The Oarsman

by Zubin Mathai

As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they could see spears of light penetrating from the surface ahead of them. Even though the beetle was calm, as he always was, he still did not take a step forward. The worker looked up to the half-covered escape route, and then looked forward to the darkness of the tunnel, and did not budge a millimeter either.

  “Perhaps we can stop right here. We can stand here and wait, and then go back to the surface when the wasp’s gone,” said the worker, as she reached out with a couple of legs and her antenna to feel the safety of the walls.

  The beetle half-turned to face the worker, not wanting to turn the whole way and have the full darkness of the tunnel behind him.

  “I am not exactly sure of this either, my little friend,” said the beetle. “But right now we are separated from your friends. Who knows if they are injured and need our attention. We cannot go around that mountain of rocks, nor over it, especially when that crazed wasp is out there. Our only choice is to go east, through this tunnel, and hope that it takes us beyond the barrier.”

  The beetle finally took one step forward, feeling the edge of the wall with his legs, and then he took another step forward. The next step he’d take would be on his injured leg, and when he noticed the worker still not moving, he half-turned again.

  “My little friend, with my dry humor I will say that me being so wise has perhaps borrowed from my courage. I cannot do this alone. I need your help.”

  The worker gulped her fear and paused for a moment. She was tempted to blur her eyes and daydream, perhaps picture sunlight flooding or transforming the entire tunnel bathed in pink light, but she resisted. She needed all her senses to be able to navigate this darkness. She stepped up and moved to the side of the beetle, and began helping him along.

  “This tunnel is in disrepair,” said the beetle a few steps later, as he knelt to look at the debris lining the floor. “I think this tunnel was made by small animals, perhaps a mole. If this tunnel were well-kept we’d be in danger-”

  The worker pressed up against the beetle, almost tipping him over.

  “No, my little friend. No need to worry. I see no signs of current animals down here. And the disrepair is in our favor, for the crumbling is letting in these shafts of light we see piercing the ceiling.”

  The pair inched along, moving through the light and dark sections, and the deathly-still air. They passed offshoots of the main tunnel, branches leading off left and right, and for each they paused and studied. As their eyes adjusted, they could see some tunnels absolute pitch-black, and others slightly less scary, with the same crumbling ceilings letting in pinpricks of light.

  At one point of their march, the worker thought she felt vibrations. As an ant, she was more sensitive than the beetle, so when the beetle said he felt nothing, the worker was not convinced. She reached out with her antenna and touched the wall, and stifled a little giggle when the coldness of it surprised her. She paused for a second, and feeling no more vibrations, she was ready to continue.

  They got to a perilous section of the tunnel where there were no tiny holes to the outside at all, no light shafts, only pitch blackness. “Stay close,” said the beetle as he inched forward. The worker didn’t need the warning, for the fear coating each of her steps was more than enough. She pressed up closer to the beetle and kept up.

  She felt those odd vibrations again, and they seemed to be shaking the whole tunnel in the most ominous of ways. She spun to look behind her, thinking they were getting closer, but then, suddenly, they stopped. Turning back, she held her breath and felt around in the darkness for the beetle, and resumed breathing when she felt his side again.

  She whispered she was ready to continue, and took one step forward, then another, and was curious why the beetle wasn’t moving at all. She reached over with her one antenna and felt the side of the beetle, at at first everything seemed right: cool, smooth, round. When she tapped him with her antenna she realized something was wrong. She felt with her legs too now, and it dawned on her that she was holding on to a pebble.

  Immediately she panicked and spun around, grasping in the dark, wiggling her legs and antenna. Only empty air came back. She started calling out, and swore she heard the beetle calling for her up ahead. She inched forward, still completely blind in the dark, and the voice she thought she heard suddenly dropped off to nothing.

  She decided to stop and collect her thoughts. She didn’t like being in the center of the tunnel, so nakedly surrounded by emptiness, so she moved to the side. Then she stopped. Is the the direction for the side of the tunnel? She spun around, once, then twice, and her lone antenna had no idea which was the right way. Eventually she picked a random direction and stepped cautiously, relieved when she could eventually feel a wall.

  “Beetle?” she called out. She waited for an answer, keeping her antenna still and feeling the vibration of her voice emanate outwards. She heard nothing, and so she waited, priming her antenna to pick up even the tiniest of vibrations in return.

  Finally, after ten tense seconds, she felt something. She froze her body, slowed her heartbeat and rested her antenna against the wall, getting as sensitive as she could. There was the vibration again. It was a step.

  “Beetle?” she called out again. Nothing answered.

  She blurred her eyes and daydreamed the source of the sound and saw the beetle step down with one foot. She felt another ping of the vibration and pictured the beetle putting his next leg down. This continued until she got up to her feeling five steps, and she imagined the next step, coming from the beetles poor injured last leg, would be slightly less easy to pick up, so she honed her focus.

  There was the next step, felt as the faintest of vibrations through the tunnel walls. But then she felt another step. This did not make sense. Her instincts would have told her when the vibration matched the first, when the beetle was restarting his stride, and yet this was definitely a vibration from another leg. Then she felt another step.

  She rubbed her antenna across her head in confusion, and counted again in her mind. That couldn’t be the beetle. It had to be some other insect. In her daydreamed vision, she was trying to picture a solution: a long beetle; a beetle with an additional body part. What could it be? In her short life, she had never met an insect that had eight steps in its stride.

  When she felt the steps restarting, ever so faintly tapping out along the tunnel floor and wall from far up ahead, she decided to cautiously inch forward and meet the source of this strange stride.

  Around a corner, the worker finally saw some light. It was only a pinprick of sun reaching down through the ceiling, but it was enough to reveal a cavern. Any light was good, thought the worker, and so she stepped inside. She could see this was a central room, dug out by whatever small animal had first excavated these tunnels. Fanning out in all directions were more tunnels, some darkened and some half-lit.

  The ant poked her head into a few tunnels, whispering out for her beetle friend and waiting for a response. She stepped into one of the darker tunnels and thought she saw the outline of a beetle. She shuffled to the side to let some of the light from the cavern through, and then shrieked and jumped back in terror.

  Littered along the ground of this tunnel were bodies, hundreds of them. Curled and dead insects, with the life sucked out of each, lined the floor. As she scanned the bodies, she saw their shriveled faces and wondered what lives they had, what homes each had. The worker suddenly thought about her friend, the soldier. As a hand reaching out for another in the dark, her thoughts were looking for a connection, a familiar spot to hide in. She thought of how the soldier always made her safe in the colony, how she was always there with an encouraging word. She wondered if any of these dead bugs had had friends too.

  The ant started backing up, unable to look away from the pile of death before her. She backed up through the cavern and headed to the tunnel she first entered through. Something was blocking her way. She felt it first with her hind legs. She reached around in the faint light and felt
something furry, and immediately she wondered if it was the original animal tenant.

  She spun and there before her was a sight to see. Hairs, eyes, and legs. Way too many of each. She saw giant pincers the size of her entire body and above were eight black eyes staring right into her. When she was younger she had heard tales, and knew this thing before her was a spider, a big one, one of the biggest, a tarantula.

  She jumped back and darted for one of the other tunnel openings, but there was that eight-stepping vibration again, and it shook the entire cavern. The spider blocked her escape and reached out with its front legs for her. She ducked under and spun around, racing for another route. But the spider was fast, even with its size and too-many legs, and it was there to block her again.

  With the speed of lightning it grabbed her between two legs and lifted her up into the air. She writhed and screamed out, smashing the tarantula’s leg with her one antenna. The spider brought her close, in between its two giant jaws and gave her a lick. The worker wished she had eyelids. She wanted to close her eyes, something other than blurring them for a daydream, and not see her soon-to-be death so clearly.

  The spider brought her to the center of the cavern, and the worker thought it a sick game, how it did not just eat her right away, but wanted to look at her in the better light. It turned her over in its legs, brought her close to its eyes and mouth again, and then, oddly, brushed some sand and dirt into a little mound. It tamped down the mound to make it flat, and then dropped the worker on top.

  “Hello,” said the tarantula, and the vibrations of its voice shook a few grains of dirt loose from the ceiling.

  The worker did not answer. She only trembled in terror.

  “How is the air outside,” asked the spider, and with its next sentence, it plopped down to the floor, spreading out its legs, trying to get closer to the height of the ant. “How’s the air? Has it rained lately? What is your name?”

  The ant still could not speak. Even if she could, she didn’t know what that last word meant.

  Grabbing the ant and picking her up again, the spider pushed some more dirt onto the mount, trying to make it as comfortable as possible. It went to set her down gently again, but paused, then brought her to its mouth for another lick before putting her atop the mound.

  “I hope that’s more comfortable now.”

  When the spider saw the worker dart her head around, towards all the tunnels and escape routes, it dropped its head into the dirt. The worker swore those eight eyes all looked down dejected at the same time.

  “I’m sorry I scare you,” said the tarantula. “I know I’m ugly. I know you don’t want to be my friend.”

  It sighed out, sending a flurry of dust over the worker.

  “I- I don’t mind being your friend,” stammered out the ant, for a little grab at hesitation before her inevitable death.

  The spider could hear the lie in her voice, and it got flustered. It grabbed some dirt and threw it up in the air and then shot to her feet to kick it before it landed. “Don’t patronize me!” the spider shouted, and this time a lot more dirt from the ceiling vibrated loose.

  The worker backed up on the mound, her eyes blurring, for a daydream wanted to come to take her away from this terror.

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” yelled out the spider. It flopped back down to its belly, and even reached out with one giant leg to pet the top of the worker’s head.

  “I don’t eat ants,” said the spider, and when it spoke, it oddly hit itself on the head with its front legs. One thump, and then another.

  “Let me tell you my story,” the giant beast offered, in a tone as gentle as its huge mouth could offer. “Once I finish, if you are still too terrified of me, then I will let you leave.”

  The worker only nodded, amidst her trembling, still just agreeing for hesitation to diffuse the situation. As the tarantula spoke, since the ant’s eyes were already blurred, daydreamed images easily came to match the story being spun.

  “I used to live in these dusty lands,” started the spider, and the worker saw the tunnel collapse and sunlight flood in. Now the tarantula was outside, on the surface, proud and large against the dirt and sand.

  “It wasn’t so bad out there before the drought started. There was so much food.”

  The worker saw the spider hunt and kill. Hunt and kill, day after day, just like the worker would pick up leaves and move dirt, day after day. The spider played its role and lived its life, just as the worker used to do.

  She saw the tarantula happy sometimes, run and chase little eddies of dust excited by the wind. None of her elder sisters ever told her, in all their scary stories, that spiders liked to play.

  One day, with the sun beating the day into a sea of washed out colors, the worker saw the tarantula attacked by a bird, pecked and injured, and then, when the bird thought this prey too large, she saw the spider crumpled and near-death on the ground. It tried to limp to safety, for a little shade in its dying moments, but could not move at all. The heat of the day dried it up, and the injuries hollowed it out, and it fell to it back and let its legs begin curling.

  Suddenly, the spider felt something under her back, a gentle touch. Then another and another, a sea of caresses. She looked down and saw ants, hundreds of them. The ants brought her into these abandoned tunnels where they were starting a new colony, brought her limp and injured body to this giant cavern where their queen was.

  Even though the spider was no threat in its current state, the giant soldier ants still formed a wall three thick around it, to protect their queen.

  “That queen was just,” said the tarantula, from its spot on the floor where it lay with its head resting on its front legs, pouring out its story for the worker to hear. “I had never met a queen so wise and loving as her.”

  The worker saw the queen of the story tell her workers and soldiers that this spider was too large for them to eat, and they could not turn it away in its desperate state. They would let it stay down here with them and nurse it back to health.

  Day followed day, and slowly the spider regained its strength. Worker ants would go out and fetch it food and would even collect dew drops in their mouths to give the spider a drink. The spider never felt so loved and cared for in all its life. This was even a better feeling than the times she laughed and played with dust eddies. Play was a bright and sharp feeling, but being cared for by this colony was a warm and pleasant feeling, like a sigh in and out overlapped.

  “We spiders are usually so solitary,” said the tarantula. “I never once imagined what it would feel like to have friends.”

  The tarantula played in these tunnels with the baby ants. It helped the workers repair the crumbling walls. It even enjoyed its regular audience with the queen, where they talked about the world and its wonders. As long as he was well fed his instincts were tamped down, and he never once thought of eating any of her new friends.

  But then things began to change. The ants would bring less and less food for him. It was not their fault, the surface world was drying up. A drought was flooding the lands. The grumbling in his tummy would keep him awake at night, and he would start salivating whenever a plump ant would walk by.

  He would sometimes walk to the main tunnel’s opening, the one that opened up to the outside world, and stare up at the night sky, wondering if he should leave and return to his spider ways. Something kept him here however, that warm and full feeling, that energy of an overlapped sigh, the love he felt from every passing ant.

  “They said I did it, but I don’t think I did,” said the tarantula to the worker, and as his eyes stared off into the distance, he picked up the worker to lick her. When he noticed what he did, he immediately dropped her back to the ground and gave her one guilty pat on the head.

  “They said I ate one of them, that I ate an ant. I swear I didn’t!”

  The worker saw the rest of the story in her daydreamed vision, saw the spider over a dead ant, with its life sucked out from it. She saw how the col
ony began to treat the spider so differently that day. The workers never asked him for help with the walls, and the ants who, as babies, had played with him, always said they were busy when he came around with a hopeful smile.

  The queen one day brought him into the main cavern to tell him the colony was leaving. This time, the soldiers had surrounded him twenty deep, and the queen was so far away. The land was drying up too much, the queen said. There was too little food for them here.

  Perking up at this news, the tarantula became excited, wondering where they were all going. But the queen broke the hardest news of all, that the spider would not be able to come along. The spider begged and cried out, imploring to be taken with them, for it had been so long since it had been alone, it didn’t know how to live like that anymore.

  He spoke as if his instincts had dried up, how he had forgotten how to hunt, and would surely starve to death on his own, but he was really too used to the feeling of love here, and didn’t want to give that up ever.

  The queen could feel the sadness in the spider, and so she struck him a bargain. She said the colony would leave, perhaps establish a new home close by. She would send workers to check on the spider and bring it some food, and as soon as the waters returned to this land, she would move the colony back.

  It was not the best of solutions, but the spider accepted it, unwilling to believe this dear queen would lie to him. On the day of departure, he stood under the tunnel opening, even tenderly picking up some ants and lifting them to the surface. He waved goodbye to each, patted some on their heads, and asked them all if they still loved him.

  “I have never left these tunnels since that day months ago,” said the tarantula to the worker. “I’m sure they will come back soon. Don’t you think?”

  The worker was moved by this spider’s story, and again there was that feeling, of moisture wanting to come from her eyes. As much as she craved for a home, a space to feel safe in again, this spider craved one too, and craved that warm feeling of connection that came with it.

  “How have you survived all alone all this time?” asked the worker.

  “I have never killed since that day they left,” said the tarantula. “I don’t want them not to come back. Sometimes insects fall into these tunnels, and I bring them here, just like I did you. I make them comfortable, chat with them, become their friends. Soon enough they die, and I feel sad when they do, for there goes another friend. When they die I eat them, for what else am I to do?”

  The spider inched closer and opened its mouth to lick the ant, but then caught itself doing so and backed up.

  “My little ant friend, do you think the colony left because of the dryness up there,” asked the spider. “Or do you think they left because they were afraid of me, that they thought I ate an ant? Do you think they left because they stopped loving me?”

  The worker had no answer for this, so she only reached out and rubbed the tarantula’s leg to comfort him.

  “I don’t know why they left,” said the worker. “But I do know that this is not a home for you. This is a lonely life you are leading. I am alone now too, but I am heading east to look for my friends, and a new home too.”

  “Can I come along?” asked the spider, perking up.

  The worker didn’t answer. She knew that would not be possible, to have a spider following them.

  “I swear I don’t eat ants,” said the tarantula. “Ants are my only friends. Beetles, worms, and crickets. Those are the main things that fall down in here. I could never eat an ant. I could be your and your friends’ new friend.”

  “I don’t think that would work out,” said the worker. “My friends aren’t as understanding as I am. I have a soldier friend, and he is always so careful and cautious.”

  When she saw the tarantula sink down into the dust, angling its head and eyes away, she added more words, “But I heard a whisper on the wind one day, coming from a pink petal set free into the sky. That feeling you describe, of warmth and belonging, I felt that in that whisper, the whisper that said to head east. So I think you should leave this place and head east too.”

  Just then a voice came vibrating through the tunnels. Faint at first, but then it came again more strong. It was the beetle calling out for the worker.

  “Oh my!” said the spider. “Who is that? From the timbre that does not sound like an ant.”

  “Oh no,” said the worker. “That is my ant friend. A big one. Really big ant. He can be your friend.”

  “That sounded like a beetle,” the tarantula said, standing up to tower over the worker.

  The worker’s antenna picked up the vibration, as the beetle called out again. She knew exactly which tunnel it was coming from, and as the spider spun to look too, the ant jumped up and started running. She ran for the tunnel, jumping over the dead bodies lining its mouth, and ran into the darkness.

  It was only a few seconds away that she ran headfirst into the beetle, sending them both tumbling into the dirt. When the beetle righted itself and helped the worker to her feet, he saw the terror in her eyes.

  “What is it? Danger?” the beetle asked.

  The worker spun to look behind her, towards the big cavern, and she could feel the vibrations sounding out as the tarantula approached at speed. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just know he have to get out of here!”

  The beetle had found another opening to the surface, and he grabbed the ant’s leg and pulled her along, running through the pain of his injured leg and the darkness of the tunnels. Left, then right, and another right, and they were under a huge shaft of sunlight calling down. The beetle threw the ant up to the surface and then half-climbed, half-flew to get himself out.

  The brightness of the outside blinded them for a moment, but then the surroundings faded in. There was dust and dunes, a washed out sky and some bushes and trees in the distance. “That is east!” yelled the beetle, and began running, as the worker raced to keep up.

  As they disappeared towards the vegetation, the tarantula emerged from the tunnel. Immediately, it backed up, putting four of its legs back into the hole. It had not been out here for almost a year. Everything looked so dry and scary. He wondered if a bird at any moment might swoop down and attack him again. But most importantly, he wondered if the ant colony had already entered through another opening and were in the tunnels calling out for him.

  That is silly, he thought. They might never be coming back. As he saw the little ant run away with a juicy black beetle, he got sad, wondering why his new ant friend had lied to him. He was not bad. He was nice. He swore he had not eaten that ant that day the colony hated him down in the tunnels. Why did that new ant not want to be his friend?

  Flooded by the light up here, the tarantula suddenly became sick of those tunnels. There was only darkness and emptiness down there. Friends coerced, would drop down sometimes, but he could tell they never really wanted to spend their final days with him. And so the spider took a few cautious steps forward, and then some more. East, he thought. He will go east and see what friends are there.

  ten

  Honor