“Yes!” he croaks from his spot on her back. “And guess who came up behind me?”
“Hey, Mez,” cries another voice, ragged and nearly out of breath. “Don’t think you were going to get away from a seventeen that easily!”
“Gogi!” Mez says. “There’s no seventeen I’m happier to hear from. Come on!”
Before them is the night sky itself, no stone in view, as if they’ve been traveling across the heavens all this time and not through a tunnel of fractured stone. Only a short way to go and they’ll be back out in the rainforest, into night air and majestic trees.
The tunnel curves, and as it does the Ant Queen comes into view.
There, on the far side of her, right at the tunnel exit, is Auriel.
He’s been desperately wounded. The emerald tree boa lies amid the shivering rock, dirt spraying on him from the unstable ceiling. He’s got a huge puncture wound behind his head, blood welling where Usha clamped down tight. Because of the deep wound, he’s only partially able to lift his head, and the eyes that regard the Ant Queen’s approach are hazy and unfocused.
Light returns to his face when the Ant Queen skitters near. Mez is just close enough to hear what he says: “You are finally free! We can begin your new era. Help me, Narelia.”
Narelia. The Ant Queen has a name.
She comes nearer and nearer, mandibles wide. The Ant Queen is plenty strong enough to carry Auriel—it won’t slow her at all to bring him to safety.
As she and her friends continue to steal toward the tunnel exit, Mez watches Auriel’s expression turn from expectant to confused to despairing as the Ant Queen speeds past into the night, not taking even a moment to acknowledge him.
“Narelia, save me!” he calls after her. “I brought the eclipse-born here. It is because of me that you can now harvest them!”
The Ant Queen doesn’t slow, and spares only a few short words for Auriel. “The ants owe you nothing. You are a fool.”
Then she skitters toward the tunnel exit, leaps into the stars, and disappears.
The tunnel continues to disintegrate, so there is no time to spare. Mez continues forward, toward the stars and the mists of the rainforests that open out below. And toward Auriel.
The constrictor tries to shuffle forward, but his wounds are too grievous. Meanwhile, the tunnel continues to break apart, half of the starry sky ahead disappearing from view as a boulder drops and blocks it.
As Mez barrels forward, alongside and then past the stricken Auriel, she sees that they’re emerging out on a bluff, the nighttime rainforest rising from the mists below. As she escapes out into the cool air, Mez’s exhausted muscles finally give out, and she planes through the ferns and grasses chin-first.
As soon as she can get her paws under her Mez stands again, only to see Rumi soaring through the air, his sticky fingers wrapping around her neck to stop himself from hurtling farther. He hugs himself tight to her. Gogi is next, unable to stop in time and crashing into the two friends, rolling them down the ravine. Mez staggers back to four paws, whipping her attention to the ragged tunnel exit as soon as she can.
It’s gone. The falling rock has sealed it tight.
No one else is coming.
She realizes with a start that they are high enough that the ziggurat should be in plain view. But it’s not there. In its place is a pile of rubble, giant stones and shards of stones crushing or entombing anything trapped within—Auriel included.
Mez returns her attention to the sealed exit. Chumba isn’t here, so she must be buried too.
Rumi is on the grass, staring at rock-clogged space where just a moment before Auriel had been struggling to escape after the Ant Queen refused to help him. “I guess evil turns on itself,” he says.
Gogi puts his warm, furry arm around Mez. She hides her face in his elbow, stunned, tears in her eyes. “They’re all gone, Gogi. I thought that flaming tornado was the right plan, but I—I . . .”
“Mez, shh, Don’t be so hard on—”
“We failed, Gogi! The Ant Queen got away. And they’re dead. The rest of the eclipse-born. And Chumba!”
“Would you stop your blubbering for one moment and listen to me? Look!”
Mez and Rumi turn to see where Gogi is pointing.
There, huddled under the broad shelter of an ironwood tree, are a bedraggled and shivering trogon, bat, uakari monkey, and sloth. Farther along, sitting apart from the rest, is a group of panthers.
“Some of us made it out,” Mez says, dumbstruck.
“Yes,” Gogi says softly. “Some of us made it out.”
IN THE BLUE-GRAY light of dawn, an improbable group of seven animals sits in a circle. Three nightwalkers, four daywalkers. Five walkers, two flyers. A trogon, a uakari, a sloth, a bat, a frog, a capuchin monkey, and a panther.
They do not know that they are being watched.
The frog speaks. He is slight, and young yet, but his words carry wisdom and quiet gravity. “We cannot linger. The falling of the ziggurat must have been heard far across Caldera. Even now the animals that would like to see us destroyed are surely approaching. The ants have a queen again. Whatever she’s been planning over the last eon will begin soon. And the eclipse magic we contain seems to be important to her plans. I don’t think we’ll be able to rest while she’s still alive.”
“What do you suggest we do, Rumi?” asks the sloth. Mez looks at him in surprise. He’s barely ever spoken before. His eyes shine sweetly, though she still suspects that might be because there isn’t very much between them and the back of his skull.
“We cannot stay together, I’m afraid,” Rumi says. “With the Ant Queen on the loose, there will be even more ill will toward the eclipse-born, and the moment someone spots a bat traveling with a uakari, we’ll be found out. Though I think we should separate, I would like to stay here. The inside of the ziggurat was covered in engravings, and they’re now exposed. There is much knowledge locked into them. Careful study might allow me to solve the mystery of why the ziggurat was here in the first place, of what our powers mean. The removable sigils must be somewhere in this rubble too, and might still be of some use.” He smiles ruefully. “A single tree frog shouldn’t attract too much attention from our enemies.”
“Some of us could risk staying together, right?” Mez says. It’s not a very panther thought, but she can’t stand the idea of being separated from Lima and Rumi and Gogi. Granted, it would look strange for a capuchin to be living in a panther den, but Lima could find a way to nestle out of view somewhere.
Mez casts an eye to the next hillside over. There, Usha and Chumba and the triplets sit in silence, waiting for Mez to come join them. Mez knows Usha is in great pain from the wounds she received during her battle with Auriel, but she manages not to show it, maintaining her regal expression.
Chumba is scratched all over, tufts of her fur missing where she got singed by the flaming tornado. She hadn’t needed Mez’s help at all—the resourceful panther discovered the exit before anyone else, had escaped even before the Ant Queen. Mez can’t wait to hear the whole story, but there will be plenty of time on the way home for Chumba to tell it again and again.
Usha reported that Mist slinked away during the fight on the roof, and he still hasn’t shown up. Assuming he survived the ziggurat’s collapse, maybe he’s run away for good.
Alone with Aunt Usha, Chumba keeps glancing over at Mez: It’s awkward over here. Hurry back! The triplets are watchful and anxious, motionless except when they nip at itches under their fur—apparently a stream of ants passed through the den on its way to the queen.
Gogi clears his throat. The others turn their attention to him, startled. “Can I say something? I think we might be forgetting something more important at stake. Auriel was one enemy. A powerful one, sure, but just one snake. The reason he was able to get so close to killing us all was because he approached each of us on our own. We didn’t know better than to trust him, because we didn’t know about each other. We couldn’t share our in
formation. We couldn’t warn each other.”
To her surprise, Mez sees Sorella nodding. At Gogi the Seventeenth!
He continues. “Of course, Auriel’s now buried under tons of stone, so that takes care of that. But we’ll have the Ant Queen to contend with—and there might be other eclipse-born out there, who could become shadowwalkers with their own goals, for good or for bad. I say we all return to our homes. I’m ready now to convince my troop that I’m not unnatural, that I’m like any other animal. Except for the shadowwalking part. And the fire, I guess that’s unique, too. Okay, maybe we are unnatural—shoot, got to figure out my wording.”
“Gogi,” Lima says, “stay on track, buddy.”
“Right. Anyway. Most important is that we keep an eye out for the Ant Queen. Between all of us, we can cast a net broad enough to cover all of Caldera. Let’s change being scattered from our greatest liability to our greatest strength.”
Mez looks at Gogi in astonishment while the other animals murmur in agreement. Even the trogon, usually distractible and anxious, nods solemnly. “Gogi’s right,” Mez says. “While I spoke to her, the Ant Queen revealed that she thought our lack of communication was our greatest weakness. She’s counting on our not staying united. Even though we separate now, let’s meet here in a year’s time to pool our information.”
From the jungle tree line, they hear the calls of the howler monkeys. The group goes silent and tense. The Veil has lifted, which means their daywalker pursuers will soon be out in full force.
“It’s a plan,” Sorella says. “For now, we must scatter!”
Lima wraps her wings around Mez’s neck. “I’m going to miss you so much,” she says.
“You should travel with my family at least as far as your cave,” Mez says. “It’s on the way, after all.”
“Gladly,” Lima says, relieved. Then she looks apprehensively over at Usha. “As long as your aunt doesn’t try to make me into a snack.”
Gogi joins the hug. “Did you see the way the other animals looked at you just now?” Mez asks, her voice muffled by monkey fur. “Our true leader was here in front of us the whole time. We just didn’t notice it.”
“I don’t know about that,” Gogi says bashfully, suddenly fascinated by his toenails.
“Sure as pond scum, Big Rumi will be waiting in my home swamp for me to show up,” Rumi says. “I’m glad to stay here. If I can decode even one of the sigils on the stones in the rubble, maybe we can figure out some of the mystery of our rainforest!”
Mez shoots the frog a penetrating look. Maybe sometime you’ll tell me why you kept your power a secret for so long.
“Mez,” Chumba calls from the hillside, “the triplets are getting antsy. Usha says we have to go!”
“Coming, coming!” Mez calls back. “I’ll be dying to hear what you find out,” she says to Rumi as she gets up to four paws. “But I’m afraid my aunt might leave without me if I don’t get over there right away.”
Aunt Usha glowers over the scene, impatient. “Looks like we’re in for a really fun journey back,” Lima says out of the side of her mouth.
“I know,” Mez says. “Forget about the howler monkeys. I’m worried I might not survive my aunt.”
With murmured good-byes and calls of “back here in one year,” the friends part. Lima on her shoulder, Mez rushes to her waiting family. Before she’s even arrived, Usha haughtily strides off. Mez nuzzles Chumba and then, stepping in unison, the sisters follow their aunt toward home.
“Has Usha mentioned Mist?” Mez asks out of the side of her mouth.
“Not once,” Chumba whispers back. “It’s really uncomfortable. The only time she said his name was to tell me about how he fled during the battle against Auriel, and that no son of hers would run from danger. Since then, it’s like he never existed.”
“And now I’m needed back in the fold,” Mez says, shaking her head. “There’s no predicting fate, is there?”
Under the calls of the approaching howler monkeys, the eclipse-born disperse.
Unnoticed by any of them, a bedraggled and wet panther stands amid the wreckage of the ziggurat, hidden in the deep shadows between the shattered stones, flexing and unflexing his claws. He scowls in the direction of his departing family. The panther’s fur is the purest white.
Mist is not alone. Right above him, also hidden within the deep shadows of the rubble, is a red bird. His eyes glitter with intelligence. Sky has been watching. Sky has been listening.
A Q&A WITH ELIOT SCHREFER
Q. You traveled into the Amazon to research this book. What can you tell us about your experience there?
A. I flew from New York City (where I live) down to Lima, Peru, then onward to Puerto Maldonado, the last airport before the jungle takes over from civilization. From there it was an hour’s drive along dirt roads, then a few hours by boat, an overnight stay at a jungle lodge, and six more hours along the Tambopata River to the research center where I stayed for a week.
Each time my guide took me into the jungle we went deeper, eventually leaving entirely the trails established by the local people. Instead, he took his machete to branches and led us through nameless bogs and dense spiderweb-clogged stretches of forest. The second time we trekked, we started particularly late in the day. Twilight was near, and at the equator, when sundown comes, it comes fast. Soon we were in half-light, tromping through bogs and marshes, tree frogs chirping all around (hi, Rumi!), caimans staring at us, their eyes unsettling red orbs reflecting back in the light from our headlamps. These reptiles were only three feet long or so, but still! It was plenty unsettling to wander through the dark with them on all sides.
Oscar Mishaja Salazar, my guide, showed me a different world by night. There was no sign of any of the daytime animals we had seen just hours earlier—it was like they’d vanished from the rainforest entirely. Frogs, tarantulas, cats, and bats replaced the tamarind monkeys and the bees. Click beetles buzzed heavily through the night, their glowing abdomens as large as marbles. When one landed on me, I could feel the heaviness of it.
I’d read about how completely the jungle was divided between nocturnal and diurnal animals, but never experienced it for myself until then. The magical Veil that separates day and night in The Lost Rainforest felt actual. Two kinds of animals really do inhabit the same rainforest without knowing much at all about each other.
Q. Clearly ants had an important role in this book—and will continue to have one, we sense, in the next book of the series! How did that come about?
A. I’d thought my biggest discomfort staying in the deep Amazon would be the mosquitoes. But I didn’t get a single mosquito bite during my whole time in the rainforest!
No, the real problem was the ants.
Really, they’re the only constant of jungle animal life. Ants are active all day and all night. It got me to thinking about how, in the Peruvian jungle, humans and ants are the only creatures up at all hours. Both are the rare examples of hypersocialized creatures, in which groups of thousands and even millions of individuals can cooperate and coexist—and therefore dominate their world. The shared human-ant tendency to overrun our environments led Abbott Lowell to once observe that ants, “like human beings, can create civilizations without the use of reason.”1
A juvenile emerald tree boa I met in the Amazon. Everyone’s cute in baby photos!
From there, I started to think about how the other animals of the rainforest are comparatively self-contained and self-sufficient. A fantasy story that takes place in the jungle, I realized, wouldn’t run like a fantasy story in the temperate climates. There would be no kingdoms or organizations. In fact, a villain could easily take advantage of the rainforest animals’ lack of organization to work his or her plans in secrecy. (Hi, plot twist!)
It’s hard to think of humans as being in charge of the planet once you take a good look at ants. There are between one and ten million billion of them, weighing approximately as much as all the people of the planet put together.2 They’
ve been on this planet long enough to have been biting the ankles of dinosaurs.
Winter keeps ants in check in North America, but in the Amazonian jungle they are truly awesome to behold. Army ants might be fearsome, but bullet ants are the biggest danger at the Tambopata Research Center. About two inches long, they are solitary hunters. Their bite isn’t fatal to humans, but they get their name from how painful it is. They’ll wander over any surface, and it’s very easy not to look where you’re putting your hand, go to pick up a coffee mug, and wind up spending the following day writhing in bed in agony.
Thus the Ant Queen was born. Although there are no humans alive in the world of The Lost Rainforest, the queen and her minions represent the social conquerors of the rainforest, able to spread far beyond the constraints of the more solitary animals. I’ve given her additional magic in these books, but even everyday ants are pretty magical, when you think about it. Consider this: ants use their antennae to smell the hydrocarbons in the exoskeleton of other ants, and in so doing know who’s from which nest, what their social status is, and how old they are. Neat trick!
As far as the Ant Queen is concerned, she’s not finished with our eclipse-born animals—Mez, Lima, Gogi, Sorella, Rumi, and the rest will have to race to organize themselves to fight against her as their story continues.
Q. The rainforest starts to feel like its own character in the book, with its own mysteries and revelations for Mez and her friends. What other tidbits came up for you in your research?
A. Nineteenth-century explorers talked of the rainforest as a “counterfeit paradise.” It looks lush and full of richness, but life within it is an eternal struggle to find enough to eat, and to avoid being eaten. What defines a rainforest is—you guessed it—the rainfall. They get over eighty inches a year. It’s easy to focus on its cool animals, but with high amounts of water and heat, the tropical rainforest can support some aggressive, giant plant life. Vines are everywhere. These colossal plants are engaged in their own combats against one another. Those fights are just as violent and lethal as those among animals, but occur over a longer period of time.
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