“A little while more, and we’ll be able to try it out,” Mez says. She looks down at the seam in the rock, which at any moment could open and release the Ant Queen—if she’s not out already. She looks, too, at the bodies of the kinkajou and caiman and poor Niko. “In the meantime, while we’re hanging around waiting, let’s go hide in the trees.”
MEZ.
At first she thinks her own name must be coming to her through a dream, that she’s back in the open blackness of her mental hunting grounds. Maybe the air itself is speaking to her, calling her forward toward the plumpest quarry.
Mez.
Or maybe it’s Chumba, calling for help. Mez’s limbs pull hard through the open air as she dozes, trying to gain traction on ground that isn’t there.
Mez.
This time her heart tells her she’s hearing her mother search for her. She can’t remember what her mother’s face looked like, but this warmth, this looming loving presence, is definitely her.
“Mez.”
Now the voice is right in her own ear. She startles awake. Her name was not coming to her from a dream. It was coming from the creature in front of her, in glittering darkness on this half-moon night. A forked tongue tickles the inside of her ear.
“Auriel!” Mez says.
The outlines of the snake’s head shift in Mez’s darkvision as he nods.
Groggily, Mez gets to her paws. “You’re back,” she says, shaking her head to clear it.
“And you managed to fall asleep—and at night, even,” Auriel says, winking. “Very un-panther-like of you.”
Mez shrugs. “I didn’t think I was going to. I just needed a rest. Everything gets a little mixed up around here. Auriel, let me wake the others so we can tell you about what happened belowground. We discovered so much! I want them to be able to tell you their part in their own words. And . . . something terrible happened to the caiman and the kinkajou, and to Niko.”
“No, don’t rouse them,” Auriel whispers. “I’ve been filled in on what happened.”
“Sky told you?” Mez asks.
“I had no idea you’d reach the Ant Queen herself down below—I assumed she could only be reached through the ziggurat’s doors,” Auriel says, his triangular head rising into the sky. The moonlight catches his diamond scale, his glossy charcoal one, and two new ones, too, topaz- and ruby-colored. With the other two they form a sort of necklace under his head. He’s so quiet when he moves—none of the other dozing animals have even stirred. “You discovered the final panels, I understand. And you know how to conduct the ceremony now?”
Mez nods, her mind still half-asleep. “The removable sigils—Gogi’s got them. Did you find the last eclipse-born?”
Auriel nods. “I did. I will introduce you soon enough; he’s still tired from his journey. In other good news, I also understand that you have discovered that you can turn invisible.”
Mez nods. Not that she knows how to turn it on or anything. “Why don’t we bring everyone together?” she asks. “We need to be in place when the Veil lifts, before the last sigil goes out.”
Auriel shakes his head sadly. “We need to get ready for the ceremony, I agree. But we can’t make a plan with all of the eclipse-born present.”
“Why not?” Mez asks.
“I’m surprised you haven’t figured this out yet,” Auriel says, his voice dropping to a whisper so low that if his head weren’t right in Mez’s ear she wouldn’t be able to hear him. “One of you is a traitor.”
“What?” Mez says, springing to all fours. “How do you know?” Her mind goes to the slain eclipse-born, dispatched so efficiently the moment they left the ziggurat.
“It’s too dangerous to discuss this here,” Auriel says. “The traitor might overhear us. Come with me, away from this thicket. You and I can figure this out.”
“Why me?” Mez asks.
“Because you’re the one I can trust the most.”
“You can trust Lima and Rumi and Gogi, too,” Mez says, hackles rising. “There’s no question about it.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Auriel says. “And I admire your loyalty. Once you and I have settled on our plan I’ll count on you to fill them in. But for now, pulling all four of you to the side would be noticed. Come now, we’re already risking discovery by talking here.”
Auriel soundlessly rears back and, coiling and then uncoiling, sloughs off the tree branch and into the darkness. Within moments, even with her excellent darkvision, Mez can discern only the slightest suggestion of his long body looping its way into the forest.
Somewhere nearby, Gogi, Rumi, and Lima are on watch. If Mez were anything but a panther, she wouldn’t be able to sneak off without their knowing it. But Mez has always been able to go her own way without disturbing others. Like she once did when she daywalked from her den, she gets up silently and flows like liquid, her calico fur seamless with the starry night. Undetectable.
She can’t sense Auriel anymore, can only move blindly into the darkness, hoping she’s going in the same direction as the constrictor. A soft rain has begun, the misty droplets making their own hushed sounds against the leaves of the surrounding trees. There is the occasional hoot of an owl, the off-silence of a swooping bat, but more than anything there is the patter of soft rain, over the smell of baked moisture rising from the mossy stones of the ziggurat at her back, the heat of day dying into night.
Where is he? Mez goes motionless, listening and watching.
“Mez.” When he speaks, Auriel’s voice is right beside her. She startles, cringing away in the darkness. He was able to come right up to her without her noticing. “Sorry to scare you,” Auriel continues. “This whole experience has been an exercise in fear, hasn’t it? At least it will be over soon.”
“That’s . . . okay,” Mez says, eyes wide as she concentrates on the vague outline of Auriel’s head, only a breath’s distance away. There’s something about his tone that unsettles her, but she can’t quite get to the bottom of it. She wants to ask for Gogi, Rumi, and Lima again, but the words die in her throat. He knows so much. It’s hard to refuse him.
“I know it can’t be easy to have been taken so far from your home, to be reviled, brought into a group of strangers and adversaries.”
“No,” Mez says. “Of course not. But . . . this is to stop the Ant Queen, right? So it’s for the good of everyone. You don’t need to worry about me, Auriel.”
“Oh, you misunderstand me. I’m not worried about you,” he says, voice low and vibrating. “I’m not worried about you at all.”
“Okay . . .” Mez says, her voice trailing off. She senses motion around her, rustling leaves and cracking branches. “Auriel, do you hear that?”
“No,” he purrs. “I hear nothing beyond the sounds of the night. You should be used to those sounds, nightwalker.”
“I guess I am,” Mez says, getting to all fours and making slow turns in the darkness so no one else can sneak up on her the way Auriel did. Why did he sneak up on her? She’s not the enemy. Does he think she’s the traitor? Mez feels her thoughts scrambling, blood rushing to her face, saliva flooding her teeth. Her intuition is preparing her for combat. As if it knows an enemy is nearby. But there is no enemy nearby. “What do you want to tell me?” she asks Auriel, voice quavering. “How will we figure out the traitor?”
“The traitor. Yes,” Auriel says. “Let’s talk about the traitor. I have something to tell you about that. Where do I begin? Earlier than you might expect.”
“Really?” Mez asks, confused, heart racing without clear reason.
“Yes. As I told you before, I spent my childhood avoiding being tortured by my siblings. Snakes deserve some of their reputation for cruelty, I’m afraid. I don’t know if you’ve ever witnessed a defanging, but it’s nothing you’d soon forget, believe me.”
“I’m sure it was very painful,” Mez says. This conversation is only heightening her confusion. Why are they talking about Auriel’s missing fangs when the Ant Queen could emerge at any
moment?
“Yes, and this was by my siblings. Sky and I understand each other this way. We both learned early on that the ones closest to you might be your worst enemies. But I showed my evil siblings, I showed them all.”
“What happened?” Mez asks, dread tingling her claws.
“The thing with snakes is that they grow, and they grow fast,” Auriel says. “I worked hard, hunted the ways that I could, and became bigger than my siblings. I traveled, I grew strong, and I came home and found as many of them as I could. They will never torment a young snake, ever again. While I was hunting my siblings, I met an eclipse-born porcupine that had the power to speak to the ants.”
“No, Auriel—that’s your power,” Mez says.
“It is now,” Auriel whispers.
Mez backs up toward the tree where her friends are.
“Your ability will prove very useful,” Auriel whispers into Mez’s ear. “The invisible can go anyplace, can overhear anything, can escape any fight. You have a power that is very, very precious.”
“And you’ll help me figure out how to use it?” Mez asks.
“Don’t worry. We’ll make sure your power is maximized,” Auriel says.
Mez feels something brush against her back and startles, whirling with claws outstretched. “Someone else is here,” she hisses.
“No. There is no one here but the two of us,” he says.
“I know what I felt,” Mez says. “Someone brushed . . . oh.” As she whirls she steps on something thick and scaled. “It’s you,” she says, hackles rising straight up.
“That’s right,” Auriel says, voice even nearer, the forks of his tongue tickling the sensitive hairs of her ear. “It’s just you and me.”
The colored scales surrounding his head glow, and Mez can see that there are five, all in different colors. She’s not mistaking it. He’s gaining colors. And looking stronger and healthier each time he does it.
“Auriel, your—your scales . . .” Mez stammers, mind racing. Considering how close he is to her, she can sense no warmth from Auriel’s breath. It is as chill as the air from the Ant Queen’s cavern. Mez’s stomach, already plummeting, drops to the pads of her paws. She backs up but hits the wall of the ziggurat, much closer than she thought it was. Then she realizes it’s not a wall: she’s up against the coils of the constrictor, one on top of the other, as solid as stone.
She’s been so naive. Growing up in her panther family, she was taught to respect Aunt Usha’s authority above all else. Now, her unquestioning obedience has surely killed her.
“Auriel,” Mez whispers. “You’ve gotten a new scale with each power you’ve stolen. You were down below with the Ant Queen. You killed Niko and the caiman and the kinkajou. The traitor is you.”
“CLEVER GIRL,” AURIEL says, his voice no longer the soft purr he’d put on moments before. His real voice is a sound no mammal could produce. He rasps, each vertebra along the constrictor’s long body layering eerie echoes over the sound. “My original power is not speaking to ants—it is to suck out the powers of other eclipse-born. Like you, Mez. The other victims trusted me to the end, never figuring me out, even as they were taking their final breaths.” He chuckles. “Of course, there is a while between that final breath and death, so maybe they figured it out then. But of course, they couldn’t tell me. They couldn’t say anything at all.”
Even within her terror Mez hears a sound like the rustling of leaves, a sound that brings to mind both death and dryness, and senses the rings of coils swirling in opposite directions around her, narrowing as they go. Hemming her in. As if patting down grasses to find a place to sleep, she turns a tight circle, looking for an opening.
“You said that you didn’t want to interfere by appearing to Aunt Usha, but really you just were worried that she’d see through you. I was easier to trick on my own,” Mez says.
“Don’t let your final moment be one of struggle,” Auriel says, “when it can be one of peace. How your death happens is all you have left in your control. You can’t change your fate, but you can change how the end feels.” He pauses, and when he speaks again his face is right beside hers. “I saw something like bliss on the kinkajou’s face as it died. Being constricted can be pleasurable.”
Mez leaps.
She doesn’t leap forward—that would bring her right up against Auriel’s coils—but upward, perfectly vertically, like she used to do when playing whisker-taunt with Chumba. By springing all her ankles at once, she pops into the night air. Then, once she’s at her highest, she reaches her front claws out, scratching for purchase.
But her claws find only open air, and as she begins to fall back down Mez starts thrashing desperately, the moves bringing her head over heels, the crown of her head the first thing to hit a tangle of thorny brambles. Be invisible, be invisible, she wills herself as she scrambles through the vines, finally getting to her paws. Her darkvision shows Auriel arrowing through the darkness, enough scant starlight to outline the rainbow of scales surrounding his face.
Mez goes still. Auriel is only roughly heading in her direction. Maybe she is invisible. She looks down at her paws. She can’t see a thing, but that could be a result of black paws in black night. Even her darkvision could miss a midnight panther.
“You know that I hunt by vibrations, silly panther,” Auriel says, emerald scales glinting in the starlight. “Your invisibility will do you no good against me.”
Is that true? If it were, why would he tell her instead of simply hunting her down where she is?
What Mez wants most is to call for help. But Auriel would find her before her friends could get there, and he would have them all. Still, she readies herself to call out a warning the moment she feels the touch of Auriel’s coils. If it’s the last thing she does, she’ll prevent the other eclipse-born from suffering her same fate. They can run away and save their own lives, even if it means leaving Auriel and the Ant Queen to hatch their plan without opposition.
For now, though, her only option is to hold still.
She won’t be able to hide for long. Auriel’s expanding to fill her entire field of vision: he’s fanned out his long body, moving back and forth as he goes, waiting for some part of him to bump into Mez. The grasses make crackling sounds as clouds of startled grasshoppers flee the constrictor. Mez scrunches her eyes shut as they batter her face. All the while, Auriel moves ever closer.
As she waits for an opening, Mez’s mind races. If Auriel wanted them all dead, why do it this way? He could have killed her the moment he separated her from Aunt Usha. Why wait so long, why bring her to the ziggurat only to secrete her away like this?
Mez sees Auriel heading off into the darkness. Maybe his random movements will bring him the wrong way. Her hackles lower slightly. She might have a few more minutes to live, to figure a way out of her plight.
That’s when the touch comes. From behind her.
Auriel’s tail. Mez holds perfectly still, hoping that Auriel won’t realize he’s found her. Maybe he thinks his tail hit a mushroom, or soft moss, or a spiny rat bumbling through the nighttime undergrowth.
Auriel hisses.
Mez crouches.
The constrictor suddenly streaks toward her, impossibly long, somehow covering all paths of escape. Mez picks a direction and leaps, claws outstretched and jaw open, as if she’d have a chance of doing any damage to Auriel if she managed to bite him.
Mez lands right in the middle of a mass of coils, and they’re immediately thrashing around her, closing in tight. Auriel is silent as he goes about his deadly work, wrapping himself around her. One paw is caught out at an angle, and Mez feels tendons and ligaments inside it tear as it wrenches painfully against her side.
Then the real squeezing begins. Invisibility is no help against this.
For a moment it does almost feel nice, like she’s being loved, like back when she was a young cub and Aunt Usha would wrap her body around Mez’s, telling her, with that simple motion, I will take care. Don’t worry. Then
it constricts, and Mez feels her fur pulling, her skin shredding, the bones of her spine and ribs grinding. Each breath is shallower than the last, and each time she tries to take in another her lungs only shrink, until she’s no longer able to breathe at all. Until she’s dying.
Mez feels a panic unlike any she’s ever felt; it’s a powerless panic, an otherworldly panic. She’s acutely aware of the insects fleeing Auriel, of the wet scales of a millipede glinting in the pattering rain, of a tarantula disturbed by the commotion and making tentative steps from its den, of some stars produced by the struggling blood vessels of her eyes, of others that are real points of light in the night sky.
The ants that cover Auriel’s body cover Mez now, crawling over her eyes and ears. As they do, she hears snippets of their song again:
Constrictor!
Our queen hears
all
you may consume but five
Niko you took right in front of
our queen
and he was four
five does this panther make
choose greed
and greed will undo you
for our queen will know
all
our queen hears you
constrictor!
So. Auriel and the Ant Queen are allies. Not that Mez will be able to do anything with the information. She can’t even speak anymore. In the distance, she hears a macaw calling. Maybe it’s Sky. Mez puts her mind fully into the sound of the macaw, listens to the harshness and the music of it. She can keep that sound for herself, even as she dies.
Poor Chumba, she thinks. After her sister, Mez’s mind goes to her new friends, who might shortly face her same fate. She thought she’d be keeping them safe by being silent, but she knows now that she has doomed them. They’ll discover the husk of her body, too, see that she’s gone the way of the kinkajou and caiman and not know why or how she got that way. They’ll flock to Auriel, hoping he’ll save them.
The Lost Rainforest Page 16
