The voice continues its wordless thundering.
The clearing goes still. Sky, on his back and surrounded by feathers, goes still. The iguana and Mez, until now wheeling around each other, go still. Lima lands lightly on Gogi’s shoulder, wordless.
The Ant Queen freezes, then takes a hesitant step forward. “No,” she says. Normally her voice sounds harmonic, otherworldly, but now for the first time it jangles and clashes. “It can’t be!”
The tree falls over entirely, with a crashing sound. All the combatants in the clearing pause, their fights made meaningless in the face of what’s emerging.
With a sharp wet crack, the enormous fallen ironwood tree shivers and splits, the two halves crashing into the ruined earth. Behind the tree, right at the start of the glowing soil that streaks across Caldera, is a giant snake.
It is Auriel, but only in a way. This boa constrictor is the same size he was before, and has the same features, but he’s turned the color of the noonday sun. His white-yellow catches the moonlight around him, and makes him seem to glow, just like the path that leads to the ziggurat. His body hangs in the air, waving slightly, like a tree in the breeze.
The radiance is too much after the utter darkness of the eclipse. Gogi turns his head away, eyes streaming tears. He whirls on Rumi, whose outline is wobbly and indistinct before Gogi’s dazzled eyes. “What did we just do?”
Rumi claps his fingers together. “We resurrected Auriel. Isn’t it amazing?”
Gogi’s gut drops. Rumi tricked him. They had the chance to kill the Ant Queen, to destroy her outright using the eclipse magic, but Rumi said to do this other thing, and Gogi, Gogi just believed him, he trusted Rumi, despite all the good reasons not to, reasons why any monkey thinking straight would see that Rumi had betrayed them, but Gogi let his heart get in the way, chose love and trust, and those were stupid, stupid things to choose when the future of Caldera was at stake. And now look where they were. Doomed! “Rumi, I—” Gogi begins, smoke pluming from his tail.
“Now it’s really going to get good,” Lima interrupts.
“Wait, good? Why?” Gogi asks.
“Because of what’s about to happen! My bets are on Auriel.”
“You mean you’re happy about this?” Gogi asks. “That we resurrected Auriel? And he just zoomed across Caldera to shatter a huge ironwood tree?”
“Yes!” Rumi says gleefully. “Look at him!”
Assuming the enormous boa constrictor had come to slay them all, Gogi has avoided doing precisely that. Puffing out fire to keep the ants at bay, Gogi turns his attention to the two giants. The Ant Queen has gone stock-still while Auriel continues to boom at her.
“You betrayed me!”
“Oh,” Gogi says, “that’s definitely Auriel, and he does sound mad.”
“And not at us this time!” Lima says.
The iguana falls in beside the Ant Queen, ready to defend her. Mez and Chumba take the opportunity to retreat, stealing toward the rest of the companions, crouched in a moonlit thicket. Sky doesn’t move from the spot where he was attacked by the Ant Queen. He might be dead.
Gogi finally allows himself to look directly at Auriel. Though the Ant Queen is far bigger than he is, Auriel looks on her with cool confidence, serene and strong. The two seem evenly matched. The queen can’t move, of course, but Auriel is equally still. The giant ant is an intimidating foe, even for him.
Or wait, that’s not quite it. It’s not that Auriel is calm, exactly: it’s more like he’s vacant. Like he’s an empty body, waiting for instructions.
The Ant Queen’s mandibles clack as she takes in the sight of the impressive reptile. All the while, eggs continue to spew from her abdomen.
Gogi turns to Rumi. “Did you know this was going to happen?”
“Yes. Now shh, get your fire ready,” Rumi says.
Auriel continues to waver, as if there’s a wind on the ruined mountaintop. It’s almost like the resurrected constrictor isn’t actually touching the jungle floor, but instead swimming through the air above it. Though his long body has lain in the earth for the past year, it shows no sign of decay or rot. He seems in the prime of health, healthier than any creature alive. And he’s the color of sunshine itself.
“Auriel’s sort of pretty now,” Lima whispers.
“I was just thinking that,” Gogi says. “Are we weird to think that?”
“Lima, get your healing ready too!” Rumi says.
“My healing?” Lima asks, surprised.
Though Auriel’s head remains still, the back of his body is moving. It finishes emerging from the jungle line, coiling itself in the dark soil. He’s right in the midst of the teeming ants, but seems to be not at all bothered by them. Maybe snake scales are even tougher when the snake is undead.
The Ant Queen is still a mightier foe than any other animal in Caldera, though, and there’s no chance a boa constrictor, even one the size of Auriel, can hope to suffocate an insect. Right? Gogi wrings his hands, smoke rising from his fingers.
He wonders if the Ant Queen will try to plead that she didn’t betray Auriel after all, that she doesn’t deserve his revenge. But she has too much dignity to even try. The queen holds still, neither moving toward Auriel nor moving away from him, neither fleeing nor attacking. Gogi’s no expert on ant body language, but he does see that her antennae are flicking toward the edges of the clearing—almost like she’s scoping out escape routes.
Slowly, Auriel’s head turns to one side—to stare right where the shadowwalkers are hiding.
“Looks like it’s time for phase two,” Rumi says.
“Phase two?” Mez asks, hackles rising. “What’s phase two?”
But there’s no time for Rumi to fill them in. The Ant Queen screeches, her arms and legs clacking in the air, her antennae pointing in the direction of the shadowwalkers. “Rise, my minions!” she cries. “Eliminate the intruders!”
The mountaintop is suddenly full of motion as the ants swarm to the attack, thronging Gogi and his friends. Gogi feels his hairs rise as ants crawl up his ankles.
“Now,” Rumi cries, “while the moon is still eclipsed, and magic is in flux. This is the moment. Give him your eclipse magic!”
“What does that even mean?” Gogi asks, frantically batting at the ants climbing up his body. But he catches on soon enough. In life, Auriel had the ability to siphon away the eclipse magic that lived in each animal. Rumi is asking them all to funnel their energy to Auriel under the magic of the new eclipse, so that he’s able to defeat the Ant Queen.
Rumi bows his head, arms outstretched, wind jetting toward Auriel. When it hits him it rises, siphoning into Auriel’s mouth, filling his gullet. Auriel’s eyes, dead and cold before, shine with new life.
Gogi’s stunned by how quickly fortunes have changed. He can’t yet bring himself to help Auriel, not after he betrayed them so spectacularly the year before. Gogi had been cocooned in stone, no way out, waiting for the Ant Queen to come feed on him, all because Auriel tricked him. And now he is supposed to turn around and do the wicked boa constrictor’s bidding?
Rumi chirps around the stream of air. “Trust me, Gogi! Sky and I tried to figure out if there was any other way, but this is it. Auriel is our best chance!”
Gogi makes his choice. “You’re lucky monkeys are such social animals,” he calls as he bounds after Rumi. “Otherwise I would so not be taking your word about trusting Auriel.”
He bows his head and holds out his palms. A stream of fire emerges, lifting up to Auriel, drawing into his gullet just like Rumi’s wind. “Mez, Lima, you too!” Gogi calls.
Using his magic feels different this time. There’s a wrenching feeling, like some beast has gotten inside of him and is kicking at his spine from the inside. Like the energies he’s releasing might not ever return.
Eyes filling with tears at the pain, Gogi can just make out his friends as they bow their heads and hold their paws and wings forward. There’s no sign of the magic passing from them, but Gogi can
feel the power of it, rippling the night air under the eclipsed moon. He gasps as the magic is yanked from him. Even though he’s not moving, keeping the magic flowing despite the pain might be the hardest thing he’s ever done.
Auriel’s eyes continue to brighten as he fills with life. Finally he swings his head to look fully into the Ant Queen’s eyes. “Narelia. We meet again.”
With that, he breaks into motion, streaking across the mountaintop. It requires even more from Gogi, and his eyes stream tears. Before Gogi even knows what is happening, Auriel wraps himself around the Ant Queen. Mez, who experienced Auriel’s attack speed firsthand a year before, yelps and hides her face under her paws at the sight of it. “Come on,” Gogi says to her through gritted teeth, “he’s on our side now!”
What strange words.
Auriel works his glowing sunlight body up the Ant Queen, until he’s wrapped around her underside and slipping his way around her thorax. She slashes away at him, sharp foreclaws raking his yellow scales. She doesn’t seem able to break his skin, but she forces him back down her body, pressing against his neck so he has to loosen his coils. She readies her gnashing mandibles. If she gets the snake at the correct angle, Gogi knows, she could slice clean through him.
“Now!” Auriel bellows. “The time is now! Give me the rest of your power!”
“We don’t know how!” Rumi shrieks. “We’re sending you as much as we can.”
“Then stop sending it to me for now, until it recharges,” Auriel bellows. “Help me get free.”
Gogi has to make a choice. He calls out to Mez and Chumba and Lima: “Attack!”
As soon as Gogi’s sucked his magic back in, he sends it out again, flames swirling from his palms. Emboldened, Mez and Chumba flank Gogi. Mez has forsaken invisibility while they’re in open combat, streaking fast and low over ant-covered soil. Chumba wheels around to the Ant Queen’s flank, preparing to attack her other side. Lima hovers in the air above. “Go for her underbelly,” Gogi calls. “No, maybe her legs first. Climb up Auriel to get to her head. I don’t know, everyone, just attack!”
“Does that include me, too?” comes a strident voice. Gogi looks over to see Sky limping across the battlefield to join them.
Sky is alive!
The macaw instructs the other shadowwalkers as they streak toward the Ant Queen’s gnashing mandibles. “Gogi—steam up her under-armor, and then you should be able to get between the plates and attack beneath,” he caws. “That’s a technique the two-legs tried. We learned about it in the riddle cave.”
“Wait, ‘tried’?” Gogi asks.
Sky nods grimly. “Yes. Tried.”
“Anything else you need to tell us?” Gogi asks as he readies his fire.
“Plenty,” Sky caws. “But now might not be the right time.”
“Right,” Gogi says. “We have an ant queen to defeat. Let’s go!”
He braids the fires from his palms, sending the cord of flame lancing toward the queen’s underside. It’s hard for him to get a good angle, and Gogi finds himself scurrying from side to side as the Ant Queen pivots during her combat with Auriel. He can keep his braided flame on her for only a few seconds at a time, and never gets it in one place long enough to build up much heat. “It’s not working, Sky!” Gogi cries.
“I know, I see that. Let me think, let me think!” Sky screeches.
The Ant Queen’s minions swarm the companions’ skin. Gogi can feel their sharp mandibles against his flesh. The queen herself rears back, getting a length of Auriel’s yellow body between her two forelegs and bringing it up to the pincers of her jaw.
Gogi desperately tries to aim his fire at the queen’s underside even as he feels the ants on his skin begin to bite, pricking and tearing. He can’t muster the sort of heat that Sky was asking for.
He feels lightheaded, like his limbs are no longer coordinating with his brain. Is the ant venom already at work?
Auriel struggles to free himself from the Ant Queen’s clutches, but he’s trapped. She’s got her mandibles around his body, and before Gogi’s eyes he sees her slice into the snake. He leaks what looks like molten sunlight. Auriel might be resurrected, but he’s not invulnerable. “Sky,” he roars, “you can merge the eclipse magic to give me even more of the shadowwalkers’ power. Like we’d once planned.”
“Yes, Auriel,” Sky says. He whirls to face Gogi and the rest. “The ants are upon us. Do as I say. Stare into my eyes to stop the queen. Do not resist.”
Mez glances at Gogi, panicked. She’s got her claws out and teeth bared, but already her limbs are jerky with ant poison. Chumba is the same. Gogi can easily read what’s in Mez’s eyes: Do we go along with this? I’ll follow your lead.
“Now!” Sky shrieks.
Gogi makes his choice.
“DO AS HE says!” Gogi cries. He stares into the nearest eye of the bedraggled parrot, watching as grays appear in the black. Out of the side of his eye, Gogi sees Lima land near him and face toward Sky too. Gogi realizes from Mez’s and Chumba’s stilled forms on the battlefield that they’re going along. Mez might be the strategist, but Gogi is in charge of matters of the heart.
The grays in Sky’s eye swirl into a vortex that sucks all of Gogi’s attention, making the rest of the battleground drop away. He senses another presence in his mind. Thoughts and sensations come to his consciousness and disappear, as if someone is rummaging through his brain.
Grooming Alzo. Ravanna’s anger. The number twelve. None of it useful. Sky discards it all.
The feelings go deeper and deeper, until it’s Gogi’s earliest memories coming to the fore. His mother. First the vision in the Dismal Bog, and then her, the real mother who loved him, alive and caring, warm and kind and his. Memories he didn’t even know he still had.
I miss you.
Then the rummaging gets as deep as Gogi’s spine, and something clicks. Sky has made it to the magic at Gogi’s core, magic that has been part of him since his birth. Gogi’s finding what makes him so different from all the other capuchins. What does a number like twelve matter in the face of fire, fire that’s his very own, fire that came at the moment his mother brought him into the world?
Because the fire is his own, he can release it. Gogi presses the flame in his spine outward, not holding on to it or tamping it down, but giving it freely. He gasps, and his vision comes back, the sight of Sky comes back, Auriel bleeding sunlight in the Ant Queen’s grasp is back. The eclipse sky is back.
Auriel writhes beneath the Ant Queen’s mandibles. She’s nearly cut through him now—his front and rear halves move out of sync. But then, impossibly, the two halves start to knit back together. They’re healing.
“Did I do that?” Lima chirps. “Did I give him that power?” Sky must have been mentally working on all of them at once.
The Ant Queen rears back, baffled, as the halves of Auriel continue to knit together. “What is this sorcery?” she screeches.
Then, quick as a blink, Auriel disappears.
The queen whirls on the companions. “You gave him your powers? You fools!”
“No, Narelia,” comes Auriel’s booming voice from above. “You have been the fool. And you will die for it.”
As if a sudden wind has come up, all the air is sucked out of the clearing. Gogi whirls, confused, and then looks up to see an eerie sight.
From the eclipsed moon, half-covered in blood-red shadow, comes a sudden cone of fire and wind. It crackles the air, casts trees and bushes alight, incinerates the hordes of ants. It’s directed right at the Ant Queen, sizzling her right where she stands.
If she’s saying something beneath the roar of the flames, Gogi can’t make it out. The cone of fire continues to strike her, continues to consume her.
By the time it’s finished, by the time the booming is done, by the time Gogi can open his eyes again against the waves of hot air, the Ant Queen is gone.
All that remains is a pile of ash.
Auriel is gone too.
The friends are m
otionless, overwhelmed, looking at the smoldering crater where Caldera’s most fearsome enemies once stood. Released magic irradiates the air, sets it wobbling and glowing. Will their powers flow back into them?
Before Gogi can think on it any further, he’s interrupted by an unearthly shrieking from the edge of the clearing. A streak of white fur races past, right to the pile of ash. “No, my queen!” Mist cries.
“Mist, stop!” Mez calls, lunging forward.
But Mist has already dashed into the nexus of glowing magic. He howls at the burning of his paws, but then quiets and looks up at the warbling air. The magic swirls around him, lifting him into the air, crackling and sparking.
Mez leaps forward, but Chumba wrestles her down to the ground. “No, Mez. This magic could destroy Mist. Don’t let it get you, too.”
Seized by the magical energies, Mist rises into the air, powerless to move, eyes wide and paws dangling. While the partly eclipsed moon shines its ruddy light on the clearing, Mist soars higher and higher, above the treetops.
His eyes widen in fear, rimmed in white as he stares down at the companions below. “What is happening?” he shrieks. “Cousins, help me!”
But Mez and Chumba are as powerless as the rest of them to do anything. Bands of magical energy swirl about Mist as he continues to rise. They cover him in tighter and tighter spirals while the eclipse starts to pass from the face of the moon.
“Guys?” Gogi says, jaw open. Mist is so far up that he’s joining the night sky. Gogi can’t see the expression on his face anymore. “Is there something we should be doing?”
But before any of them can answer, the eclipse finishes. The magical energies band Mist tighter and tighter, merging into a pinpoint of light. Then, with the faintest pop, that light disappears.
Shreds of magic flutter down from the sky, like glowing rain.
After the Eclipse
THE ANTS FLOW away. Now that their queen is gone, they become less like enemies and more like a natural disaster.
They drain like a flood, and like a flood they leave behind a ravaged landscape.
The Lost Rainforest #2 Page 20