The square is lively today. I know it by the clicking of innumerable appendages on the flagstones, by the hearty smell of seared and spiced vegetables, and by the kaleidoscopic blur of colors that greets me when I look outward into the light.
Taá burns bright and unforgiving, as it always does when the Caravan’s arrival is near. Those of the darker shells are better suited to this kind of weather, but for now, the shade of the thick cloth canopy above me will suffice. My guest insisted on the open air. It was somewhat unbecoming of me to accept such a demanding offer from a lower caste, but no custom is immune to special circumstance.
She sits opposite me, a burst of color in her own right, although her age and extensive sun damage has dulled her pigmentation to something a bit more palatable to fragile eyes like mine. Her silhouette is marred by the bumps and irregularities of many injuries, patched with resin and time but never quite healed. Dullweed clings to her breath like a lesser insect to a fur coat.
She brushes the ends of her higher arms, then her middle arms, then her lower arms together in succession with a rhythmic tapping. I do the same.
“Thank you for coming, Citlali.”
“How could I refuse? It’s not often a priestess invites you for lunch and stories.”
A chitter escapes me. Adventurer’s humor, I suppose. “I doubt I have much to offer you in the way of narratives. A thousand generations in the colony produces similar-sounding tales. Your life is the path less traveled, and many times more interesting.”
“True enough, Mother.”
I hear a wad of fried mushroom shear between her mandibles. Cave fungus is a favorite of those with much work to do and little time to eat. For me, a light soup at midday is sufficient enough to fill my first stomach.
“How long ago was it again? How long since you killed your first antlion?”
“Does it matter? The novices will always tell you your first is different. That’s why they’re novices. It takes experience to realize they’re all the same.”
“Surely there must be something notable?”
She sighs. There’s a hint of an edge to it, but it quickly fades. “You don’t make memories in the handful of minutes it takes to skewer an antlion and haul its bloated body up to the surface. Memories come from the days you spend on the road eating trash and choking on sand.”
“Then tell me about those.”
“Hm.” I can hear her pick at her food for a moment, absorbed in thought. “Well, it’s nice to eat mushrooms that haven’t been salted to shit and kept on the road for three weeks. Pardon my language, Mother.”
“You are forgiven. It would be a shame for you to censor yourself for my sensibilities.”
She makes a vague noise of assent. “At least on the trail you get meat. Here, you have to pay a queen’s ransom for anything remotely edible.”
“So you hunted other creatures?”
“Of course. Nothing that speaks — we’re not barbarians.”
“Are antlions edible?”
She chitters. “Of course not. The larvae are far too fatty to be anything but disgusting, and the adults… good luck catching one.”
“How could one catch a creature whose wingbeats shatter glass and deafen the infirm?”
“Yeah. I can understand why they say it’s a good omen when one leaves the desert.”
“Surely you must have seen one.”
“How do you think I got these scars?”
She waits for a good-natured chitter that doesn’t come.
“Apologies, Mother. Bad joke.”
“All is forgiven.”
Silence reigns for a few moments before she breathes life into the conversation once more. “But yes, Mother. I have seen mature antlions.”
“Multiple?”
“Yes.”
“Few can claim that honor.”
“Is it really an honor?”
“Perhaps not. I did always find it strange that their young are reviled while the grown are revered. Are they not the same flesh?”
“Is a maggot a person?”
“No, of course not. But the murder of an infant is still a grave crime, no?”
“Yes, of course. But…” She trails off.
“Did you ever feel guilty for killing them?”
“They eat people. They threatened the Caravan. Without us, we’d all have starved.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
A mournful exhalation. “Yes. Was it right to extinguish infants in their cradles? I don’t know. Was it necessary? Yes. Did we do it? Yes.”
“Once, one could scarcely step off the beaten path before disappearing into a waiting maw.”
“Indeed. And they are gone from our skies in this part of the world.”
“Some might consider that something to be thankful for as well. Many would rather not throw out the children born under the antlion’s final voyage.”
“And whose fault is that?”
I cock my head to the side. “Is it necessary to assign fault?”
“I suppose not.” There’s a gentle scraping as she runs an idle hand along the table. “I assume you know where they go when they return to the desert?”
“I’ve read certain accounts, yes.”
“Then you know about the antlion graveyard.”
“Yes, that murky pilgrimage-place of outcasts and fools.”
“I’ve been there.”
My astonishment makes itself known with a sharp inhale through my tracheae before I can suppress it. I lean forward, upper elbows on the table. “Please, elaborate.”
“It is not an uplifting story, Mother.”
“That is of no importance. A great many priceless works would be lost were we to preserve only comedies.”
Her exhale signals a resignation to her fate. “Alright. I’m sure you’re wondering why I did something so reckless.” She doesn’t wait for me to confirm before continuing. “I had a long career of antlion hunting, of clearing the path for the expansion of the Caravan. Some might even call it successful.”
“This much I know.”
“Yes, yes. Have you ever seen an antlion larva run through with harpoons and dragged from the sand into the unforgiving sunlight?”
“Not personally, no.”
“They’re wretched. Pale and wriggling, without eyes or limbs or anything capable of gentleness on their bodies. They bleed a thick greenish stuff that seeps between the segments of the body and burns unbearably.”
“They have medicine for that.”
“Only if you’re lucky enough to have a practitioner with you. For the rest…” She rubs two of her hands together with an unpleasant clicking. “Mercy killing the newbies who got too close was always the part I hated most.”
“The job comes with risks, of course.”
“I know that, dammit!”
I’ve offended. I bring my hands up in a gesture similar to surrender. “Continue, please. I should not have interjected.”
Judging by the lack of further protests, she acquiesces. “I’ve seen a lot of kids die. Some weren’t cut out for the job. Some just got unlucky. When we were far enough out, we couldn’t even bring ‘em back in time to be buried. And despite it all, I kept going.”
“Why?”
“I still don’t really know. Maybe I thought I was doing something good. It’s hard to tell, even in hindsight. Maybe it was sunk cost. Maybe it was some fucked-up masochism, desperate to feel something or die trying.”
“You certainly came close.”
“That’s the funny thing about it, Mother. I didn’t stop because of some crisis of conscience. That came later, when I had all that time to think. I stopped because I got hurt badly enough that I couldn't do it anymore.”
“What happened to you?”
“I was thrown under the wheels of a cart. My shell cracked and healed wrong, and then there was nothing anybody could do. I was lucky enough to have wealth and prestige to fall back on. Most aren’t.”
“I remember hearing of your retirement when I was younger. Of course, I was less familiar with the discipline then.”
She pointedly ignores me. “I won’t say getting a debilitating injury was good, because it wasn’t. On bad days, I can’t even get out of bed. But it did give me time to reevaluate some things. I didn’t have kin to keep me company, so I read books. I dredged up chronicles of past adventurers and catalogues of the creatures of the desert from the archives. I paid good money for the rarest stories when the Caravan came around every year.”
“Stories beget stories, Citlali. It is why we leave no deed of our people unwritten. It is why I sit here, across from you, listening to your testament.”
“Well, I hope whoever reads my story gets something out of it.”
“Likewise. But I digress. As you were saying?”
“Oh- yeah. I read a lot about the world I’d seen, and a lot of it that I hadn’t. But eventually, I came back to the antlions. Something that’s that important to you for that many years doesn’t just go away.” I hear her take a long sip of her strong-smelling tea, almost certainly gone lukewarm by now. “I read about the world before the Caravan, before harpoons sharp enough to pierce sand and leathery hide. I read about when antlions were forces of nature, not nuisances to be cleared out in the name of progress.”
I nod. “In the barbaric days, some worshiped them as living gods. It’s certainly believable, no?”
“Absolutely. I read about their long life cycles, and how when they reach maturity, they leave for distant lands of nectar and giants. Real quote, by the way. It stuck with me. And I read about when they come back from their long vacation to lay their eggs in the sand of the Desert and waste away.”
“What makes the center of the desert so special as a final resting place?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. Dunno if anyone does. If I had to guess, it’s probably because it’s hard to get to. Apart from the occasional oasis, the path is barren, scorching, and populated with hardy creatures unaccustomed to civilization.”
“How, then, did you make the journey?”
“There was an expedition. They took the best, most competent people from all four corners of the Desert and sent them to see the graveyard with their own eyes. They were happy to take me along, although I was something of a liability as an invalid.”
“Did the expedition go well?”
“One of the silver-haired ones got an infection and died. We made a sun-shade out of his fur. Two more wandered off in the night and didn’t return. But an expedition of dozens losing only three is an impossible success.”
“Indeed, indeed. How long did it take?”
“Four weeks. Two getting there, two getting back. We stayed for barely a day.”
“Seems a bit disappointing, no?”
She makes an inscrutable noise. “It was too much to handle.”
“How so?”
“Did you know that antlion corpses don’t decay?”
“Truly? They are spared the rot that comes for us all eventually?”
“Yes. Their bodies dry out, but they remain where they died until the wind wears them away. Now imagine the place where they’ve been going to die since before we started recording history.”
I sit there and contemplate while she finishes draining her tea to the dregs. She continues before I can move to say something.
“At first we thought it was a mountain range. But as we got closer, we started to make out the individual shapes: the desiccated wings, the legs like huge spindles, and the colossal plates of dry shell hardened to something stronger than tempered steel. It was black and grey and sandy brown. It was terrifying. It was beautiful. It was the largest tomb the world has ever seen, built from the dead and dying.”
“You don’t mean…”
“The lower layers were crushed and hardened into something that couldn’t really be called flesh anymore. But in the upper parts of it were the antlions who had already mated and spawned, and were now just waiting to die.”
“So that is where you saw them.”
“Mm. I suppose it’s less glamorous than seeing one in flight.”
“In fairness, it’s also much less dangerous.”
“That’s true. Still, some of us were too scared to get close. Not me, though. While they took samples and sketches, I had someone help me up the heap to the few that were still twitching.”
“With your injuries?”
“You don’t understand. It was this… calling. Not a divine mission or anything preachy like that. Just a burning itch, a pressure that had been building under my skin. If I had stayed back there alone with my thoughts, I might have burst like a cyst.”
“What did you mean to do?”
“I don’t know. I just climbed up that mountain of shell and told the person with me to give me a few minutes alone.” She takes a deep breath, a slight rasp emanating from her mutilated spiracles. “And there it was, perched on the corpses of its ancestors. Its legs were twisted and useless, and its wings had hardened and splintered off, but it was still an imposing thing. It had a body thicker than the biggest support pillar in the nest and longer than a footrace-track. Its antennae were like tree branches, too damaged to do anything but sway in the wind.”
“How did you know it was alive, then?”
“How do you know I’m here in front of you, Mother?”
I take a moment to ruminate. It would not matter if I closed my eyes or not. The sounds and smells of the larger area have changed in the time I’ve been talking to Citlali. The peak market hours passed some time ago. Now is the time where satisfied merchants recline in the shade with a sigh and the first round of laborers are dismissed from their duty to eat and socialize. They talk loudly and quickly. Meanwhile, I treat myself to the smell of their fried food and fermented drink. Above it all, I am brought back to the rasp of Citlali’s battered body, and with it the answer to her question.
“It breathed.”
“Yes. At first I didn’t realize it was breathing; I thought it was the wind whistling through the gaps between the carcasses. But there was a regular pattern to it, and it didn’t take long to notice the warm, wet breeze emanating from its spiracles. It certainly could have passed for the wind, considering how loud it was.”
“Is it true? Can an antlion drag a person into its shell with a single inhale?”
“I wouldn’t know. This one was far too weak to do anything like that. It just wheezed and twitched like someone on their deathbed.”
“An appropriate comparison. Perhaps there is some truth to the way of the antlion. A death in proximity to one’s kin is a true display of legacy and tradition.”
“I doubt they think about that, Mother. I doubt they even think at all.”
“Perhaps. Without speech, the question is unanswerable. Did it see you?”
“I stood next to its eye and looked in, and it made a noise. I don’t think it was accidental. But I wasn’t focused on that. I was looking at my reflection in the thousands of iridescent black scales.”
“I’d imagine it would be like staring into a broken obsidian mirror.”
“Not exactly. There was nothing broken about it. Every plate was the same size and shape, and they wobbled at the slightest vibration. I ran my hand across it. It was warm, wet, smooth, and ever so slightly malleable under my touch.” Her voice is beginning to choke up. “And I felt this… connection. This sense of unity with another being that I hadn’t felt in ages. And it surprised me and everything hurt from the climb up and I just… burst. I’d had all these things I wanted to say, and without another person to tell them too, I just unloaded on this old, dying thing.”
I can feel the quivering of her body propagating through the table. “Are you alright?”
She takes a moment to claw back some semblance of composure from the emotional flood. “Yeah. Yeah. It’s just a lot harder than I expected to talk about it again. I really poured my heart out to that thing, you know. I told it how I was sorry. How I felt aimless. How I’d lived longer than I was supposed to, and everyone else had moved on without me.”
“Cit-”
She continues in spite of my address. “And of course it didn’t say anything. How could it? It didn’t understand me. It just let me stare into my reflection as I confessed my sins and my worries to a tower of dead gods. And you know what? It helped.”
She doesn’t seem to realize she’s interrupted me, but I elect to let it slide. “If nothing else, I’m glad you found an outlet. Isolation is the most insidious killer of them all.”
“Not sure about that. Dullweed is up there too.”
This time I chitter without entirely meaning to. “What happened after that?”
“Someone came and found me. Apparently I had been up there for a while. And I came down the mountain, and we went back. They couldn’t stop talking about their findings. I just needed time to process. I started keeping a journal.”
“A respectable habit, certainly. Will you be leaving it to the archives after you pass on?”
“No. You can have this story. But there are some I want to keep for myself. I’m leaving on the next Caravan.”
There are several things I want to say. My mandibles click together haphazardly and express none of them. I have half a mind to protest. Say something. Convince her to lend us her presence for just a little longer.
Instead, I bow my head. I know she’s right. “Safe travels, Citlali.”
“Thank you, Mother. Truly.”
I shake my head. “You’re leaving. You won’t be bound to the city anymore. Call me Ichel.”
“Well then.” She stands up, pushing her emptied plate to the center of the table. “Thank you, Ichel.”
We shake hands, gesture goodbye, and she wanders off into the crowd to make her own destiny. If she looks back, I can’t tell.