Prophets of the Ghost Ants

by Clark Thomas Carlton

  Close to home, Anand was slowed when his route was overwhelmed with the caste of ants that gave the leaf-cutters their name. The foraging ants had stripped leaves from a distant tree and were returning to the mound with their pieces. The ants paraded past him with their leaf shards up high, at least providing Anand with some flickering shade.

  As Anand was jostled in the foragers’ traffic, a few dropped their cargo to rub their antennae and sniff the pair he wore in a headband fashioned from straw. Anand’s antennae, like his skin and clothing, were coated in the ant’s kin-scent. “Yes, I’m one of you,” he said as they identified him as one of their millions of sisters before moving on. He saw his father in the distance, a look of panic on his face as he took in Anand’s bloodstained clothing.

  “Don’t worry, Dad,” Anand shouted. “I’m not bleeding.”

  Yormu wiped at his eyes and ran to his son to hand him the cone. Anand’s mouth was fuzzy with thirst and he sucked down the drop in an instant. He was eating the cone when Keel, the foreman, tromped over with his whip. “Yormu!” he shouted. “Who said you could bring water to your bastard?”

  Keel was the largest of the middenites and had a lipless slash of a mouth. Like all in his caste, his right ear lobe was cut off to identify his polluted status, but his left lobe was newly clipped to distinguish him as foreman. Good with the whip, he lashed Yormu, who fell to his knees from the force. Blood surfaced from gashes in his back as Keel raised the whip again—but this time he didn’t strike.

  Anand had thrown himself between the men.

  “Whip me if you have to whip someone!” the boy shouted. No hint of fear was in his voice as his eyes pierced Keel’s. The foreman lowered his arm.

  “I won’t whip you, Roach Boy,” said Keel. “Your blood might blind my eyes. Why are you so late?”

  “I was caught in the flea attack. I had to sound the alarm.”

  Keel addressed Yormu as he struggled to stand. “Your bastard’s a liar, Yormu, like all roach people. Now get back to it, both of you, or I’ll dock your mushrooms for a month.”

  Anand watched with concern as his father limped back to the corpse piles. Anand returned to his usual work, the cleaning of chamber pots. He reached for one with a lid that had a quartz inlay of the emblem of Cajoria’s Sorceress Queen. Inside it were contents that were rather less elegant.

  As he scraped, then washed it, Anand was coming to understand that royal night soil was as malodorous as any commoner’s. Lost in his thoughts, he had not realized a pack had gathered behind him. When they pitched sand grains at his back, he turned to see who provoked him.

  It was his usual enemies, led by Tal, the eldest son of Keel. Since his father had become foreman, Tal had grown fat from stuffing himself with insect salvage. He had great and drooping cheeks, giving the impression that his chin and buttocks had switched places. He looked over his shoulder to see that his father and the men were distracted in the distance.

  “Those are royal pots, Roach Boy,” said Tal, “and they’re for decent Cajorites to clean, not some roach-eater’s son.”

  Anand’s anger felt like maggots feasting inside him. Not a day passed in which his mother was not insulted. He was aware that all the boys had dropped their tasks. Like manure flies, they were buzzing around the two, ready to revel in the Roach Boy’s weekly humiliation. Anand knew what was coming next, but after a morning of fleas that wanted to drain his blood and sheriffs who wanted to sever his arm, he wasn’t going to take it.

  “You want to clean these shit pots? Be my guest,” Anand said, taking a pot and swinging its contents into Tal’s face.

  Tal was doubly startled; he was not used to defiance and now he was blinded and choking on excrement. As he scraped at his face, the others rushed Anand and grabbed his arms, stretching them back.

  “It’s time you were dead, you black bastard,” said Tal. “Time to wash your kin-scent off you and give you to the ants!” And with that, he kicked Anand with a powerful thrust to the stomach.

  All he could manage was a whoosh of air as the breath was forced from his lungs—not that any of the others heard it over their own howling laughter. The world around him grew dark and quiet. He felt the boys lift and toss him in the vat where he sank to its bottom. So it ends like this, was his final thought. His panic gave way to a strange and gorgeous relief as a sudden path to the Next World glowed before him with the soft light of stars.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE SORCERESS QUEEN OF MOUND CAJORIA

  The foraging ants, pincers full, continued their climb up the mound with the essential task of delivering their leaves. After skirting the midden, they passed through 127 levels where different castes worked at specific labors. The first rings were the colorless slums of the laboring humans, an expanse of one-room shelters made of sand grains glued together by ant dung and perched atop stilts. Nearer to the mound, the leaf-cutters crawled through the rings of craftsmen and traders. These castes were privileged to live in two-room hovels of sand bound by sulfurous tar.

  At a higher elevation were the treasure-stuffed homes of the merchants, constructed from white sand fused with fragrant resins. At the next level were the black sand barracks of the soldiers and above these were their generals’ austere mansions. On top of these, and in marked contrast, were the priests’ ornate rectories. These were fashioned from grains of pinkish sand and embedded with images of the Slopeish gods.

  Finally the foragers reached the crystal palaces of the royal family. As the ants marched over these magnificent structures, their leaves were reflected in a golden lacquer. The palaces encircled the mound’s opening, which was guarded by four ants with giant heads that locked and unlocked as a living gate.

  Once inside the mound, the foragers descended to deliver their leaves to the dark, deep chambers of the chewing ants. This caste would make a rough carpet by shearing the leaves into tiny pieces. Smaller ants, the fungus growers, would chew these pieces into a fine paste, fertilize it with liquid manure, and then infuse it with threads of fungus. The threads would stalk and fruit into the sacred mushrooms, the staple food of both the ants and the human parasites that lived among them.

  Once they made their delivery, the foragers exited for a second trip and more leaves. They spiraled past a stately train of silk-draped riding ants with noisy bangles clasped above their claws. Atop the lead ant was Queen Polexima, the most important human in all Cajoria. She and her entourage were just returning from the essential ritual she practiced as the mound’s sorceress.

  In the ninth month of her ninth pregnancy, riding had become difficult for the queen. Two things were on her mind as she entered the tunnel that led to her palace: lunch and a comfortable seat. Once in her chambers, she sat down to savor a sun-baked swamp fly as her servant informed her of the flea attack.

  “Good gods,” she said. “Did anyone die?”

  “Eight hunters . . . all of them boys,” said Mulga, a woman from the servant caste with freckles as numerous as stars.

  “Children? How horrible.” Polexima pushed her food away, having lost her appetite. She tried to hide her moistening eyes.

  “Majesty,” said Mulga, somewhat shyly. “Your hair could use a bit of brushing.”

  “Oh, thank you. Bring me my toiletries, please.”

  In a hand mirror fashioned from the wing of a water beetle, Polexima saw her yellow-white hair was now streaked with silver. Her pale skin with its golden undertones had grown more wrinkled about her eyes and mouth. After thirty-nine summers, she saw she was somewhere between being a fabled beauty and a faded one. “What did you expect?” she muttered to herself. “That it wouldn’t happen to you?” Suddenly, the queen dropped the mirror and clutched her belly.

  “Mulga . . .” she gasped.

  The queen’s tone frightened the servant as well as the twenty others in the chamber. They were as still as stone as they stared at their queen.

  “Yes, Majesty?”

  “It’s time.”

  The serv
ant continued to stare.

  “Mulga, will you run and summon the priests, please?”

  “Yes, Majesty. Apologies.”

  As her cushion soaked with fluid, Polexima’s mind flooded with painful concerns. After eight deliveries, it never really got any easier. Panic was throbbing inside her but she knew giving into it would accomplish nothing. She drew deep breaths as she rubbed the belly of the Grasshopper idol in her bedside altar and chanted all his names in prayer.

  Mulga scurried through the vast chamber and its furnishings of carved amber. To reach the outside pathways, she had to crawl through a short tunnel, then push through a portal whose flaps kept the ants out.

  Standing under the shade of the mound’s rain shield, the servant tied on her band of antennae before entering the dense traffic of ants and humans. She was trembling when she stopped before a gathering of others from her caste. They were picking up the day’s drinking water at the royal dew station where a man wearing a bucket-shaped hat stood on a sand-sled and used a broad knife to slice water from a barrel.

  “What’s wrong with you?” asked Mulga’s sister, who served the crown princess.

  “The queen—her water’s broken.”

  Everyone gasped. The dew collector dropped his knife. Some fell to their knees and others fainted. All of them turned to their gods in prayer.

  Mulga knew they should have been praying for the queen’s health and blessings for the new heir. Instead, like her, they were muttering prayers that she give birth to a male.

  Or at least a female whose life would be brief.

  CHAPTER 4

  SURVIVING THE STING

  “He’s drowning!” said a shaky voice some distance from the vat of excrement. It belonged to Terraclon, a twig of a boy, who squeezed through the circle of Anand’s abusers. Terraclon was held in almost as much contempt as Anand, and his presence repulsed the others.

  Terraclon thrust his arms, as thin as threads, into the vat. Using all his strength, he managed to pull Anand out, but he also sent the vat tumbling, something sure to set off the foreman (even more than the attempted murder of the Roach Boy). Anand coughed and flopped in the spreading filth. The other boys scurried back to work just as their fathers noticed the commotion.

  Yormu felt stabbed to see what had happened to his son. How many times had they thrown him in a vat this month? Yormu was running towards his boy when Keel grabbed his arm.

  “Don’t run to him, Yormu. He makes his messes. Let him clean it up.”

  Yormu clenched his fists with rage. If only he could speak his mind! He wished for a tongue so long and sharp it could lop off Keel’s head. He saw Keel glance at his fists.

  “Are those fists for me, Yormu? Take a swing and I’ll knock out what few teeth you have left. Get back to work.”

  Yormu panted as he strained to keep himself from leaping onto his foreman to climb his chest and rip his ears off. He shook his head, defiant.

  “I said get back to work!” Keel bellowed.

  Yormu shook his head again, waiting for the moment Anand could rise and walk. Keel was coming towards him, fist cocked.

  “Stop!” shouted Terraclon, yanking Anand to his feet. “He’s up. Look.” Terraclon held Anand’s wobbling body up as he coughed.

  “Go back to work, Dad,” Anand choked out. “I’m fine.”

  Keel glared at them all before pushing Yormu back to his tasks.

  After Anand and Terraclon refilled the vat, they removed their muck with several baths in nutshell tubs. As Anand sank under the last dome of water, he imagined the time he could leave Cajoria and return in the trappings of the richest trader. He would go to the Cajorites’ priests to purchase Keel, Tal, and his other tormentors. Afterwards, he would sell them to an enemy nation where, for the rest of their lives, gawkers would pelt them with trash in pits at public showings.

  Dreams beyond dreams, he thought as he continued to wash.

  As they bathed, the caste’s idols keeper stood nearby repeating the names of the Slopeish gods as he rubbed his generous belly stained from the dye of his yellow sash. When the boys were dried, he handed them oily cloths soaked with leaf-cutter kin-scent and muttered a prayer to Goddess Ant Queen. The boys were coating themselves when they heard a hubbub among the middenites. All had left their work to gather and stare at the top of the mound. Banners were hanging from the rain shield’s edges.

  “Look, Anand,” said Terraclon. “Yellow banners! The queen is giving birth again. You know what it means if it’s a girl who lives.”

  “Fission,” said Anand. “A new princess may mean a new colony.”

  Terraclon shuddered. “Don’t say it out loud, Anand!”

  “Why not? Fission would be a good thing.”

  “Fission is never good. It tears families apart.” Looking at Anand, he added, “And friends. Tears them apart, too.”

  “The people of this mound are starving. It’s better they divide than die.”

  A northern breeze sent dead leaves and dust whirling over the boys. Anand sniffed the air and savored the strange scents of some distant land. He had no fear of being forced to a new colony for a few more months. As the most miserable boy in the most miserable caste, any change was welcome.

  Queen Polexima was used to giving birth to triplets and quadruplets. It was more difficult with this single infant, whose enormous head was crowning.

  “Push, Your Majesty,” said the midwife as the mound’s high priest, His Most Pious Dolgeeno, arrived with his entourage. Through all her pain, the queen almost smiled in contempt. She could see it had taken the priests a good part of the day to dress for the royal delivery. Their pollen-powdered faces of yellow contrasted with cassocks of deepest purple and as hats, it appeared they had agreed on fuzz cones over the usual skullcaps. Each wore twenty-eight head-to-floor necklaces of moonstones that rattled across the tiles as they teetered in on the cube-shaped shoes that gave them height.

  A man of fifty-three summers, Dolgeeno had small eyes lost in a heavy face. He had three, sometimes four chins. He looked to the heavens, then led the other priests in a slow and cumbersome chant circle around Polexima’s bed that drowned out her screams as the baby broke through. The midwife gasped.

  “Show it to me,” said Polexima.

  The midwife hesitated before picking up the infant and turning her to the sight of the others.

  “Good gods,” said Polexima, “a girl!”

  The queen could not hold back tears. Flooded with emotion, she had not realized her legs were apart when Dolgeeno glanced between them. She knew he had done so only for the pleasure of humiliating her. Her hatred for him flared as he approached with his knife, crafted from the tip of an ancient ant queen’s mandible. He severed the umbilical cord, held the infant upside down, and slapped her buttocks to make her cry.

  Polexima saw that the infant was large and strong and perhaps could survive the poison. Please, Grasshopper, let her live, she prayed to the god of riches and mercy. The infant was freed of her placenta as the jaw of a patrolling sentry ant broke through the greased flap of the chamber’s window. Alerted by the newborn’s odor, its antenna slid through the window in search of an intruder it would have to kill.

  “Hurry, please!” the queen said.

  “That sentry is too large to break through,” said Dolgeeno.

  “But she’s spraying alarm-recruit scent,” Polexima shouted back. “Smaller ones will get through.”

  “My good queen, I have never lost a baby to sentry ants,” said His Most Pious, even as he was immersing the infant in a basin. Once the baby was doused in kin-scent, he raised her and the ant moved on. Dolgeeno nodded towards something buzzing in the corner.

  Strapped into a twig frame, a living mud dauber wasp was lifted onto the shoulders of the priests and brought to Dolgeeno. He held up the baby and pressed her buttocks to the wasp’s stinger, already glistening with poison.

  Polexima had previously witnessed this ritual eighteen times. Seventeen times she had
seen daughters die. The newborn would expire in a moment or live to wail in agony. The wasp fluttered its clipped wings as its stinger pumped its toxins. Dolgeeno pulled the infant away. She made tiny fists and squirmed.

  Polexima’s heart sank as she watched the infant shiver, then grow still.

  “No, she’s . . . ”

  Suddenly, blood rushed to the girl’s face and turned it a deep pink. Her little body spasmed and she shrieked.

  This daughter would live.

  “Thank you, Lord Grasshopper!” said the queen, collapsing into her sheets.

  “The gods have found this baby worthy. She shall be called Pareesha,” said Dolgeeno, naming her after the south wind goddess.

  One of Dolgeeno’s men handed him a bladder of aphid milk. He smeared a bit of the sticky syrup onto the newborn’s lips.

  “May the days of Princess Pareesha be sweet and may her descendants be numerous,” sang the priest. When the infant stopped crying, she was set in an amber rocking crib.

  Polexima drifted into a shallow slumber as she waited for her family’s visit. She knew one of them would be most unhappy, a thought that somehow made her smile as she closed her eyes.

  Making their way through the palace’s tunnels were the new baby’s sister, the Crown Princess Trellana, and her father, the Warrior King Sahdrin. They sat together on a couch set over the thorax of a carrying ant. Behind them, on their own ants, were twenty of Trellana’s twenty-one brothers, most of whom were twins or triplets. They laughed and sang as they sucked from bladders of honey liquor. Trellana found them loud and irritating and it deepened her usual pout. She had been summoned prematurely from a day with a hairdresser who had fresh gossip from the neighboring mounds. What unsettled her most was pondering that this new sibling was her first surviving sister, a teensy thing that would be adored and spoiled by all.