“Here,” he said, motioning for me to sit facing him. I stepped toward him in preparation for sitting down.
“Wait!” he shouted. “Stop before you step on them!” His command startled me so much that I nearly leapt to the sky in another imitation of the snake dance.
He pointed to the earth, and there I saw an anthill. An ant? What was I going to learn from a tiny ant? The idea seemed preposterous.
I swallowed thickly, but moved as he indicated, hoping I had not offended my teacher or the spirits. I seated myself across from Roncommock, with the anthill between us.
“Here?” I asked tentatively.
“Yes,” he replied, handing me a macócqwer full of water.
“Now you will learn the ritual of contacting the animal spirits. First, cleanse your mouth with this herb water, spitting over your left shoulder. Wipe a little more water over your eyes, nose, and ears so that they are purified, too.”
The water gave off the delicate fragrance of winauk and another herb I did not recognize. I followed his instructions, completed the ritual, and felt refreshed.
“Now, drink this, all at once,” he said as he handed me yet another macócqwer full of a different liquid.
“It is bitter, but do not spit it out. It is sacred water and will help you contact the spirits.” I drank the concoction and was glad he’d warned me about the bitterness. Still, it was an effort not to spew it all back out.
Next, Roncommock opened his medicine pouch, pinching a small amount of powdered uppówoc between his index finger and thumb, and scattered it over the ant mound. The ants went crazy, running frantically around and picking up the offering.
“Focus now on the ant mound. Watch their comings and goings. See the ant that just exited the hole? Watch it. Try to reach it with your mind. See its tiny head? Make it your head. See its six legs? They are yours. Feel how lightly the ant scuttles along.”
As I opened my mind to meet the ant spirit, my teacher’s voice became a low drone. Instead of his words I felt only a throbbing, or vibration, of the air. I also sensed something else, something that smelled really good, and I twitched my antennae as I raced along to follow the enticing scent.
I’d done it! I was an ant! But as soon as I thought it, I was a boy again. I looked up in surprise at Roncommock.
“It is okay, Skyco. You did well, but startled yourself when you made contact with the spirits and entered the mind of the ant. We started with these simple animals so that you might easily connect with them, but you were jarred back into your own self by the ant’s radical differences in size, form, and sensation. Try again. See how much there is to learn from these industrious and largely unappreciated creatures. Choose another ant and merge yourself with it.”
This time was easier, and I quickly slipped into another ant mind. I felt light and fast as I began to run along with six legs working together instead of just two, but the intensity and variety of odors suddenly struck me. I smelled many different things, but one powerful and pleasant odor was so dominant that I was compelled to follow it. Along the way to the source of this delightful aroma, I ran excitedly until I bumped into another ant. He promptly turned back toward me and dabbed his antennae over me like soft drumbeats and I returned the favor. And then I realized that it was he that smelled so good! He was from my ant village, my ant mound. The odor of my home was the sweet scent—the recognition of my own people, my own village.
I followed this sweetly-scented ant because he smelled so good. It seemed to be the right thing to do. We traveled a long way, clambering over tree trunks, dashing through fields of tall cane. The mind of the ant ahead of me reached back to probe mine, and I realized that Roncommock was in the other ant.
“Skyco, you do not realize that these creatures are all women. You keep thinking of us as ‘he’ rather than ‘she.’ In ant villages, the women are the workers—food gatherers and child carriers, as well as warriors. Here, among the ants, the queen is chief. Do not insult the ants by referring to us as men, for here the males are needed by the queen solely for reproduction. They do nothing else, except eat. Males and new queens are made only in the time of need, and then are fed and cared for until it is their time to swarm. When they swarm, they fly high into the air, mate, and leave the village. When they settle back down to earth, they find a new location and start another ant village somewhere else.”
The speech from Roncommock-the-ant astonished me, but I promptly assumed my new gender and adopted the correct pronoun. Having settled myself, I soon smelled another odor that I recognized as food. Good. I was hungry. Where was this food?
I looked around and saw that I was high above the ground, having run up the stalk of a plant without even realizing it. I had not noticed the ascent because running upward felt no different than running along the ground, neither more difficult nor more tiring. I also realized that what I imagined to be tree trunks or fields of tall cane were just sticks and grasses of the field. My perception of them was different because I was a tiny ant instead of a small—but by comparison, gigantic—boy.
The Roncommock-ant approached a green bug, swollen like a fat round pumpkin, and I was astonished to see her stroke the bug with her antennae. The bug’s head was anchored down to the plant stem, but it lifted up its free tail end and squirted out a droplet of liquid. The ant sucked up the droplet and patted another bug that then obligingly squirted out another droplet.
These swollen bugs were aphids, I realized. The ant was collecting their honeydew, the sugary sap extracted from the plant and excreted by the aphid. To an ant, an aphid was a macócqwer filled with honey. As a human boy, my mother had pointed out the aphids on our crop plants. Often they were guarded by ants, and my mother told me that the aphids offered honeydew to the ants in exchange for their protection. The ants fiercely guarded the aphids against other insects, or even humans, that brushed against the plant on which the aphids fed. Apparently, the ants must stroke the aphids to release the honeydew, so I decided to try it too.
The first aphid I patted with my antennae didn’t respond. I watched Roncommock-the-ant with more care and tried to emulate the way she sensitively stroked the aphid with her antennae, encouraging it to release the honeydew. I tried again, more carefully and gently this time. Sure enough, my little, fat bug rose up and produced a droplet that I drank. It was delicious! Sweet and good, just what I wanted for food. Unlike human food, swallowing this ant food did not make me thirsty, for the honeydew was liquid and it provided all the water that I needed. We continued stroking aphids and swallowing honeydew until my stomach felt uncomfortably full and tight. Several other ants joined us. Before long, their abdomens were as swollen and nearly transparent from the golden liquid as my own.
No longer hungry, my comrades and I turned and followed the ever-present home scent back toward the mound. I kept my abdomen a little elevated so that it didn’t drag on the ground as I ran along. Soon I could see our home mound ahead of us. As we entered, it turned dark, but I immediately discovered that I didn’t need to see where I was going with my eyes. I followed the scent and my antennae touched the roof of the tunnel, guiding me like hands. Every time we passed another ant, we touched antennae and I smelled a strong whiff of the powerful, satisfying home scent.
Within the mound, other ants awaited us in a deep chamber. Their abdomens were much larger than ours and they stood immobile, patiently waiting as each incoming ant stepped up and regurgitated the liquid from its stomach into the waiting ant’s mouth. The sole function of these big ants, like living cisterns, was to store the liquid we brought back.
Task completed, we turned back toward the surface. It was clear that different ants had different tasks. There were cistern ants, soldier ants, the queen, the male drones, and workers like me, doing all sorts of different jobs. Among the workers, some cared for the larvae, some gathered food, some fought, some cleaned, but all looked identical. I couldn’t disting
uish the individual ants traveling with me. Which one was Roncommock?
As we approached the entrance, I smelled a strange and unpleasant odor. It made me uncomfortable and agitated. My companions began to hurry and so did I. When we reached the surface, there was chaos.
A huge ant, terrible in its snapping jaws and bulging eyes, grabbed the ant beside me and lifted her high, suddenly snapping her directly in half. The giant was a soldier from another tribe. I was stunned, but even more surprised when the half composed of my companion’s head, thorax and two legs, but missing her abdomen and remaining legs, grabbed the big ant’s back leg and heroically ripped it from the intruder’s body. The leg amputation caused the soldier to swing around and, once again using those oversized jaws, clip off her head from her half-body. The severed head of my unfortunate companion, however, remained valiantly gripped onto the leg of the massive soldier, which was now under attack by two more of our workers. They too pulled off legs until the giant began to topple.
I stared at the small head affixed to the giant’s leg and tried to probe her mind. “Roncommock?” I ventured hesitatingly.
“Behind you. Keep fighting!” he answered back, and I paused briefly in relief but soon redoubled my efforts.
Bodies were clashing together everywhere. Big enemy soldiers were lifting up our smaller workers and dashing them in pieces to the ground, but other small workers were successfully ripping legs off the huge enemies who then stumbled and fell like giant trees crashing to the forest floor. We were fighting ferociously, but there were just too many enemies. Every enemy soldier occupied several smaller workers, and a line of the big ants was pushing toward our entrance burrow. They were going to charge into the burrow and defeat our village! If they succeeded, we would all be taken as slaves by the enemy ants.
Just then, a phalanx of soldiers from our own village came spilling out of the entrance and turned the tide of battle in our favor. They went head-to-head with the invaders, chomping their way through enemies large and small. As our own soldiers began to overwhelm those from the other tribe, I could see that we were starting to push them back, clearing a zone in front of our entrance. I smelled victory, and then realized that was exactly right: my victorious side was releasing a triumphal scent that announced we had won. The invaders that still had legs hobbled away.
The battlefield covered a large area in front of the entrance to our mound. It was strewn with bodies and parts of bodies, detached legs most commonly. Whole legs, partial legs, broken antennae, and the claws from innumerable feet intermingled with the occasional oblong head, section of square thorax, or perfectly spherical abdomen.
Before all the invaders even left the scene, our clean-up of the carnage began. Other workers like me began picking up bits and pieces, invaders and comrades alike, and carrying them off to the midden, or trash pile. We formed a line of cleaners, hauling parts of carcasses back and forth. Our big soldiers just turned back and reentered the nest as soon as they smelled the victory signal, but all the smaller workers joined in the clean-up. With such a large number of workers, it did not take us long to clear the battlefield of all the refuse.
After the battle and the clean-up were over, I descended into the mound where I was greeted by another group of workers. They were pale and younger than those who were fighting, and they had never left the nest. They smelled only of the nest scent, whereas all of us who’d been involved in the fight smelled of ourselves, another nest, and of victory. The interior workers brought us food and checked us over for damage. I had some frass wedged into a joint on my back that I couldn’t reach. One of the young workers cleaned it out for me and carefully groomed the rest of my body, checking for any other damage.
While the worker cleaned me, I smelled an odor that my ant-self recognized, but my human mind could not identify. It was wafting up from deeper in the mound and it filled me with concern. “Roncommock, are you here?”
“Yes,” was the reply. “I am with you, Skyco.”
“What is that new odor?”
“Be patient. You know what it is, but your human mind is interfering. Just be an ant and don’t worry about me. I will stay nearby.”
I tried to block out the part of me that kept intruding, tried to give up the idea of the human “I” and connect instead to the community spirit of the ants. The odor provided important information about the village, supplying instructions for the next task essential for the village’s welfare. What was it?
At last, understanding arose out of confusion. As new workers emerged from their pupal cases, the queen laid more eggs in the newly empty chambers. The odors recruited workers to their next duty. Some of the pale, young workers were scurrying down deeper into the nest to assist the emergence, while others moved off to the royal chamber to take the eggs the queen produced and move them into the chamber of eggs. The different odors told us where we were needed, what the next task would be. All the communication was through scent instead of verbal commands.
The ant queen is responsible for producing the number of workers she needs to maintain the size and health of the ant tribe. This includes replacement of individuals lost to warfare and old age, just as in our human tribe. Our village of Chowanook held about a hundred people, but all the villages under Menatonon’s care, eighteen in total, held around two thousand people, together forming the tribe of the Chowanoacs. There were about that many ants in this single nest.
Even though we’d just won a great battle, the ant colony did not sit back and enjoy it, recounting stories and celebrating around a fire as we did in a human village. Instead, we went back to work. As an ant, I sensed no sadness for the loss of comrades and no reluctance to join in the fighting when the time came. My colony mates were totally devoted to the defense of their village. They harbored no fear, no sadness, nor any joy at their victory. They just did what was needed when it was needed. These ants were true to their nature, without guile or regret, which seemed to me to be an admirable trait.
Some workers had found a good food source. I immediately recognized their call, a scent, for help to gather it. Other workers inside the nest were also recruited to be field scouts like me. I followed the scent trail from the entrance, along a path worn down by tiny feet, to the edge of the field where it gave way to forest. There, workers were picking up the seeds from a violet’s seed pod. Several of the seed pods had split open, and the brown, shiny seeds each had a soft, white handle—the elaiosome—that was easy to grab. I bit into it to get a good grip and then slung it up over my back, still gripped in my jaws. The elaiosome smelled and tasted strongly of good food, but instead of the sweetness of the honeydew, it tasted more of oils and fats, like the roasted bear meat I ate as a human.
I followed the home scent back to the village and handed over the seed at the entrance. Pale workers knew exactly what to do with the food. They clipped off the soft, moist, elaiosome and hauled it below to the food chamber while other workers took the hard, brown seed to the midden. I made the trip from the violet to the nest and back again several times, running along a trail well-marked by our village scent. Soon our task was completed and all the seeds were delivered to our nest.
I felt sluggish and realized that the sun was no longer high overhead, heating up the sand surrounding the mound. Other workers were coming in from all directions, converging on the entrance. I could smell strange scents on all of them. Some odors were clearly different types of food, and the workers who stayed inside to collect the food approached these newcomers to touch and taste them with their antennae.
A column of wounded and undamaged soldiers marched back from the direction of the lowering sun. They’d been in another skirmish, this one clearly a raid by our own troops on another mound. Based on the scents they were releasing, they’d raided another village ambitious to extend its reach into our territory and had successfully repulsed the enemy. Our soldiers smelled of the foreigners, an unpleasant, sharp odor like sweat
y men who’d been in battle. They returned home lumbering and limping, eagerly lining up to be examined and cleaned by the small workers.
In addition to our own workers, captured workers from the defeated village scurried alongside. They’d been sprayed with our village odor, and, although their foreign scent was still apparent, our village scent overwhelmed it. These captured enemies would soon lose their strange scent and be incorporated into our village, just as sometimes happened in my human village when we defeated another village and returned with captured enemies. Men were usually killed during battle, but if the whole village was captured, its women and children were adopted as members of the victorious tribe.
One of our returning soldiers hobbled up to the entrance of the mound, missing three of her six legs. Luckily, the remaining legs were distributed on each side, and her lurching gait carried her awkwardly along. The workers swarmed around her, cleaning her up before sending her down below. She could not grow new legs, but she could fight a while longer and would be used in another battle.
Another soldier walked up, weaving drunkenly along the path as she collided occasionally with other returning soldiers and workers. She had all six legs, but clearly something was wrong. I couldn’t see any damage, and was stunned to see one of the workers grip her and drag her away from the mound, refusing to allow her to enter. She was being taken to the midden with the other rubbish! The disoriented soldier did not balk, but just allowed herself to be dragged passively by the small worker. Then I saw what was wrong. Both of her antennae were damaged. One was just a stump; the other was about half gone. Without antennae, she could no longer smell anything. She had lost her primary sense and would be unable to respond, unable even to return to the nest unless guided by another. She was helpless, and she knew and accepted it. She was walking dead.
Spirit Quest Page 4