The Illustrated PROPHETS OF THE GHOST ANTS: Part One, The Roach Boy

by Clark Thomas Carlton

  But very long on sorrow.

  Make the most of every day

  And don’t live for tomorrow.

  The servants understood this song, which used words from their caste dialect. Polexima’s family and the priests did not. Dolgeeno interrupted.

  “If Her Highness will excuse me,” he said, before turning to his men. “Priests, the Princess Pareesha has survived the sting. We must descend to the cathedral and consult with the gods to tell us when Princess Trellana’s fission trek should depart.”

  “Before you do,” said Polexima. “I should like to speak with the scouting party about the new site.”

  “Why?” asked Dolgeeno. “The site was determined and approved nearly a year ago.”

  “Who approved it? Not me. I will not send my daughter and thousands of our people into the wilderness without some assurance of their safety. I should like to speak with the scouting party before you leave for the cathedral.”

  “As you wish, Majesty,” said Dolgeeno, sending his quickest novitiate as a messenger.

  Trellana trembled from a deepening realization. She had always been told it was her destiny to leave Cajoria and rule over a new colony, but the arrival of this infant was turning the words into a reality. She suddenly felt constricted by her clothing and unable to breathe. She fainted, and fell softly into the thickness of her own costume, her mouth open. Before they were chased away, grooming ants responded to the signal that she was hungry and regurgitated into her opened mouth.

  *

  A short time later, the men who had found and approved the site of the new colony arrived at the chambers of the king and queen.

  “The site of the new mound is north and slightly east of here, a journey of twenty-one days by caravan, or two days on fleet ants, in the uninhabited territory known as Dranveria in the old tongue,” said Pious Estaine, the priest of the tree god Bortshu-mox. He wore a twin-winged seedpod as his hat and drew a map with his finger in a dust-box.

  “Twenty-one days by caravan?” King Sahdrin repeated, his voice loud but trembling. “That’s too far! No mound on the Slope is that distant from another.” Trellana sniffled. She did not want to be so far from her father.

  Estaine bowed to the king before responding. “Majesty, it is some distance, but the oracles were correct. The new site contains glorious stands of untouched bortshu trees… an ample supply of leaves for at least ten generations.”

  Commander General Batra, the officer whose soldiers had accompanied Estaine, jutted out both his deep chest and his box-like chin before speaking. Over his tunic was a necklace of dried human ears from tree cannibals he had killed on the journey. “Pious Estaine is correct, Your Majesties. The new site is distant, but treaties with the Seed Eaters prevent us from going east and we risk war with the Carpenter tribe if we venture west.”

  “What is the terrain like?” Polexima asked.

  “It is still an extension of the Slope, but with reddish sand,” Estaine answered.

  Polexima flinched when she heard “reddish sand.”

  “And it is not occupied?”

  “Not by ant peoples. The tree canopies are full of cannibal tribes, but they are primitives who pose little threat. We will exterminate them as we establish the colony.”

  “Why have we not colonized it before?”

  “Our journey was not without incident,” said Batra. “In the old tongue, the name Dranveria means ‘domain of lair spiders,’ of which there are many. Some in our party succumbed to them. Others were carried off by… night wasps.”

  At the mention of night wasps, a long silence chilled the room. Sahdrin sighed through his nostrils. “Very well,” said the king.

  “It’s not very well at all,” said Polexima. “One remembers stories about previous attempts to colonize the lands of red sand, and of the mysterious and brutal… Dranverites.”

  “Stories? What stories?” Trellana asked. She shot her mother a piercing look then turned to Dolgeeno.

  “In one legend,” said the queen, “the dried bones and bloody clothing of Kulfish pioneers were returned to their original mound in neat, cube-shaped piles.”

  With slitted eyes, Dolgeeno turned to Estaine and Batra.

  “Pious Estaine, did you see even one little Dranverite on your expedition?” he asked, as if he were speaking to a child. “How about you General?” he sang with a smug smile. “Anyone mounted on a… red hunter ant?”

  “Of course not,” said General Batra. “I give my word as a soldier.”

  “By all the gods, no!” swore Estaine, as both men blinked at each other then looked away.

  “People tell lots of silly stories for the fun of being scared,” said His Most Pious. “Fear not, Princess. The omens for your new mound are exceptionally good. There are no such beings as Dranverites and no one to challenge Slopeish supremacy.”

  “I overheard a conversation,” Polexima said, “whispered between my servants, in their own tongue.” The queen began to whisper herself. “They said the laborers that accompanied your expedition were not killed by insect predators, but by our own Cajorite soldiers.”

  “Ridiculous,” said Dolgeeno with a roll of his eyes. “Soldiers have no right to kill your subjects without cause – they would risk their own execution.”

  “Perhaps these laborers saw something,” said the queen, “something you did not wish them to report to the Mound.”

  “Like what, dear Queen?”

  “The border walls of another nation which they were ordered to clear… as their last act before dying.”

  “Polexima, really,” said the High Priest as he shook his head and sent ripples through his wattles. “What calamitous shape we would be in if we believed the stories of the simple folk.” He turned to Batra and Estaine. “Again, under oath to Mantis, did either of you see red ants or anyone riding on one?”

  “Certainly not,” said Estaine.

  “By Mantis, no,” said Batra.

  “Then you are dismissed,” said the High Priest, cutting short the meeting. “If your highnesses will excuse me, we must prepare for our divine audience.”

  Polexima watched Dolgeeno’s weighty buttocks jiggle under his robes as he exited the room. How I loathe that man, she thought.

  As Dolgeeno and the priests returned to the rectory, they had a lively discussion about which of their evening robes to wear. They were at their happiest when they met with the gods. As they spiraled downward on an ant train to the cathedral deep inside the mound, they would eat the joy-inducing wafers of the Holy Mildew, the precious fungus they scraped from the ceilings of the mushroom chambers. Once inside the sanctuary, lit by torches of lightning fly eggs, they would shed their robes to dance and chant before a gaudy altar with a hundred idols. The priests’ feet would disappear and they would float in an ecstatic trance. Soon the walls would melt and the idols would transform into real gods – gods who would make pronouncements and answer the questions of mortals.

  Chapter 5

  The Trip to the Swamp

  Anand and Terraclon had no rags to change into, but nudity was a serious crime in Cajoria so they cut shoots of new grass, pierced the middles with holes, and made tunics of them. They fashioned antennae from grass fibers, dipped them in kin-scent, and tied them to their heads. No sooner were they dressed than Keel put them to the gruesome work of porting corpses to the swamp at the edge of the Freshwater Lake.

  The boys reported to a man from the steering caste who, like most of the mound’s workers, was starving and had sunken cheeks. Using his shriveled limbs, he handed the boys turbans scented with leaf-finding-scent. The boys strapped themselves into reins attached to trucking ants. The ants were hitched to the vats stuffed with stinking dead men, and once the boys put on the turbans, the trucking ants could not help but follow and lug the vats behind them.

  The two friends dreaded the tedious hike to the Punk Weed Wilds, but they picked up batting poles from a pile and took the first steps. Terraclon, who was usually chatty, w
as as silent as stone as they trudged past the trunk of a dying tree.

  “You’re quiet today,” said Anand.

  Terraclon exhaled and looked away.

  “My parents have stopped speaking your name, Anand. They just call you ‘that half-breed boy.’”

  “So?”

  “So they think you will make me unmarriageable and tempt me into eating roach flesh. They say I am too old to spend time with you.”

  “I’ve never eaten roach flesh. Neither has my mother. Her people eat roach eggs, and only when there is no other food to be had.”

  Using their poles, the two swatted at the flies buzzing about the carts. When one refused to fly off, Anand looked around to see if they were alone then used his pole to smash it to the ground and stab through its head with the sharp end.

  “Impressive!” said Terraclon as he slapped Anand’s back. Anand tore open the fly’s abdomen with his knife, scooped out some of the lymph and ate it.

  “What are you doing?” asked Terraclon, anxiously looking both ways.

  “I’m eating. Come on. Let’s get some fat on your frame.”

  “That fly belongs to the royals!”

  “The fly belongs to us if we eat it,” said Anand. Terraclon scooped out some green flesh. When they finished eating and resumed their trek, carrion beetles crawled up from their holes to munch on the fly’s remains.

  Terraclon and Anand pulled their vats off the path when they heard soldiers returning from the conflict with the neighboring Seed Eaters. As usual, the soldiers sang the Hymn of Glories, which boasted of Slopeish invincibility. Terraclon bowed his head and glued his eyes to the sand as the procession made its way. Anand bent his head to the ground, but his eyes peered up. The soldiers rode on the tallest of ants, with mandibles that were long and lethal and exoskeletons of a deep and glossy yellow. Around the men’s necks were the breathing filters they wore when fighting the Seed Eaters, whose harvester ants sprayed noxious battle fumes. On the end of the soldiers’ pikes were the severed heads of the enemy.

  Slopeish soldiers may have spent all their days in preparation to kill and be killed, but to Anand it seemed they were always smiling, always laughing, something he resented. When he stole an upwards glimpse, his head was smacked by the flat of a sword. He looked up to see a chiding soldier, nearly as young as himself.

  “Eyes to the sand, boy,” said the soldier and Anand’s ears went hot. He gazed at the ground until the procession passed.

  The boys reached the edge of the marsh with towering punk grass that waved its brown cylinders in the wind. They dumped the contents of their carts and backed away as water bugs swam up from the swamp and converged on the corpses.

  “I hate them and what they do to us,” Anand said. “But sometimes I wish I was with them.”

  “With who?”

  “The soldiers,” Anand said as he kicked up a grain of sand.

  “You will be with them — some time when they go to war. Even soldiers have to wipe their bottoms.”

  “I’m not talking about carting off their shit. I’m talking about fighting.”

  “Fighting? You? Let them fight and die! Look at our legless king at the next assembly and then tell me you want to be a soldier.”

  “Come on, Ter. Haven’t you ever wanted to do something besides clean chamber pots?”

  “No point in thinking about it. We are born to our tasks, just as the ants are hatched to theirs.”

  “But you have thought about it.”

  Terraclon looked over at a tuft of razor grass where he kept something hidden.

  “Can you keep a secret?” he asked.

  Anand nodded and Terraclon disappeared behind the grass. He huffed and puffed as he pushed aside a pebble, then unfolded something wrapped in rags. “Turn your back,” he said, as he snapped a flower from a spray of dwarf lilies. Anand kept his back turned and heard the sounds of dressing.

  “All right,” Terraclon said. “Turn and bow before me.”

  Anand turned then burst into laughter. Terraclon was arrayed in a parody of royal dress with jackets and trains. It was a patchwork of rags that had been salvaged from the royal trash. He wore the lily as a miter and its yellow pollen was smeared on his face. He strutted about, wielding his pole as if it were a scepter.

  “I have a secret too,” Anand said when he could stop laughing. “Time to turn your back!”

  Terraclon obeyed. Anand cut a shard from a saddle-leaf plant and draped it over the spiny thorax of the trucking ant. He took off his turban and wrapped it at the end of his pole. Terraclon heard Anand climbing and then the ant taking steps.

  “Turn around,” Anand said.

  Terraclon screeched. Anand was riding on the ant, guiding it with his turban.

  “Anand! What are you doing!?”

  “I’m riding.”

  “Get off that ant now. It’s forbidden!”

  Anand laughed as he rode the ant in a circle. Terraclon trembled then climbed the ant’s leg spikes and yanked Anand off.

  “If the sheriffs see you on an ant, they’ll cut your legs off!”

  “Why then I’ll look like our king. And with that outfit, you can be queen.”

  “If you ever ride on an ant again, I won’t be your friend.”

  “All right, all right,” Anand responded. “Help me hitch her to the cart.”

  On their return, the boys detoured into a density of bucket orchids whose roots clung to the shady side of the dying tree. After docking the ants, they climbed an orchid to steal a nap in the tubular beard of its flower. It was sweet and waxy inside, with lavender light that bled through the flower’s freckles.

  When Anand drifted into sleep, he dreamt of himself in a soldier’s armor riding with Terraclon on a soldier ant. He saw himself leading an army of a hundred thousand against an even greater enemy. He woke from the dream, startled and sweating. Why have I seen someone else’s future? he asked himself. Roach people are traders, never soldiers.

  Chapter 6

  The Fission Lottery

  His Most Pious Dolgeeno was fatigued after a sleepless night of sanctifying the lots prior to the assembly. He paced the tunnel outside his chambers as he waited for Dorfen, the foreman of the blinders’ caste, whose grim and messy work was deep in the brood compounds. The foreman’s garment was filthy with the dried blood of ants whose eyes were gouged out as soon as they emerged, and from the slaughtering of winged hatchlings who might be potential rivals to the ant queen. After Dorfen was bathed and given a clean garment, he was escorted to the rectory. He crawled to Dolgeeno and used his antennae to nuzzle the hems of the holy robes.

  “Blessings of all gods upon thee,” said His Most Pious Dolgeeno. “Kneel.”

  Dorfen raised his head and peered past Dolgeeno’s legs to glimpse the high priest’s chambers. His table was covered with plates of foods that had only been sampled. The sleeping cushion, supported by columns of carved amber, was larger than the shelter where Dorfen, his wife, and their eighteen children lived. Dolgeeno noticed the blinder was distracted and shifted to cover the portal.

  “Good Worker Dorfen, until I say so, you are not to blind or slaughter any winged nymphs that hatch. They are to be taken to a separate chamber by the hauling caste.”

  “Yes, Holiness. If I may ask a question…”

  Dolgeeno nodded.

  “How soon is the fission?”

  “Sometime after the next rain. The winged ones you protect will be the new colony’s progenitors.”

  “One other question, Holiness.”

  The priest cocked an eye. “Yes?”

  “May I wear this garment to the assembly?”

  “Certainly not.”

  Dorfen fell to his knees and crawled away backwards. Once he had reached the priest’s servants, his crusty rags were thrown at him.

  *

  As Dorfen returned to his caste, Polexima prepared to fulfill her duty as the mound’s Sorceress Queen. As usual, she dressed in a simple garment, then mounte
d an ant at the head of a team that took her to the ant queen’s chambers. Once there, she would lay down the divine essence that safeguarded the mound’s existence. Joining her that morning was a newly ordained priest, Pious Frinbo, Dolgeeno’s current favorite, who she thought was more pretty than handsome with his long, thick eye lashes that weighted his blinking.

  “Your Majesty,” he said, and he bowed before helping her mount her ant. “I will accompany you this morning. Pious Dolgeeno is exhausted from a night blessing the lots.”

  “The lots!” said Polexima with surprise. “Was I informed of this?”

  “You were exhausted. We did not wish to disturb your sleep.”

  Polexima hid her alarm but her head throbbed with worries. Sooner than expected, her daughter and a third of her subjects would be making a perilous march.

  She was jostled in the traffic of ants that thickened on their way to the ant queen. Some of the smaller ants, with food for their mother, crawled over Polexima’s back and her mount. It seemed longer than usual before she reached the egg-layer, a massive ant of thirteen summers. She was nearly three hundred times the size of her smallest daughters, the grooming minims, a few of which paced inside her emptied eye sockets. At her massive gaster were ants from the hatching caste that took her chains of eggs to the brood chambers.

  A dozen priests near the ant queen circled around Polexima as she dismounted, then spread out her skirts before discharging her urine.

  “Holy is the essence of Polexima,” sang Frinbo in the priests’ holy tongue, “that holds back the Yellow Mold whose demon tendrils weaken walls and tunnels, and whose poisons kill ants and mushrooms. Gods bless and protect our Urine Sorceress, Queen Polexima.”

  Once Polexima had finished, the priests returned to the ant queen where they rubbed rags over different parts of her to absorb her different essences. Some of them dashed into her mouth to dab at the glistening lumps inside it. As they did so, streams of feeding ants ran in and deposited their liquid food. When the ant queen’s mouth started to close, both ants and priests rushed out.

  After Frinbo returned Polexima to her apartments, he rejoined the priests, who were back in the secret chambers of the rectory, immersing their essence-soaked rags in barrels of water, oil or spirits. Around them were other priests extracting essences from leaves, seeds, twigs, or insect parts to bottle or to dry and powder. As they did so, they made lists and practiced their greatest secret of all: the inscribing of symbols on sheets of paper that only they could decipher.