The Lost Rainforest

by Eliot Schrefer

  Mez runs to Chumba and has her teeth around her sister’s nape, as if to carry her to safety like a little kitten. The triplets watch her strange behavior like it’s a game of catch-the-frog, their rapt eyes going back and forth and back and forth.

  Aunt Usha’s tail was already flicking, but now it thrashes and jabs, sending wet leaves flurrying about the clearing. Then suddenly she is on all fours, teeth bared. “Enough! Here’s what will happen: Chumba, you will not return to the den.”

  “No!” Mez cries.

  Mez feels Chumba’s warmth next to her, and then nothing. Her little sister has gotten up to stand on all fours. Though Chumba looks calmly into Usha’s eyes, as though she has nothing to fear, all the hairs on her calico body have pricked up. “As you wish, Aunt Usha. I will go,” she says resolutely.

  “No!” Mez cries again.

  Usha silences her with a simple look. “You cannot always speak for your sister,” Usha says. “Let Chumba make this decision herself.”

  “She doesn’t need to go!” Mez says. “Please don’t do this—she needs me!”

  Mez pulls back in shock as Chumba whirls on her. “Stop it!” she cries. “Stop trying to protect me—let me help you!”

  There’s a secret message in Chumba’s eyes. The others wouldn’t see it, but Mez knows her sister so well. I know it’s you. But you have the best chance of surviving anyway. Let me be the one to be exiled. “But no cub can survive on her own,” Mez whimpers.

  “I wouldn’t call spending all her time hiding behind your tail ‘surviving,’” Mist says.

  Aunt Usha casts a frustrated glance at the night sky. “I’m tired of being lied to, and we need to hunt this night, or the triplets will go hungry,” she says. “This conversation is over. Chumba, you stay here, and we will go. By the time we return, you must be gone.”

  “Come on,” Chumba whispers to Mez. “Don’t fight this anymore. You’ve got the best chance of the two of us. My nights have always been numbered, anyway.”

  Tears stand in Mez’s eyes. She bares her teeth at Mist, at Usha, unsure where to direct her anger.

  She tries to memorize the way Chumba looks right at this moment, to save it in her mind for later: the dappling of white along her cheeks, the orange patch on her left side that looks like the profile of a crow, the way some of her whiskers stick straight out while others have an elegant curve to them.

  Mez forces herself to step in front of Chumba and look Usha full in the face, her whole body trembling.

  She takes a deep breath.

  “It’s me, Aunt Usha. I’m the daywalker.”

  All the panthers freeze. Mez stares into Usha’s inscrutable eyes, trying to find answers there that just won’t come. Did Usha suspect this all along?

  “Fine. I can’t believe either of you, clearly,” Aunt Usha says. “If you want to take your sister’s place, I won’t stop you, Mez.” She turns sharply and heads out of the swampy clearing. “Good-bye. To my side, cubs.”

  Chumba throws herself over Mez, body shuddering. “I’m going with her!” she says.

  “No, you are not,” Usha says. “My last promise to my dying sister was that I would take care of her cubs. One of you has broken the sacred way of the nightwalkers, and so one of you must be exiled. But one of you must stay here so I can keep my promise. We will not drag this out any further. We go now.”

  Chumba’s head hangs heavy. The corners of her eyes tip down, her lips droop away from her teeth.

  “Go, Chum, before this is any worse. I’ll be okay,” Mez says, lowering her voice so only Chumba can hear. “I know what I’m going to do. I’ll prove myself somehow and come back. Usha will have cooled off in a season or two. Just wait for me.”

  “I want you to stay,” Chumba pleads.

  “Chum, please go,” Mez says, seeing Usha’s glowering expression.

  “Just stay in the woods for a while, and then return at dawn,” Chumba whispers. “I’ll convince her to accept you back in the meantime.”

  Usha growls. “Exile is not the worst punishment I can give. We go now.”

  “Go, Chumba. I love you. I’ll be back.”

  “I love you too.”

  Tail between her legs, Chumba follows Usha and the triplets out of the clearing, glancing back over her shoulder one last time to look longingly at Mez. Mist is the last to go, with a expression in his eyes that Mez has never seen before, wonder laced with fear.

  Then Mez is alone.

  She plops down in the clearing, stunned. Her tail thrashes despite her efforts to keep it calm, her paws crunch the twigs and stony soil, her lips flick back from her teeth time and again.

  She stares between the trees, at the movement of emerald coils.

  AS THE CONSTRICTOR approaches, Mez tries to keep her terror at bay by concentrating on the familiar feeling of waxy leaves under her paws, the pungent scent of the fertile soil, the tiny pops of puffball mushrooms crushing while she kneads the earth.

  The emerald coils come nearer and nearer, bending and breaking branches as they go.

  “Little cub,” says a voice from above.

  Even though Auriel’s head holds motionless in the air, as if suspended from the moon, his body continues to emerge from the trees. His very long body. Mez fights the urge to bolt as more and more of the giant snake uncoils.

  Mez holds steady, turns her tear-streaming eyes treeward. Auriel’s long body has looped and looped so many times around a branch that Mez cannot tell which coils are at the front of his body and which are at the back. He slides his head closer to Mez, and as he does the emerald-and-tan patterns on his skin cross, beguiling her. Ants rain from him.

  “I know I said I wouldn’t come with you last time I saw you,” Mez says. “But everything has changed.”

  “You do not need to explain,” Auriel intones, “for I heard it all.”

  Mez stares up at the strange snake, out of words.

  “You are a shadowwalker,” Auriel continues in his vibrating voice. “That was all I needed to know. Joining me and the other shadowwalkers at the Ziggurat of the Sun and Moon is your destiny. I knew you would find the courage to face it.”

  The snake finishes arriving. His body forms wide coils under him, the raw size of it all making him look more like a tree than an animal. Now that he’s talking, there’s a glint to his eyes that’s almost kindly. As kindly as a snake can get, of course.

  “Why didn’t you say anything earlier?” Mez asks.

  “I didn’t know how your aunt Usha would react to a constrictor,” Auriel says. “It is easy to hate what you have never met. When I went to find other eclipse-born, I’ve discovered young animals slain by their own kind for having the stink of day on them, or the stink of night. You know your aunt Usha better than I do. My joining the conversation might have put you in even more danger.”

  Mez shivers, not so much at the idea of being killed—the rainforest has reminded her every night of the many forms that death can take—but at the idea that others have died for having the same wrongness inside them that she has.

  “Of course,” Auriel says, as his body starts to pour onto the ground in front of her, “I would only use words of praise for a young animal of your gifts.”

  It’s almost like he’d heard Mez’s thoughts, like she’d spoken them out loud. “I’m—I’m not gifted,” Mez stammers. “I’ve got only the weird daywalking part.”

  “No one has only the ‘weird daywalking part,’” Auriel says, the purring sound in his voice increasing as the hint of a smile crosses his face. Undeniably serpentine and intimidating, but definitely a smile.

  Mez cocks her head. “I’ve never met a shadowwalker before you. This is all new to me.”

  “You have met a shadowwalker,” Auriel says. “Yourself. We have a long journey to make, and I will answer as many of your questions as I’m able along the way. But for now you’ll have to trust me. I know that I am not mistaken in the few things that I know. Come. The columns of ants streaming toward the
Ziggurat of the Sun and Moon grow thicker, which means the Ant Queen is nearing her release. Time is running short. The very fate of Caldera is at stake.”

  If Mez leaves this part of the jungle, she’ll be even farther from Chumba. But traveling with this constrictor will still be better than being alone, and maybe she’ll be able to do something special at the ziggurat thing, and come back a hero. Aunt Usha might take her back then. “Lead the way,” Mez says quietly.

  Auriel nods, reversing direction and slithering through the undergrowth. He’s remarkably fast for such a large snake, arrowing gracefully between trunks and brambles, leaving a trail of ants behind him.

  Aunt Usha always chooses the same pathways through the jungle, but Auriel has his own ways of going; though they move in a direction Mez has gone in many times, the scenery is soon unfamiliar. Here is a red flowering vine she’s never encountered; here are termites with bluish carapaces, unlike the brown ones that build their mounds near the den; here is a waterfall of just a few feet, the water drumming modestly, only slightly louder than the constant patter of rainfall on leaves. Mez keeps her gaze outward, to fight off her worry about Chumba.

  Mez takes a few gulps from the stream, finds herself wondering if Chumba is off doing the same somewhere, then struggles to catch up to Auriel. Panthers are supposed to be the fleetest creatures in the jungle, but Auriel’s faster than she is—and he has no legs! Good thing Mist isn’t there to see.

  “Just because you haven’t shown powers yet doesn’t mean that you don’t have any,” Auriel explains patiently in his low and vibrating voice. “That’s part of why I’m trying to bring all of the shadowwalkers together. So that you can see what your powers are, and use them. To prevent the Ant Queen from overrunning Caldera, of course, but if we’re successful you can return home and help your families with your abilities, too.”

  “What’s the Ant Queen like?” Mez asks, hopping from stone to stone across a muddy stream. Auriel easily swam across it, as if he were made of river water. She gulps. “And what could she do to us?”

  “I know less than you think I do, I’m afraid,” Auriel says. “I’m no older than you. Granted, I can see why you’d think I’d know more. Constrictors mature more quickly than panthers, and we are wanderers, and I am able to spy on the Ant Queen’s communications with the billions of her kind, so maybe I do actually have more information than most daywalkers or nightwalkers. All I know is what you do: the last time she was free was the time of Caldera’s darkest struggle.”

  “Do you know how far away the ziggurat is?”

  “It’s right at the center of Caldera,” Auriel says. “Lucky for us, your aunt Usha’s territory is closer to the center than most. It won’t take you more than twenty days and twenty nights to make the journey.”

  You? Something about the way Auriel said that word sets Mez’s tail to thrashing. Before she can ask about it, though, he speaks again. “You and I are not so unalike.”

  “I’m not so sure that’s true,” Mez says, pointedly looking down at her small furry body and then at Auriel’s long scaly one.

  “Come, this rock is still warm from the sun. Let’s rest on it for a moment, so a cold-blooded creature like me can build up a little heat.” Auriel doesn’t seem to have been flagging, but Mez takes his word for it that he could use a rest. “That’s better,” he says as he arranges his coils on a mossy rock. “I was once a leathery little egg surrounded by dozens of other leathery little eggs. Then my siblings and I were born, and I would have done anything to get back into that egg and leave the outside world forever. Little snakes are food for everyone, and unlike you I didn’t have a mother or an aunt to care for me. I was hunted by birds, insects, frogs, even my siblings. They trapped me, and attacked me, and almost killed me. But I managed to survive, and as soon as I could I left. You’ll find that no one holds much affection for a top predator like a panther—but there’s even less love for a constrictor, I can promise you that. But do not worry. You will find your way, like I once found mine. There are many sorts of families out there.”

  Maybe it’s Auriel’s words, or his calm and wistful manner as he says them, or the way the moonlight traces patches along the jungle paths; maybe it’s the lonely call of the owls secreted away in the treetops above. Whatever the cause, the enormity of what she’s undertaken comes over Mez, a sadness that’s sudden and strong. She’s never gone more than one night’s travel from her den, and here she is speeding away from the only place she’s ever known to go to some strange place called the Ziggurat of the Sun and Moon.

  At least Auriel seems like an easy enough snake to talk to. “Did you ever see your family again?” Mez asks. Her mind goes to Chumba, and the thought of her is enough to make her ribs and belly seize tight.

  Auriel stays quiet for so long that Mez wonders if her question might have gotten lost in the drone of the insects. It’s hard to even see Auriel anymore; he is so adept at slithering through the damp leaves of the jungle floor that his heavy body merges seamlessly into the surrounding dark, making him hard to detect even with Mez’s excellent darkvision.

  She’s about to repeat her question when finally he speaks: “My family tried to eat me, Mez. No, I’m never going to see them again.”

  “Oh, right, sorry, of course,” Mez mumbles.

  Silence. Then, when Auriel’s voice comes again, it’s controlled and tight. “That is enough conversation for one evening. Come, you must be hungry. I know I am. It is time to eat.”

  “We’ll hunt . . . together?” Mez asks.

  Auriel chuckles and opens his mouth so Mez can get a good view of his gaping fangless jaws. “This was the last gift of my childhood bullies. They pinned me down and broke off my fangs. A mean old snake trick. Hard to hunt without fangs.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mez says.

  “It feels like a long time ago,” Auriel responds quietly.

  “Did it hurt?”

  “Another time, Mez.”

  “So you got to be that big size . . . by eating fruits and vegetables?” Mez presses.

  “Some of them are very nutritious,” Auriel says.

  “It’s impressive. I hope you don’t mind though if I, if I . . .”

  “Of course not,” Auriel says, a smile in his voice. “Hunt away, Mez.”

  BEFORE THE NIGHT is through, they’ve gone well past the border of Mez’s known world. Toward dawn, the dense jungle thins to rocky mineral mats edging a saltwater lake. Mangroves sprout around it, and Auriel eagerly twines himself into their midst to bed down. He takes a tree almost to himself, his long body spooling around the trunk and into the strongest branches, draping back down so his head nestles amid the lowest leaves. Mez never would have imagined she’d see an expression on a snake’s face that could be called sweet, especially not on a snake this large and powerful, but so it is. Auriel begins to snore. Or the quiet and raspy snake version of snoring.

  It’s been so long since she’s had a good sleep. Mez picks her way between the warm and fragrant pools, shaking out her paws, licking away the salt that stings the creases between her pads. She selects the mangrove that looks the driest, not far from Auriel. She’s never been this near to one of the salty, stinky trees, and finds its bark unappealingly slimy.

  Still, she locates a secure perch and spends the dawn hour licking herself clean, bringing her rough tongue directly to her fur where she can, then licking her paw and using that to groom the harder-to-reach places. Back in the den, Chumba would have been the one to lick those spots. Missing Chumba hits Mez hard enough to make her head droop. She wonders who, if anyone, is grooming Chumba now that she isn’t there, and the sorrow of that thought makes her eyes scrunch shut tighter.

  Come dusk, she emerges from her slumber to find Auriel still asleep in the same position, head resting on the branch. Mez watches the smooth rise and fall of the snake’s green rib cage and wonders what boa constrictors dream about. Her belly growls, and even the croaks of the frogs make her hungry. Mist and Usha woul
d consider a frog beneath a panther’s dignity, but Mez has snuck one or two before and enjoyed their watery flavor.

  She didn’t catch much the night before, and would like to hunt again. But this salt flat is an unknown place, and Mez has only ever hunted along pathways set by Aunt Usha. She’s sure Auriel wouldn’t want her wandering off, so despite her hunger she holds still and watches him, willing him to wake.

  Chumba, I hope you’re awake now too. I hope you’re thinking of me like I’m thinking of you.

  Finally her hunger is too nagging to ignore. Mez climbs down from her mangrove and slinks along the ground, fearfully looking at the sky, imagining cub-stealing eagles everywhere.

  Auriel’s fangless mouth lolls open as he sleeps. Mez hasn’t been this close to the snake before. He really is covered in ants. They’re streaming up from the mud, climbing all over his giant body, antennae waving and forelegs tasting the air. Once they reach Auriel’s head they increase in concentration, massing around his eyes. Even in Auriel’s sleep his eyes remain open, only a milky membrane covering them. The ants cluster at the corners, antennae waving in perfect synchronization. As they do, Auriel’s mouth moves slightly, murmuring in tones too low for Mez to hear.

  She is transfixed by the dream-communication between ant and snake. Mez goes more and more still, losing track of time and place. Slowly words enter her mind as if spoken to her, though she’s also distantly aware that the dusk is full only of its normal sounds. She both hears the ants speak and knows in her deepest heart that they cannot be speaking.

  Of eclipse-born now are thirty

  nineteen are found

  five are dead

  three will soon be

  Rumi is next to find

  not by snake, but by killer be

  Lima is nearer

  she will die next

  unless

  one can save her

  with the magic that

  is not known