The Oarsman

by Zubin Mathai

Without even giving them a word in edge-wise, the worker rattled on with a renewed vigor of their need to head east, for she now knew, beyond any doubt, that there there must be a home for her. She also mentioned the expansive, dark and unlit place close by that looked like they would have to cross, and the coyote nodded and began leading them away, saying he knew how to help.

  As they walked, the soldier stayed mostly silent, only piping up once, amidst the workers excited squeaks, to mention that the princess had left. The worker barely registered it, but the beetle was saddened, musing that one less of their party would see their wondrous adventure to the end.

  By the time they reached the expanse that the worker had seen from up top, dawn was beginning to creep across the land. With the rising light, the group could now see before them a barrenness. Scrubland gave way to swirls of brown sand, rolling dunes, and the occasional boulder or cactus standing defiant. To larger animals, it was a mile-wide patch of parched land, but to the insects it was a sprawling desert.

  Seeing the featurelessness up ahead brought the worker back to reality. Even with the new drive to continue east, her timidity was still whispering its fear into her heart. She put one tiny foot onto the sand, paused to find some courage, then pulled her foot back quickly.

  “Before she left,” said the soldier, staring solemnly ahead and letting danger-scenarios play out behind her one eye, “the princess said that I must escort you to a new home. It was her last command to me, and so now it is my mission. Little friend, if you want to go this way, then I will have your back.”

  The beetle saw the worker’s hesitation and chimed in with some wisdom too. “We have not seen a colony for you two to join since we began, so if crossing this desert is a means to finding one, then I will gladly follow. I agreed to come on this adventure of yours, and as beetles all know, adventures have a beginning, middle, and end. If you stop here, then this adventure would only have a beginning and middle.”

  Absorbing the support of her friends, more real than any whispers, the ant stepped forward onto the sand again. This time she could feel its coolness vibrate up through her body and tickle her senses.

  “This is the longest I’ve been away from my mom, and she’ll yell so loud when I return,” said the coyote, still with the pink flower dangling from his mouth. “I can’t join you guys, but I brought you to this spot for a reason.”

  They coyote placed the flower gently on the ground, and then bounded over to a mound of dirt. There was an opening to a burrow there, and the coyote shoved his head in and let out a little howl. Silence and an echo came back, and the coyote perked up his floppy ears to listen. He than ran over to another burrow and thrust his head in for a follow-up howl.

  An avalanche of squeaks and chirps filled the air and an explosion of brown flowed out from the burrows. The shapes scurried in all directions, like a wave running dry, until all that was left was the empty land again. One more brown shape popped up from a close-by burrow and began chirping angrily at the coyote.

  The worker had never seen such a strange animal. It was barely the size of a small stone and hopped towards the coyote on hind feet springing with staccato. Its tiny forearms dangled, a long tail with a patch of fluff at the end floated steady, and its small black eyes were the shape of dew drops.

  As it continued to chirp angrily at the coyote, the coyote turned to the insects and spoke, “My little friend here is upset, but he owes me a favor, so let me plead your case.”

  Kangaroo mice were proud, never accepting their place in the size-order of mammals, and so the little animal hopped forward to sternly look the insects over. It then spoke out in as proud a tone as squeaking could be, “Which one is the injured one?”

  The beetle slowly raised one of its legs, and the mouse stared at him, taking in the shininess of his plump body. Then the mouse turned to lord over the ants, stopping his long feet right next to them, just shy of stepping on them.

  Turning to the coyote, the mouse spoke, “I will take your friends across the desert. The injured one can ride on my back, the other two will have to walk beside. I promise I will try not to eat them — even though the fat beetle looks tasty — just like you didn’t eat me that day you saved me from the bobcat. And then, we will be even.”

  The coyote said its goodbyes and then tried awkwardly to hug things as tiny as bugs. It left its new friends with wishes of luck before bounding back, with the flower dangling from his mouth, and wondering if he’d need two extra flowers for staying out so late. The beetle then climbed atop the mouse, the soldier and worker readied for the march, and the group of four set off into the unknown.

  The group trudged on for hours, across shifting mounds of sand and in between wayward tumbleweeds running from the wind. The beetle held on for dear life, bouncing up and down with each long hop of the mouse, while the soldier and worker ran to keep up. By noon they were all feeling the effects of the heat and the worker ran her legs over her jaw, trying to soothe the ache of its dryness.

  “Is there any water in this area?” she asked.

  The mouse stopped after its next hop, and its long feet spread out the sand into two little craters. “One of my seed caches is buried close by. I can find it. Whenever I’m thirsty, I nibble on seeds and it helps.”

  As the beetle climbed down and the mouse went off to search, the worker saw a pattern in the sand. She went over to look, and the soldier cautioned her not to stray too far. Swirls in the sand stretched off into the distance, and the worker could sense that these were tracks of some strange animal.

  From the top of a small dune, the mouse squeaked out for them to join it. The soldier went first, running up the hill fast enough so that the shifting sand did not swallow her up. The worker was a bit more cautious, even though the solider kept yelling at her to quicken her pace. The first few steps were solid, but then the sand started sliding.

  It all happened so fast, first the ground was moving and then the worker tumbled and disappeared. The brightness of the day was replaced by the darkness of burning sand from all directions. She felt like she could not breathe, and tried to spit out the grains that had been shoved into her mouth. Moving her legs did nothing, and soon she could feel the sand crushing more and more.

  She felt a vibration from up above, and from its thumping she knew it was the soldier and beetle digging furiously with tiny legs. She felt the sand shift more, squeezing tight like a deathly hug, and then she suddenly felt herself pulled into the fresh and parched air. The soldier was there, brushing dust from her body, and only nodded when the worker hugged her in thanks for saving her.

  “This is a foolish place to be, for little bugs like you,” said the mouse, shaking its head slowly and wondering why it had agreed to this silly task.

  To answer the judging look from the giant mouse, the worker only crested the dune and jumped down the other side, never once breaking eye contact.

  The mouse found its spot and dug down beside a little rock to unearth a collection of seeds. “I get water from seeds and usually tasty little insects, especially round beetles like this one,” said the mouse, crunching on a few seeds and smacking its lips noisily for the sand all around to hear.

  The beetle, in his wise ways, broke the tension with a joke. “My humor is as dry as these lands, mouse friend, so I will only say that the fatness of my body is deceptive. Everyone knows I’m too crunchy to be tasty.”

  That might have been a chuckle behind those mouse-eyes, the soldier was not sure. But the mouse did pass around the remainder of the seeds, and the ants and beetle chewed them to extract moisture. The worker thanked the mouse for sharing its food, but did not want to dawdle, so she encouraged the beetle to climb back on board and for the mouse to resume leading the way.

  They trudged through the afternoon and into the evening, and the heat of the day sank into a coolness. Stars came out as the group settled down for the night, and the worker looked around, at the beetle and soldier, and wondered what they saw when they looked up
to the heavens. She looked at the mouse, lying on its back with its legs up in the air, and was happy that at least another could see the points of wonder above.

  The next morning at dawn the sun kissed away the shadows and set the ground back to amber tones. The worker rolled over to stand, and saw those strange tracks in the sand again, as if the odd, long animal had passed them in the night without even noticing them.

  As hours melted their march in the sunlight, and time dripped to a slowness, the worker wondered if they were heading in the right direction. She asked the beetle and he assured her they were still heading east. The proud mouse scoffed a little, sending a snort of flying dust, for it thought it should have been asked that question, and not the fat passenger on its back.

  The worker had not seen a petal on the wind in ages, and she wondered if another would ever come this way to whisper secrets. The wind was alive in this desert, for at random sand was picked up and pelted, and loose tumbleweeds tumbled at the slightest agitation. With the thought fresh in her mind, the worker looked up and saw a splash of color. At first she thought it was a daydream, but she knew her eyes were as sharp as the sand grains prickling her feet.

  She began chasing the petal dancing high above. “Do you see it?!” she yelled, not even caring if her friends answered.

  Right away the soldier gave chase, and the beetle asked the mouse if it wouldn’t mind keeping up too. The mouse was the first to overtake, and came to a screeching, sand-skimming halt in front of the worker. The worker paid it no mind, however, and darted between its legs to continue her chase.

  The petal dipped and spun, as if its dance partner was the sunlight filling the air, and the worker giggled at the show. She wished she had wings like other lucky insects, for then she could fly and land on the petal, to be taken away to the home to the east that she knew was awaiting.

  By the time the soldier caught up, the worker had already tripped over an obstacle and tumbled to the sand. When the worker looked up again, the petal was gone, leaving no trace or whispers against the blue. The mouse and beetle hopped in, and the mouse immediately looked worried. It swished its tail, as if feeling the air for danger.

  “We have to go,” it whispered.

  The worker followed the mouse’s stare, looking down at what she had tripped over. There were angled lines cut into the sand, edged by two straighter lines that stretched off into both distances. The worker could feel the sand beneath her more compressed than elsewhere.

  Before she could ask the mouse what was wrong, she started feeling a vibration. It was a high pitched whine melded with a low rumble, and it was powerful enough to vibrate straight through the worker’s body. She shot to her feet just as a metal monstrosity appeared over a dune. It was the size of a boulder and had a human animal caged within. The metal beast kicked up sand and noise as four black discs spun beneath it, and it was heading right for them.

  As the buggy stamped more tracks into the sand, the worker dove out of the way, and the soldier ran to help her up. The mouse’s first instinct was to turn and run, to abandon its charges, but the beetle yanked on its ears to get it to stop. The mouse turned and charged straight for the ants, and the worker’s eyes went wide. The mouse did not slow, and the thumping of its feet was lost in the thunder of engine noises all around. At the last minute, the soldier jumped and pulled the worker into the air, and both landed on the back of the mouse next to the beetle.

  Now all three bugs were holding tight to the hairs of the mouse, as another and another buggy arced over the horizon and slammed into the ground like mountains falling. The buggies spat burning heat and clouds of dust, as the mouse hopped left and right, ducking under wheels or hopping out of the way at the last second.

  The worker curled her jaws around the mouse’s fur, wishing she had eyelids like animals, so she could close her eyes and pretend none of this was happening. The jarring of the mouse’s hops and the body-crunching vibrations were taking its toll, and the worker no longer cared about pink petals on the wind. She just wanted this ride to end and wanted to never cross the paths of humans ever again.

  As quickly as the dune buggies had appeared, they disappeared, taking with them their sickening vibrations and spraying fumes towards the next dune. When the scene had calmed, the mouse crouched to let the soldier and worker down, and it could see the panic still quivering in the worker’s little face.

  “Living out here can indeed be challenging for bugs like you,” said the mouse. “In this place, whenever you see tracks in the sand — of any kind — the best option is always to run. If you do that, then I won't have to save you again.”

  They crossed the remainder of the buggy tracks and picked up their pace, trying to get far away quickly. Soon, the vibrations turned to a murmur and then disappeared completely. The soldier asked if the worker was okay, and the worker nodded and smiled, but still stepped over to walk closer to her big friend.

  At the next seed cache, dug up with a flurry of kicks and pawing, the mouse this time shared the bounty without any smart remarks. The group settled down as day turned to evening, and the beetle regaled the group with stories of its youth and adventures through forests and rock fields far to the west. At the tales, the worker blurred her eyes and painted images came singing; they sang of the mysteries of these lands, of so many places yet to be seen, and into the safety of those imagined pictures the worker’s shyness and fear were not invited.

  Morning came to kill the cold night winds, the sun rose to wash the land in yellow, and the group set off again. An hour into their march, the worker, ahead a few strides, came across a disturbance in the sand. She recognized the flat tracks from before as from those human machines which spat and sprayed sand, but she also other tracks. The curved tracks she had seen before were there, and they split the sand like an empty, twisting river. There were also peppered dots across the other tracks, as if bugs had passed this way recently.

  She remembered what the mouse had told her, to run whenever she saw any tracks in this desolate patch of land. She turned to see the soldier catching up, and the mouse and beetle not far behind. The worker paused, wondering if she should speak up, even as her lone antenna, unnoticed by her, started pointing in one direction.

  A patch of sand ahead and to her right exploded, and suddenly a rattlesnake shot out from where it had been half-buried. It uncoiled with the force of an exploding gun and snatched the mouse out of the air mid hop, causing the beetle to tumble from the mouse’s back with yelping thuds.

  The beetle ran past the stunned soldier and grabbed her to pull her along to where the worker stood. For a second they stared, as the snake had the mouse in its mouth and started to widen its jaws, readying to swallow. The soldier was the first to snap out of it, and she yelled at her friends to run. At first they were still frozen, but then she shouted louder, and they all began scurrying away.

  They ran for a few seconds, feeling the hot air against their faces and bodies, and feeling the crunching sand beneath their churning legs, and then the beetle stopped. A few steps ahead, the soldier and worker stopped to stare at him with wide eyes.

  “We cannot just abandon that poor mouse,” said the beetle. “She has escorted us all this way and has kept us safe.”

  The soldier grabbed the worker’s leg, readying to pull her away, and turned to speak to the beetle, “No. We can leave her. We are bugs. We are no match for a snake.”

  The beetle turned to look at the worker, and could see the worker staring behind him to the mouse and snake. To the worker, all she saw was danger slithering into death, scales and piercing eyes, fangs sharpened to points, and a dark, shadowy throat. The worker just shook her head no at the beetle and trembled, aching to put this entire dry patch of land behind her.

  Gulping away its fear, the beetle turned his back on his friends and began marching back to the snake. When the worker started reluctantly following, the soldier grabbed her to hold her back.

  “In this world there are not always sa
fe endings. You are not always the hero who can never die, and that is true especially for ants like us.”

  The worker stared at the beetle marching bravely, all alone, and then broke free from her friend’s grasp to follow. The soldier dropped her head, sighed out, and began following too.

  “Listen snake,” said the beetle as he approached, “I know that little mouse is a tasty snack to you, but could you do me a favor and hold off on eating her?”

  By now the worker and soldier were there standing beside, and the worker could see the look of terror on the still-alive mouse’s face, with its black eyes wide like moons. Three fangs had missed the mouse and one had pierced its skin, but still it lay limp in the snake’s jaws, its instincts freezing its body as if it were already dead.

  The snake was quite surprised to be spoken to by a lowly fat beetle, and not only that, but a beetle backed-up by two tiny ants. The snake dropped the mouse and curled its body around her so that she could not escape, and then answered the beetle.

  “Well,” hissed out the snake, “this is quite interesting. I have never been requested to drop a meal by an insect. Why should I not eat this mouse?”

  Darting its eyes, left and right, the beetle looked for a plan. It knew it was wise, having walked these lands for months, from the time it was a baby to now, and had seen and encountered so much. It knew of trees that could whisper through their roots, of rocks that walked at night with the winds, and of birds that might land anytime for a chat about the luster of clouds. Yet still, nothing was coming to his mind. No plans were appearing.

  The worker was the first to feel it, a dull vibration that turned into a distant murmur. She tapped the beetle’s side with her lone antenna, and the beetle could suddenly feel it too. They both knew exactly what it was.

  “Oh, you’ve misunderstood me sir,” said the beetle to the snake. “I don’t want you to not eat the mouse, just to hold off for a bit.”

  “And why should I?” asked the snake.

  The beetle thought for a moment, and there was the plan he had been waiting for, offered up by the sun above and sand below.

  “Because,” said the beetle, “that mouse has been the bane of my existence, threatening to eat me every chance it gets. So I want to relish this moment. I want to see it squirm and die.”

  “Oh, in that case,” said the snake, opening up its jaw to swallow the mouse.

  “But wait!” shouted the beetle. It took a few steps forward, as the distant vibrations grew louder, and raised himself up to his full height. “Before you eat the mouse,” continued the beetle, “perhaps you could back up into the brighter light so I can get a perfect view.”

  As the vibrations got louder, turning into a throaty rumble, the snake smiled and asked where. The beetle looked to the right, to the source of the rumbles, and told the snake to back up a foot, which it did. Snapped out of its focus on the beetle and mouse in its clutch, the snake finally felt the vibrations and looked down to see track marks running across the sand.

  It looked up just in time to see a buggy baring down, arcing sand into the sky and over its caged human grinning obliviously. The snake unfurled the mouse and tried to slither away, but it was not fast enough. Springing back to life and coiling its strength, the mouse hopped free with giant bounds, just before the rattlesnake was fully flattened into the sand.

  The mouse did not want to wait around to see if the snake was alive. It just ran forward and grabbed the beetle and both ants, then threw them on its back before bounding away. It hopped as fast as it could, its long tail swaying almost like the snake that had just been squeezing it, and brought the insects to the edge of the arid land. There, it deposited them tenderly to the ground and said its goodbyes, saying it needed to get back to its burrow to rest and heal.

  It hopped away a few feet, and then paused to turn and look at the beetle and ants. For the first time, its black eyes seemed to show something other than dull or angry reflections, and the mouse returned to crouch down near the beetle. It angled its head so that its whiskers could give the beetle’s head a gentle pat.

  “I think I like you the best,” said the mouse, before heading back into the desert and over a nearby dune.

  The beetle turned and smiled at the ants, then ran over and hugged them, for some reason wanting to feel the contact of other life in his legs. When he let go of his friends, his smile was still there, stretching his jaws to the widest. “I think that is enough excitement for today. I am ready to continue this adventure, but hopefully with a little section of uneventfulness.”

  It came quickly. First there was a flitting of vibrations that the worker could feel, and then a blur of brown and black as the giant shaped crawled over. The soldier reacted quickly, grabbed the worker and pulling her off to the side. When the soldier saw what it was, a huge tarantula, she dragged the worker further away.

  The spider went straight for the beetle and grabbed it in its jaws, and the worker screamed out. The spider took a few steps away, and only when the worker screamed again, wiggling against the vice-like hold of the soldier, did the spider stop and turn.

  “I am so sorry, my ant friend. I tried. I tried to head east as you said. I crossed the desert and there was nothing to eat. I came to these grasslands and still nothing. I am so hungry.”

  The spider turned and began to crawl away again, but the worker yelled out for it to stop. Looking up to his friends, the beetle writhed against the jaws of the spider, and knew it could not escape. He then tapped the tarantula’s head with his broken leg.

  “I have a bit of a dry sense of humor,” said the beetle, “but now that we’re in the not-so-dry lands, maybe my humor might get me out of this. Look at me for a second…”

  The beetle angled his body. “Black,” he said, and then shifted his body to the left. “And now it’s blue,” he said. He repeated this a few times, even as he felt the spider’s pincers tighten. “Is not the light of this world fascinating?”

  The tarantula ignored the beetle and looked up at the worker. “I’m sorry,” it said, “I swore to you I don’t eat ants, and I won’t start today. I am not a killer, but your friend can be my friend for a while until he can feed me.”

  With that, the tarantula crawled away, back into the desert and blazing sun, as the worker tried to chase. The soldier was holding tight however, and would not let her budge, and even began pulling her away into the tall grass. When the worker began kicking and screaming, even trying to bite the soldier, the soldier had enough and threw her to the ground.

  “Listen, friend,” said the soldier, “you are now my charge. I was given orders by our princess to keep you safe and to bring you to a new home. That is what I will do until I succeed or die.”

  When the worker jumped to her feet to run after the spider and beetle, the soldier got more forceful. She grabbed her friend in a tight hug and dragged her away.

  “No!” shouted the worker. “We can still save him!”

  “Stop it!” said the soldier. “We are ants. That is a spider. It is certain death. We will not go back”

  The soldier ran for a minute with the worker in her grasp, even as the worker continued to bite and kick at her. When they were finally a safer distance away, and the worker tried biting her good eye, the soldier had had enough and threw the worker to the ground again.

  “Fine!” yelled the soldier, “Go. Go after your friend and try and save him.”

  The worker jumped up and began running, but in her frantic state, her lone antenna would not cooperate. She ran for a few seconds, thinking she would emerge from the grass back to the desert, but instead she found herself face-to-face with the soldier again, having run in a circle. She tried again, but the grass blocked her and clawed at her face, and she did not know where was West or East, or anything anymore. She ran and ran, and each time she ended up back in front of the soldier, until she could not take it anymore and collapsed in a heap at her friend’s feet.

  For the first time, that moisture that wanted
to come to the worker’s eyes all this time, finally did, and the worker began crying. It was a strange sensation to her, and even the soldier was confused, for she too had never seen water pouring from the eyes of an ant.

  The worker felt so alone, and she tried gathering the dirt around her for a blanket, but everything was so blurry that she could not see. No daydreams came to comfort in this blurriness, only more and more water falling from her eyes. She felt herself drying up, hollowing out as if nothing was in her body and heart anymore, and then she dropped her head to the ground to feel its scratchy dryness and hoped to disappear.

  Sadness can point the way, just like unbounded bliss, came a whisper on the wind. Through her tears, the worker looked up and saw a smudge of pink above the amber of the grass and washed-out blue of the sky. She rubbed her eyes with her front legs, clearing her tears, and saw, as clearly as ever, a pink petal dancing on the wind.

  “I see it too,” said the soldier, looking up, quite perplexed, for she thought she had just heard the petal, or perhaps the wind, speaking.

  thirteen

  Winds