Mez will—
At hearing her name spoken in her own head, Mez startles and hears a pattering sound on the leaves around her. Ants are cascading from her own fur like rain, from her ears and her nose and everywhere in between.
They were crawling on her eyes.
Mez yelps, leaping and scrambling, and plunges herself into the saltwater pond. The shock of the water soon sets her hurtling back out and scrambling up the bank, standing at the edge with all four legs splayed out wide, shaking the water free.
When she catches her breath and looks at Auriel, she finds the snake is staring at her, chuckling. Ants spill from him in streams. “Decided to go for an evening dip?” he asks.
“I—I don’t like a-ants on my eyes,” Mez says, her shivers stuttering her words.
“Ah,” Auriel says. “I see you’ve discovered that my ability lets others hear the ants, too, if they’re at close-enough range.”
“Talking to ants,” Mez says. “I bet you wish you could turn that power back in and get another.”
“On the contrary, my new friend,” Auriel says. “I have learned much about our land through my magic. The ants of Caldera weigh more than all the other animals put together. Ants are the unsung element of our world.”
“That’s an element I’d prefer not to have saying my name into my eyeballs, thank you very much.”
“You heard your own name?” Auriel asks, suddenly alert. “What else did you hear?”
“Nothing that made much sense.”
“That’s too bad,” Auriel says, his head bobbing in what Mez has come to realize is the snake equivalent of a shrug. “Come, let’s get moving. I’m sure you’re hungry, but you can hunt along the way. Maybe I’ll get you to try eating some nuts, too.”
“No chance,” Mez says, shaking her head in disgust.
Mez waits until their night’s travel is well underway to speak up again. The moon is in a shrunken phase, so the forest is especially dark. The dim and cool scraps of light only intensify her darkvision, make any hints of movement in the brush even more evident. It’s a perfect night for hunting, and her instincts bring her focus to the chase—but not so much that she can’t ask Auriel a question. “Who are Rumi and Lima?”
Auriel stops moving for a moment, his back coils bunching up against the front. Then he continues his smooth glide through the night jungle. “Rumi and Lima? Why do you ask?”
“The ants mentioned those names.”
“Ah,” Auriel says. “So you did get something from your eavesdropping. Rumi and Lima are soon to be your new companions. We should be meeting Lima shortly, if the ants’ indications are correct.”
“Are Rumi and Lima . . . ants?” Mez asks.
Auriel chuckles. “No.”
“Capybaras? Peccaries? Ooh—more panthers?”
“Hush. You’ll find out soon enough,” Auriel says.
I’d love it if there were another panther. Maybe like Chumba! I’d even take an ocelot, Mez thinks as they continue to stalk through the still night. She consoles herself that at least they’re meeting this Lima at night.
The dawn’s sun has begun to crack out of the horizon and Auriel still hasn’t called them to a halt. “So . . . is Lima near?” Mez asks.
“I thought I asked you to be patient,” Auriel replies.
“That was a very long time ago,” Mez says.
Auriel leads them toward a gap in the hillside where rocks join unevenly, leaving a passage wide enough for a constrictor—or a young panther—to fit through. Without pausing to see whether the way forward is safe, Auriel heads right in. Apparently extra-big snakes don’t have much to fear. For Mez, though, the cave entrance is tight enough to tickle the tips of her whiskers, and having walls that near both sides of her face makes her hackles stand up. It doesn’t help that it’s fully daylight now. “Do we have to go in here?” she asks.
“You’re a predator, friend!” Auriel purrs back. “Time to start acting like one!”
Grumbling, Mez forces her hackles down and continues through the tunnel.
The cave is dark, at least it has that going for it. Otherwise, it’s only gross. There’s a bitter and stale reek, with notes of dung and fungus, nose-slapping ammonia layered on top of it. Tailless whip spiders skitter around Mez’s paws, agile as scorpions, their forelegs ever poised to strike. “Who would want to live in this place?” she asks, tucking her nose in the crook of her leg.
“Look above,” Auriel whispers back, “and you’ll have your answer.”
Mez stares up, craning her neck, eyelids wide to let as much light in as possible. Now that she’s looking closely, she can see slight swaying movements. It’s a carpet of bats, black fur blotting out the cave ceiling. Then Mez sees a pair of eyes glinting back. Hunting instincts take over, and she brings her body into a low crouch, creeping slowly forward, her body, nose to tail, one rigid line.
“Stop it right there,” Auriel says sternly. “I did not bring you all this way to have you eat another shadowwalker.”
Mez lets herself lick her chops, imagining the pleasing crunch of hollow bat bones between her jaws, then forces herself out of her hunting stance. “Is that Lima up there?” she asks, pointing her nose toward the eyes staring back at them from the ceiling.
“She’s a nightwalker awake during the day, is what she is,” Auriel says. “That’s why we came to this cave during the daytime, so we could find her easily. I seem to remember meeting a certain young calico panther that way, too.”
Mez looks up with wonder. She’s seeing her first fellow eclipse-born, after Auriel! “Is your name Lima?” she calls up softly.
The glinting green eyes blink, disappearing and then reappearing in the dark cave.
“We mean you no harm,” Auriel calls up. “We only want to help.”
“I know who you are,” the bat says, her voice a high whisper. “The ants told me you’d be coming.”
“The ants talked to you on their own?” Mez asks, strangely jealous, considering that talking to the ants also means letting them crawl all over your eyeballs.
“Part of my ability means I can send advance word through them,” Auriel whispers sharply. “It would have worked on you, too, if you’d been a little more open to it. They were all over your den, trying to transmit my message. All you would’ve had to do was listen.”
“Ants. Ugh!” Mez says. “I might have squished a bunch of your messengers. Sorry.”
“Um, could you two keep it down?” Lima says. “I don’t want everyone else here finding out my secret, thank you.”
“Lima, please,” Auriel says dryly. “We both know how impossible it is to wake an ordinary bat during the daytime.”
“Still,” Lima whispers. “Just in case, I’d rather not have anyone catch me dayflying, please.”
“Then come with us,” Mez says. “We can talk more outside of this stinky cave.”
“Stinky!” Lima shrieks back, indignant. “That’s rich, coming from an animal that pees on trees all night.”
“That is enough,” Mez says, growling. “You get down here right now, pip-squeak.”
“Outside, ladies,” Auriel says. “Both of you. Right now.”
“You two leave first,” Lima says. “I’ll follow.”
“With pleasure,” Mez says icily as she pads her way across the soft stones of the cave floor—soft with bat guano, she realizes, which also explains the ammonia smell. Tailless whip spiders crackle and flail beneath her paws. She’ll be glad to leave this cave, that’s for sure.
She blinks into the daylight and comes to a seat on the jungle floor, facing the cave entrance. Auriel follows, his body taking a long time to finish coming through the entrance. Once he’s emerged, a tiny black speck follows, flitting to the top of the rock at the entrance, then nervously stepping from one foot to another. “Oh my,” Lima says in her high-pitched voice, looking at the constrictor and panther assembled below.
“Perhaps you were expecting someone . . . cuddlier?” Auriel asks.
“Yes. I think I was,” Lima squeaks.
She’s really, really tiny. Mez has met mice heftier than this bat. “You don’t have anything to fear,” she calls up to Lima. “You’re much too insignificant for me to consider eating, and apparently Auriel has turned herbivore.”
“Oh!” Lima says brightly. “That makes me feel so much better.”
At first Mez figures the bat is being sarcastic, but then Lima makes a sprightly chirping sound and hops down, fearlessly perching on one of Auriel’s coils. “I mean, I figured that you weren’t going to eat me, because it would be so much easier to eat one of the sleeping bats, if food was all you were after. Oh my gosh, you’re so pretty!”
Mez looks behind her, trying to see what animal might have crept up, her heart supplying all-white panther cubs for Lima to have admired. Then she realizes who she’s talking about. “Wait, you mean me?”
Lima hops from Auriel over to Mez, her little clawed feet barely any weight on Mez’s back. She picks through Mez’s fur with the little hands at the ends of her wings. “All these colors! I mean, from far away you’d think it was all sort of this brown-black, like mine, but there’s actually circles and lines and dots beneath, all these great golden shapes floating under the brown. Do you know how to make those kind of colors in another animal?”
“No,” Mez says, whirling around to try to get a better view of her own body, to see what Lima’s talking about. The patterns her mother gave her are kind of beautiful. At the very least they’re interesting.
“That’s too bad,” Lima chirps. “I think I’d look good with calico spots. I mean, not as good as you, but good.”
“I’m from a family of black panthers, but my coloring is from my mom. It’s what I have to remember her by.”
“Oh, that’s very nice,” Lima says, hugging her leathery wings tight around her own body. “I’m not sure who my mother is. Or my father.”
“Wait, what?” Mez asks.
“Well, you saw how many bats there are in there!”
“But, I figure you’d always know, I mean, don’t you have special calls for one another or something?”
“Well, sure, when we’re little, but not once we’re full-size. It’s fine, no big deal, no bats know who their parents are, less to worry about. So, let’s get going to the Ziggurat of the Sun and Moon! I’ve never seen a ziggurat before. I’m not even sure what one is.”
Auriel clears his throat. “Allow me to properly introduce myself. I am Auriel, and I was born in an eclipse like you, which means the powers of sun and moon both—”
“—are in you, and in me. Yes, got it. I told you—your ant friends already filled me in. Let’s go stop the Ant Queen from taking over Caldera!” She shakes her little bat fist up in the direction of the queen’s constellation.
“Oh, um, okay,” Auriel says. “Let’s head out, then.”
Lima doesn’t leave Mez’s shoulder as they start off along the jungle pathways. The bat is so light that Mez can’t even sense her on her back, but still, it does seem like Lima should have at least asked if she could ride her. Mez debates how best to bring it up.
“Do you think this is the first time that a panther and a bat have traveled together?” Lima asks. “I bet it is. I bet a lot of animals would be surprised to see us like this, huh? But I guess you panthers are famously good at avoiding being seen. That’s sort of the whole point of being a panther, or a constrictor for that matter, so I guess no one’s going to see us. Maybe panthers have been carrying bats around for all of eternity, and no one’s noticed because no one can find them. Maybe!”
“Anyone can find us when we’re talking all the time,” Mez says through gritted teeth.
“Oh, right, got it, sorry,” Lima says, and goes perfectly quiet. “One last thing,” she whispers after a moment. “Is it always so bright out during the day?”
Mez is used to daywalking by now, but has forgotten that it’s all new to Lima. When Auriel leads them into a bank of ferns, carefully maneuvering his body between the fronds so he’s out of view, and Mez lies down beneath the broadest leaves so she, too, can sleep through the worst of the sun’s heat, Lima lets out a big sigh. “There’s so much to echolocate out there. So many daywalkers.”
When Lima hops down from Mez’s back, Mez sees that she’s trembling, her eyes streaming tears. Her irritation dissipating, Mez gives the little bat a tender lick along one of her soft and fuzzy ears. Lima hops so she’s closer to Mez’s side, and the panther loops her front leg around her to snuggle the little bat in tight. She could almost pretend it’s Chumba. They’re not too dissimilar, Chumba and Lima, full of pluck and cheer.
Auriel forms a protective ring around them, the ants going about their mysterious work, crawling over him as he closes his eyes to rest. Nestling down together, the three strange traveling companions settle in to wait out the day.
Come evening, Mez wakes to see Lima hopping along one of the ferns, to the tip and back. Ears and wings undulating, she’s doing a dance that’s both crazy and elegant. She leads with her mouth, swinging around invisible dance partners. “What are you doing?” Mez asks.
“Getting a meal! It’s like the gnats around here have never met a bat. They come wandering right up. I’ve always stuck to hunting high up in the sky before, but this, this is amazing. Tree hunting, who knew? Also amazing, look at this! Have you noticed yet?”
Lima’s hopped over to where Auriel is still resting. Ants, a red-black species this time, crawl over the membranes on his eyes. Mez shudders. “Yes, I’ve seen it before. It’s disgusting.”
“No it’s not, it’s fascinating,” Lima says, leaning forward so she can extend a leathery wing and use the thumb at the top to pluck an ant off of Auriel’s nose. She examines it closely. It stands up on its back legs, antennae twitching as it examines her right back. “It looks like a normal ant to me. Doesn’t it to you? I mean, you don’t see this ant and immediately think, ‘Oh yes, this is clearly an Arthropod of Prophecy,’ or whatever they get called? If that’s even a thing. Probably not a thing, now that I think about it. Why would the ants crawl all over Auriel like that? Ooh, maybe he’s got some nectar on him somewhere.” Without hesitating, Lima gives Auriel a big lick on the tip of his leathery nose. Her face wrinkles. “Nope, not sweet at all. Ugh. Kind of the opposite, actually.” Her expression brightens. “Hey, have you ever tasted a snake before? Well, now I have! That’s one for the list! Glad he didn’t wake up while I was licking him, though. That would have been awkward.”
With that, Lima brings the ant she’s holding to her lips and daintily nibbles off its head.
Auriel snorts awake. The power of his exhale is enough to send Lima tumbling head over heels, coming to rest in a fern, wings stretched wide as if set out to dry, astonishment on her face.
“Did you just eat one of these ants?” Auriel asks, an unreadable expression on his face.
Lima looks at the wriggling half ant still on her thumb, then at Auriel, then wordlessly hides it behind her back.
A smile grows across Auriel’s face. “It’s fine, I’m teasing. Ants don’t mourn ants, so why should we? It would be like mourning grass. There are over a million in one colony, anyway. If they stopped to have a funeral for each one, they’d never get anything done.”
Her eyes never leaving Auriel’s, Lima brings the body of the ant, brittle legs still flailing, up to her mouth. She chomps down. “Shmtastesgood,” she explains as she swallows. She clears her throat. “Tangy. Can I have another?”
“Some other time. Let’s get a move on,” Auriel says. “Your next companion is near. Fleeing this way, actually. Get those sharp teeth of yours ready, Mez. According to the ants, Rumi is having a really bad evening.”
WHILE THEY STEAL through the darkness, a storm comes up, night rain pelting the broad, flat leaves of the trees above. Those leaves will hold the water as long as they can, until the weight causes them to bend and give way, dousing the jungle floor below. The three companions move as fast as p
ossible through the undergrowth, trying to avoid the occasional downpours. Auriel seems not at all bothered by the wet, but Mez finds it as unpleasant as always. Every once in a while she sprints ahead, to give herself time to pause and shake out her front paws. She feels an urge to lick Chumba dry, then it floods back that her sister isn’t there.
Lima keeps her wings tented over her head as she rides on Mez’s back. “Echolocation and rain are not friends,” she says. “I’d rather not know the precise location of each raindrop, you know?”
Every once in a while the rain clouds part to show the moon. It has grown from its newness of the night before, and more of its light survives the trip down to the jungle floor. So far Mez has been able to avoid the worst puddles, though one especially large deluge from above catches her directly on the face, stopping her short. She sputters.
Auriel halts, and after a few long moments his head makes the journey back to where Mez is, near his tail. He listens, tasting the air with his forked tongue, then nods. “Ah yes. I detect Rumi’s approach, too. Good work, Mez. Follow me.” The snake starts off in a new direction, arrowing into the brush.
Mez nods vaguely. Right. She detected something. That’s why she stopped.
Lima pipes up. “Oh, I don’t think Mez heard anything. I think she stopped because of that massive—”
“Ready-to-go-Lima-okay-good!” Mez says rapidly before starting off after Auriel.
“Don’t cut me off!” Lima cries, the rest of her retort lost to the drumming sound of the rain as Mez stalks forward.
“Quiet now,” Auriel whispers. “They’re coming along that path.”
Mez draws back into the lightless area beside a tree.
For a long time, there’s nothing for her senses to take in beyond the pounding rain and the scant moonlight scattering on the surfaces of puddles. Then Mez hears something coming along the path. Lima must have, too: “What in the world is that?” she squeaks into Mez’s ear.
It’s the croak of a frog, Mez is almost sure. But all the same it’s unlike any other sound she’s heard, all flappy and loud, like each croak is actually bursting the frog open. As it gets nearer, she pulls farther back into the shadows, suddenly wary of the possibility of a six-foot frog.
The Lost Rainforest Page 5