“—last chance . . . now . . . get ready,” Rumi gasps.
Startled, Mez realizes he’s been speaking to her, but she was too transported by the queen’s gaze to hear him. “Wait, Rumi, get ready for what?” Mez asks.
Then they’re rising, Rumi croaking at the exertion as they pick up speed. Mez looks up and sees Gogi and Lima at the edge, peering down, Gogi’s arm still outstretched. Rumi is rising too fast, though, and quickly losing control. They’re starting to pitch, heading for the side of the earth instead of the open exit.
“Rumi, more to the right!” Mez cries.
The frog desperately overcorrects. They careen back toward Gogi, then they’re hurtling past his hands, and then they’re above him, above the jungle itself.
They’ve gone way too far. They’re soaring high above the ground now, the daylit world shrinking away. “Rumi, that’s enough!” Mez yells, even though her voice is lost in the violent wind.
Rumi stops gusting, but their momentum keeps them flying, sideways now, then arcing toward the ground. Terrified that they’ll wind up falling back into the gaping hole in the earth, back into the ants teeming in the dark water, Mez swims through the air, legs paddling uselessly as she tries to head toward Gogi.
As Mez and Rumi rocket toward him, Gogi beams and claps. Then, as he sees their speed and trajectory, the monkey’s eyes widen in shock and he throws his arms over his face. Mez tries to swim backward, but though the movement turns her around it doesn’t alter her course—she slams into Gogi tail-first. They’re one shrieking mass rolling through the jungle, limbs entangling. Finally a dense clump of ferns slows them and they come to rest, katydids bounding away as Mez sits up, looking at Gogi worriedly. “Are you okay?”
Rumi hops to one side, lies gasping in the middle of a fern. Lima flits down from a tree above, lands beside him, and begins to inspect him for wounds.
Gogi sits up, examining each arm and leg. It’s all intact—though a wisp of gray smoke is coming up from his tail.
“Your tail is smoldering,” Mez points out.
“It does that when I get upset,” Gogi says, eyes crossing as he concentrates. The ribbon of gray smoke subsides.
Suddenly Mez is breaking into laughter, great peals of mirth, more from relief than anything else, relief that she’s alive, that her friends are alive after she so nearly lost them.
Except for Niko.
Mez stops laughing, her gaze dropping toward the ground. Her friends don’t need to ask why. Their expressions grow serious too.
There’s a roar from the area of the pit, and then the soft muddy earth begins to fill it in. They huddle at a safe distance, panther, monkey, frog, and bat, all growing silent as they watch the land slope and pour. Gradually, the sounds of the jungle recommence around them, the calls of the insects and birds and mammals that have lived in Caldera for eons, that have seen endless cycles of birth and death.
“So that was the Ant Queen,” Mez says. “The dark whirlpool was full of her ants, drowning just to be near her. She asked Rumi and me to help her get free. Because we’re all shadowwalkers.”
“Well, that certainly sounds like a bad idea,” Lima chirps.
Gogi nods. “Even a mere seventeenth can see she was imprisoned for a reason. And we saw what lengths those two-legged animals went to trap her away. After what happened to them on those panels? Yeesh. I’d have thought it would be harder to carve such vivid gore in a stone block.”
“Yes, you guys are right,” Mez mumbles. Rumi is quiet, and Mez can imagine why. Maybe he was as transfixed as she was by the Ant Queen’s eternal eyes, by the sound of her song.
Mez eases toward the rockfall, testing the ground on each step. As she gets close she sees that it’s not really a hole anymore; it’s more like a wound that’s healed messily. The falling rock and mud have come together to seal the underground lair tight, making a broad gash of brown and black within the rich greens of the rest of the jungle. There is no returning the way they came.
“At least the Ant Queen can’t follow us out this way anytime soon,” Lima says.
“Probably,” Rumi says darkly. “Although you’d be surprised what a few billion ants can do when they put their minds to it.”
“Poor Niko,” Gogi says. “Eaten by a horde of ants.”
“He said something odd as he was dying,” Mez says. “Something about the Ant Queen not being alone. He could have meant the other ants, but it was still strange.”
“At least we know what to do now,” Lima says as she examines Rumi’s fingers for injuries, bending and flexing each one while the little tree frog whimpers. “Find the sun and moon carvings that can be removed, and hold them up at dawn. Or maybe dusk. Whenever the Veil is coming or going.”
They all linger unmoving in the clearing, girding themselves. Then Rumi makes a hop in the ziggurat’s direction. Gogi steps the same way, followed by Lima and finally Mez. As one, they make their way back.
“Only two sigils are lit now?” Lima asks, her voice squeaking at the end.
The other eclipse-born nod grimly. They are lined up in front of the bottom level of the ziggurat, where there used to be four winking blue lights. Now there are only two glowing squiggles left—and even they are looking feeble.
“No wonder the sphere was puckering around her, and no wonder the ants were swarming. Their queen is almost free,” Mez says.
“I wish Auriel were back already,” Sky says.
“The Ant Queen asked us not to interfere, because we’re fellow shadowwalkers,” Rumi says, chin jutting. “That’s what she said to try to convince Mez and me. I want you all to know in case she tries any similar tricks again.”
“Well, of course she would want us to help her go free,” Sorella says. The burly uakari monkey has none of her usual bravado, is hunched down and staring intently at her fellow exhausted companions, her beady black eyes glinting in the glow of the remaining blue sigils. She and the rest of the young eclipse-born have been hanging off every word of Mez and her friends’ adventure.
“I didn’t get to see her up close, but apparently she was surrounded by something like a whirlpool,” Gogi says, looking at Sorella with wide, hopeful eyes, grateful to finally have her attention. He clears his throat. “Well, I guess it really was a whirlpool, but made of ants with the water. So not sure that still counts.”
“I’d call it a vortex,” Rumi says. “My thinking is the swarms of ants coming to visit their emerging queen opened up passages, causing cave water to drain to lower and lower levels. Or the Ant Queen’s emerging power drew everything toward her, including underground water.”
Mez cuts a glance at Rumi. He hasn’t mentioned his power over the wind, and she hasn’t had a chance to ask him about it in private. She assumes he has good reasons for keeping it secret, and will follow his lead for now.
“Poor Niko certainly got a good view of it all,” Lima says.
“Ghastly,” says the sloth, shaking his pretty head.
Rumi glances at the sloth quizzically, opens and then closes his mouth. Mez is grateful that he doesn’t say what he’s so clearly thinking: I didn’t think a sloth would know a word like that!
Then she winces, her mind going back to the sound of Niko’s crunching bones.
“Auriel definitely can’t get back soon enough,” the ocelot says. He’s kept up his cool expression, but Mez can tell how agitated he is by the thrashing of the tip of his tail.
“Agreed,” Rumi says, blinking one frog eye and then the other as he takes it all in.
“It’s a wonder the rest of you made it out unscathed, since Mez and Rumi don’t even know their powers yet,” Sky says, tilting his head to one side so he can fix an eye on Rumi.
“Yes,” Rumi says, avoiding Sky’s penetrating gaze. He steals a look at Mez, the message on his face clear: He might be onto me. Please keep my secret. “We got very lucky.”
Sky stretches his red wings out wide and begins to preen, working his beak between his thick feathers,
spreading the oil from his glands. “Well, there’s no way we’re going to figure this out on our own,” he says when he comes up for air. “Auriel will be back soon with the last eclipse-born. I wish you’d figured out something more useful down there, so I’d have more to report to him than that you got Niko killed.”
The gathered eclipse-born go silent, aghast.
“Excuse me,” Mez says, her voice coming out as a low and threatening growl despite her efforts to remain calm, not to pounce and make a meal of this cocky red parrot. “More useful? We found out how to conduct the ceremony! All we have to do is wait for this night to be through, find the symbols, and bring them together at dawn. And we all nearly died down there. I didn’t see you so eager to come with us.”
“There was enough to handle here,” Sky sniffs.
“What does that mean?” Gogi asks, hands on his furry hips.
“You’re so concerned with what happened to you that you haven’t noticed what happened to us. Look around you,” Sky says. “Notice anyone missing?”
Gogi looks at the assembled group. He tries to count them on his fingers, getting halfway through one hand before the fingers he’s put down begin to wander back up, the first hand entirely unticked by the time he finishes with the second. “Sixteen?” he says, shrugging. Then his eyes scrunch. “No, that doesn’t make any sense. I think I meant six.”
Sky tut-tuts. “Monkeys and arithmetic. Not a pretty combination.”
“Whereas macaws can count to fifty,” Rumi says admiringly.
Rumi, Mez thinks, no complimenting the bully!
“That’s right,” Sky says, literally preening as he speaks, “and since I can count, I can tell you that there are nine of us.”
“Three fewer than before!” Gogi gasps.
“No,” Sky says, shaking his head. “Nine is eleven take away two.”
“Sheesh. Okay, two fewer! I’m just a monkey! You don’t have to rub it in,” Gogi says.
“Did the ants get them?” Lima squeaks, turning a shade paler than her usual black.
“No,” Sorella says darkly. “After Auriel sent you out after the Ant Queen, the caiman and the kinkajou got spooked and escaped into the jungle. I saw them go.”
“I did too, caow!” says the trogon in its singsong voice. Mez barely noticed he was there, he was standing so still. “Well, I didn’t leave too, but I saw it too, caow!”
“They are cowards, if you ask me,” Sky says. “Auriel will not be pleased.”
“This is an extraordinary situation,” Rumi says. “I think it’s perfectly reasonable for self-preservation to win out.”
“Yes,” Sorella says, eyeing Sky. “I ran into a howler-monkey patrol last time I was off foraging. There are more and more each time. If more animals come to join them, we’ll wind up totally trapped. Easy targets.”
“Auriel will keep them at bay,” Sky says defiantly. “I know it. We have to survive this night, then conduct the ceremony at dawn. Auriel will definitely be back by then.”
“Why are you so faithful to that constrictor?” Sorella asks him, poking hard enough at the macaw’s chest that he falls right over. “He’s just another animal, no better than any of the rest of us.”
“I don’t need to explain myself to you,” Sky sniffs.
“Niko is dead,” Sorella says, “and two more of us have decided to risk the border guardians rather than stay here. It seems a lot to ask that the rest of us remain because a smelly bird and a boa constrictor have told us to.”
“At least there’s some good news. Sky did figure out my ability, caow, caow, caow,” says the trogon. The beautiful little songbird falls into his usual trogon vocalizations, and if he goes on to say what his ability is, Mez doesn’t hear it.
To prove what he’s discovered, though, the trogon concentrates, and one of the stones beneath his foot lights up, eventually turning as bright as a firefly before he opens his eyes again. The stone returns to its normal stony color.
“Ooh, that’s way pretty,” Lima says.
Sky nods proudly. “One more magical power figured out. We’re making progress.”
“I wish my ability were more useful, caow,” the trogon says mournfully. “But I guess we can’t all make fire. Caow.”
Gogi blushes. “I’m sure your ability will come in handy, don’t worry.”
“So who wants to be next to discover their power, caow?” asks the trogon.
Sky’s head swivels to take in the group, then he opens his mouth to speak.
Mez’s voice comes before he can say anything. “I am. Please. Let me go next.”
ALL MEZ CAN do now is wait for the Veil to lift. And figure out her power in the meantime.
While Gogi and Rumi and the ocelot go off to search out the removable sun and moon sigils, Mez steals to a quiet corner of the ziggurat and stares out, waiting for Sky to come find her. She extends and retracts her claws, scraping into the stone.
Sky flaps through the night air to land in front of her, long tail fluttering as he settles in and starts preening. After keeping Mez waiting for a long moment, he looks up dramatically from his feathers and fixes her with his penetrating stare. “I hope you’re ready to find your power.”
“Yep, we’re ready!” Lima says from under Mez’s chin.
“Agh!” Mez exclaims, startled. She hadn’t realized Lima was with her. She peers down the length of her nose and is just able to see the fuzz on top of Lima’s head as the bat hangs upside down from Mez’s chin fur.
Sky clacks his beak disdainfully at Lima. “You know she has to do this alone. That’s part of the rules.”
“Oh,” Lima says. “I didn’t know there were rules. Sorry! Good luck, Mez!”
Mez watches Lima fly off, wishing that she could keep her friend with her. But Léon the kinkajou didn’t need a friend with him, so she doesn’t push the point. All the same, Mez wistfully follows Lima’s departing form, waiting until she’s disappeared from view before nodding to Sky.
He stares at her for a long moment, an unknowable expression on his face, before he uses his beak to grasp a vine and lower himself, claw by beak, down to a lower level of the ziggurat, out of view of the other eclipse-born.
Mez pads down to follow him. They’re below the level of the treetops that surround the ziggurat now, and are cast further in shadows.
Sky shifts from claw to claw, staring at Mez with one eye and then the other. Mez catches herself being intimidated by it, then says panthers eat macaws twice to herself, until she’s able to rise up to her full height and stare back.
“I expect you already know what your power is,” Sky says. “I think you’ve already used it, in fact.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mez says.
“I believe that, too,” Sky says, his eyes smiling. “Let’s get started.”
“Let’s get started doing what?” Mez says.
Sky wraps his beak around his foot and tugs, something Mez has come to recognize as a nervous gesture of his. “You don’t trust me, do you?”
Mez considers how to answer. “I . . . don’t have a reason not to trust you.”
“But you don’t trust me all the same. You’re not the first to feel that way toward me. It’s the problem of being put in a position of power.”
“No, I don’t think that’s it,” Mez says. She considers saying You just seem shifty but keeps her mouth closed.
Sky holds perfectly still, staring at her. “Interesting reaction. Keep track of that feeling. It might help us to reveal the Mez that lives within.”
“Hoo boy,” Mez says, rolling her eyes.
“Have you had trouble trusting anyone else in your life?” Sky asks.
“Are you kidding me?” Mez scoffs. But her mind says Mist, Mist, Mist. She hopes it doesn’t show.
Sky’s eye travels over Mez’s face. Like he’s reading her. “Mez,” he finally says. “I’m trying to help you. Do you want to know what your power is?”
Of course she does. S
he felt invisible in that den for way too long, and now the Ant Queen is right below them, ready to emerge at any moment. Mez nods.
“I’ve found that the eclipse-born who have already discovered their power on their own are those who have, let’s say, fewer defenses built up inside them. But you have plenty of defenses, don’t you?”
“If this is a way of trying to put me at ease, it’s definitely not working,” Mez says.
Sky winces. “Okay, okay, I see your point. But I do think it’s useful to look at any reasons you might have not to know your power. That could be what’s blocking it.”
“Okay, I’ll try,” Mez says. Though she quickly knows she won’t tell Sky, her mind goes to Aunt Usha bearing down on the mewling kitten, teeth bared. Unnatural! Mez’s imagination provides her aunt’s teeth around its little neck, dragging it out into the dark, returning alone. Somewhere deeper in, more complicated, are the sense memories of Mez’s own mother, gone too soon because of the childbirth brought on by the shock of the eclipse. “It’s dangerous to be different,” she whispers. “I’m dangerous because I’m different. That’s why I didn’t deserve to stay.”
“Yes,” Sky says, his voice unreadable. “That makes sense.”
Mez stares down at her paws, trembling. Much as she has tried to clean it all off, the muck and staleness of the belowground cavern are still on her. Facing the Ant Queen didn’t scare her as much as this interrogation. Is she going to let Sky undo her with a few questions? She raises her head and steels her eyes.
Pushed by some macaw instinct, Sky makes a strident call, the sound harsh and unlovely. “Here’s how I see it,” he says, returning an eye to Mez. “Right here, right now, would it be so bad if you revealed yourself? We’re all eclipse-born. Do you think any of us would call you unnatural?”
The Lost Rainforest Page 14
