The Oarsman

by Zubin Mathai

The pair walked along a line of cool stones, but these were not ordinary stones like the worker would encounter when she would wander off on her own. These were flat and square, all exactly the same size, arranged in a grid, and separated by lines of dusty grayness the width of four ants side by side.

  While the soldier dutifully walked along the dark grey lines, excusing herself politely or with a silent nod when other ants passed the other way, the worker chose her own path. She ran in circles along the flat part of the stones, along their brown, clay-like smoothness, and tried her hardest to keep up with her friend. She ignored most of the other ants, but one thing in the distance did catch her attention.

  Two pale, tree-like, giant columns moved along the stones far away, casting their own shadows and vibrating the ground whenever their bottoms smashed down. She had seen this thing before, often when she would come this way to the colony, and decided to muse out loud to her friend.

  “Just like lizards are with four legs, and us ants with six, do you think there could be an animal so giant — so tall that we couldn’t even see it’s head — an animal with only two legs?”

  The soldier scoffed and turned to look at her friend (the worker was always kind enough to walk to her right so she was easier to see).

  “My tiny friend, we ants don’t have to worry about such things. Even if there were animals so huge, they would not be a threat to us,” said the soldier, picking up her pace. “They probably would not even be able to see us.”

  They walked for a bit more in silence, as the soldier kept her head straight and her antenna oddly still. The worker continued her hops along the flat stones, while stealing glances at those two weirdly moving trees so far away.

  Suddenly, the soldier stopped and used its front legs to wipe the glisten off its head and body, and even used antennae to wipe down it’s lone eye. The worker could sense her friend hesitating, could see an anxiety wash over her like a shadow, and so she spoke up.

  “Why are you so nervous?”

  “My friend, you are young and innocent — perhaps too innocent for what colony life is like deep inside.” As the soldier responded she stood tall, gathering her courage as if for battle, and straightened out her antennae to crisp lines above her head. “When the queen calls on you, it is never for a good reason.”

  The pair entered a small hole at the end of the line of dusty grey, in between two smooth stones, and all the light was suddenly snuffed out. They went deep into dirt and rocks, with the little worker following trustingly behind her bigger friend. They scurried around corners and climbed down tunnels, all while feeling the wriggles of hundreds of other ants coming and going. They passed the sea of youth in training and passed the immense walls of newborns curled up and waiting for sparks of life to animate them.

  Finally, after the long, crawling journey, and with not a word uttered between them, they entered the queen’s lair. At first, the worker’s eyes could see nothing, but then they slowly began adjusting. The tiniest splinter of light reached down from above through a shaft, and it brought a little mercy against the terrors of imagination. There were five giant soldiers in a semi-circle along the far wall, and they stood still, stoically so. None had any nervousness on their face like the worker’s big friend.

  At first, the worker could not make out what the giant black shape at the center of the semi-circle was, but then she heard a few grating scrapes, as sharp legs moved along a hard and bulbous abdomen. It was the queen, an ant bigger and blacker than the worker had ever seen. For a few terrifying moments, she just stared, and the silence in the room came to shove a scary daydream into her mind.

  She pictured those dark soldiers just waiting for the command to seize and torture. She pictured the queen with giant and serrated, snapping jaws — jaws bigger than the entire worker’s body — ready to separate the heads of any ant that even looked at her the wrong way. Luckily, even darker images did not enter the worker’s mind, cut short by the queen clearing her throat and speaking up.

  “Let a little more light into the room. I want to see these two,” the queen said, and her voice was the deepest and richest the worker had heard, like the fire of a sunset poured onto the wind.

  One of the guards reached up and flicked a few grains of sand from the shaft above her, and more more light, precious light, spilled in. Even though the queen was less scary now that she could be seen, the size of her, easily four times bigger than even these giant soldiers, still scared the worker, and she immediately scurried behind her friend.

  “Come out, little one. Let me speak to you,” the queen said.

  “I- I can hear you just fine. We can speak without seeing each other,” the worker said back with a shivering stutter.

  After a pause, the one-eyed soldier, spoke up herself. “Forgive my friend, my queen, she is a timid one.”

  The queen, at the words of that soldier, immediately tensed and drew up to her full height, stomping all six of her legs violently enough to shake the entire cavern. The light caught her eyes and set them ablaze. “You! I did not ask you to speak. How dare you even address me?!”

  At that, the soldier shrank back, almost stepping on the head of her little friend behind her. She did not even answer the queen, instead the worker could see her tremble, and her antennae instinctively reach up and rub where her missing eye had been.

  The queen waited for a few seconds, still glaring with red-fired eyes, but satisfied that that that soldier was put in its place. She tried coaxing the worker out from behind again, but gave up when the tiny one only had a few smartly squeaking remarks.

  Deciding to get on with business, the queen spoke. She spoke of all the stories she had been hearing of the little worker getting in trouble: sneaking off in the middle of the day to explore, not carrying her share of the burdens. She spoke of other ants coming to complain of the worker’s daydreaming, spacily getting herself lost, not obeying orders, or walking in circles instead of the called-for straight lines.

  But when the queen spoke of the soldier, her tone changed from a wind to a hurricane. “And you — you who have a duty to protect, to offer your life for the colony — I’ve heard how you wander off to find your little friend and bring her back. You leave your post as if it were not the most important responsibility you have!”

  “Do you know, little one,” the queen said, directing her words to the worker still trembling behind her friend’s legs, “that a soldier is sworn to protect a queen with her life?” And as she uttered those words, the soldier backed up a bit into a shadowed space, reaching up to cover its missing eye with its front legs.

  “For a soldier to survive a battle — a battle in which nearly an entire colony is wiped out — is the worst shame of all,” the queen continued, and the little worker could feel her friend shaking above her. She looked up to make out terror painted by the dim light on the soldier’s face, and she did not like seeing her brave friend so belittled.

  Hoping to get attention back on her, to save her friend, the worker piped up. “I know I am not a good worker,” she said, and the queen angled a head and antennae at her, easing the tension that had been building.

  “Maybe I could switch roles?”

  “Ha!” scoffed the queen. “You are too small to be a soldier. You have only one antenna. How could you know when danger approaches?” And then she glared at the soldier, not breaking eye-contact for even a second. “Ants with missing parts are not full ants. They cannot do their duties. You were born that way, little one, so you could have learned, but others… others become half-ants because of their failures.”

  “I could be an explorer!” yelled out the worker, again to deflect attention from her friend.

  A moment of silence draped the room, as the queen, and perhaps even the circle of stoic guards, tried to understand the word that they had just heard. Finally, the queen let loose a laugh, a laugh large enough to shake sand from the walls and ceiling. As the laugh spread out through the colony, vibrating through walls and stone, all
the ants underground stopped their movement to listen, and soon they shook and vibrated in tune, mimicking with their bodies the spreading laugh from their beloved queen.

  “Listen, my little worker,” said the queen after recovering from her laughing fit. “You are the youngest here, one of the latest born in this new home, a home I found at the edge of the sea of flat stones, a home I had to bring myself to when our old colony was attacked and obliterated.” And for that last sentence she once again glared at the one-eyed soldier.

  “You are too young to understand,” the queen continued. “I dragged myself here, wounded and near death, with only a few workers — and one lone soldier — and we rebuilt this place. You are perhaps too young to know of roles and responsibilities. There are only workers and soldiers out on the surface. Nothing else. We don’t need explorers.”

  “But I like to wander, to look at new things,” the worker said faintly.

  The queen laughed again, this time, however, a little impatience was creeping into her voice. “How could you explore? You are too afraid to even come out from behind your friend to look at me.”

  The worker thought for a moment, thought that she should step out and show the queen her courage, but her mind was always more brave than her feet, and so she stayed put. She tried blurring her eyes, readying to call up a daydream for courage.

  “If you forget about your daydreams, forget about the images you constantly play with, could you actually go out and explore?” asked the queen. “Could you actually go out into a world where everything is hundreds of times larger than you — go out and meet dangers even your over-active mind could never fathom?”

  A flash of a pink petal on the wind, beckoning with a twirling dance and whispered mysteries, raced through the worker’s mind, but she tamped it down immediately. Her queen was asking a question, and so she owed her mother the dignity of an honest response. She cleared her head, came back to the moment, the moment of being the tiniest in a colony of purpose and roles, the moment of her needing to hide behind her friend, and finally spoke up.

  “No, my queen. I think not. I think I am too afraid,” and the little ant gulped down, unable to stop trembling, before finishing her sentences, “I think I am only meant to be a worker. I think my only choice is to try harder.”

  four

  Death