took Anand time to get used to the smells of his mother’s people. When his aunt kissed him, he smelled the acrid breath that was typical of the tribe. It was something he would stop noticing once he had eaten their foods. Glegina hugged him too hard.

  “Auntie Gleg, you’re squeezing the life from me,” he gasped.

  “Only because I’ve missed you so much,” she said in Britasyte. “Do you want to take the reins?”

  Excited, Anand climbed up the roach which had been fitted with a rope ladder. Sometimes a roach took tumbles and they could not be righted, but they were more exciting to ride than ants. It was a strain to wrap thighs around the protrusion on the natural saddle at the backs
of their heads, but roaches were fast and nimble and could be steered with yanks on their mandibles.

  As they drew closer to the camp, Anand could hear the drums and group-songs of the tribe. The drumming made his heart race until it thumped in unison with the beat. The roach reached the peak of a grade and the riders looked down. Spread out on a dried mud flat and lit up by glowworms were the combined clans of the Britasyte tribe. Surrounding the camp were three corrals with roaches of various sizes. The insects were tethered to each other in elaborate webs.

  The clans danced around a cage of lightning flies whose abdomens flashed with the beats of drums. Aphid punch tinctured with Holy Mildew was passed to the crowd by Da-Ma, the revered Man-Woman who scooped it from a cauldron. He/she wore a festival costume fashioned from the spotted wings of the green moon moth and the protuberant codpiece of a Slopeish general. His/her eyes widened as Anand and his mother approached.

  “Now comes a boy of mixed blood,” Da-Ma said, giving Anand the scoop. “Drink deeply, son of two tribes, for your journey commences.”

  “What journey has commenced?” Anand asked, blinking at Da-Ma, who had already entered the spirit world. Several times Anand had drunk the spirit of fermentation, but he had never ingested the black mildew of the Slopeites’ priests. Anand turned and looked at his mother, who nodded her approval. The punch was sweetened with juice from the phantom berry, but it was bitter all the same and he shuddered as it scorched his throat. His mother sucked but a sip, as she was responsible for returning her son.

  A moment later Anand had the sensation that his head had dissolved and blown away with a breeze. His feet grew into the ground like a tuber and his arms were sprinkled with stars. Feeling strong and weak, grounded and dizzy, he heard thoughts from the insides of the heads around him. Paralyzed by panic, he was sure that his quick-beating heart had switched places with his tongue.