The Lost Rainforest

by Eliot Schrefer

  “It’s the carvings,” she says, teeth chattering. “We have to hold them up while the sun and moon are both in the sky.”

  “We’ll get out of this somehow,” Rumi says. “Niko’s alive, and has been scouting. And he’s off again already, trying to locate the others. It’s tricky, because there are strong currents passing through the cave system, so any way he goes could turn into a one-way downhill. But he’s a smart fish, and those barbels he has on the front of his nose are pretty sensitive to danger.”

  “That’s . . . good,” Mez says, teeth chattering harder. “Keep talking . . . makes me . . . less lonely.”

  “Oh, okay,” Rumi says. “Let’s see. I’ve never really tried to talk to a fish before. Frogs always claim that fish have nothing useful to say, but it’s really not true. I can’t wait to report back about what I’ve discovered once this is all over.” He pauses. “I’m sorry, that sounds insensitive. I talk about unimportant things when I’m worried.”

  “No . . . it’s good. . . .” Mez says. Even though she’s not intentionally moving her paws, Mez’s nails clatter against the stone. At first she thinks it’s her shivering getting worse, but then she hears another rumble. “Rumi,” she warns, “I think it’s about to happen again. Another cave-in.”

  This time it’s not just a rumble coming from below. Mez hears an even deeper sound, too—singing. It’s lower than any vocalization Mez has ever heard, and sounds more like a resonant rattling than a voice. Whatever’s making this song must be huge to create a pitch that low. “Is that . . . ?” Mez asks.

  “The Ant Queen?” Rumi finishes. “What do we do if she’s coming for us?”

  They leave Rumi’s thought unanswered. Mez wonders why the Ant Queen would be singing that eerie humming song, whether she’s excited because she found Gogi or Lima, if even now they’re trapped between her horrible sharp mandibles, being sliced open between musical notes. At least the shaking isn’t increasing—the roaring might be horrifying, but the cavern’s not about to fall on their heads.

  Little pips of sound come from Rumi’s direction. “I think I hear Niko, hold on. . . . Oh no.”

  “What is it?” Mez asks, darting to all fours. But Rumi must have his head below water.

  Finally he responds. “Are you ready to swim?” he asks urgently.

  “What?”

  “ARE YOU READY TO SWIM?”

  “Yes,” Mez says, biting her lip. It’s true—she is a good swimmer. For very short distances.

  “The chambers connect, but only far below. I’ll guide you. Dive into the water, as deep as you can go!”

  “What’s gone wrong?” Mez yells as she runs pell-mell toward the water’s edge. Before she knows it, she’s tumbled in. It’s cold enough to seize her muscles, forcing all the breath out of her lungs.

  Against the cramping that immediately sets into her legs, Mez manages to force herself to start swimming. Water covers her head and ears, surrounding her in cold blackness. Rumi’s speaking underwater now, his voice louder and clearer than it was in the air: “Down, down, now a little to the left. Closer, closer. It’s Niko. He’s figured out where the caverns connect, but as he was telling me he was attacked. Straight ahead. Now come back up!”

  Mez surges upward, before promptly cracking her head on a stone outcropping. She sees stars and her body jerks in panic, taking in a mouthful of cave water. She resists the urge to gulp in more and instead descends again, currents shivering her whiskers as the wall of rock opens up in front of her. Mez swims forward, traveling along a watery dark passage stroke by stroke, then rises. Rumi is saying something, but she can’t hear him within the roar of the current and the song of the Ant Queen vibrating the water. Her lungs begin to burn against her ribs, insisting: Inhale. Inhale. Inhale.

  Mez continues upward, though, her vision turning from the black of the passage to the red of blood. She courses upward despite the urge to give in and let herself sink. She can once again make out Rumi’s insistent voice. “Almost there! I can see you. Rise carefully, though—the Ant Queen—!”

  But rising carefully is no option. Mez’s desperate need for air has taken over everything else, fueling her legs as she kicks frantically through the water, only slackening once she’s broken the surface and gasped air into her lungs. She nearly gags; the air here is ancient, full of staleness and the smell of stone. But even though it’s fetid, it’s air. The best she’s ever tasted.

  Drowned ant carcasses glint everywhere Mez looks, and though she’s able to stand where she is, it’s only because the rock she’s crawled onto is close below the surface—the water still rises up to her chest. If it comes to combat here, she will be at a severe disadvantage.

  At first this new cavern seems calm, but then she hears a popping sound as a flare of light rises to the jagged stalactites of the roof. She’s dazzled, vision stained bright purple, until the fire on her retinas fades and she can make out a familiar shaggy head, just above the waterline on the other side of the cavern. Gogi. Gogi sent up the flare.

  Mez gets to all fours, ready to leap to the defense of her friend. But where is the enemy? Her panther instincts tell her to stay still until she can figure it out. Gogi’s head bobs, and even from her distance Mez can hear that he’s panting heavily as he faces off against some invisible foe. The air is filled with the smell of burning dust, the sweet tang of singed hair. The hand that released the small bolt of flame is shaking; Gogi must be exhausted. But there don’t seem to be any immediate attacks, either—maybe he and the Ant Queen have reached some sort of stalemate. If that’s who he’s facing.

  Mez wishes she could see Gogi’s enemy, but it’s on the far side of him. The capuchin monkey hasn’t made any sign of noticing her: he’s either too distracted by the fight to realize she’s arrived or he’s trying to keep Mez out of his enemy’s view. Either way, she figures she should keep quiet for now.

  Rumi clings to Mez’s ear. “What’s Gogi facing off against?” she whispers. “And where’s Lima?”

  “I don’t know,” Rumi whispers back. “I haven’t been over there yet. And Niko should be in here somewhere, but he’s not responding.”

  The water at Mez’s chest begins to lap, and she feels currents tug her ankles. They’re pulling toward the far side of the cavern, gently at first and then with increasing power.

  Splaying her paws and bracing herself lets Mez resist the current for now, but it’s clearly stronger where Gogi is; he’s having a much harder time of it. He shrieks and flings his arms above his head, uncontrolled tendrils of fire snaking up from his hands toward the ceiling, illuminating the cavern with popping bursts of light. “It’s attacking again!” Gogi screams. Maybe he knows his friends are there, or maybe he’s desperately calling out to anyone who’s around and might be able to save him.

  I’m coming, Gogi. But even though she wants to, Mez can’t leap to the attack yet: she’s still far away, and the moment she gives up the element of surprise, she loses her best chance of saving him.

  Once she sees where he’s looking, Mez gasps.

  In the sudden illumination of Gogi’s fire, Mez sees that a whirlpool has formed at the far end of the cavern, the dark water swirling into white water as it spins faster and faster. The force of it has dragged Gogi off his feet, sucked him in so he’s splashing and flailing, the flames from his palms fizzling before they can even start. His shaggy head disappears below water.

  “No!” she cries, leaping into the water despite her terror, despite her impulse to stay invisible, despite her exhausted muscles. She immediately realizes her mistake, foundering in the current, only barely able to drag herself back into shallows.

  With a splash, Rumi has leaped off her and into the water. In her darkvision she catches sight of him swimming toward where Gogi last was, then his tiny yellow form, too, disappears.

  “Rumi? Gogi? Niko? Lima?” Mez cries.

  There is no answer in the cavern, nothing beyond the roar of the whirlpool.

  Then there’s an
entirely different roar, a roar more like the wind that whistled over the edge of that waterfall many nights ago, and Gogi is suddenly floating above the water, his body wet and limp, hands and feet dangling toward the surface. Mez strains her eyes and blinks rapidly, struggling to understand what she’s seeing. Rumi hovers above the whirlpool, not steadily but bobbing in the air, shooting this way and that as gusts emerge from his mouth. He struggles to point those gusts at Gogi, and the force of wind emerging from the tiny frog hits him often enough to keep him airborne.

  Rumi screams at the exertion, his body pitching this way and that in the air, until he loses control and plummets headfirst into the whirlpool. In one last burst of effort, he emits an earsplitting croak, and Gogi flies through the air, landing in the shallows beside Mez. She gets her teeth around the scruff of his neck, lifting the capuchin monkey’s white furry head out of the water so he can breathe. She’s relieved to feel his lungs rise and lower, once and then again.

  “Gogi, you’re alive!” Mez says, after settling him into a sitting position beside her. Immediately she’s looking about, trying to see what happened to Rumi, and whether she can spy Lima. But she can’t see either of them anywhere.

  The monkey is too dazed to answer, but Mez hears another voice come from up high. “Mez, is that you?” Lima calls.

  “Yes—I’ve got Gogi and we’re okay. But Rumi, find Rumi!” Mez yells into the blackness.

  Without prompting, Gogi lets out a weak burst of flame, enough to illuminate the whirlpool. Though Mez tries, even with the benefit of the extra light she can’t see Rumi.

  “I’ve echolocated him!” Lima says, her voice trailing off as she arrows toward the very center of the whirlpool.

  Then there is no more sign of her.

  “What’s happening?” Gogi asks, his exhausted voice little more than a whisper.

  “I don’t know,” Mez says, growling in frustration.

  Flashes of movement. Then more. Mez makes out the wings of a bat, rising above the maelstrom on the far side of the cavern. Rumi is gripped in Lima’s feet. Though she’s struggling mightily, Lima’s barely able to make headway against the winds surrounding the vortex and floats unmoving in midair, flapping away as hard as she can. Then Rumi must have given her a burst of wind, because they’re whizzing through the air toward Mez and Gogi. “Whee!” Lima calls.

  “The Ant Queen,” Mez hears Rumi say. “I’ve seen her, and she’s terrible—her minions have Niko, and they’re, they’re eating him! We’re running out of time. We have to save him!”

  Lima launches back toward the vortex. “No!” Mez calls after her. “We can’t lose you all.”

  Then Mez hears it. A piercing scream, rising up from the whirlpool. Niko’s voice collects into words. “She’s not alone. He’s here with her! Run!”

  “I can’t hold Rumi in the air any longer,” Lima gasps, before crash-landing on top of Gogi’s head. The exhausted monkey barely reacts as frog and bat tangle into his hair.

  Niko’s cries continue, until his voice cuts off in a strangled, anguished gasp, followed by the unmistakable crunching of bones.

  NO SOONER HAS Niko cried out his last breath than a massive rumbling sounds above their heads. Mez scrunches her eyes shut as pebbles pelt her head and pock the water’s surface. When Lima and Rumi move to her underside for safety, Mez huddles over them. Only once she’s sure they’re secure does she risk a look up, and sees that scraps of daylight now can make it down, lining the edges of the cavern. As she peers about in confusion, more debris strikes Mez’s head and paws.

  The rocks get bigger, and as Mez peers into the light above she sees the ceiling is fraying and falling, larger and larger chunks of rock dropping.

  “It’s all collapsing!” Gogi screams, adrenaline making his exhausted body spring into action.

  Whether it was Niko’s last act to rend the cavern open with his earth magic or some power of the Ant Queen that started the fall, gravity is now taking care of the rest. The gaping hole broadens, chunks and boulders dropping into the watery cavern. Mez is stunned by the shuddering earth all around her, the plummeting rocks that are each many times her own weight. One hits the surface right beside her, dousing her in a wave of black water.

  Under it all is a voice, low and throaty and garbled by surging water, singing words whose meanings Mez can’t make out. The Ant Queen.

  The ancient horror of the sound, and the memory of the dismembered two-legs in the carvings, jolts Mez into action. As she surges forward, she realizes that Gogi is bounding ahead of her, jumping from fallen rock to fallen rock, twisting in the air to make each landing, using the accumulating debris as a ladder to make his way up toward the daylight.

  “Fly, Lima! Follow Gogi!” Mez cries, and then she surges forward. She’s relieved to spy the black bat streaking toward the daylight above. Mez knows she’s responsible for getting her and Rumi safely through, but at least Lima is likely to survive.

  Mez takes off after Gogi, trying to land his same leaps. As the cavern’s ceiling continues to crumble, the field constantly shifts, boulders sliding into new formations or dropping into the deeps. Gogi can scramble up the rock faces with his grasping hands and feet and tail, but Mez will have to find some other way up.

  She springs to one of the shifting boulders, and almost as soon as she lands is dipping and sliding, soon slipping off entirely into the churning water. She flounders, swimming desperately, trying to find a rock to grip her claws into. The moment her back paws hit a hard surface she springs, launching herself into the air.

  It’s been many nights since she’s been able to give her leaping legs play, and Mez now comes fully alive, twisting like a grappling snake, front half and back half moving almost independently, rotating and whipping her through space so she can go even farther with each jump.

  Mez’s legs take over as they scramble and claw and hurtle her ever higher. The rocks fall in cascades, and Mez is able to trace each flow, Rumi giving shocked croaks as Mez launches herself off the individually falling boulders before they’ve hit the cavern floor. Moving by instinct alone, she’s climbing through the air itself.

  Finally, only one rapidly expanding open space awaits her. There’s no time to hesitate—if Mez doesn’t leap now, she’ll fall with the rocks down below, crushed or trapped underground forever. Even though she doesn’t think she’ll make it, she leaps anyway, paws flailing wildly, stretching for the rocky edge of the jungle floor. She concentrates on Gogi’s friendly face, gripping the edge of the earth with his tail and one hand as he reaches the other to catch her and pull her in.

  Mez doesn’t make it that far.

  The tip of a claw scratches the rock at the soil’s edge, but grinds right through, and suddenly she’s falling, belly up, limbs flailing as the sun shrinks at the edge of her vision, while the noise of roaring water below—and the terrifying song of the Ant Queen—calls to her, calls her to come close, calls for her death.

  Feline instinct brings Mez to face the bottom, limbs outstretched so she can kite in the air. She slows, air resistance dragging her face and belly upward even as her body continues to fall.

  “No!” Rumi yells from his spot buried in her fur, and then Mez feels herself slowing further. Her spine wrenches as wind gusts out of Rumi, slowing their fall even more so they are hovering in the air instead.

  They’re stuck in open space, Rumi trembling with the exertion as wind gusts from his mouth, causing them both to wobble this way and that.

  All Mez’s attention is on what’s below her. The whirlpool is clogged with ants, the ones who are still alive swimming frantically in the water, clumping into great clods and rafts of teeming dying insects. Below them, at the center of the whirlpool, is a blurred sphere of softly glowing blue. The whirlpool of ants and water scatters as it hits the barrier, nearly hiding the creature trapped in its center. Nearly.

  Within the sphere is a giant ant, larger even than Usha, her many legs pressed against the glowing blue barrier as she si
ngs her song, staring up at Mez and Rumi. The barrier wavers and bends under the pressure of her sharp limbs, as if it might at any moment puncture and release her into the outside world. Her slavering mandibles, grotesquely large and gleaming like obsidian, open and close while emotionless black orbs stare out from within the broad plane of her head.

  Mez hears more low humming words. She wonders what the Ant Queen is saying, but it’s either an unknown language or its sound is too muffled by the magic barrier of the blue sphere to come through clearly.

  Then the surviving ants in the whirlpool start singing too, clambering over their dead brethren to raise their voices. There are tones to the song, but it’s not quite music. The hum is otherworldly, serene, eerie, beautiful. Horrifying.

  Now there are words Mez can understand.

  Rumi, greetings

  . . . Mez, you finally appear

  This prison is not

  . . . justice

  It is

  . . . cruelty

  I have been held for

  . . . so long

  You who shadowwalk

  . . . should know one of your kind

  “Mez, are you hearing this too?” Rumi asks, their bodies dropping the moment he uses his mouth to speak instead of produce wind. He struggles to raise them back up in the air, and when his voice comes again it’s ragged and harsh. “I can’t . . . keep this up.”

  Mez looks around in desperation. The rockfall is over—the boulders have all settled under the water’s surface. Once Rumi tires out they’ll pitch down into the waiting froth of ants and dark water. Whether they’ll drown or be picked apart by millions of mandibles, Mez doesn’t know.

  The era of the ants was the most peaceful

  . . . Caldera has ever known

  Let me be released, for this wrong

  . . . can be fixed

  Free me and you will survive

  . . . to rule with the ants

  While she tries to understand the strange song, Mez locks eyes with the Ant Queen. The interlocking plates of her exoskeleton gleam in the pale bluish light, her giant heart-shaped head curving in brutal lines unbroken by any blemish other than thick yellow bristles. Her song is niggling into Mez’s mind. How has the Ant Queen not gone mad, entombed for ages? Isn’t it unfair to have imprisoned a thinking, feeling creature for so long?