The Lost Rainforest #2

by Eliot Schrefer

  “Thank you, Mez,” Gogi says, panting.

  “We need to start the next part of your plan now,” Mez says.

  “Right. The next part of my plan. Uh-huh,” Gogi says.

  Mez narrows her eyes at him. “Pull one of the fungus sticks out of the bag,” she says, eyeing the gnashing horde of ants, healthy soldiers crawling over the dead bodies of the fallen, the tide of insects rising ever closer. “If we’re going to die here, at least we can try to take them down with us.”

  “Go out in a blaze of glory, eh?” Gogi says. His words might sound brave, but his heart is quaking. He doesn’t want to die.

  “With you here, we could literally do just that,” Mez says. She presses her backside against Gogi’s, tail entwining with tail as they face off against the ants.

  Gogi presses his hands together at the soft part of the wrist, so that a fan of flame jets out. He aims it in front of him, where it scorches a cone of ants, then pivots so the fan of fire passes all around them, making a circle of charred insects. “I can’t keep producing fire forever,” Gogi says. “Once I’m exhausted, I’m out. But this is buying us a little time. You get a fungus stick out, and put it on the tip of my tail. Then I’ll whip it around and hurl it as far as I can.”

  Mez gets to work, slipping her paw into the sack. Gogi expects her to turn left when she turns right, and he singes off the hair on the tip of one of her ears. “Sorry! Sorry!” he says.

  “Just one second—there, got it,” Mez says, pulling her paw out. Gogi’s too busy burning the advancing ants to spend a second looking, but he feels something at the tip of his tail, and wraps the end around it.

  “When you whip your tail around, don’t forget to stop making your fire,” Mez says. “I don’t want to be a crispy charred panther.”

  “Crispy charred panther sounds kind of tasty,” Gogi says.

  “Gogi!”

  “Sorry, sorry. Which direction?” Gogi asks.

  “Where Big Rumi was heading,” Mez answers. “As far into the horde as you can get it.”

  “Okay, then, here we go,” Gogi says, gauging where the ants seem to be thickest. He drops the flame momentarily so he can concentrate on his tail throw, winds the stick round and round, and then flings.

  He tracks the arc of the stick tumbling through the sky, until it passes in front of the sun and he’s dazzled. He shields his eyes, too late, and shakes his head.

  Bites on his ankles. “Mez,” Gogi says, “more ants are climbing on me. We have to go.”

  “Yeah, have any bright ideas about how to do that?” Mez asks, her voice falling into gasps of pain as she nips at the ants on her legs.

  Gogi looks at Mez, but she’s just a big purple blob from where he let the sun burn his eyes. “I don’t, I’m sorry.”

  Or maybe he does. Go out in a blaze of glory.

  “Mez, get close.”

  “I am close!”

  “Okay, stay close, then. I mean it. As close as you can to my backside.”

  “Yuck. Monkey butt.”

  “Mez! Remind me to kill you once I save you.”

  Once he feels Mez tight against him, Gogi summons up the depths of his power. This will require more magic out of him than he’s ever summoned before, but if they want to survive this ant horde . . .

  “Oh my,” Mez says, awestruck.

  All Gogi can see is fire. His fire. He’s made a shell of it, a rippling, searing sphere of flame. His eyes tear up, his fur instantly sweaty. He takes a step forward, and the sphere moves with him. Mez paces with him, making little yowls of astonishment as she goes.

  “I’m not hurting you, am I?” Gogi asks.

  “No,” Mez says, nearly breathless. “Gogi . . . this is amazing.”

  “Best part is that I don’t even have to focus. I’m just letting it bust out all over the place. Much easier when you have a mind like mine. I’m going to pick up the pace,” Gogi warns. “No crispy charred panthers.”

  “I’ll be with you.”

  Gogi begins to run. He’s only got a few more seconds of fire left in him, and if they want to be out of the ant horde by then, he’ll have to move fast.

  Beneath him are ants, some charred to bits, some steaming, some sizzling. Some of them manage to bite him anyway, and it feels like running over nettles.

  One significant drawback of a fire shield: he can’t see beyond a couple feet in front of his face, can’t see any sky above his head. He’ll have to hope that he’s continuing in the right direction, that he’s not heading into the middle of the horde instead of out of it.

  A gnawing feeling starts up in his center. It’s like being out of breath from running, except the exhausted, heaving feeling is in his spine instead of his lungs. He’s felt this in a minor way before, when he was battling the Ant Queen back in the watery caverns beneath the Ziggurat of the Sun and Moon, but never this intensely. He’s nearly spent.

  And that’s it. With a hissing flicker, the shield disappears, reappears briefly, and then is gone.

  His pupils got used to the bright light, which means now he can’t see the ground beneath him. He might be swarming with ants, and those that are still unscorched might be teeming toward him and Mez. He waits for the biting to start, the first signs that all is over.

  There are no bites.

  Gogi’s eyes gradually adjust. Beneath his feet are grass and twigs, a few crumpled ferns, and one very startled praying mantis.

  They made it out past the ant horde.

  “Mez, are you okay?” he asks, whirling.

  She looks at him, her eyes wide, then slowly nods. “That was the wildest experience of my life,” she says. “And we’ve had some wild experiences.”

  Gogi struggles to keep a straight face. Mez’s eyebrows have been seared right off. She’s now the most ridiculous-looking panther he’s ever seen. Maybe she won’t notice. Maybe he won’t get in big trouble. “You seem . . . fine,” he says.

  Mez nods, obviously still dazed by the whole experience. “Which way is Chumba?” she manages to ask.

  “Over here,” Gogi says, leading them toward the fern thicket where he left the young panther. He holds his breath, only exhaling once he’s parted the fronds and seen Chumba right where he left her, snoring away.

  “Chumba, you’re okay, thank the moon,” Mez says, curling her body around her sister’s.

  “That looks very snuggy,” Gogi says, letting out a long breath.

  “Come join us,” Mez says.

  “Don’t mind if I do!” comes a small voice from above.

  “Lima!”

  “Sorry I wasn’t much help during the fight, guys,” Lima says. “But at least I got a great aerial view of that light show. Wow!”

  Gogi knows he should be off to examine the ant horde, to see whether their plot has worked. But who knows how long it will take the fungus to start working—if it works at all. And he’s so very tired. Using that much of his magic feels the same as staying up for five days straight. A nap would be so very nice.

  Mez is cuddled next to Chumba, her paw over her sister protectively. Gogi hunkers down on the other side of Chumba, his backside against her soft belly. Lima nestles between them. “I have to admit, you panthers have this cuddling thing down pat,” he says.

  “Panthers really do know how to nap,” Mez says, then lets out a big yawn. Gogi hears her sharp jaws click as they open to their widest, can imagine his friend’s long teeth. She makes him feel safe.

  “Should we set a watch?” he asks.

  Mez is snoring already.

  “We should . . . really . . . set a watch,” he says.

  The next thing he knows, he’s dreaming of fire and ants, and then he’s coming awake.

  It’s nighttime, and Chumba’s shaking him. “Gogi, something terrible has happened!”

  “What is it? What is it?” Gogi cries, leaping to his feet, listening for danger, imagining ant queens and giant toads.

  Chumba points at her sleeping sister. “It’s Mez’s eye
brows!”

  Gogi bursts out laughing.

  Three Nights Until the Eclipse

  “I’M NOT SURE the fungus you hurled in does anything after all,” Chumba says. “It looks like there’s still a whole bunch of ants over there, being all ant-y.”

  “I know,” Mez says. “But look at it this way. They’ve stopped mowing down everything in their path. So something is going better!”

  Gogi’s finding it a little hard to concentrate, as they’re hidden in the branches of a short tree that smells weirdly delicious, like wild onions. As they wait for any sign that the fungus has taken effect, he scratches at the bark, soaking in the tangy fragrance that rises up from it. After their climactic fight against Big Rumi and their flaming run from the ant attackers, he’d expected something more exciting to happen next. But it’s not like the ants have suddenly started running around saying What’s this terrible artifact from the Dismal Bog, what ever will we do? They’re just being . . . ants.

  “The fungus will kick in soon, I know it,” Mez says.

  “Maybe we’re going about this wrong,” Gogi says. “Panther and monkey instinct is always to stick in the treetops to observe enemies, because it’s safer. But ants are just too little to get an eye on. I’m going to go down and see if I can figure anything more out by getting close.”

  “Be careful, okay?” Mez says.

  “Of course. Who do you think you’re talking to, a fifteen rank?”

  Relieved to finally be moving his muscles, Gogi scampers down the tree. At the bottom, he pauses to cup his hands, willing a lick of fire to appear. The flame itself feels nice—cozy on the calluses of his finger pads. After yesterday, even this small move makes his spine sore.

  Once he’s got his tiny flame, Gogi hunches and begins to work his way forward, tracking the illumination back and forth along the dark ground. It’s awkward going, until he thinks to transfer the fire to the tip of his tail instead. That’s much better. He can maneuver the tail so it’s always above him, and he can move forward at full speed on all fours.

  The ants are just about everywhere, even in this healthy part of the rainforest. It’s the creepiest thing about them—they’re active on both sides of the Veil, the billions of them always working at something. Up night and day, like the two-legs once were. And the shadowwalkers still are. Hmm, maybe he should rethink that “creepy” part.

  Concentrate, Gogi.

  He pauses to study the ants around him. They’re healthy-looking normal ants, doing antlike things. Not swarming or eating up all the animals in their path or anything. They’re cutting up leaves, carrying dead bodies of other ants, hassling a caterpillar, streaming along in their columns, tapping the ground with their antennae. There are ants of all sizes and types, little red ones, big black ones—it pays to watch out for those especially—and brownish ones that are somewhere in between. But they’re all just being ants.

  Gogi looks back toward his friends, where Mez is watching him closely. Worried. Hopeful.

  He continues poking his way forward. It’s as unnerving as nighttime travel always is, with fronds and spiders and click beetles whapping him in the face every few steps. But he keeps himself focused on the ants.

  Trees become sparser, and the calls of birds and insects stop, so Gogi knows he’s approaching the ruined part of the land. Sure enough, what little greenery is left here is lacey and pockmarked, ants working to carry away the few bits that remain. But these ants are uncoordinated, unlike the orderly lines he saw before. Most of them, actually, look like they’re running for their lives. As much as ants can express that sort of thing.

  Flame held forward gingerly on the agile tip of his tail, careful not to get any ants running up his legs, Gogi works his way in the direction the ants are coming from. There are more fleeing ants, and then he comes across some that are acting even more strangely. They’re wearing head ornaments, for one thing.

  Wait. Ants wearing head ornaments?

  Gogi leans in close. They’re not really head ornaments. They’re—Gogi leaps back in astonishment, his flame winking out.

  Gritting his teeth, he relights the flame and approaches the strange ants. These ants have mushrooms. Growing. Out. Of. Their. Heads.

  Those poor creatures, Gogi thinks, even though those poor creatures were just recently trying to kill him.

  The mushroom-y ants are still moving, just slowly and randomly. And upward. They definitely seem to like moving upward. Whenever one of the weird suffering insects hits a ruined branch, it starts climbing, joining the other afflicted ants at the top. Gogi can’t wait to report this new information back to the sisters. Maybe it will prove useful. But he forces himself to wait a little longer, to see if there’s more to learn.

  One of the mushroom-y ants in the cluster, this one with a particularly large specimen of fungus growing out of its forehead, leaves the group to walk even higher, along a long branch. Once at the tip, it pauses and lowers its head. Lit in eerie, glittering colors by the firelight from Gogi’s tail, the scene has the feeling of an ancient ritual. He leans forward to get a better view of what this renegade ant might be doing.

  Then—puff. Like it’s blowing a booger out of its nose, the ant sneezes out a fine white dust. But it doesn’t sneeze out of the nose—the ant doesn’t have a nose, for starters—but out of the mushroom top. Which, unfortunately for the ant, causes its whole head to explode into bits.

  Spores, Gogi realizes. It’s sending out spores.

  Spores—and bits of ant exoskeleton—fall like dust on the surrounding ants. They immediately start cleaning themselves, running their hairy forelegs over their heads and bodies. But right away they seem disoriented, running into one another, knocking one another onto their backs, legs flailing.

  Or no, they’re not running into one another. They’re killing one another.

  The ants lock mandibles, pushing heads into the ground, brittle legs coming free as they slice and hack. The soil around Gogi’s feet is soon strewn with ant bits. One ant survives the immediate battle, and before his eyes Gogi sees it slow down, then find the nearest high point—the top of the pile of ant pieces—where it lays its head, as if taking a nap. But it’s not a nap. Gogi can see the first tendrils of mushroom sprout from its joints.

  So that’s how the fungus works.

  That’s some creepy fungus.

  This must be happening across the ant horde, fungus infecting ants, turning them aggressive, the survivors living long enough to become spreaders of the fungus.

  But there are so many ants. How quickly will the infection spread? Will it spread fast enough to stop the horde’s momentum?

  Will it make it all the way to the queen?

  Unnerved by the nighttime ant zombies, and puzzled what to do with this new information, Gogi retreats. He wipes away the insects that took advantage of the opportunity to start crawling up his arms and legs.

  Lost in thought, he returns to Lima and the sisters.

  “So it’s working!” Chumba says excitedly, kneading her claws into Mez’s ribs, a move that Gogi has only recently figured out is the panther version of a high five.

  Mez is less thrilled than her sister. “Yes . . . but why doesn’t it feel too great?”

  “It doesn’t feel great to me, either,” Gogi says. “Why is that?”

  “Yeah, what’s wrong with you guys?” Lima says. “Ants slaughtering ants is great news!”

  “To recap,” Mez says, pacing the branch. “These ants have gotten this fungus and are now dismembering one another.”

  “Creepily dismembering one another,” Gogi adds.

  “Okay, creepily dismembering one another. But what now? The Ant Queen isn’t here. The rest of her armies aren’t here. And we don’t know how long this fungus lasts. If these ants right here all die, then there won’t be any left to take it to her.”

  “Then we bring the Ant Queen here,” Chumba says. “So we can be sure she’s exposed to the fungus.”

  “I never consider
ed that,” Mez says.

  “Could I just say that the Ant Queen seems very difficult to move around, seeing as she’s huge and armor plated and, um, all-powerful?” Gogi asks. “And far away? I also think that in general we should be avoiding her, right? Here’s a thought: What if we brought these infected ants to her?”

  “We bring this problem all the way to the top,” Mez says.

  “And right to the queen, too,” Lima says, nodding.

  “That’s what I meant,” Mez says.

  “Right,” Lima says, nodding.

  “So, where is the queen?” Chumba asks.

  “To the east, where the sun dawns,” Mez says. “Why she’s staying there instead of joining the vanguard of her army, who knows.”

  “If we can find her somewhere in the east, and that’s a very big ‘if.’ That’s far to bring an ant horde,” Gogi says. “Especially on little insect legs.”

  “So, how do we herd a few trillion ants all the way across the rainforest?” Chumba asks.

  “That I have an answer for,” Gogi says, a smile spreading across his face. For extra dramatic effect, he sends licks of flames out of his nostrils.

  “Wow,” Lima says. “I like the way you think.”

  “ISN’T THIS PRECISELY what they mean when they say ‘Don’t play with fire’?” Chumba asks.

  “This will work out fine, don’t worry!” Gogi says.

  Lima squeaks up. “I’m with Chumba. Lima the Healing Bat thinks that once the flame is out of the monkey, so to speak, it’s out of our control.”

  Mez raises her eyebrows. Or where her eyebrows would have risen if Gogi hadn’t seared them off. “Tell me you’re not going to start talking about yourself in the third person, Lima.”

  “Who’s the third person?” Lima asks.

  “Lima,” Gogi says, patting her on the head. “I’m not the young monkey that you once knew. I have plenty of self-control. I’m a twelve rank now, don’t you forget.”

  “How could we ever possibly forget?” Mez says sweetly.

  “My sister appears to be in a bit of a mood,” Chumba says.

  “Look,” Gogi says, “this is going to be—what would they call it?—a ‘controlled burn.’ A little flame behind the ants to get them started in the right direction, that’s all.”