Samantha spun around and saw Lieutenant 7725695P glancing up at the wet patch. “I… I… I think it must be water seeping from the top,” she said, as calmly as she could.
“I think that’s highly unlikely,” he said, spraying some musky perfume that made Samantha wince. The scent reminded her of her first encounter with the ants, and she now realised what it signified: danger. “It’s never happened before,” the lieutenant added. “It must be something else.”
She had to think of something quickly. “Maybe it’s a reservoir of mud.”
“That’s possible,” he said, thoughtfully. “Still, I think we should have our engineers look at it. Better to be safe. We don’t want the whole anthill to be flooded.”
Samantha agreed to inform the engineers. The tunnel was her responsibility, after all. The lieutenant told her to be quick. There was a storm front passing through this evening and the tunnel should be reinforced as quickly as possible. Samantha promised she’d hop to it and told him not to worry; it was as good as done. “Hurry up then,” he said.
Samantha hurried toward the factory, glad to get away from the snooping lieutenant, at least for a minute. Informing the engineers, though, would be the last thing she would do. If they discovered Mad Jack’s tunnel, it was as good as over. There was no other choice. She would have to escape tonight.
As a ruse to keep the lieutenant’s curiosity at bay, she had several ants prop the wet ceiling with support beams. She wanted it to look as though the engineers were doing something about it. Later, at rec-break, she told Mad Jack about the change of plan.
“I thought we’d agreed not to speak until we rendezvoused,” Mad Jack said, popping his head out of the hole in which he was digging. It was a diversionary hole, in the unlikely event a guard wanted to know what he was doing.
“Things have changed. Lieutenant 7725695P is suspicious of the wet patch. We’ve got less than twenty-four hours before they discover your tunnel.”
Mad Jack glanced up at the evening sky. “I don’t like it,” he said. “Not a bit. Those clouds mean rain. It’s too dangerous. The tunnel could collapse. The river could swell. Anything could happen.”
“We’ve got no choice. It has to be tonight.”
Mad Jack relented. He told Samantha everything was as ready as it could be. He wished her luck and confirmed their rendezvous point, just past the first bend in the river. Samantha then left to join Lizzie and the security guards at the water’s edge.
Lieutenant 7725695P, she saw, was eying her suspiciously.
THAT NIGHT SAMANTHA didn’t bother going back to her lodgings. She spent the time on the factory floor tinkering with the spinning wheels. She was going to miss this anthill, even though she was no more than a glorified prisoner. She was going to miss the chanting, the sector manager, the evening rec-breaks, and, dare she even think it, even the Silly Season. Still, she wasn’t going to dwell on it. There was a destiny with her name on it she needed to find.
She waited until the absolute last minute before confronting Lizzie. Although it went against her better judgement, she was going to offer Lizzie the chance to escape with her. If she wanted to stay in the anthill, then that was fine. She wasn’t going force her to do something she didn’t want to do.
Hoping her friend would come to her senses, Samantha summoned her courage and crossed the factory floor to Lizzie’s office. Lizzie was going over the monthly accounts behind her desk. “I’ve got something to tell you,” Samantha said, shutting the door.
“I know, Samantha,” Lizzie said, without a trace of surprise. “You’re planning on escaping tonight. We know about the tunnel.”
Samantha was so shocked she stood frozen to the ground, unable to reply.
“Lieutenant 7725695P has been on to you for a while now. He knew you and Mad Jack were getting up to no good. When he saw the water dripping from the roof of the transportation tunnel today, his suspicions were confirmed. He told me everything. As we speak, Mad Jack is being taken to a prison cell. It’s over. Your plan has failed.”
The office door opened and in walked Lieutenant 7725695P, smiling. He grabbed Samantha’s arm and told her that she was under arrest until their splendiferous leader, the magnificent Procruste Ant, decided on her punishment.
Samantha jerked her arm away. “Take your filthy claws off me,” she said, more furious at her friend than with the lieutenant. Then to Lizzie: “Why are you doing this? You know this isn’t my Bee Dream.”
Lizzie’s expression momentarily hardened. “You know your problem, Samantha? You fail to see that Bee Dreams are just that, dreams. Heavens above, you still believe in Beebylon.”
Samantha was momentarily taken off guard. She suddenly recalled the old actress in her dream. To bee or not to bee, she had said. “And you know your problem?” Samantha said, her body tensing. “You’re so frightened of becoming a butterfly and living your destiny that you can’t stand to see anyone else living theirs. What kind of a caterpillar are you?”
“Enough!” Lizzie said, and thumped the table with a clenched claw. She began spraying musk-scented perfume in the air. She sprayed and sprayed and sprayed, until the whole bottle was empty. “Take her to her room!” she said to the lieutenant. “Now!”
Lieutenant 7725695P grabbed Samantha’s arm, but like before she shook him off. He escorted her to her room without a word. Waiting until she had heard the key in the lock, she threw herself onto the bed and buried her face in the pillow to muffle her cries. It did practically nothing to muffle the chanting down the corridor, however.
When she had cried herself out, she pulled the sheets up over her head in despair. Everything she had worked for was in ruin. She wondered what punishment she’d receive, and what would happen to Mad Jack. She felt guilty at that; if it weren’t for her, he wouldn’t be locked up in some prison cell.
Mercifully, sleep came and smothered her pain in a blanket of darkness.
SAMANTHA WAS REVISITING an old forgotten dream, buzzing through an endless field of crimson roses, when all of a sudden she heard loud raps on the door and shouting outside. It sounded like one of the guards on nightshift.
Still a little groggy, she slipped out of bed and into her overalls. The rapping ceased and keys rattled in the lock. The door flung open.
“Miss Samantha, quick!” the guard said. His feet, to her surprise, were wet. The whole corridor was flooded. “To the surface!”
She felt the hairs prick on the back of her wings. There was a pungent smell of musk in the air. The chanting had fallen eerily silent.
“The storm’s hit!” the guard said. “The river has swelled. Water’s pouring down the escape tunnel. We don’t know which one of Mad Jack’s holes to plug.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her into the sodden corridor. Why the ants didn’t get Mad Jack from the prison cell instead, she didn’t know. “Come on! We have to leave. The anthill’s flooding.”
Samantha was now fully awake. “We have to get Lizzie,” she said.
“She’s already on her way to the top,” the guard said, pulling her after him. “She’s with Lieutenant 7725695P.”
They came to the busy intersection with the main corridor. The water was deeper there, almost halfway up Samantha’s legs. A multitude of black ants sloshed past in maddened panic, wading toward the stairs and spraying musk-scented perfume. Many were carrying larvae on their backs. As she tried to join the mayhem, Samantha was buffeted to and fro in the scramble to exit the anthill. She tripped and fell to the wet floor. The guard helped her to her feet, but when he took her arm, an hysterical ant spraying musk elbowed Samantha in the back, as if he didn’t even see her, and she fell, face first, back into the water. She lifted her head to breathe. All she could see was splashing water and a flurry of legs. She heard the guard shout to get up, then felt him jerk her arm and drag her along the corridor.
Eventually, they managed to scramble to the surface with the horde of ants. Atop the anthill, to her surprise, the guard shackled her wings. He apolog
ised as he did. He was only following orders.
Samantha didn’t reply, taking the moment to catch her breath and survey the scene. It was just before dawn and the sky was dark and angry. Heavy raindrops splashed to the ground. Lightning flashed in the east, briefly illuminating the surrounding area. Like black lava from erupting volcanoes, an inestimable number of ants streamed out of the adjacent anthills into the nearby forest, taking their young eggs with them. Lightning flashed again. The river, to her horror, was dangerously high and about to burst its banks.
Urged on by the guard, Samantha trudged down the face of the anthill to the river. Although most of the ants had fled into the woods in search of higher ground, a good number, mostly guards, had rushed to the riverbank. Several of them, including Lieutenant 7725695P and Lizzie, were filling sandbags and passing them along a chain to reinforce the bank.
“You have to show us the mouth of the tunnel,” Lizzie said as Samantha approached. “Mad Jack jumped into the river before the guards detained him. You’re our only hope of saving the anthills. They’re all connected. Once one is flooded, they all are.”
Samantha pointed to a group of seven holes near the water’s edge. One of them was the mouth. Samantha, Lizzie and the guards rushed over to inspect them. The water lipping over the bank made it impossible to tell which was which. They simply had no choice. They would have to plug each one.
Samantha began scooping dirt into the sandbag Lizzie was holding. The lieutenant and the other guards did likewise. Lightning flashed again. It fizzed overhead, striking a nearby pine tree, which burst into flames and toppled into the river. Several of the guards panicked and ran for the woods. One slipped and fell into a deep pit, his screams easily heard over the deluge.
There was no time to help him. Water was still lipping over the top of the riverbank. Although she felt she was fighting a losing battle, Samantha kept scooping dirt into the sandbags for another ten or so minutes. Lightning flashed and thunder roared. Rain pelted down. It was then, as she bent down to scoop up more dirt, Samantha saw Lizzie’s legs. They were free.
“I think we might just do it,” Lizzie said.
Samantha stopped for a moment to assess the situation. The holes were steadily filling with dirt and the sandbags reinforcing the riverbank were holding back the water. To her surprise, their efforts were actually starting to make some headway. Samantha returned to filling the sandbags, and at that moment saw something truly terrifying.
“Look out!” she yelled, pointing upstream. Where the pine tree had toppled into the river, part of the riverbank had now begun to sink in and give way, triggering a terrible chain of events. As she’d previously suspected, Mad Jack’s excavations had weakened the surrounding riverbank. The ground could barely sustain its own weight. It collapsed under the rush of water, creating a chute through which the river poured, sweeping all before it.
In a matter of seconds, the watery avalanche struck Samantha and Lizzie. They didn’t even have time to turn and run.
PART THREE
AS THE WATER carried Samantha downstream, her first reaction was to try and fly, but her wings were tied. She struggled against the swirling current, going under several times, knowing she didn’t have much time. Leaves and logs and branches swept past her. She snatched at a large twig, but an eddy pulled her under and by the time she’d resurfaced, coughing and spluttering and gasping for air, the twig was well out of reach.
Samantha was now desperate. Lizzie was nowhere in sight and the cold water was sapping her energy. She was finding it more and more difficult to keep afloat. Then she went under for the seventh or eighth time. She fought to the surface, but her head bumped into something hard, preventing her from rising any further, as if she were in a flooded tunnel and her head had just hit the ceiling. She kicked her legs and flailed her arms in panic. Her head hit the underside of the object again. She needed to breathe. She needed to get out.
Suddenly, another underwater eddy tossed her around and around. She tumbled head over stinger so fast she didn’t know which was up or down. Then, like something inedible, she was spat to the surface. She was about to go under again when she saw a long, twisting shadow not too far from her, a branch. She reached out and clung on to one of its lesser twigs, gasping and coughing as she floated downstream with it.
After a moment or two, feeling a little better, Samantha searched for her friend. Apart from the occasional flash of lightning, it was incredibly dark. There wasn’t much she could see apart from the branch. Several times she called out for Lizzie without reply, then gave up. It was no use. She just hoped and prayed that Lizzie had found purchase on a log or branch like she had done. Then, summoning her last reserves of energy, she dragged her exhausted body out of the water to a higher and drier section of the branch. Safe from the rushing water, she nestled into a small hollow and collapsed, utterly worn out, into a deep slumber.
Hours later, when she stirred, she discovered that the branch had become stuck on a sandbank. The river was now calm and serene. The skies, too, had calmed, blue with a dash of white, as if the storm had never happened. She tried flapping her wings, but they were tied. Along with finding her friend, cutting the rope was one of the first things she would have to do.
She climbed down to the end of the branch to where it rested on the riverbank and called for Lizzie, scanning the bending shoreline. Debris was everywhere – logs, branches, and what appeared to be a tattered portrait of Procruste Ant. Just as she was about to call again, Samantha heard someone shouting her name. She spun around to see Mad Jack coming toward her, waving his spade.
They met halfway, both glad the other was safe, and quickly exchanged their version of what had happened during the night. He had escaped arrest by jumping into the river, just before the storm hit, and had been waiting at the river bend as they’d planned, digging some holes to pass the time.
“Then I heard you shout for Miss McCoon,” he said, “and saw you near that log.”
Samantha wanted to know if he’d seen Lizzie, but Mad Jack shook his head. “We need to find her,” she said, her wings sagging. “But first of all, I want this rope off me.” She turned to show him her shackles. “If I can fly, I can cover a lot of area.”
Mad Jack obliged, but the water had caused the knots to tighten and they were impossible to untie. The rope was also too tough for his maws. Even the edge of his spade couldn’t cut it.
“Maybe we should go back to the anthills then,” Samantha said, sighing. “If Lizzie washed ashore, she’d probably do the same.”
“I thought we were going to the lake,” he said. “Isn’t that why we escaped?”
He was right, of course. She was on a quest to find Beebylon and her Bee Dream. Everything had happened to point her in that direction – the sunflowers, the ants, the storm – it would be foolish to go back. She had to keep following the omens, and maybe along the way she would find Lizzie, too. Their destinies were somehow linked, that she could feel, and the lake had something to do with it.
WITH RENEWED ENTHUSIASM, she began the slow trek downstream. She kept to the riverbank for most of the day, weaving around the flotsam and jetsam tossed by the storm, scrambling over, and sometimes under, the larger logs and pieces of wood. Mad Jack would often stop to dig a hole. Around noon, she found a flywheel lying in and out of the river. Next to it was a sign: THROUGH SEWING COMES FREEDOM, confirming her worst fears.
Suddenly, the sandy bank rippled beneath her feet. She jumped back. The sand caved in at the spot where she’d just been standing, and Mad Jack popped his head out. “Where are we?” he asked, blinking in the bright light. “Are we at the lake?”
Gazing downstream, Samantha shook her head, not knowing how far they were; she couldn’t see further than the pines. “You almost scared me half to death,” she said, her heart still fast from the shock. “Why are you tunnelling, anyway?”
Mad Jack shrugged, holding his spade. “I figured it’d increase my chances of finding honeyroot,” he s
aid. “Don’t worry about me. As long as you keep to the riverbank, I’ll keep up.” Then he disappeared in a spray of sand.
The trek was long and difficult. For the rest of the day, Samantha kept to the shadows of the pines, always in sight of the river. Mad Jack was somewhere underground and there was still no sign of Lizzie. She was beginning to wonder when, if ever, she would get to the lake. Then, lost in thought, she stepped out of the shadows and into the warmth of the late afternoon sun. There, before her very eyes, cupped in a forested valley, was a sea of blue.
“The lake,” she whispered with awe.
It was just as she had imagined. For a wonderful moment, she believed she had stumbled upon the fabled Gardens of the Great Mother. She saw pine-covered slopes. She saw the sunflower field. She saw a waterfall spilling down the face of a cliff, and at its base a magnificent rainbow arching from shore to shore. If Beebylon existed at all, then it surely existed here.
The lapping waters drew her attention to her feet. A bottle of ant-perfume had been washed ashore. She picked it up and read the engraving: LIZZIE McCOON. SPECIAL CITIZEN SECOND CLASS. Her antennae stiffened. She quickly scanned for her friend. Only pines, frustratingly, and a sign nailed to a trunk, old and faded and difficult to read. She didn’t even see Mad Jack. She called for Lizzie but there was no reply, only the twitter of a blackbird somewhere in the treetops.
The perfume bottle slipped from her grip and she held back a tear. She should have listened to Lizzie. She should have stayed in the anthill, even if it wasn’t her Bee Dream. No destiny was worth the death of a friend.
At that moment, she heard a mumble, like someone wakening from a deep sleep. “Lizzie?” she asked, facing left and right, then left and right again. “Where are you?”
The voice got louder. “Samantha! Up here!”
Samantha Honeycomb Page 10
