Yormu stood, blinking at her in fright.
“Don’t worry, Yormu. You’ll like it there. It’s older and almost empty these days and they aren’t so stuck in the Slopeish ways.”
For the first time since Anand had left, he saw her smile.
With happy thoughts of her trip, Polexima returned from a Sacred Wetting to the sunlit chambers that had belonged to Trellana. The queen would leave behind a supply of the precious fluid that the priests could set before the ant queen. The divine urine had to be fresh to be effective, but Queen Mother Clugna would arrive in time to assume her daughter’s duty.
The Royal Chief of Protocol, Zembel, supervised the final packing for his monarch. He was completing his task when Polexima pulled herself into the room.
“Good morning, Zembel. Any message from the pioneers?”
“No, Majesty. No messengers at all.”
“That’s the third day in a row.”
“Yes, Majesty, but the pioneers have ventured deep into unfamiliar territory. The messengers may have fallen prey to any number of things.”
Polexima’s mood turned dark. She imagined the steaming corpse of her daughter, dressed in her most indulgent costume, being pulled from a sun kiln and unwrapped for eating. Pareesha cried from her crib.
“Would you bring her here, please?” Polexima asked, as she pulled down the top of her garment. The nurse brought over the baby, who was dressed in thirteen gowns that bound her arms and legs. Her face was a frightening red.
Polexima shook her head. “Nurse, Pareesha is not hungry. She objects to being baked. For this journey, one gown will do with a simple slip.”
Polexima sighed and reminded herself that this daughter would be raised differently. This one will not be tutored by gray, fat eunuchs, she thought, and she will play in the outdoors with children from many castes.
On top of the mound, the procession bound for the southernmost queendom had been assembled since the night before. Polexima insisted that no more than a thousand soldiers, four priests, and fewer than fifty servants accompany her. The queen and her infant entered into a large sand-sled and climbed a winding staircase to its throne. The procession lurched off with summoners at its head who rubbed cicada wings so that the people would draw to the side and bow.
Though he hated being used as a draught animal, Anand loved travel by day. He had the bad habit of looking out at the passing landscape when he should have been keeping his eyes to the ground. In his travels with his mother, Anand had to wander under cover of night. In daylight he saw new vistas of intense beauty that were almost unbearable.
Two days after the rain, poisonous mushrooms had exploded into fat towers with light spews of stinking spores. The procession trekked through thickets of these mushrooms, stopping when they grew too dense and had to be uprooted. A day later, they collapsed in their own slime and gave rise to smaller blue mushrooms that were clear, like water. Ahead of the pioneers was a terrain of trees that were stripped, but whose upper branches sprouted leaf buds. The mysterious canopy tribes who attacked and ate leaf-cutter ants protected these branches but they gave the procession no trouble.
Later, the pioneers entered a sunless territory with thriving trees that smelled damp and sweet. Anand had never seen a tree that was not a victim of ants. He sniffed the pleasant decay of leaves that trees had dropped by themselves. Under these trees, the sunlight took on a greenish color. In a few places, it poured down pure and yellow on patches where weeds flourished and bloomed.
The journey continued under ferns, a plant unknown on the sunny Slope. Orange powder misted down from ribs of buds on the leaves’ unfurling undersides. Progress was slower, as the leaf-strewn ground was springy with loam that clogged the sleds’ scale-lined runners. Also blocking the path were fallen logs rotting under moss and teeming with termites.
A hundred kinds of forest insects, many of which Anand had never seen, scurried or flew as the procession marched. When they stopped to rest under a bortshu sapling, the pioneers were captivated by chalk-and-jade butterflies as they emerged from a cluster of chrysalises. Young girls, briefly freed from their harnesses, ran over to wish upon the butterflies, who might take their dreams to the gods in their tree palace.
Anand was making a wish too, when his ear was split by the soul-rending scream of a child. The scream ignited more screeches and shrieks as the pioneers turned and saw it: a monstrous lair spider. She had erupted from her trap door and targeted a child, snatching her with a web-snare stretched between her forelegs. The victim was a spinning blur as she was wrapped in a silk cocoon. Anand’s knees went weak as he saw the spider sink her fangs in the squirming bundle before slipping under the door to her lair.
The girl’s mother screamed without control as her father sputtered in panic. Hundreds of workers had seen the girl’s capture and were too stunned to move. They watched as the victim’s father fell out of line to plead with a sheriff. Unconcerned with the child, the sheriff was angry that the march had slowed.
“Please, Good Sheriff, help me rescue my daughter!” begged the father.
“Keep moving. Nothing can be done.”
The father got closer to the sheriff, who turned away to avoid making physical contact with someone of the low scraping caste.
“But my daughter! She’s . . .”
“She’s at the bottom of a deep hole and so will you be if you attempt to rescue her. If she’s lucky, the spider’s poison is melting her flesh and it will drink her soon.”
“But it could be laying its eggs in her. She will suffer for days!”
“Pray to Grasshopper,” said the sheriff, “and get back in your harness.”
The father ran to the spider’s trap and fell to his knees.
“Elora! Elora!” he cried as he dug with his hands.
Anand felt as if his heart had been ripped out of him as it dawned on him that he knew this man. The victim was the girl with the doll.
“Do you want to die, too?” the sheriff asked the father as he pawed the soil. Panic deafened him to the sheriff’s words. They were not a warning against an attack of the spider, but the sheriff’s own blade. The father’s arms were reaching through the flap when the sword came down, chopping his head off. Anand and hundreds of others went still with rage and fear. The sheriff rode toward them on his ant. A scowl was on his face and blood flew from his sword as he waved it.
“Keep moving . . . if you don’t want to be next!” he bellowed. He traded his sword for his pole and used it to knock on the people’s heads until they were roused into marching.
Anand watched as Elora’s mother fell on her back and screamed. Her relatives ran to cover her mouth for fear she would further provoke the sheriff. Since the trek began, the lower castes had seen predators pick off several of their own, but not a child. Anand stole a glance to see skull-flies descend on the father’s corpse to lay their eggs. These had no chance to hatch, for soon, carrion roaches crawled from under a log to eat it all.
That night, as he used his pack for his pillow, Anand wept. He was haunted by the image of Elora’s smile. He felt he was drowning in water, surfacing and gasping, only to sink again. Not for another second could he tolerate knowing the girl was in the spider’s lair and might be alive and suffering with eggs inside her whose spiderlings would hatch to drink her blood as their first meal.
He knew what he must do.
CHAPTER 12
THE LONGEST NIGHT
Once he was sure that everyone was asleep, Anand pushed off the dead leaf he rested under to hide himself from night wasps. He grabbed a sharpened fly pole and a water bladder and raced into the night. An avenging spirit would not allow him to consider the aches that plagued him. Aiding his sight were luminous bark fungi that glowed soft blue.
Anand looked for the sapling whose branches were hung with empty cocoons. When he found it, he treaded softly to the spider’s lair. His ears pounded with his heart’s thumping. The sky, the trees, and the air all seemed to pulse around
him.
Circling in back of the trap, he was uncertain as to whether he could rouse the spider. If she was making a meal of Elora, the spider might be too content to take another victim. He probed the door with his pole by simulating beetle steps. Nothing.
Anand tapped harder on the door, then harder still. No response. A breeze picked up a leaf and scuttled it over the trap door. Anand blinked and when he opened his eyes, the spider’s back was to him, her rear-eyes taking him in.
She pivoted and Anand saw the snare stretched between her legs. She sprung at him on her hind legs, but he ran forward, not away. He thrust the pole through the threads of the net and between her fangs . . . but he missed. The point jammed in the side of her head, but did not kill her. Though she was blinded in two eyes, it did not stop her from leaping again.
Anand dove over her snare and into her spiny legs. He scrambled to retrieve his pole as her legs batted him about. Plucking out the pole he held it flush against his chest. Pushing against the spider’s legs, he flipped her over. He turned to see her claws wave in the air. Before he could stab her, though, she pulled herself tight, rolled on the sand and was on her legs, at him again.
He crouched and waited as her forelegs stretched the net and her fangs parted. Just as she lunged, he leapt up, thrusting his stick between her fangs.
This time he struck true and the point pierced the spider’s head. She collapsed on him, her legs still twitching as blood seeped down the stick in oily globs. Anand felt her fangs as they grazed the skin of his neck and he shuddered at the thought that, were she alive, he would be dead right now. He gingerly shimmied out from under her to avoid the glittering poison. After finding the edges of the trap door, he folded it back, but could see nothing down the black cavity.
Shaking and coated in cold sweat, Anand crawled down the hole anyway. He hurt himself when his knee jammed in something round with cavities on its surface. He handled it briefly and realized it was a human skull. As he crawled over more bones, he wondered how much deeper he would have to go. Sand grains fell on his back when he heard a faint wheezing.
Elora?
He sank down farther until his hand touched a warm body. He stroked her hair, touched her warm skin. The girl was alive! He did not know if she could hear him in her paralysis, but he spoke.
“Elora, it’s me, Anand. I’m bringing you out of here,” he whispered. Anand tucked her frail chest under his arm and began his ascent. Crawling up with one hand, a rain of dirt fell on his head until, suddenly, the lair’s walls collapsed. With his face and arms buried in loose dirt, he pressed the girl to his chest and squirmed up.
When he heard the chirping of crickets, he knew they would make it out—but he also heard the whipping of long antennae. Poking his head out, he saw white insects, three times the size of a man, tearing at the spider’s corpse. A pack of moon roaches had converged on the dead spider, but their antennae were far more alert to Anand. They hovered over the lair, excited by the scents of ants and humans.
The moon roaches’ forelegs were strong and lined with sharp hooks. Anand knew they could clutch his body and chew his head off. After surviving the spider, he wasn’t about to let that happen. Thinking quickly, he let a baby roach approach and fall on top of him. Grasping his knife, he thrust under the insect and slit it to its head. As blood oozed down his face, he used the carcass as a shield and pushed his way out. As the larger roaches attacked, he slashed at their antennae, watching them fall, twitching on the ground. The now-senseless roaches wandered without aim and butted heads before stumbling away.
Anand pulled Elora out of the hole and set her on the ground. He freed her arms and limbs from the spider silk, revealing a raised bruise on the front of her thigh that spread to her back. When he turned her over, he saw where the spider had pierced her and laid its eggs in a bulging chain. The eggs’ transparency revealed the living spiderlings that twitched inside them. These tiny monsters were more revolting than their giant mother.
After scraping lichen from a nearby rock, he dampened it for a poultice with his water bag. Then, taking a deep breath, he used his knife to excise the eggs. It was delicate work as he did not want to pierce the sacs and free the spiderlings to prick the girl with their fangs. He was sweating by the time he removed the last one and knew he had to stanch the bleeding soon. He pressed the lichen against the bleeding wounds and bound it with grass fiber. Her eyes were glazed and unmoving but then he saw her blink.
“You’re going to be all right,” he said and tried to smile. “I’m bringing you back to camp now. You will be with your mother before Sun is reborn.”
Anand took her limp hand and held it, unsure if she could hear him until he saw a tear well in the corner of her eye.
Elora’s mother was lying outside her camp, muffling her weeping with a wad of cloth. In the dim light, she saw the figure of a boy carrying a limp body over his shoulder. Anand set Elora down. Then he collapsed. He looked as if all the aches and pains in the world were weighing on his limbs.
The mother dropped the cloth from her mouth and shrieked. Other mite scrapers surrounded Elora and felt for her pulse. They saw the poultice that Anand had applied and looked at his spent figure.
“She’s alive!” said one.
“This boy went back and rescued her! And he’s cut out the spiderlings!” said another.
“Who is he?” asked the foreman, stroking the long mustache that indicated his authority. Elora’s mother rocked her daughter and could say nothing. All she could do was sob in relief.
“He’s from the shit caste,” said a sneering boy who was Anand’s age. “Let’s kick him back to where he belongs.”
Other boys were ready to take up the suggestion and surrounded Anand to stomp on him. He had heard their threats but was too weak to move.
“No!” screamed Elora’s mother, throwing herself over the untouchable.
“You are polluting yourself!” screamed the woman’s sister. “He’s polluted your daughter!”
“He saved Elora! Kick me before you kick him!” she shouted. The foreman stepped towards her, and for a moment it seemed he was about to do just that. Instead, he gave her a sharp yank and looked down at Anand.
Anand gazed up wearily. “All I ask is that if you’re going to kill me, be quick about it,” he said. His eyes then closed and he fell into a deep sleep or death—no one was sure.
CHAPTER 13
THE GHOST ANTS OF HULKREN
At the halfway point of her journey, Polexima met her mother’s more modest caravan on its way to Cajoria. Polexima and Clugna chatted happily in the shade of a daisy plant and doted on the baby Pareesha before resuming their treks.
Riding inside Polexima’s sled was a brilliant orator from Mound Loobish, the seat of learning. His specialty was history of the Wars of Unification, the conflict that forever bound the tribe of light-skinned warriors with the dark-skinned primitives who had first settled the Slope. After four days of narration, he was about to end his recitation for the queen.
“Locust and Mantis had commanded that the tribes become one, and yellow-skinned soldiers were given access to brown-skinned women. Thus all future peoples of the Slope, no matter how low-born, are related to each other and descended from Ant Queen.”
The orator left the trance that enabled him to sing the vast chain of words. As he slumped a bit in his seat, Polexima lifted up the flap of the sled’s tent to speak with her attendants. “Please, bring us refreshments,” she commanded. A sentry scurried back on his ant to the royal provisions-sled.
“Thank you, learned one. Will you join me for a repast?”
“I would be honored,” said the orator as he adjusted a necklace that dangled the jar which contained his pickled testicles.
When the food arrived, the orator did not join Polexima in eating the bitter wafers proffered to her by Pious Kontinbra, the haughty priest that accompanied her on journeys. The wafers were mixed with dried fruit, but she knew they contained roach eggs, something s
he usually consumed in her morning tea. She still wasn’t sure why they were required in her diet, but she had gotten used to the taste to the point she almost enjoyed them. Kontinbra watched Polexima eat the wafers, then excused himself and let his ant fall back. Without a priest to eavesdrop, she probed the orator as he smeared grub jam on a mushroom cracker.
“Learned One, do you know the histories of the roach peoples?”
“No, Majesty. The Britasytes are a secretive tribe.”
“It’s why I asked,” she said ruefully. “Maybe you can tell me this, then—how long have the Britasytes been granted freedom to travel on the Slope?”
“Since the time of the Wars of Unification.”
“Do they trade roach eggs?”
The orator was quiet as he searched his chains of words. “The Britasytes do not trade roach eggs with Slopeites, only the cured goods made from them.” After a moment he added, “Roach eggs are known to be poisonous to Slopeites and can result in death after ingestion.”
The queen sighed, certain she was not being poisoned. What the orator had told her did nothing to assuage her curiosity—after thirty years she was still longing for the end of this mystery. Her frustration was forgotten when she sighted her home. Palzhad was larger and more impressive than Cajoria, but it was far less significant. She could see that even more of the lowest castes were squatting in spacious dwellings within the mound’s closest ring, a condition that made Palzhad ridiculous in the views of other Slopeites. She noticed that even the workers of the midden had moved up to occupy large and lacquered houses.
And why shouldn’t they have nice houses if it’s possible to provide them? she thought. She also noticed that since her last visit, the outer rings had become denser with weeds too poisonous for the ants to mulch. The tall grasses smelled sweet, and at the top of their stalks were spittlebugs coating themselves with meringue. She thought the weeds were pretty and gave the mound a luxuriant quality, but she knew others viewed the growth as further evidence of Palzhanite decline.
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