“Keep swinging,” he shouted to her and she pumped even harder.
He squirmed himself out and fell, only to be caught again. His cape had flown up and the wasp had snatched it in its mouth. The collar gagged him. He took his knife from its sheath and brought it to his neck.
When he cut the collar, the two of them plummeted. Anand shut his eyes. Save us, Sweet Roach God, he prayed. They fell to a cluster of pitcher plants, bounced on the bumpy mouth of one of them, then slid down the chute of its cylindrical leaf. They splashed in a pool of sharp smelling goop at the pitcher’s bottom.
“Come on,” said Anand as he swam to the wall and used his knife to slit open the pitcher. They squeezed out, landing in a bog where they struggled over the springy loam and fell in its fetid puddles. When Daveena tripped, Anand pulled her up and they faced each other, close enough to feel each other’s heat. “I have chosen well,” he said to her, holding her with his eyes.
The two stumbled through the bog’s tangled threads until they reached the edge of the dried mud flat. They were unsure which way to walk until their noses picked up roach-scent. As they got closer to camp, they heard the keening of the Britasyte women. The wasps had left and a funeral had begun, for all were sure Anand and Daveena had been shredded and fed to the wasps’ larvae in a nest in the sky.
The tribe had gathered around Da-Ma at the idol-sled. “Benevolent Crawler, bring them into your Heavenly Caravan,” he/she prayed, “to wander in eternity.” The tribe was silent when two filth-covered figures weaved through them, then took the stairs to the altar.
“Anand? Anand!” shouted Corra, as she and Glegina rushed the altar. They were followed by Daveena’s parents. All of them screamed in joy.
“Stay back,” said Da-Ma as the parents lunged for their children. The holy person suspected the two were ghosts. How could they have escaped a night wasp?
“We are not spirits,” said Anand, showing Da-Ma his bloody punctures from the wasp’s grip, “but Britasytes who bleed red blood.”
The parents hugged their children in teary disbelief. Da-Ma took the two into the sand sled and rubbed healing extracts onto their cuts.
Anand was heavy with fatigue, but he rose to his feet to address Daveena’s parents, Eltzer and Gupa, as they knelt at their daughter’s side. From her mattress, the girl looked up at Anand with a faint smile.
“I will not have this chance tomorrow,” Anand said to Eltzer, “and must speak to you now, sir. My fate is with your daughter. If she agrees, I wish to take her as my eternal wife.” Eltzer looked to Gupa. She nodded with enthusiasm.
“Of course,” said Eltzer, who rose and bowed. As he looked at the floor, he smiled, trying to hide his relief. At last, his intimidating daughter had found a husband, and one who was a spanner!
“There is one problem,” Anand said. “I am the property of the Cajorite royals for six more moons. I have been pressed into a colonial expedition, far to the unknown north, and I am unsure of when I can return. Daveena must wait for me, no matter what happens.”
Eltzer was silent before speaking, but his face was filled with apprehension.
“I cannot do that to my daughter… she is not a young girl anymore. What if you are killed on this trek? She will be eighteen in a few more moons. After that, we will be lucky if we can match her with an outsider.”
“If you have no word from me in seven moons, she is free to find another. Until then, I ask that she wear her hair in the braid of one who is spoken for. I am a poor boy with one thing to give her as my betrothal present: a promise to love and honor her all our days together.”
Eltzer took Anand’s hands in his own and nodded as Zedral arranged to return the boy and his mother on a speed-sled drawn by their fastest roach. As Bejetz drove the unhobbled giant, Anand and his mother slept on a cushion in the sled’s back.
Anand fell into a dream as they rode. He dreamt of the moment he could leave the Slopeites’ new colony to find Daveena in the Pleps’ caravan. He dreamt that on his route through the wilderness to find her, he was attacked by fleas, trapped by spiders and pursued by a swarm of night wasps. At the dream’s end, he found Daveena, but she burst into tears and stood to reveal she was pregnant with the child of a Slopeish outsider.
Anand awoke from this nightmare to find himself back at the midden where another nightmare had just begun.
Chapter 10
Departure
Anand was sick with hatred at the idea of donning his usual rags and facing another day at the midden. Before he left, he helped his mother butcher a drone that had landed near their tent. Before he and Yormu departed, she filled their bowls with fresh ant-flesh. It was something so forbidden Yormu would not eat it.
“It’s all right, Father,” Anand said as he scooped up the rich jelly with his fingers. “It’s been decreed.”
“For one thing, they want to fatten up the pioneers for the Fission,” said Corra.
Anand tasted his food then pushed away his bowl and clutched his stomach. “I’m sick,” he said.
“It happens after you leave the spirit world,” said his mother. “You must eat something, and drink as much water as you can today.” She released a terrible sigh.
“Something wrong, Mother?”
“Just the usual sadness of returning to this place.”
“It won’t be forever,” Anand said in Britasyte. It was the first time the thought of leaving the sedites didn’t make him happy. He looked at his father and wondered —how would he live once they left?
*
At noon, during a water-break, Anand clustered with other middenites that had drawn yellow lots.
“I have told you, I will not go,” said Pleckoo the Noseless, whose disfigurement left him with a bone that poked through gaping nostrils.
“Don’t be a fool, Pleckoo,” said Keel. “If you don’t go you’ll be executed!”
“There are far worse fates,” Pleckoo said, then spat in defiance. The wad landed on Anand’s foot. When Pleckoo realized he had spat on his half-bred cousin, he didn’t apologize or even look his way.
“The sheriffs will kill your parents if you run away,” said Keel.
“My parents have lived long enough,” said Pleckoo, “and I weary of sharing my rations with them.”
“Where do you plan to go, idiot? Will you run away with the Roach Eaters? Will you climb a tree and take up with cannibals? If you leave the mound, you leave the protective spells of the priests. How long will you live then?”
Pleckoo snorted, stood his most erect, and said in full voice, “I have my own magic. And with it, I will find and settle in Bee-Jor.”
This was met with a roar of laughter. Bee-Jor was the name of a land from a children’s song, where edible mushrooms grew in abundance in fields outside its mounds. Bee-Jor’s lakes were filled with honey and its stream gushed with cold berry-wine. It was never hot or cold and all were welcome to live there if they worshipped Bee, the honey goddess.
“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 far to the north, where we are going.”
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 in the Dustlands, tempting Slopeites to demon 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 will be hunted down and dragged back for bathing. Are we understo
od?”
“We are,” Pleckoo answered. And then he spat in Keel’s face.
“You shit!” said Keel. “Take him to the whipping-pebble!”
Tal and Keel’s other sons grabbed Pleckoo. His rags were ripped off as Keel raised the whip. 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 laugh, 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 tent on the far side of the midden.
“Where are you going, Pleckoo?” screamed Keel. “Get back to work!”
Pleckoo fell on his face. Anand ran and picked him up.
“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 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 soul.
He had to find something to distract him. What was this place Pleckoo had mentioned? Bee-Jor. Anand would ask his mother about it. If there was such a land, the Britasytes knew of 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 Highness in privacy,” she said. The servants bowed then crawled away, backwards. Polexima sat on the bed and signaled Sahdrin to join her. He did not know what she was going to say, but he was already saddened.
“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 descendent 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.”
Sahdrin realized that he was both as deeply vexed by and as deeply in love with this woman as when he first met her. 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 with his good eye. Whatever she was going to say, he knew it was going to hurt.
“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 arrived on schedule for his wedding with his spectacular retinue from Mound Kulfi. His train of ants and humans seemed to stretch to the horizon, then back through time. As tradition dictated, he awaited Trellana at the pen of seeded ant-queens. 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.
Trellana sulked as she made her way to the wedding site. She had wanted a wedding in the cathedral with a weeklong feast, but omens insisted that the pioneers depart after an abbreviated ceremony in the outdoors. The cathedral’s idols had been transported to a makeshift altar on the inside of a great tent pitched on an ant-riding course. With her parents riding behind her, Trellana arrived at the tent, veiled atop a gold-powdered ant. Dolgeeno and the other priests finished bathing and perfuming the idols in time to receive the prince and his priests.
“I’m a bit fearful,” said Maleps to his brother, Prince Kep, whose duty it had been to accompany him.
“Why? Why fear any woman?”
“Last time I saw Trellana, we were children. I don’t remember her as being that pretty.”
“I’m afraid I don’t either,” said Kep. From his smug smile, Maleps assumed his brother was glad he was not the one getting married that day.
The prince’s ant entered the tent and both bride and groom dismounted. Once at the altar, Maleps and Trellana knelt before their gods.
Dolgeeno passed them a chalice of honey that they licked then offered to the idol of Ant Queen. They bit a consecrated mushroom then set it before Grasshopper. Dolgeeno 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 towards 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.”
Maleps gulped as he lifted his wife’s veil. Like some of royal blood, Trellana’s eyes, he knew, were very close together. For weeks, Maleps had rehearsed his reaction to her – he imagined taking her hand in assurance, certain he could find some charm to make him smile.
He found none. 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. He look
ed over at Trellana’s handmaidens who carried the gossamer trains of her gowns. One maiden had large eyes set in a cunning face. Her figure was so full and comely it could not be hidden under her robe. The prince was charmed by her and smiled.
“You look lovely,” he whispered, transferring his smile to Trellana who looked up and into his eyes.
“Thank you,” she said, eagerly accepting what seemed a belated but sincere compliment. They exited the tent to see her waiting parents.
“I entrust you with my daughter,” Sahdrin said.
“I will not betray your trust,” he responded.
Maleps looked at his mother-in-law and thought her far prettier than her daughter. Polexima did not like him at all. She saw that his eyes had already roved from her to other women.
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. The middenites, as usual, were at the tail of the parade. Yormu was sniffling. He stood with his hands on Anand’s shoulders as the long procession commenced its journey. He 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. They’ve been sentenced to death by bathing if they’re caught.”
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 had brought 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.
The Illustrated PROPHETS OF THE GHOST ANTS: Part One, The Roach Boy Page 6