The Oarsman

by Zubin Mathai

The soldier grabbed the princess and pulled her under her body just as the avalanche of sand and pebbles came crashing down. A few pebbles smashed into the soldier and she cried out in pain. She also had an odd thought, how the sharpness of that pain was more preferred than the dull ache of the poison so slowly eating away at her insides.

  When the dust settled, the two ants were in a little space in the crevice, where pebbles had angled in their tumble to lean up and create a pocket of survival. Sand, rocks and twigs had filled every other section, and if the ants were just an inch in any other direction, they would have been crushed.

  Staring down at the princess trembling beneath her, the soldier took a long moment to relish a smile. The aches in the soldier’s body, from where the pebbles had hit, was now the ache of honor. It took a few seconds for them to return to the moment and understand the situation. One second they were in the crevice between the giant boulders of the rocky outcrop, with the beetle stuck and wiggling, the wasp diving in for an attack, and the next they were huddled down and buried by darkness.

  They could hear an angry buzzing above — even though it was muffled by inches of sand — as the wasp flew off. Then there was only silence.

  “We cannot stay here,” said the princess. She had stopped her trembling and moved out from under the cover of the soldier. The soldier heard a calmness, a seriousness, in the tiny one’s voice, and gone was the squeaking excitement of before.

  Surveying the piles of sand surrounding, the princess knew what had to be done. She turned to the soldier and pointed out exactly where she needed to dig, and then asked for her to commence. As the soldier moved forward and began kicking with her legs to clear the way, the princess felt odd. She could feel the muscles beneath her wings wanting to churn, but she calmed them for now. There was a stirring inside, a rising serpent of instinct taking over, and it was giving her the voice to command.

  As the soldier kicked and shoved, creating a tunnel to the surface, the aches from the pebble hits started to fade. For a moment she still felt good, for here were roles being played, she as the soldier guarding and the princess as the ruler giving orders. But when the pebble aches fully drained, so did the soldier’s honor, for she could see the princess standing, sure and confidant, as if she no longer needed a protector.

  A shaft of sunlight broke free from the surface to stab the darkness for the pair. As more of the opening was cleared, more light rushed in, until it was as bright as the outside.

  “Wait,” said the princess. “Listen for the wasp.”

  The soldier was already listening, and did not need for the youngster to tell her to do what came naturally. Her antennae were already primed, waiting for vibrations in the air or on the ground. When the air and ground sent back only stillness, she spoke, “It is safe, princess. The wasp seems to have gone.”

  “You go out first. Make sure the way is clear. Then I will come out.” As the princess spoke, she could feel that serpent of instinct rise higher, and it was telling her to ensure her own safety.

  The soldier poked her head out of the opening and scanned around. She saw a mound of sand, from what she had dug out, and also some pebbles and half-buried twigs. Up above was the washed-out blue of a sky housing the relentless sun, and, fortunately, nothing else. There was no wasp visible, and no buzzing felt anywhere. The Soldier nodded back towards to the princess to let her know the coast was clear.

  As soon as the princess stepped out into the daylight was when the attack happened. The wasp was standing right there, and the princess immediately saw it. Only the soldier was blind to it, for it had been standing behind some twigs off to the right side, the side where the soldier had no eye.

  An angry buzzing was the briefest of warnings before the wasp shot up then dove down for a killing blow. It went straight for the princess, thinking her the easy target, and it angled its abdomen to thrust its stinger. The soldier spun as soon as he felt the vibration, and he saw the blur of yellow and black and dove to protect the princess, but it was too late.

  She had already saved herself. With a millimeter to spare, she jumped to the side and began flapping her wings in a panic. This time, she flew upwards, not one inch, but ten, before falling gently back down to the sand. Both the wasp and soldier were surprised, with the wasp smashing to the ground and impaling the dirt.

  The soldier got over her shock more quickly, returning to her role of protector to run forward. She tackled the wasp’s midsection, a half-blind soldier against a killing machine three times her size. They both tumbled to the dirt, kicking up a wall of dust as they grabbed, chomped and stabbed at each other.

  Getting in a few good bites, the soldier was using her cunning, honed from months as a battle-hardened fighter. She stayed slow until the last millisecond, leading the wasp’s stinger and then bending away at just the last moment. She jumped onto pebbles and dove in from above, to bite and cripple the wasp’s wings.

  The wasp fought with less cunning, but made up for it with its size and rage. It stabbed wildly, knowing that all it needed was one good hit for this battle to end with death and dripping satisfaction. It tried to fly, but its now-injured wing made it difficult, so instead it hopped upwards, gaining the advantage of perspective, to dive back down with the sharpest of weapons.

  The inevitable happened. The size difference was just too much, and it got the poor soldier pinned to its back. The soldier was trying to regain her strength and focus, pushing with all her might, but it had no effect. Just then, the soldier could feel the pain of the poison in her abdomen burning like lava.

  “You are, surprisingly, a worth opponent,” hissed out the wasp as she tried to flap the pain and anger from her injured wing. “I usually kill ants by the dozen in the time I have been fighting you.”

  The wasp then curled its abdomen, bringing the stinger up to the good eye of the soldier. “Do not feel shame, ant. I have devoted my life to killing your kind. You are simply outclassed and outfought here. There is no honor for an ant to die with a wasp’s stinger through their head.”

  During the battle, the princess had been standing off to the side, watching with wide eyes as her soldier fought valiantly. The instinct rising inside was whispering for her to leave, to save herself, to accept that this worthy knight was sacrificing itself for her. She flapped her wings again, and knew they were getting stronger by the second, but then she stopped. Seeing the soldier, with the wasp’s stinger about to snuff out its life, was just too much.

  “Fight!” she yelled as loudly as she could.

  The princess’ voice gave the soldier a burst of strength, and it pushed back against the wasp even more, but it was too strong and the stinger hovered right there, eclipsing everything else in the soldier’s view.

  “I am your princess! If you have honor in your service to me, then you will obey my rule. I am telling you to fight! I am telling you to live!”

  The pain suddenly receded from the soldier’s abdomen, washed away by the princess’ commands. Replacing it was clarity. She scanned the surroundings as time slowed, and saw the end of a twig nearby. It lay beneath a pebble propped up precariously by already shifting sand, and the soldier knew that was her only hope. She writhed with all her strength, the entire strength of a life aching for regained honor, and managed to kick out.

  Sand collapsed and a pebble rolled, and the motion was enough to distract the wasp enough for the soldier to crawl away. The pebble smashed into the wasp to send it flying. Unfortunately, it was not enough, for even though stunned, the wasp was uninjured. “A worthy attempt,” said the wasp, clenching all her muscles to stop the scene before her from spinning, “but I am sorry it had no real effect.”

  Just then a flurry of dust was kicked up and a tornado-force wind ripped through the area. Sand and twigs were hurled aside like they had no mass, and a shape eclipsed the sun. Wings and a sharp beak touched down inches from the wasp, and just as suddenly, it was snatched up in the talons of a jay. Its blue shimmer caught the light of day, and
it towered over ants, and then nodded to them.

  “Thank you for stunning the meal,” said the jay. “I’d normally not go for wasps, for they sting a few times before succumbing. I’d usually go for ants like you two, but I had my fill of tons of dead ants back there, at a sea of flat stones, and I’ve been feeling sick ever since.”

  And just as quickly as the jay landed, it took off with another tornado of dust, with the limp wasp now hanging from its beak. The soldier and princess were stunned at the scene, and all the princess could do was run to her friend to help her up. The soldier winced and gasped, and two of her legs went to her side, and the princess could see she had been stabbed.

  The princess was too focused helping the soldier to the shade of a nearby bush that she did not notice, far up above, a wasp in a jay’s clutch, sting the bird once, then twice, then be dropped to the ground far away, severely wounded.

  “How did you lose your eye,” asked the princess. The sun was now at its zenith, and the land seemed quiet in honor of the heat. No sound nor motion, except the soldier rubbing her side and the princess beside, pushing sand against her injured companion to make her comfortable.

  The stab from the wasp fight was not life-threatening. The soldier would survive. But, as she rubbed the wound, she chuckled inwardly. A brief glimpse of all that nasty poison in her draining out from the hole flashed through her mind, and she thought perhaps that’s what her worker friend meant by a daydream.

  As the princess looked after her, piling more sand under her head, the soldier felt smaller and smaller, as if the sand was a mountain and she was as tiny as an aphid. The soldier could not help thinking of her friend once more, that worker who always looked up to her and needed her help, and she hoped that little ant was okay.

  “My eye was lost in a great battle almost a year ago,” said the soldier faintly. She rubbed the socket where her eye used to be, as if recalling times when she could see as perfect as any other ant. “We were attacked by another colony. We were outnumbered, for those other ants had an entire army. In that battle I saved the queen, your mother, and escorted her to safety.”

  Added the soldier, after moving away some of the sand under her head so she could feel the hard ground again, “and even though I saved her life, your mother, my queen, never forgave me for surviving.”

  “If I were to start a colony, it would be a proud and strong one,” said the princess. “I’m not sure I would have room for injured soldiers like you.”

  She gasped as her last sentence surprised her, and moved a leg to cover her mouth. “I’m sorry,” said the princess. “I’m not sure why I said that.”

  The soldier nodded and showed no reaction at all on the outside. She stood and bowed before the princess, keeping her head down as close as possible to the dirt.

  Even though the princess offered that apology, she knew exactly why she had uttered those words. She was feeling the serpent of instinct rise higher within. It was telling her of her role, and just as the soldier had a role of honor and protection, so she had a role of ruling over a colony whose reason was to flourish.

  They rested through the night and into the morning, and then set out to continue their journey. They marched south, hoping that within a day or two they could clear the giant, rocky outcrop and be able to locate the worker and beetle again.

  Even so early in the day the sun beat down and dried any moisture that collected at night. The ants had to rush to drink drops from the underside of leaves before they disappeared, and they continued that way, from bush to bush to avoid the direct sun for as long as possible. Under one bush they could see a splash of color up ahead and approached a caterpillar on the ground. It had a buffet of fallen leaves around it, and yet, oddly, it was eating none of them. It’s shiny green and black body just lay stretched out and still.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” moaned the caterpillar. “Do you need to get by?”

  With the slowest of motion, as if all its energy had been sucked dry, the caterpillar inched off to the side at the pace of a snail.

  The soldier grabbed the princess and moved her behind her, but the princess immediately stepped to the front again.

  “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” asked the princess.

  “Don’t mind me,” said the caterpillar, taking the leaves around her and piling them over her head.

  “Tell us what is wrong,” said the princess, in a voice that was getting increasingly confidant and commanding with each use.

  The caterpillar looked up and then sighed out, speaking with a lifeless monotone. “I come here to eat these leaves, for these bushes have the last green ones in this area, but I have no appetite. I am too busy worrying to eat.”

  When pressed for more information, the caterpillar filled these new strangers in. She spoke of her friend, her dearest friend that she grew up with, that one she hung from leaves with or joked with into the night about all the less colorful like slugs and worms. She said her friend had gotten into danger, and was now trapped somewhere and could not get out. The caterpillar was worried sick about her.

  “We can help you,” said the princess, and immediately the soldier scoffed at the idea, pulling the princess aside to talk some sense into her.

  “My highness,” said the soldier, “are you forgetting that we have to get back to the other side of that mountain and find our friends? The worker and beetle might be in danger.”

  “Soldier,” said the princess sternly, “I am feeling something inside me, a churning of thoughts and ideas, and as they spin they spit out conclusions. I am beginning to know what it means to make decisions. This caterpillar needs our help. Just look at it. It will not survive another day if this worry is not taken from its mind. To rule, to create a strong colony, a queen knows to help those around who are not a threat to us, for then nature is balanced and provides for us.”

  The soldier said nothing for a moment, she only bowed and rubbed the spot where he eye used to be. She thought of her friend again, the worker, and tried to stop imagining all the horrors that might be befalling her. The soldier then checked her abdomen, and could not feel any poisoned pain.

  “I am only here to serve you, my princess.”

  They kept to the shade by running from bush to bush, with the caterpillar finding a quickness to its step now that there might be help for its friend. As they made their way, the soldier looked up and noticed each bush get paler and paler. Greens were replaced by pale greens, and then browns, as leaves that burst with life on the first few bushes, now had their life squeezed dry.

  More dust was blown up against these latter bushes, and the ground was only dry sand, no more patches of dirt. The could see the next bush far up ahead, but between here and there was a corridor of open sand, and a fierce wind was blowing through it.

  “The lands have gotten so dry so quickly,” said the caterpillar as it looked across the dusty patch of desolation. “I used to play here as a youngster and everything was so green.”

  The caterpillar then raised one of its tiny legs, and the princess knew exactly what it was offering. She nodded to the soldier and the soldier took the caterpillar’s leg then offered one of its to the princess. She took hold and they inched forward, connected and on a mission, into the blowing dust.

  A few steps were easy, but the wind grew stronger, hurling grains of sand and little twigs past them in a blur of motion. They could see a tumbleweed approaching, and to them it was a rolling mountain, and they panicked and separated, letting go of each other’s legs.

  In the blowing dust, visibility disappeared, and the princess could see just vague outlines for where the soldier and caterpillar were. Instinct suddenly told her to fly, and without a thought she churned her wings and took off. For a moment she flew above the chaos to the clear air, but then she panicked, never having been so high up. She dropped back into the gusting dust and looked down at her body to see that it was nearly black, no more white translucence, and felt so calm.

  Just as sudde
nly as the wind had started, it dropped to nothing, for they had crossed the corridor and were on the other side. They paused for a moment to check on themselves and each other, and the silence surrounding seemed so deafening. Ahead of them was a deep chasm filled with prickly burrs, all collected and deposited there by the fierce wind.

  The caterpillar made it easily across, for its body length was wider than the chasm. When it offered to help the other two across, they both refused, each for their own reasons. The soldier jumped across, making sure the princess was looking to see how strong she must be to so easily clear the obstacle. She held out her leg for the princess, but the princess smiled as gently as she could, and then flew across instead.

  Here the bushes were mostly dried out, with leaves with no luster. Up at the top of the bush the caterpillar led them to, they could see its friend. There was a silken cocoon on one of the higher branches, and the princess and soldier could see a small hole in one side and movement inside. The cocoon was not shiny and white, not lit up by the midday sun, but was brown and dry, caked with the blown dust that was covering everything here.

  The caterpillar immediately flopped to the ground and moaned out when it saw once more the predicament of its friend. Inside the cocoon there were legs furiously kicking, and the princess could see them through the hole. She immediately commanded the soldier to head up and free the prisoner, and the soldier nodded and began climbing the bush.

  Not being as strong as her worker friend, the soldier wasn’t sure what she would do once she reached the cocoon, but she had received a command from her princess, so she had no choice. Once at the right branch, she held on to it with her jaws and began kicking at the cocoon with her legs, shaking free some of the sand encasing it. She also crawled onto the cocoon and began biting at the opening, trying to widen it.

  With her help, and the kicking from inside, suddenly the cocoon broke open and the caterpillar’s friend burst out. The motion knocked the soldier loose and she fell through the air and into the sand below with a painful thud. The soldier picked herself up and dusted herself off just in time to see a splendid sight.

  The butterfly that had emerged was colored the most delicate of blue, like the sky turned into a cloth and wrapped around the sun. She flew on gossamer wings ringed with silver the color of the moon, and with a body furry as animals, and yet as shiny as a rippling lake. The butterfly relished her freedom, and was not too quick to land. She flew down to send breezes of greetings and affection to the caterpillar, but then flew up as high as she could, letting out a giggle the entire way.

  The princess marveled at the butterfly, how light and carefree she looked. Looking at the caterpillar, and then at the butterfly looping and diving, fluttering like a living feather taken by the wind, the princess could not fathom how these two creatures were kin. She also saw the soldier ahead of her, limping from its fall, with its one missing eye and a wound on its side, and could not help fluttering her wings.

  She took off to join the butterfly, and they danced in the air together for seconds that felt like hours. The princess laughed like she had never laughed before, and not the immature laugh where nothing mattered, but the laugh of life, of seeing that every last thing did indeed matter beyond understanding. It was a laugh of instinct breaking free to say a destiny was determined, and that destiny was as free as flight.

  The butterfly and princess landed, and when the soldier saw the princess’ expression, she knew. She knew what was coming next. She immediately ran up to the princess and knelt on all her knees before her, bowing her head and lowering her antennae.

  “Take me with you, my highness,” said the soldier. “I can be your guard. I can raise you an army to protect yourself.”

  The smile drained from the princess, and she stepped forward to lift the soldier to her feet. Even as the soldier towered above her, she still caressed her giant head with her front legs.

  “I have to say something you do not want to hear,” said the princess, and the soldier looked away. “It is not for me to decide. It is the fire of instinct burning in my tummy. Just as you kneel before me, I kneel before it. It says my destiny was never to follow you and the worker to find a new colony. It says my destiny was always to start my own.”

  The princess flapped her wings — wings which so recently could barely get her off the ground — and she circled above the soldier as slowly as she could. When the soldier would not look up to her, she called down to her friend.

  “My soldier, there is no shame in this. Your honor is intact.”

  Those words stung the soldier, deeper and more painfully than the wasp ever could, for them being uttered had the opposite effect of their intention. The words brought thoughts to the soldier of all the times she did not save this princess.

  “Even with one eye, I am still an asset,” cried out the soldier. “This wound on my side is nothing. I will heal soon… please.”

  The princess could near bear to hear the pain dripping from this once-proud soldier’s voice, and so she flew up higher and higher. She circled a few more times and was ready to fly straight and true, fly to where her instinct was to lead her, but before she did, she called down once more to her friend.

  “Until I leave I am still your princess, my soldier. You are to obey my command. I am telling you that honor is still in you, and to keep it there go and find your friend, the worker. I am no longer a member of that old colony, but you two are the last of it. Find your worker friend and keep her safe. Help her find the new home she seeks.”

  The soldier could not bear to look up, but she knew the princess had left, for the air was still and silent, and it cut like a knife through her abdomen, awakening the ache from that terrible poison resting there.

  A leg brushed her head, and she looked up to see the caterpillar and butterfly standing next to her trying to comfort her. The caterpillar even found a barely green leaf and broke off the brown parts with its legs and was offering it to the ant — for how else could insects show affection to each other. The soldier took a nibble, but then dropped the leaf and her head to the sand.

  “Your little princess friend said you have another friend? A worker?” asked the butterfly, and the soldier silently nodded.

  “Then come, let me repay the favor for your having helped free me,” said the butterfly. “Let me take you up so you can get a better view. Let me help you reunite with your friend.”

  The soldier said nothing, did not even move. But she also did not resist when the caterpillar came over and lifted her to place her tenderly on the back of the butterfly. The butterfly slowly churned her wings, catching the light like a trophy to the moment, and told her caterpillar friend that she would soon be back.

  She floated upwards and the soldier held on with little effort. At first the soldier did not care if she stayed there or tumbled through the air to her death. She did not care for the heat rising around, tickling like whispers, or the breezes against her body. The butterfly swooped and turned, did loops and dives, all to try and impart the thrill of the flight to its passenger.

  The soldier lifted her head for the first time, and felt the wind against her face. She could feel it on both sides, over her good eye and even in the place of her missing one. It started to feel nice, like a cool stream running over her, a cleansing, and she offered a faint smile back to it.

  eleven

  Seeing