The Lost Rainforest

by Eliot Schrefer

  Darting around debris, Mez just manages to clear the falling tree. As the ringing in her ears fades, she can sense the new stillness of the surrounding jungle, becomes more aware of where her panicked flight has led them. They’re deep in the forested hollow in front of the ziggurat.

  “So do we camp for the day,” Mez says, looking nervously up at the sun, “or do we press on?”

  “We press on,” Rumi says resolutely.

  “Yes,” Lima says, alighting on Mez’s shoulder. “Just Agony Canyon to cross, and then we’re there.”

  “Oh right,” Mez says. “Agony Canyon.”

  The bottom of Agony Canyon is so far below that it’s hard to tell anything more about it than that it’s filled with raging white water. If Mez tumbled, and were somehow lucky enough to survive the journey, there is no bank on either side of the river—to fall in here would be to drown. Agony Canyon, indeed.

  The ziggurat awaits on the far side. Ominous and silent. Even the surrounding trees have no motion to them, as if they’re fixed in time.

  Crossing the canyon is a swaying length of vines, intricately tied together and fixed to posts on either side. The fibers are green-black with age, some of them broken clean away and dangling far above the raging white water.

  “Who could have built something like this?” Mez asks.

  Rumi considers it, tapping his lips. “Monkeys, I suppose. They have those agile hands, you know?”

  “But why would they want to build it?” Lima asks.

  “To get to the other side, of course,” Rumi says.

  “But why would they want to get to the other side?” Lima presses, a look of triumph on her face.

  “Ah, what is life at all but a sequence of crossings to ‘other sides’?”

  “You’re speaking Frog again, I can’t understand you.”

  Mez tunes out her companions as she edges toward the vine bridge. It’s brightly illuminated in the harsh sun, utterly exposed. Still, it’s not overly long; if all goes well she’ll be across and into the foliage on the other side after a few long strides. If all goes well.

  Mez can hear the hum of bees and wasps nearby, watches fat flies sip on nutrients in the soil. Ants stream along the ground, and she wonders what Auriel could glean from them, if he were here to listen. Then she remembers Chumba, and the threat of the Ant Queen, and that if she returns victorious then Usha will have to come around to Mez’s daywalking and accept her back. It gives her courage. She tests the first vine under her paw.

  A vole appears out from underneath, a mother with two little baby voles trailing after her. She scampers about, looking for seeds, then goes motionless once she notices Mez. “A panther!” she exclaims.

  “And a bat!” Lima says.

  “And a frog!” Rumi says.

  “Please don’t hurt me,” the vole says.

  “I’m not in the hunting frame of mind,” Mez says. “You don’t need to worry.”

  “Three nightwalkers!” the vole says, looking at them quizzically. “Why are you up and about?”

  “We do not mean to be,” Mez says hurriedly. “We’ll be on our way now, actually.” Then, hoping to distract the vole, in case she’s off to inform any other daywalkers about them: “Tell me, does this bridge belong to anyone?”

  “Oh no,” the vole says. “Maybe it once did, but now it’s free for anyone to use.”

  “Mama,” says one of her kids, jaw wide-open in amazement, “are these really nightwalkers?” His wondrous expression makes Mez feel bad that she’s ever eaten voles at all. And she’s eaten a lot of voles.

  “Hush,” the mother vole says. “Let them go about their business without gawking at them. It’s what we’d hope for if the roles were reversed.” She nods at Mez and gestures toward the bridge with her tiny claw. “I’m sorry. We don’t want you to feel unwelcome. Please, go ahead.”

  “Thank you for your help,” Mez says.

  “Good luck!” the mother vole says.

  Mez takes another tentative step onto the vines. “How does it feel?” Rumi asks, peering down nervously from his spot on her back.

  “Not too bad,” Mez says. “I think it will hold our weight.”

  She places her paws on the knots where vines meet vines. There’s less give there, and she hopes she can spring and snag her claws into other vines if part of the bridge gives way. She’s a panther, after all, and panthers are made to leap and grasp. Mez picks up speed.

  The morning is hot. The buzzing of the bees gets louder.

  “Oh, hello, Miss Vole,” Mez hears Lima call. “Have you decided to come along with us after all?”

  Mez whirls to see the vole darting along the bridge’s bottom vines, so fast she’s a blur of brown. She disappears underneath, and the buzzing increases.

  Suddenly bees—enough bees to be a cloud, enough bees to make gusts and flurries—emerge from beneath the vine bridge. They fill the air, their droning beating out all the other sounds of the jungle. As they whiz around them, batting against Mez’s face, wriggling their way into her fur, she realizes that they are not bees: They are wasps. Very aggressive wasps.

  So this is Agony Canyon.

  The stings start. Fiery stabbings on her face, behind her ears, along her ribs, even in her tail. Rumi cries out in pain, and Lima takes to the air, but the wasps are harrying her, too, arrowing into her wings and belly, plump stingers stabbing.

  They’ve only gotten halfway across. Mez balks, unsure whether it’s safer to continue or return. She staggers forward, her steps haphazard, her view blocked by the clouds of insects. One of her paws passes right through the bridge, and she hits the vines hard, the lengths giving way so that she’s straddling open space, staring into the white water churning far below. Mez scrambles back up, more vines shredding and tumbling away around her. She’s gripping only one vine now, clutching it like a branch. Despite her best attempts, her sharp claws begin to shred the fiber.

  The vole blurs by, back to where her babies are waiting on her side of the bridge. “Death to the shadowwalkers!” she screeches. “You will not bring back the Ant Queen!”

  “Please!” Mez calls out. “You’ve got it wrong! We’re trying to stop the Ant Queen.”

  “You cannot help what you will do,” the vole calls out. Her words continue, but they’re soon lost beneath the angry buzzing of the wasp swarm.

  The air is black with them now, and as more and more sting her Mez can no longer see the way forward, flailing blindly through open space as often as she’s gripping vines. Already she’s finding it hard to feel her limbs, can sense numbness spreading over her. And if she’s this bad, with her protective fur and larger body, she can’t imagine what’s happening to Lima and Rumi. She calls out their names, but there is no answer.

  “No!” comes a thin voice Mez doesn’t recognize, from the far end of the bridge. “You won’t have them!”

  She tries to see who this stranger is, but as her vision blurs even more it’s all Mez can do to keep holding on. She hears a crackling sound, then the air is full of red light. An arc of fire whooshes by, then another. The wispy flames are soon extinguished, but they smoke the air, leaving trails in the morning sky. The wasps relent, clouds of them dropping away. Mez chokes, wrinkling her nose, but feels a surge of relief that at least the wasps are no longer attacking.

  Moving forward by feel alone, Mez continues to the far end, gripping shreds of vine, waiting to hear a rip and begin the plummet to the river below. Mind floating above her body, she finally reaches the far side. Once she feels solid ground beneath her, she lets her muscles give way, laying herself out flat.

  “Ow, ow, ow!” says the voice she heard earlier. Mez looks up to see a monkey hopping from one foot to the other, sucking on his fingers. His tan tail curls and uncurls as he howls in pain. He shakes his fingers out, tendrils of smoke rising from them. “A smarter monkey would have figured this out by now,” he says.

  Mez stares at him in shock. A flame-throwing monkey! But she can’t muste
r the energy to run away. The poison in her veins makes her want to sleep, sleep, sleep.

  There’s a whizzing sound in the air, and a little black shape falls from the sky to land in front of her. It’s Lima. She’s on her back, clawed thumbs moving weakly. Two angry red welts rise on her belly, growing in front of Mez’s eyes.

  Lima raises her head enough to lick one of the red welts. The strange monkey squats on his haunches and watches as she runs her little tongue over the swelling. It shrinks. With a little more energy now, Lima licks the other welt. Like the first, it melts away.

  “Rumi,” Mez manages to gasp. “I haven’t heard a word from him since the attack began. Find him. Help him next. Please!”

  Lima hops to Mez’s head. Mez can only hope she’s helping Rumi, but the poison in her system is making her so sleepy. Each time she closes her eyes it takes longer for them to reopen. Whenever she does, she sees the strange monkey with the smoking fingers, expression inscrutable as he stares at her with his shining black eyes.

  MEZ DREAMS OF day. She is not a panther, could not be a panther to love the daytime like this. For now she is a creature of sunlight. No slinking, no ambushing—she is a ball of energy, unabashed and fearless. She romps through a meadow, leaps into banks of wildflowers, bats at songbirds. She lifts her face, whiskers quivering, to receive a shower of sun.

  Her sister is there. Chumba clings to the shadows, peering fearfully from beneath rocks and within trees, her eyes set deep in calico fur. “Mez,” she whispers. “Mez, I need your help!”

  “What is it? Chumba, I’ve missed you.”

  “It’s Mist. Without you here, he’s been picking on me, nipping my tail, trying to lose me on the hunts. I need you, Mez. How could you leave me when I needed you most?”

  Mez noses into the pocket of shadow. It feels like she’s crying, though in the dream all she senses is an aching emptiness in her throat. “I’m here, Chumba.”

  But Chumba retreats farther into the shadows, terror in her eyes. “Mez! Why are you awake in the day?”

  Chumba’s shocked tone stills her. Mez cocks her head, stares at her sister.

  “What kind of panther are you?” Chumba scolds.

  What kind of panther is she?

  Then Mez is awake. Ambush instinct causes her to stay still and open her eyes only to narrow slits. If there are enemies around, or prey, best to be motionless. Even as she fills with fear about what might surround her, Mez’s heart aches at the memory of Chumba. What if she really is in trouble? Is anything—even protecting the rainforest itself—really more important than being at her sister’s side?

  Fur fills her vision, wiry and straight, a mix of brown and tan. She’s not sure what part of what creature she’s seeing, but it becomes clear when a finger reaches back and scratches, a tail flicking in response. She’s staring at a monkey butt.

  Mez shifts back so her nose isn’t right against it, and at that very movement the monkey turns around and eyes her. It’s the same one she saw right before she lost consciousness, the one who had singed paws. The one who threw fire.

  For a moment panther and monkey stare at each other.

  Then the monkey howls in fright, jowls and chin hair quivering. Wondering what he’s seen, Mez yowls in return, staggering to all fours, hackles raised. She whirls around, until she sees that the monkey is staring right at her.

  “Oh, calm down. I don’t like the taste of monkey,” Mez growls.

  “That’s good to hear,” the monkey says. “I know I’m not really the one who gets to decide, but considering how I saved your life and all, it does seem the least you could do is not eat me.”

  “You . . . made that smoke,” Mez says.

  “Yes,” the monkey says. “And the fire behind it, too. Gogi the Seventeenth, at your pleasure.”

  “There are seventeen Gogis here?” Mez asks, looking around. They seem alone.

  “No. I’m the only one named Gogi. But, well, I don’t know how much you know about monkeys, but we’re sort of obsessed with who’s on top, and everyone’s got a ranking. Seventeen’s . . . not too good. But I was eighteen last dry season, so at least I’m improving, right?”

  Mez stares back at him.

  Gogi taps his lips. “I know what you’re thinking now—what is a posh panther doing talking to a lowly seventeenth monkey? I can’t blame you if you stop right now. Though come to think of it, I’ve been away from my troop for a while, and who knows what’s happened while I’ve been gone. So maybe I’ve dropped down. Maybe there’s another seventeenth. Or maybe . . . maybe I’m sixteenth now! Wow. That would be nice.”

  “Rumi, Lima,” Mez says groggily, looking around for her friends.

  Gogi’s face brightens. “Your friends are so nice. Maybe they’ll be my friends someday. Rumi’s off catching flies. That’s sort of a cliché for a frog, right, but who am I to judge? Lima’s tired. She spent all night healing those wasp bites you had. Tuckered her all out. She deserves some rest, sweet little thing.”

  Mez runs a paw over the top of her head. The wasps! But her fur is smooth and flat over her skin. She’s healed.

  “It’s that horrible little vole mom,” Gogi says, shuddering. “She’s fooled a lot of us as we approached. Never quite as well as she did you three, though. The animals around here are amping up their defenses. Good thing I was there standing guard in case she got up to her tricks.” His face falls. “I don’t understand why all the normal animals dislike us so much. I mean, look at you. You’re a panther. How cool is that?”

  “I want to see Rumi and Lima,” Mez says resolutely, taking a step in one direction and then another, unsteady on her paws.

  Gogi prattles along. “I mean, I guess there have always been taboos against shadowwalking, and the only animals that usually do it are the ants, and the animals remember when they ran amok ages ago, and their queen is awakening, which can’t make anyone feel too good about it, I mean, I get all that. But still, riling up a bunch of wasps to do your dirty work? That’s pretttttty low, right? I guess everyone has their reasons, though, who’s a seventeenth to judge anyone.”

  Mez blinks rapidly as she tries to process Gogi’s words. “Do all daywalkers talk this fast?”

  “Me? Oh, I don’t talk fast. You should try talking to a tamarind monkey. I mean, they talk fast sortoflikethisit’ssofastthatyoudon’tknowwhenonewordstopsandthenextbegins.”

  “My head hurts,” Mez says.

  “Yes, wasp stings will do that,” Gogi says, nodding wisely.

  “Yes, wasp stings . . . that must be it,” Mez says. “Still, I’d like to know my friends are safe. Would you take me to them?”

  Gogi’s face softens. “Of course. I understand the urge. I’d feel the same way myself. If I had friends, of course. Seventeens generally don’t. I mean, it would be weird if a monkey did have friends with any rank worse than twelve or so. I don’t deserve friends, so I don’t really feel bad about it. All the same, once we locate your friends maybe I could hang out with you guys? Don’t answer yet, give me a chance first, okay? Anyway, come on!”

  One moment Gogi’s in front of Mez, and then suddenly he’s leaped into the air. She looks up and sees him on top of the thin stone battlement that traces the edge of the ziggurat, swinging his legs over the edge as he smiles down at her. Her eyes widen as she finally has a moment to look at where she is.

  Mez is surrounded by old sun-warmed stone crossed by light misty breezes, the tops of the trees at eye level all around her. The massive hewn rocks of the step pyramid have been pocked and worn by eons of tropical storms, and so many varieties of plush moss have grown to cover the scoured surface that the stone is as soft as skin under Mez’s paws. The ziggurat. She’s on top of the ziggurat.

  Mez sees movement on the edges of her vision, creatures scampering and hiding, but she can’t spare a moment to see what sorts of animals they are. All she can think about is how exposed she is. Head and tail low, she slinks toward the nearest shadows. There are ants under her paws, stre
ams of them slipping into the cracks between the rough stones, disappearing somewhere below. Mez steps around them as best she can.

  Gogi heads in the same direction, scampering along the stones, hands and feet never losing grip as he darts along. Limbs trembling, Mez tails him, body tensed in case any of the nearby animals pounce or lunge or bite.

  Under a dusky sky, the ziggurat’s flat top is full of life. Mez is nearest a huddle of daywalkers: she first sees a bird, a nervous trogon that flits to a branch before darting back to the stones and then back to the branch, then what Auriel once described to her as “a three-toed sloth” clutching the stone edge, its blank eyes staring out at the infinite steam rising from the surrounding jungle. Standing in front of them is what must be a uakari monkey, her bald red face glowering at Gogi. When she spies Mez, her eyes widen. “Hey, maggot,” she calls to Gogi, “you didn’t tell us your little nightwalker buddy was awake!”

  Gogi cowers at the sound of the uakari’s voice. “Come on, Mez,” he says. “Let’s not bother Sorella.”

  “That’s right,” the uakari says, her arms crossing over her chest. “‘Let’s not bother Sorella.’”

  “This way,” Gogi says. “I’ll bring you over to where your kind stay.”

  Intimidated and a little grossed out by the uakari monkey’s bright red face, by those intense black eyes that are like two pits in the middle of cracked red skin, Mez slinks behind Gogi as he crosses the ziggurat.

  A long seam runs along it, as if the whole roof is a set of doors that open down. If that’s true, they don’t appear to have been opened in years and years, as moss and weeds fill the seam in tight. Even the ants don’t seem able to find a way in, tapping their antennae at the green line before turning in other directions. Gogi pays the seam no mind, happily scampering across, but Mez hops the line when she gets to it, imagining the doors parting beneath her at any moment, opening like the brambles that obstructed the entrance to her old den.