The Caterpillar King

by Noah Pearlstone

  Amanti pulled back a little more, slid the shovel underhand right into the shell. The echo got louder, but not much. I hid my knife for a moment. I wanted to make conversation. It’d be rude not to.

  “Looks like you’re sweeping,” I said.

  “Sorry,” she said. “This is someone I don’t actually want to hurt.”

  She went back to sweeping. Tap tap tap. It was a nice little rhythm. My fingers were free, so I joined in. I tapped them against the wooden chair. She stared at me.

  “We could make beautiful music together,” I said.

  I hummed a few bars of an old blues song. You wouldn’t know it by looking at me, but I can keep a melody as well as the next guy.

  “I bet you’ve got a soulful voice,” I said.

  “Oh, he’s racist, too?” said Amanti. “Just when I thought it couldn’t get any better.”

  Jesus, I thought. Nobody can take a compliment these days.

  I cut through one rope and freed my left hand. Amanti was busy with the cocoon. She got tired of playing patty cake pretty quick. Now she was really smashing it. Ned would be lucky to come out alive. The light pulsed bright and quick. Amanti hammered down again and again. But nothing budged. This was a tough case to crack. Ha.

  “What’re you laughing about?” said Amanti. She wiped sweat from her forehead.

  “Ever see a stupid kid try to open a bag of chips? They’ll pull and push and bite. But if they just took a second to read, they’d see a little arrow pointing to a “Tear Here,” sign.”

  “So you told me the wrong way to do this?”

  “Nah,” I said. “I just didn’t tell you the right way.”

  Amanti looked sick. But she started using her brain. She crouched down by the cocoon. She looked for a seam. She didn’t see one. It kept her very occupied. In the mean time, I cut through the last of my ropes. But I kept the ropes covering my hands. Then I hid the knife underneath my palm. I waited. Ned might not be free, but I was.

  Soon enough it dawned on Amanti. Put a dumb mouse in a maze and it will find the cheese eventually. She rolled the cocoon over. On the underside, there was a dark line from top to bottom, like a vein. With each pulse, it revealed itself.

  “I hit this line in the middle?” she asked.

  “You already hit everything else,” I said.

  She pulled the shovel over her head. It came screaming down with the force of the gods. The metal clanged against the shell, sending shockwaves through the air. On the next pulse, I saw a crack forming along the line. She hit it again, lighter this time. The shell split open like a broken piñata. There was no candy inside, though. Life is full of little disappointments.

  Amanti dropped the shovel and took out her phone. She flicked it on, as if it were a torch. The cave glowed blue-white. A shape came out of the shell. It stood up and found its balance against a wall.

  “Ned?” said Amanti. “Hey.”

  The boy leaned over, spit a little. His hair had been flattened. His body looked spent.

  He puked against the wall. I felt for him. This world was enough to make you sick.

  “Are you OK?” said Amanti. “Ned?”

  Ned saw her coming toward him. He scared quick. He backed into the corner of the cave. In the blue-white light, I saw an animal gleam in his eyes.

  “Who are you?” he said. “Who’s Ned?”

  14.

  Amanti pretended it was all a joke. She bullied Ned, pushed him further into a corner. Asked him about everything he didn’t remember. The clueless interrogating the clueless. She told him names. She told him stories. Nothing worked.

  I sat and watched. The ropes around my wrist were loose. Amanti hadn’t tied my legs down. I had a knife. I could move whenever I wanted to. But I was enjoying the show.

  “Think about Madeline,” Amanti told him. “We need to find Madeline.”

  Ned curled into the fetal position. He might’ve been crying. I might’ve been laughing.

  Amanti turned on me real quick. “This is your fault,” she said. “Look at him.” She pointed to the whimpering mass in the corner. “He’s retarded now.”

  “Don’t think that’s a recent development,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I know you did it. It’s from being locked up in that shell.”

  “That’s one way to look at it,” I said. “Then again, you’re the one who bashed him over the head with a shovel.”

  Suddenly, she didn’t look so sure of herself. “You said…you said he was already messed up. That happened before I came here, didn’t it?”

  “I don’t know what I said.” I grinned. “But I can help.”

  “That’s the last thing I need.”

  “All you have to do is untie me.” I looked down at the ropes that hung on top of my wrist.

  “Eye for an eye,” said Amanti. “You kept Ned here for a day, I keep you here for a day. Seems fair.”

  “Promise to come back for me?” I said

  “You help us find Madeline?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  She thought it over. “Not good enough.”

  “I have no choice then,” I said. I rose from the chair slow and steady. The ropes fell by my side. Amanti held her phone like a weapon. I held my knife like a weapon. I was feeling alright.

  “You ready for another beating?” she said.

  “Nah,” I said. I dropped the knife to prove it. “I told you, I’m looking for the Little Duck, same as you.” I kicked the knife. It scratched across the cave floor and stopped at her feet.

  “You want to tie me up again, fine. You want to hit me again, fine. But I’m the only one who’s got any idea where she is.”

  Amanti stared at me. Then she bent down to pick up the knife. But she dropped her phone. The screen broke, and the lights went out. Ned whimpered.

  “Don’t move!” said Amanti.

  I started talking. I didn’t want Amanti to feel threatened. At least not now.

  “I had a chat with Madeline’s mom. Nice woman. She told me Madeline was going to the cave at a park somewhere close. You know what she meant?”

  “It’s not really a-” said Amanti.

  “The cave,” said Ned. “The cave.”

  Looked like someone had a guilty conscience.

  “Is it coming back to you?” I asked Ned. “How you tortured the girl? Stole her diary? Then you decided to lead her to a cave. I bet you thought you could have a little more fun there.”

  “Not the cave,” said Ned.

  “You don’t understand,” Amanti said to me. “He’s freaked by caves. Can you blame him? Let’s get him out of here.”

  “Listen,” I said. “The cave at the park- Madeline’s mom searched it. Didn’t find a trace of her daughter. But she didn’t seem like she had it all together. She might’ve missed something.”

  “You’re saying we go back there now?”

  “Couldn’t hurt,” I said.

  A new, small voice came out of the darkness.

  “You won’t find her there.”

  ***

  I knew that voice. It was tinny and high-pitched. It came from the back of the cave, across from Ned. I looked there and saw the two specks of yellow on the ground. That meant there would be another voice. That voice would be a low growl. Low growl didn’t say too much.

  “You two,” I said.

  “Who are you talking to?” said Amanti.

  “She went into the cave,” said high-pitched. “We’re protecting her now.”

  That sounded like one interpretation of things. Mine was a little different.

  “You took her,” I said.

  “She came to us,” said high-pitched.

  “You took her. You’re gonna keep her, too?” I said.

  “They say it’s for the good of our colony,” said high-pitched.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “Who are you TALKING TO?” yelled Amanti. I caught a glint of the knife in the air. My little friends fell silent.r />
  “It’s business,” I said. “Business you don’t want to get caught up in. Now tell me what you think,” I said.

  “I don’t get paid to think,” said high-pitched.

  “Great. You got anything to add?” I said to low growl.

  Low growl didn’t respond. He hadn’t changed a bit.

  “Where do I come into this?” I said.

  “I can take you to her,” said high-pitched.

  “That’s a nice thought,” I said. “But it won’t do much good.”

  “You don’t want to come?” asked high-pitched.

  “Oh, I do,” I said. “I want to see the boss.”

  There was a long, unkind silence. It was a silence that said a lot.

  “Fine,” said low growl. “Follow.”

  I would’ve disappeared into the darkness, but Amanti was there. I told her as much as I could. I told her everything I knew. But she didn’t believe a word.

  “You’re hearing voices,” she said. “Voices of worms.”

  “Caterpillars,” I said.

  “But for some reason I can’t see them and Ned can’t see them.”

  “Not true. Look at the kid. Even in the dark, you can see him shivering. What do you think he’s scared of?”

  “You,” she said. “And now you’re gonna crawl down some imaginary tunnel and follow them to an imaginary place where a real girl is being held hostage.”

  “That’s about it,” I said.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said. “But if you’re going anywhere, I’m coming, too.”

  I shook my head. “I work alone,” I said.

  “Not this time,” said Amanti.

  “You’ve got this-” I pointed to Ned- “to look after. He’s in no shape to go anywhere.”

  Even in the darkness, I could see her concede.

  “You’re gonna pull some Houdini shit and disappear,” she said. “And then what? What do I do if you don’t come back with Madeline? Better yet, what do I do when you don’t come back at all?”

  “Hard to say.” I grinned. “But if you stay here long enough, they’ll come for you, too.”

  In the darkness, I walked past Amanti. She didn’t lay a finger on me. What a shame. I saw the two caterpillars fading into the background. I passed by Ned and went to the far corner of the cave. The darkness was nearly total. Up ahead, I saw the two slivers of yellow. They were moving forward. I followed them. The ground sloped down like the path to hell. The caterpillars moved quickly. The distance between us was growing.

  “What’s the rush?’ I said.

  The two caterpillars stopped.

  Low and gruff talked. “Too fast?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I don’t have twenty-five legs,” I said.

  I caught up to the two of them. “It’s never too late to put my foot down,” I said. “I fed you for years.”

  “And you were well-compensated,” said high-pitched. “Now move. The king is waiting.”

  I didn’t think the king waited for much. But I kept walking just the same. We went deeper. We went deep enough that I thought the trail would reach the center of the Earth. And then we walked on.

  There was a light up ahead. We went to that. Light isn’t my favorite, but I wasn’t calling the shots. The light opened up into a room, a square about that size of my basement. It was a room full of dirt. Yellow globes of light hung high up along the walls. If my grandmother had been a decorator, she might’ve designed this exact room. My grandmother was blind.

  I scanned the room. Darkness on the edges. Three doors ahead. The one in the middle was the biggest. The king was behind that one.

  “We’re going in there?’ I said.

  “We are going in there,” said high-pitched. “You will wait here in the grand hall.”

  I gave my surroundings a second look. They weren’t grand. Before I could mention it, my little friends crawled through the door in front of us. They disappeared through the bottom like it was a dog door. I would’ve preferred dogs to these bugs. Dogs weren’t devious.

  I took a seat on the floor.

  “Name, please?”

  The sound was feminine and it came from the dark edge.

  “Who’s asking?” I said.

  A circular light flicked on to my left. Underneath it, a green caterpillar sat perched on a Y shaped branch. She looked very satisfied with herself.

  “I am. This is how we do business, Mr. Blue.”

  “Seems like you don’t need my help,” I said.

  “I thought I’d be polite,” she said. “But it doesn’t look like you appreciate hospitality.”

  I was starting to think every female in the world had it out for me. Age, race, species- none of it mattered. They saw something they didn’t like, and that was the end of it. But I didn’t take it personally. I never have.

  All but one light went out, the one above the Green Goddess. I felt a presence. Like being watched, but stronger. More like being hunted. Beady eyes reflected the little light all around me. They were everywhere. There was a colony down here. I realized I was on a suicide mission. What a fool I am.

  “I hear you like the dark,” said Green Goddess. “Am I mistaken?”

  “Don’t do me any favors.”

  “Mr. Blue, you have no idea what you’re doing down here,” she said.

  “You kidnapped a girl,” I said. “That’s reason enough.”

  “But unlike you, we need her,” she said.

  Before I could ask what that meant, my two little friends came back out. Green Goddess turned all the lights back on. The two crawled slow and kept their eyes down. They crawled right past me without a word.

  “What is it? What did he say?”

  They didn’t answer me. Green Goddess did.

  “The king will see you now,” she said.

  September 14, 2038

  At the River

  15.

  Once we were a safe distance away from the rock bridge, Tika and I made camp. Tika would’ve probably put it a different way. She might’ve said after the rock bridge, I collapsed on the ground and refused to move. It’s all a matter of perspective, I guess.

  “I can’t keep going,” I said. “I can’t.”

  “You should not have been so foolish,” she said. “Running away in the dark of night, without any thought. Now we have no batteries and no nets. Next time, you listen to me.”

  “Well, if I had gotten by the squirrel without being bitten, I would never have made a great discovery,” I said. Then I explained my theory about the necklace: how there were three parts, and we were recreating it one piece at a time. I told her about the forks in the road, too. But she didn’t look all that impressed.

  “Hmm…” she said. “Maybe.” She considered it for a while longer. “So in your thought, you must be bitten once more to get the third piece?”

  I nodded.

  “And you are scared of being bitten again? That is why you are crying like a baby and not continuing this journey?”

  “No,” I said, even though she was exactly right. “That’s not it at all.”

  “Then tell me your problem,” she said.

  “I know how I lost my memory,” I said. “It wasn’t some accident. It was you.”

  Tika stepped back. She looked hurt.

  “You are not understanding everything,” she said. She turned and walked away, towards the forest in front of us.

  “What is it?” I said.

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Please,” I said.

  She looked at me. “You were suffering,” she said. “You did not want to remember anymore.”

  Then she walked ahead into the grove of trees.

  The choice was simple: either I turned back, or I kept trying to find my mother. In the end, I followed Tika into the forest. After all, I couldn’t just stay at the edge of a canyon forever. And while I couldn’t be sure who the woman in my memory was, I knew I had some connection to her. At the very least, it seem
ed like the right place to start.

  The path was narrow, and the forest was very dense all around us. It was like walking through a tunnel. A little sunlight trickled through the treetops, and the white line lit our way. Then we came to the mouth of a river. By our feet, there was a wooden raft and two oars. One was a normal sized oar, and one was tiny.

  “This looks like the only way forward,” I said. The white line trailed off into the water. Far up ahead, I could see the river branching off in two different directions. “Tika,” I said. “I think this is the third part. This is how we get the last piece.”

  But Tika wasn’t speaking. She looked terrified.

  “What?’ I said.

  “I cannot swim,” she said.

  “Well, good news,” I said. “Somebody left us a raft to float on and a couple paddles to help us along. One of them is just your size.”

  Tika shook her head. “When I was little, I went to a lesson once. The instructor made me jump in deep water, and I stayed under for a very long time. He did not try to help me. He wanted me to save myself. Finally, when I had nearly drowned, he pulled me out. After that, I said, ‘Never again.’ I will not go in the water. I do not even want to be this close.”

  Tika crawled back a few steps and settled down near the base of a tree. It did not look like she was going to move any time soon. I wished we could’ve gone a different way for her sake, but I didn’t see any alternatives. I dragged the raft over to her and sat down on top of it.

  “See?” I said. “It’s really great.” I was exaggerating a little- it was mostly just a thin sheet of wood- but she didn’t need to know that. She climbed on top of it and rocked back and forth.

  “I do not think it is sturdy,” she said. “You are so much bigger than this raft.”