Prophets of the Ghost Ants

by Clark Thomas Carlton

  “And just where is the Land of Endless Honey?” sneered Keel. “Aren’t we to wait for the Dark-Skinned Son of Locust to lead us there?”

  “The Locust’s Son has led many to Bee-Jor,” answered Pleckoo. “It is far to the south, past the Dustlands, a long and dangerous journey. But it is no more dangerous than the one all of you are about to take.”

  Impy, a hairless old man considered a fool by everyone, piped up with his squeaking voice. “You are wrong, Pleckoo. Bee-Jor is past the land of lair spiders. It is where we are going . . . far to the north!”

  Now it was Impy’s turn to be laughed at and he shrank under the assault. “To the north!” others repeated and clutched their sides.

  “You’ve been talking to them,” Keel whispered. “Those traitors defecting to the Dustlands, the ones tempting Slopeites to termite worship.”

  Pleckoo was all too silent. Keel pressed in, poking his finger into Pleckoo’s chest. “You will be among the pioneers, Pleckoo. If you are not, you’ll be hunted down and dragged back for bathing. Are we understood?”

  “We are,” Pleckoo answered. And then he spat in Keel’s face.

  “You shit!” said Keel. “Take him to the whipping pebble!”

  Tal and some of the other boys grabbed Pleckoo and stretched him over the whipping pebble. His rags were ripped off as Keel raised his whip with its lashes tipped with crystal razors. He lashed Pleckoo’s back and buttocks until they were bleeding. Anand turned away. He suffered nearly as much as the victims when he watched.

  While the other middenites gathered to snicker, Anand remembered when everyone had loved his cousin. When Pleckoo the Handsome was fifteen, he risked beatings to stand at full height with squared shoulders in imitation of the nobles. Now everyone was savoring Pleckoo the Noseless’s suffering. When he was released, they watched as he tried to stand, then fell. He wobbled as he crawled to his shelter on the far side of the midden.

  “Where do you think you’re going, Pleckoo?” screamed Keel. “Get back to work!”

  Pleckoo fell on his face. Anand ran and turned him over.

  “Get away from me, roach bastard!” Pleckoo shouted. Anand stared into the disfigured face as Pleckoo’s lips twitched with rage. “I said get away from me,” he cried and then beat Anand’s face with his fists.

  Anand’s nose was bleeding and his mouth had been cut, but what pained him most was his pity. Why is this sadness so familiar? he asked himself. An old wound inside him was hemorrhaging again, a memory so painful, he tamped it down to the furthest end of his mind.

  He had to find something to distract him. Bee-Jor. Pleckoo seemed so sure it was real. If there was such a land, the Britasytes knew of it—he would ask his mother about it. I would follow Pleckoo if he let me, Anand thought, and bring my parents and all my tribe . . . and then we could wander in peace.

  Polexima was almost dancing as she supervised the packing of her trunks, when the king’s servant sounded “creet creet” like a cricket, through the portal.

  “Enter,” said Polexima, unhappy to be removed from her reveries. The king’s manservant crawled through, yanked in the king’s crutches and false legs, and then pulled in Sahdrin himself. Once the king was righted, he hobbled to his wife and saw the trunks.

  “Polexima! Are you planning on accompanying Trellana?”

  “No. I’m going to Palzhad. To see my family.”

  “What? When?”

  “In the morning.”

  “Just after the pioneers leave? Why can’t you wait?”

  “I’ve no choice but to go now. I have fourteen days to show my parents their other female grandchild. I have a sister I have met but twice in my life. I should like to know Lamalla while she is still a girl.”

  “Is it wise to travel so soon with the baby—with the female heir to this mound?”

  “In Palzhad, I saw laboring women take their babies into the weeds and out to the Tar Marsh and down to the chambers with the ants. I am sure Pareesha will survive a fortnight’s journey with a retinue of hundreds.”

  “I shall miss you,” the king said.

  The queen looked up from her trunks to address the servants. “I need to speak with His Majesty in privacy,” she said. The servants bowed then crawled away, backwards. Polexima sat on the bed and signaled Sahdrin to join her.

  “I don’t know what you’re about to say, but it’s already saddened me,” he said.

  “I plan to raise Pareesha part of the year in Palzhad.”

  Sahdrin readjusted his false legs to hang over the mattress.

  “Impossible, my dear. Everything would collapse.”

  “It would be during the months of hibernation.”

  “Polexima, even during hibernation a descendant of the goddess must be present in the mound. Perhaps you have forgotten, but this is Cajoria, and it would be unseemly for the most influential mound on the Slope to be without its queen. It’s an invitation to chaos!”

  “We will return well before spring.”

  “You know we shall have to speak with Dolgeeno about this,” said the king.

  “It is my decision to make. I have given you twenty-one sons and two daughters and have been a most dutiful queen. This is not a request I make of you, it is a demand.”

  “A demand?”

  “If you know what is best for our mound and our little girl, you will let me raise her in my way. She will not be a catastrophe like Trellana.”

  “Catastrophe? Trellana?”

  “You are the only one who doesn’t see it.”

  A sigh escaped through his nose and Polexima accepted this as his concession. She took his hand.

  “There is one other thing.”

  He looked at her as his good eye rapidly blinked. She hesitated, knowing her words were about to stab him.

  “When I return from Palzhad, I should like to move into Trellana’s chambers.”

  “Polly, why? We have far more room here. I don’t see . . .”

  “I should like to move into them by myself. With the birth of a second daughter there is no longer need for me to share your bed.”

  The king looked away from her.

  “I see.”

  “You have your concubines.”

  “But I won’t have you.” He looked on the floor and then back at her. “Then again, I suppose I’ve never had you.”

  On a bright, sunny morning, Prince Maleps and his spectacular retinue from Mound Kulfi arrived on schedule for his wedding. His train of ants and human attendants seemed to stretch to the horizon, then back through time. After the ceremony, the tents, supplies, and gifts of his caravan would be turned over to the Cajorite pioneers and loaded onto their pack ants.

  “I’m a bit fearful,” said Maleps to his twin brother, Prince Kep, whose duty it had been to accompany him.

  “Really, Maleps?” Kep said. “Why fear any woman?” Though the two were identical, it was Kep who was considered the handsomest man on the Slope. Women were drawn to the attentive glimmer in his eyes and men liked the scars on his cheeks inflicted by the swords of jealous husbands.

  “Last time I saw Trellana, we were children,” said Maleps. “I don’t remember her as being that pretty.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t either,” said Kep. From Kep’s grin that turned to a smug smile, Maleps assumed his brother was glad he was not the one getting married that day. The two dismounted at the opening of a vast tent pitched on Cajoria’s ant riding course. They were escorted by priests to a makeshift altar where the cathedral’s idols had been washed, dressed, perfumed, and bejeweled. As they waited for the bride to arrive, the priests prayed and polished Maleps’s ceremonial armor until they could see their faces in it.

  He did not appreciate how much focus they had placed on his codpiece.

  Trellana sulked under her veil flapping over her towering coiffure as she made her way to the wedding site atop a gold-powdered ant she shared with her parents. She had wanted a wedding in the cathedral with a weeklong feast and thousan
ds of guests from the other mounds, but omens insisted that the pioneers depart after an abbreviated ceremony in the outdoors. After her descent from the ant, twelve of her handmaidens helped her dress in the bright pink and voluminous Cloak of a Virgin, then held its heavy edges as they trudged with her to the groom. She knelt next to Maleps who she was surprised to find stank from a common grass liquor. His profile was perfect but for his pouting lips stained with green.

  Dolgeeno sang a chain of prayers and passed them a chalice of honey that they licked, then offered to the idol of Ant Queen. They bit a consecrated mushroom, then set its remains before Grasshopper. The priest used his knife to prick the couple’s fingers, which they pressed together after smearing their blood on an egg chip offered to Mantis.

  As their two bloods mixed, Dolgeeno looked toward the heavens and awaited the words of the gods. Cricket-drums beat slowly. Finally, Dolgeeno’s head fell and his eyes opened.

  “The gods bless your union and accept this marriage,” he said. “You are bound forever, husband and wife.”

  She watched Maleps gulp as he rose to lift the veil over her hair, then returned to look in her turning face. His hand was cold when it took hers.

  “May our children never know famine,” he said. She sensed his disappointment and was silent.

  “Repeat after him,” prodded Dolgeeno.

  “May our children never know famine,” she mumbled.

  Maleps thrust an egg-cake in her mouth. She was wounded and her mouth did not make enough saliva to chew.

  “You . . . you look lovely,” he whispered. “I’m stunned.”

  “Thank you,” she said through the cake, eagerly accepting what seemed a belated but sincere compliment. It was enough to get her mouth water going, at least, and she was able to swallow. Dolgeeno summoned Sahdrin and Polexima to approach and complete the ceremony.

  “We entrust you with our daughter,” Sahdrin said.

  “I will not betray your trust,” Maleps responded and bowed towards the couple.

  Just moments after he had paid her a compliment, Trellana noticed Maleps looking at his mother-in-law in a way that she had hoped he would look at her. A second later, Trellana was sure his eyes had wandered from her mother to her handmaidens as they released her from the virgin’s cloak.

  “Congratulations, Trelly,” said Polexima as they exited the tent. “He is as handsome as they say. Such . . . inquisitive eyes.”

  Trellana reminded herself to breathe and willed herself from being sick.

  In the near distance, the parade of human pioneers had gathered by caste. They stood with their belongings and the tools of their trades packed into sand-sleds.

  Thousands of soldiers led by General Batra were at the head of the line in a circular cluster, anticipating predators. Trellana and Maleps donned royal-yellow wedding capes, then mounted grand and glittering ants. For some of the journey the royals would ride, but later they would be pulled in a great sand-sled covered with a furnished tent.

  The privilege of dragging the caged ant queens was given to the youngest soldiers. It was a taxing labor and their faces showed both strain and delight. The priests followed them, led by Dolgeeno, who carried the sacred relics he would need to consecrate the new mound and anoint the new queen. With him were the priests who had picked yellow lots. They rode atop the tallest ants which had prayer cloths tied up the length of their legs.

  It would be late in the morning before Anand’s caste finally joined the parade at its rear. Anand heard Yormu sniffling behind him as he stood with his hands on his shoulders. He turned Anand to him, pointed to his nose and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Are you asking me where Pleckoo is?” Anand asked and Yormu nodded.

  “He slipped away, Dad. At least a hundred have defected from different castes. They’ve been sentenced to death by bathing if they’re caught.”

  Corra arrived, out of breath, and gave Anand a pack she had stuffed with food and articles he could trade. She saw that Yormu was weeping and took his hand.

  “Yormu! Bitter tears do not commence a sweet journey.”

  Yormu nodded his head, but like rain collecting in a leaf, his tears gathered to spill down his cheeks. Anand was touched by his father’s display. “I will see you soon, Father,” he said and stroked his back.

  “I have something for you,” said Corra, “a present from someone.”

  The way she said “someone” stirred something in Anand. Corra handed her son a bit of folded straw. Inside it was a gossamer sash, the present offered to boys from admiring girls. Someone had labored over its delicate weaving for days.

  “Is it from . . . ?”

  “Daveena, of course. She thinks only of you.”

  Corra was tying the sash around Anand’s tunic when a crude doll sailed overhead and landed atop the seed comb of a stinkweed.

  A tiny girl of five summers ran into the area set apart for middenites. Anand and his family looked at her and were charmed. She had chubby cheeks and tear-filled eyes. Her hair was a tumble of dark curls.

  “They threw my doll over here!” she gasped.

  “Who did?”

  “Those mean boys over there. Have you seen her?”

  The girl had an endearing lisp. Anand and his parents smiled.

  “It’s up there,” Anand said, and pointed to the top of the weed. She ran to the plant to climb its slippery stalk but fell on her bottom. She stood and rubbed her seat and cried.

  “I’ll get it,” Anand said, and he shimmied up to the seed comb. He dropped the doll to the girl and she hugged it. When he slid to the ground she asked his name.

  “Anand. What’s yours?”

  “Elora,” she said. “My doll is named Geeta. My father says we’re going somewhere to build a new mound.”

  “We all are. Is your mother going, too?”

  “Yes. We all picked yellow lots. Mommy says that at the end of the journey they will give us some aphid candy.”

  “Elora!” someone shouted.

  Anand turned to see the girl’s parents were approaching. They wore palm-sized blades around their necks to signify the scraping-caste. It was their duty to remove mites and other parasites from the older ants.

  “Elora, get away from that boy!” shouted the girl’s mother.

  “Get away from him now!” the father shouted, then ran to her and swatted her behind. The mother grabbed the doll and threw it towards Anand.

  “My doll, Mommy!”

  “I will make you a new one. That one is polluted.”

  As her parents dragged her off, Elora turned to look at Anand over her shoulder. “Good-bye, Anand.”

  “Shh!” her mother hissed.

  Anand felt an unbearable ache in his chest as he watched her go. She was the first Cajorite girl who had ever talked to him in a way that acknowledged him as a person. Corra shook her head and muttered curses against the Slopeites. At last, a guard with a nose pin called out, “Midden caste.”

  Anand went to his father, who clenched his son. His mother did not hug him so hard. “My sadness is small. My heart is brave,” she said. He nodded, but he did not believe her sadness was small. She gritted her teeth to stop from sobbing. Over her shoulder, he saw Terraclon running towards him, panting and sweating. His eyes did not leave the ground to look into Anand’s own.

  “Ter! I was hoping you would say good-bye.”

  “I did not come to say good-bye,” said Terraclon reaching into his bulging tunic. “I have come to repay you for all the food you have given me.”

  “Don’t be stupid. That was just sharing.”

  “I have come to repay you,” insisted Terraclon. He handed Anand a package wrapped in cocoon shreds. Anand removed the wrapping to reveal a new knife. The blade was a whetted shard of quartz and was embedded in a handle of sun-baked resin. Anand knew from the handle’s design that Terraclon had carved it himself.

  “I can’t take this!” Anand gasped. “You have labored over it for moons.”

  �
�I told you . . . it’s a repayment,” Terraclon insisted, and he wiped at his eyes. “My father’s calling,” he said, though it was not true. He ran off after he burst into tears.

  Anand sniffled as he added the knife to his pack, then joined the others. A harness was fastened over his chest that was attached to the first of the middenites’ sand-sleds. When Keel cracked his whip, they took their first steps.

  Corra watched in silence as her son trudged off. As she and Yormu walked back to the midden, she remembered when he was a baby, a sweet and tiny creature who laughed with delight at every new discovery. She tried hiding her tears from Yormu but as her crying turned to sobbing and her body shook, he placed his arm around her and she leaned on him. She tried and failed to dismiss the fear that she would never see her son again.

  CHAPTER 11

  ROYAL JOURNEYS NORTH AND SOUTH

  The rear pincers of earwigs made good daggers. Yormu was removing the pincers from some dead earwigs whose misfortune had been to wander into the path of some returning foragers. The ants halted their parade, dropped their leaves, and tore the earwigs into pieces they then picked up before dumping at the midden.

  Yormu hated this work—a sheriff had used this kind of dagger to cut off his tongue. He was drenched with sweat and worrying about Anand when a sentry approached. As custom dictated, he pointed to the first middenite he saw.

  “You,” said the sentry, “are drafted to serve Queen Polexima on a trek to Palzhad.”

  Yormu showed the sentry that he had no tongue and led him to speak with Corra as she hung her slug sausage to cure in the sun. The sentry winced at the woman’s color.

  “Your mate is needed for Queen Polexima’s journey,” he said while looking away from her eyes.

  “Palzhad? How long will he be gone?”

  “Twenty-eight days. It is your decision to accompany him if you choose.”

  “Of course I’m going,” she said.