Eliot Schrefer - The Lost Rainforest #2: Gogis Gambit

C REAKING STICK, SNAPPING branchan intruder is approaching.

From her spot high in a fig tree, Sorella goes still, sniffing the air. The hairs along the back of her neck rise.

If a predator has spotted her, the best plan for the uakari monkey is to stay as motionless as possible. Eagles and ocelots respond to movement.

When a few long moments go by with no more sound, Sorella returns to foraging. Shes soon got a nut between her hands and is working her teeth into its hard casing. Uakari are the only monkeys around with the strength to break into this kind of nut, but that doesnt mean its exactly easy. She loses herself in gnawing and piercing.

Another crack. But its not from the nut.

Sorella whirls, drops her nut, and races farther up the tree, primed to attack or flee. Leaves, branches, and even an unfortunate praying mantis rain down on the clearing below as she squawks and demonstrates. Teeth bared, she howls in the direction of the intruderuntil she sees who it is.

Its a sloth.

Sorella has been snuck up on by a sloth! So embarrassing. Her bald red face turns even redder as she leaps to the ground, shakes out her stinging ankles, and races back up the tree, teeth bared at Banu where he holds on to a branch of the next fig tree over. What do you think youre doing? You dont sneak up on someone like that!

The sloth yawns, staring at her blankly from his branch. A wasp picks its way across the hair of his eyebrows. Im sorry, Banu says, in the slow and deliberate manner of all sloths. It makes them sound either incredibly wise or incredibly stupid, depending on whos doing the listening. Ive never managed... to sneak up on anyone in my life.... Im not sure a sloth can sneak up on anyone... and certainly not someone so alert and powerful... as a young uakari like yourself.

Sorella sniffs and allows her shoulders to relax. I suppose youre right. You didnt sneak up on me. That would be impossible.

Banu nods, satisfied with himself.

Sorella starts poking through the underbrush, lifting leaves and sniffing underneath. You did make me drop a nice fat nut, though. I was just about to get it open.

Sorry about that, Banu says, nodding. Try... between... the fronds of... the scrubby palm.

By the time Banus finished speaking, Sorella has already searched the palm twice and emerged victorious, the nut held high in her palm. She peers up at Banu and squints her hard, dark eyes. So, whats a nice sloth boy like you doing deep in uakari territory?

He blinks at her. Im on my way to the ruins!... Remember, after we defeated Auriel, and the Ant Queen escaped... we all promised wed spread the word back home... then reconvene at the fallen ziggurat... to discuss what wed discovered. What... did you fall out of a tree and hit your head... or something? He grins. Slowly.

Of course I remember all that, Sorella grumbles. But the moon has three cycles to go before a year has gone by.

Banu holds up a clawed arm in mock surrender. The move takes a few seconds. When you move at the pace I do... you have to get started early for any trip. Took me six moon cycles to get home.... I had to turn right back around... to get back in time.

Thats too bad, Sorella says.

Banu shrugs. Its the life of a sloth... not bad or good.... Do you want to travel... with me?

Sorella shakes her head. No offense, but Id drive myself crazy having to go at your speed.

Is Gogi... around? Banu asks.

The capuchins are in the north, not west like us uakari.

Banu nods. Too bad... I like that... friendly little monkey.

His magical streams of fire are pretty useful too, Sorella says.

I discovered... my power, Banu says. Water. I... can move water.

Sounds very, um, slow, Sorella says.

Well, I shouldnt... dillydally anymore. Do you have any more... of those tasty nuts around here... that I could take on the road?

You get started, and Ill bring them to you, Sorella says dryly. I think Ill be able to catch up.

By the time Banu reaches the edge of the clearing, Sorella has cracked open four nuts. She lays the meaty white bits into one of his claws. When you have a sloth metabolism, he says gratefully, this much food... will last many days.... Thank you, Sorella.

She watches the sloth leave. Sorella was the most brutish and aggressive of the shadowwalking animals, but after she nearly died in the final assault at the ziggurat, shes come to see theres a time and place for being competitive, and theres no way to go back and show kindness to those who are now dead and gone. Who knew? Even a uakari can show some heart... at least every once in a while.

Sorella feels a prickle under the fur of her knee and reaches down to scratch it. Crack and squish. It was a soldier ant, but shes gotten to it before it could sink its mandibles into her. Luckily, she has plenty of thick, wiry fur.

She forages through the greenery, enjoying the whistling sound her breath makes through her sharp teeth. The light shifts, going from blinding white to a more orangey tone as the afternoon wanes on. The ants become more and more of a nuisance, streaming over the spongy orange piles of dead leaves. Sorella switches to the canopy, but then she finds columns of ants streaming up there, too. She tries not to let it worry hermaybe there was a heavy rain somewhere nearby and the ants are fleeing it.

She hears another cracking sound, and again goes perfectly still.

Maybe its Banu, returned for another nut?

The tree trunks around her start to shimmer, but Sorella, her eyes trained in the direction of the noise, cant spare even a moment to investigate.

The fronds of a giant fern begin to tremble and then part. Whatever it is, is big.

Sorella sees the antennae first, then the smooth plane of a head and two giant mandibles, each big enough to spear a uakari.

Its the Ant Queen.

As big as the largest buffalo, shes made of shining, invulnerable plates, interlocking in sharp and narrow joints, the many surfaces reflecting the ruddy late-afternoon light. The queens purple-black surface is unmarred except for stiff yellow hairs sprouting along the broad plates.

Sorella shrinks back against the tree trunk, making herself as motionless as possible while the Ant Queen comes closer and closer. Once she emerges from the scrubby palm, the insects many legs are as noiseless as a panthers, the only sound the sighing of wet leaves being tamped under the monsters weight.