Mez is more distracted. After she’s settled in beside Chumba in the corner of the den farthest from Aunt Usha, she doesn’t even pretend to close her eyes. She’s exhausted, but her heart is racing—once again, the Veil is about to lift but she’s not sleepy. Mez starts counting ants, her mind wandering over the events of the night, finally to her memories of her mother, a remembrance of warmth and presence, though she can’t recall her actual face anymore.
There are more ants than ever in the den, and Mez soon loses count. She stares up at the opening, where the triangle of light reveals the coming dawn. When she takes her eyes away to make sure Chumba is sleeping comfortably, she sees that Mist is still awake. From his prized position directly under Aunt Usha’s chin, he watches Mez, eyes glittering. He seems to be trying to force himself to stay up, but no nightwalker can stay awake past dawn.
Except for Mez.
Though she’s terrified of going out on the wrong side of the Veil, Mez knows she won’t find out what’s worrying her by staying in the den. This daytime she’ll see if she can discover anything about the mysterious constrictor. It’s time for a spy mission.
Once dayrise is over, once the sun is high in the sky and currents of heat have begun to curl the edges of the den, Mez gingerly lifts Chumba’s leg off her chest, placing it across Jerlo instead, and gets to four paws. She stares up at the triangle of exposed sky. Long moments go by, and Mez never moves, falling deep into a hunter trance. Then—there!—she sees the flash of green and tan again. Nose low to the ground, Mez slinks toward the opening.
The walls are thick enough to keep the den dark, but there are points of light behind the brambles, like stars. Mez takes one last look at her sleeping family, and then pokes her way through the narrow ring of vines.
She pauses, blinking.
At first the world outside is pure and dazzling white. Adapted to darkness, her eyes are too flooded with light to tell her anything. For a long moment, all she can do is listen. The birdcalls are different in daytime, more songs than hoots. No frogs croak. There are more sounds of flying insects, more whining sounds of tiny wings. As she holds still, eyes streaming tears, the dayworld comes into better view.
It’s so bright! She’s relieved that at least it’s still the jungle she knows out there, that the shapes are the same even if the colors are saturated and loud. Here are the same treetops draped in liana vines, the same broad-leafed ferns, deep green mosses even darker in contrast to the radiant blue above.
Mez’s gaze darts through the flood of daylight, flitting between the movements of individual leaves, the columns of ants streaming across sun-drenched ferns, a pair of shrikes following each other from branch to branch, singing all the way. Under such an onslaught of information, she has to muster her courage to take even a step.
If she doesn’t move soon, though, the emerald boa will be long gone.
She puts a paw forward. Then another.
Mez feels so small and exposed, so open to predators. “It’s okay to be in danger, if it means getting answers,” she whispers to herself. She scarcely believes her own words, and hopes speaking them aloud might give them more weight.
She creeps along the column of ants running beside the nest, going in the same direction the snake went. They’re thick and fast on the ground, like a brook down a hill. Even though following the ants takes Mez through places she’s already been many times, by day it’s a whole new journey. She pauses frequently as she goes, keeping as best she can to the dark spaces beneath fronds and leaves, to the narrow crevices between fallen trees. She goes by memory through this flipped world, keeps her whiskers near the ants to better track their mysterious journey.
Where is the snake?
While she follows the ant column, an intense headache starts up between Mez’s ears. She could handle the strangeness of daylight when it was a triangle of blue sky surrounded by reassuring darkness. But taking in all this brightness at once sets her heart to skipping, gives her a constant panic at the sunlit wrongness of this world. Her path takes her by a fallen tree, a mossy decaying trunk that took many other trees down with it and created a clearing in the woods. Passing through will mean leaving the shadows entirely.
She sinks her claws into bark and scales the fallen giant, sprinting along its length. Imagining birds of prey in the dazzling sunlit sky above, Mez’s head begins to spin and her paws start to feel uncoordinated, barely connected to the rest of her body. She continues to put one in front of the other, but has to close her eyes and go only by feel. The rotten bark of the dead tree, already giving rise to bright green weeds, is soft under the pads of her paws, and she concentrates on that familiar feeling as she continues forward. She narrows her eyes to slits and only fully opens them again once she’s reached the far side of the fallen tree.
Mez locks eyes with a serpent.
The boa constrictor must have slipped forward while Mez was walking blind along the giant trunk, and lies coiled before her, right where she would dismount. Stunned by the unexpected sight, Mez goes motionless, as if there’s any chance it hasn’t noticed her.
The constrictor is huge: since it’s coiled up, Mez can’t quite see how long it is, but it’s as wide as a full-grown fig tree. A cub like Mez could slide easily down that gullet, whole and struggling.
The serpent stares at her, waiting for Mez to move first. Though all of her muscles are tensed, she remains perfectly still. The reptile’s eyes, surprisingly small compared to its body, glitter with calculating intelligence, but Mez has no idea what thoughts are passing through the emerald boa’s brain. Maybe it assumes an adult panther like Usha is nearby. Maybe that’s why it hasn’t attacked yet.
Even if Usha were here, it would be hard to imagine her lasting long against a snake this size. And of course, Usha is nowhere near. Mez is far from her aunt’s strength and fighting skill. If it comes to combat, she has no chance at all. But she’s gotten what she asked for: she’s found the other nightwalker awake during the day.
AS THE LONG stare between panther and constrictor continues, Mez edges backward, ears flat against her head. The snake doesn’t budge, but its eyes remain fixed on her. Mez knows that boa constrictors kill by squeezing animals to death, and this one is enormous and strong; if it wanted to, it could streak forward now, encircle her body with its own, and crush the life from her.
But even as Mez continues to retreat, the strange snake holds still, jaws wide open, heat releasing in waves from its mouth and warbling the air. Maybe it’s eaten recently. Maybe it doesn’t like the taste of panther cubs.
Or maybe it, too, is feeling out of place here. Maybe this constrictor is also overwhelmed by being in the dayworld. For, to Mez’s astonishment, it closes one of its eyes and then opens it again. While a horrible smile creeps across its face, the constrictor does it again.
It winks.
Mez’s mouth drops open in shock. She tries to form words, but fear is scrambling her thoughts, making her legs move on their own accord.
Before she knows what she’s doing, Mez flees back toward the den, scarcely aware of the jungle floor passing underpaw. She breathes a sigh of relief when she sees familiar leaning boulders, even though day makes them a brilliant gray-green instead of their nighttime black. At the sight of home, Mez feels her heart rate begin to return to normal for the first time since she left the den.
Until a shriek splits the air.
She’s heard eagles before while lying awake in the daytime den, her fur standing up on end at their shattering cries. But she’s never seen one.
Mez expects to see the eagle high overhead. But the bird of prey is right at the opening to the den. To be so close to a daywalker! The eagle is regal and strong, beak long and hooked, muscled body covered with sleek blue-gray feathers. It hops in the air, too heavy to take flight.
Because it has something furry between its claws.
Chumba.
The Veil keeps Chumba trapped in dayworld slumber, unable to awaken despite the eagle’s
attack, eyes shut even as talons dig into her rib cage. Her chin shakes, mouth opening and closing, trying to find the source of the pain in her dreams.
Open attack is not the panther way: Usha has taught them always to ambush, never to confront. But the sight of Chumba in danger puts Mez beyond thought. The eagle leaps and surges its wings, using brute muscle to try to rise into the air. Chumba unbalances it, though, sending the bird pitching from side to side. The eagle tumbles back to the ground, rolling on one shoulder and momentarily releasing Chumba.
That’s when Mez strikes.
She streaks forward, fast and agile, and sinks her front claws deep into the meaty back of the eagle’s leg. The raptor cries out in surprise and beats its wings frantically, buffeting Mez on her sensitive nose. She recoils, instinct telling her to release the eagle for her own safety, but at the thought of helpless Chumba, Mez holds on, climbing the eagle’s body until she can sink her teeth into the joint where wing meets torso.
Mez gets mostly oily feathers in her mouth, but when her canines find flesh, she bites down. The eagle cries out, beak raised to the sky as it shrieks. The noise is meant to terrify Mez, and it works; she imagines the bird clawing out her eyes and almost lets go of the raptor. But she manages to hold on, clamping down harder and harder.
It’s almost like the eagle can’t see her. Its beak gnashes over open air, making clattering sounds. As the movements become more and more frantic, Mez feels her grip slipping against the buffeting wings. She keeps her ears back and her jaws locked, but it’s not enough. The eagle throws her, and she goes skidding across the soil.
Mez struggles to get to her paws, but she tumbles back to the ground—her back paw has looped itself in a vine. She tries to yank it free, but she knows it will be too late. She doesn’t need to look to know the eagle is arrowing toward her, powerful wingbeats sending up sprays of dirt and insects. Mez scrunches her eyes, waiting to feel talons raking her flesh.
But the pain never comes.
Rustling and crashing, then silence. She opens her eyes to a harrowing sight: the eagle has wrapped itself in a vine, and is bound tight to the jungle floor.
Or, wait. It’s not a vine.
The constrictor has wrapped itself around the eagle, weighting it to the ground. Emerald-green scales cross and slide across one another as the snake tightens its grip, pulling ever more ferociously around the bird. Blue-gray feathers stick out between the muscular coils.
Mez has been saved. By a boa constrictor!
Surrounded by down and flight feathers, she collapses into the mussed soil, gasping in air. Once she’s caught her breath, she staggers to Chumba.
Her sister lies on her side, still in full daycoma, eyes darting beneath her lids as she sleep-flees. Mez’s eyes have adjusted to her initial dayblindness, but with the exertion of combat the light has grown intense again, her headache thundering in her skull, powerful enough to make her want to shut her eyes and block out everything. But she keeps her eyes open and approaches her sister, vision drumming as she examines the gash on her nape. The eagle’s sharp talons and beak broke the skin, but not too deeply—Chumba’s wounds are already clotting.
The snake wraps itself again and again around the eagle, so that the two of them are rolling along the ground, the eagle disappearing entirely in the churning scales. Mez shrinks back in fear, bringing Chumba with her by dragging her tail gently between her teeth.
But the constrictor makes no move toward her. Nor does it seem to be interested in eating the eagle. It stills and stares at Mez, eyes glittering.
Then, shockingly, it speaks. The voice is low and throaty, with a slight purr to the end of each word. He sounds surprisingly like a panther. “You and your sister are safe now.”
Wounded and panicky, scared that the eagle will soon emerge from the constrictor’s grasp, Mez wriggles backward toward the den. Her hindquarters are already inside when the constrictor speaks again. “This eagle is no more danger, and this young panther’s wounds are minor. We both know she won’t wake during the day, unlike you and me. I’ve come a long way to meet you—please stay and talk to me. My name is Auriel.”
Mez continues to drag Chumba back into the den. There’s so much she’d like to ask this snake about, but the eagle attack has spooked her.
Auriel opens his mouth but then closes it, peering at the ground. While she tugs on Chumba, Mez follows his gaze. What does he see? Big puddles are forming from the constant rain, but she’s barely even noticed. They’re in the season when it’s always raining. Then she spots where Auriel is looking: the broad column of ants has shifted so it passes swiftly along the ground beside him. Almost like it’s traveling to Auriel. “What do you know about the Ant Queen?” Auriel asks Mez.
She ignores his strange question and tucks Chumba into the den instead. After pawing vines so they cover her, she then eases back to poke her head out of the opening. There’s no way she’s getting any closer to the constrictor.
Still wrapped around the eagle, he closes his eyes, head swaying. “Let me explain my question: I have the ability to listen to ants. They are the only animals that exist throughout Caldera, in all times and all places—including in your den. They do not speak, but communicate by chemical, one to the next. News travels quickly and with little distortion. Listening to them has told me something very interesting about you, Mez.”
“You know my name,” Mez says, tail thrashing.
Auriel nods.
“Ants told you to come here? And to find me?” Mez asks.
“Yes,” Auriel says. “You’ve never really been alone. They have been watching.”
“Those leaf-cutter ants I count each day,” Mez says, “they’ve been seeing everything . . . and reporting it back to you?”
“Yes. The ants told me that a special panther has been born here. One who, like me, has magical power. A shadowwalker.”
The drone of the cicadas begins to die off. The Veil of dusk will drop soon—and with it Mez’s family will awaken. She must be inside by then, if she doesn’t want to be caught.
“What’s a shadowwalker?” Mez asks.
“Why, it’s what you and I are,” Auriel says, lowering his crepey snake head onto his coils. He’s breathing heavily, and the ants swarm over him with renewed vigor. “About a year ago a strange event occurred. When the sun was at its highest point in the sky, the moon cut across its path, and their powers combined. The daywalkers remember this moment well, as their world went dark in the middle of the day. The nightwalkers experienced only a moment of wakefulness.”
“I don’t remember that,” Mez says. Now that it’s become clear that the giant snake doesn’t mean to immediately suffocate and swallow her, Mez allows herself the luxury of taking a good look at him. Though he’s covered in bands of emerald and tan, his scales have a milky cast to them, almost as if they’re covered in fine cobwebs. Strangely, one of the scales on the side of his head is a glossy charcoal color. When he speaks, his mouth reveals flapping gums, pale pink. No sign of any fangs at all. Mez wonders what happened to them, not that it makes him any less dangerous. Auriel’s body is dense with power. Who needs fangs when you’re as large as that?
“You wouldn’t remember it, and neither would I,” Auriel says, winking. “Because we were busy being born. I would have known none of this if I hadn’t been able to listen to the ants and learn from them. But because I have, through the shared memory of their immortal colonies I’ve been able to access knowledge beyond the reach of normal animals. The vital energy of the night comes from the moon, and the vital energy of the day comes from the sun. During the eclipse, those vital energies were doubled. It allows us to walk during both day and night, and it’s resulted in magical powers. Exactly what that magic is depends on the animal.”
“Well, you’re wrong there,” Mez says. “I don’t have any magical powers.”
“By listening to the ants I have already located over a dozen other young eclipse-born, and they are on their way to the Ziggurat
of the Sun and Moon, deep in the center of Caldera. Most don’t know their powers yet. Come with me there, too. One of the first other eclipse-born I met has shown powers of divination—we’ll see if he can find your magic. If you do not have any after all, then we’ll get you back here, safe and sound.”
More and more of the daylight falls away. It will soon be nighttime. Mez looks fearfully up at the sky. She has to get inside before it’s too late. But she also needs to know what’s going on inside her. “I don’t have much time!”
“Hide your sister away in your den and come with me,” Auriel says. “Come join the rest of our kind. We shadowwalkers need to stick together.”
Mez shakes her head, ears flat and trembling. There’s no way she would leave Chumba for this stranger. Not for anything.
“I know it’s daunting,” Auriel says, unwinding from the limp corpse of the eagle and easing toward Mez. “But we need to combine our eclipse magic to stop the Ant Queen.”
“The Ant Queen?” Mez asks, her wide eyes going to the dusky sky, where the stars of the mythical ant’s constellation are already winking awake. The queen is in the center, her minions points of light scattered across the rest of the sky. “She’s just a constellation panthers make up stories about to scare cubs. She’s not real.”
“I would have thought that too,” Auriel says, “if my eclipse magic hadn’t allowed me to spy on the ants. I have learned from them that their queen is the greatest evil Caldera has ever known, and she is about to emerge.” As if he can sense the coming danger, a glossy charcoal scale on the side of Auriel’s head begins to glow, standing out from the surrounding green. His head wags from side to side. Mez has to look away when she realizes that ants are now crawling over the milky membrane covering the snake’s eyes as he continues speaking. “She has been imprisoned for thousands of years, through the magic of an eclipse that happened eons ago. After the most recent eclipse, the same combined magic that has made you and me shadowwalkers also started her release from her bonds.”
The Lost Rainforest Page 2