Episode: Twenty-Eight

Horatch stretched his legs out along the bark and watched the boy cringing. Milyi didn't see it, failed to note how delicate their situation had become. But Horatch knew. He saw barely controlled terror in the clenching of the boy's hands, in the constant working of his jaw and the twitch of his fingers.

They rattled, and in that drumming, Horatch heard the Wisp's influence. 

He couldn't lose her now, not this close to the city. Not with the Great One mending in the next clearing. If the boy knew that, if he ran to tell his masters--Horatch would see him dead first, but that killing would lose him his candidate. He saw that much in the girl's wide eyes, in the way she leaned toward the boy when he spoke. 

Trouble.

"Tell me about your village, Saku." Milyi crouched beside the fire, hands on her knees and eyes fixated on the rapidly recovering boy. "Did you have a trade yet?"

"I was learning to hunt." The boy smiled for her, but his eyes darted to the tree, to Horatch. "What about you?"

Horatch twitched his legs and watched the enemy. Milyi would balk at leaving him behind. She'd mutiny at feeding him to the Great One. What was he to do? If he left her now, not only would he fail Niatha, return home empty handed and fully shamed, but he'd miss the girl's company as well. 

She was his. That was it, his candidate, and the boy had no claim to her. The Wisps never would, not so long as Horatch had a breath inside his carapace. 

"My grandmother wouldn't let me hunt." Milyi's laughter filled the clearing, drowned out the crackle of the fire. "But she made me try everything else."

"Milyi is a dancer," Horatch said. Best to remind her of that now. The skill would be her salvation later, would keep her off the fangs of whatever Great One summoned her to its burrow. Best to keep her focused on that. Horatch meant for his candidate to return from the summons alive. "She's very good."

"Really?" The boy leaned forward and put his hands on his knees. "Show me."

"Oh no." Milyi's long hair danced from side to side. She giggled again, and despite her words, when the boys hands began to drum an awkward rhythm against his thighs, Milyi stood and swirled her skirts. The Wisp spy found a beat, hammered it with all the grace of a second instar with a missing limb, and Milyi moved to the side of the fire and began to dance.

She'd definitely survive the summons. Horatch knew talent when he saw it...and the lack of it when he heard it. The boy's drumming faltered too much, but Milyi made up for the lapse by clapping, by stamping her feet and evening out the rough music. 

Her hips swayed. Her arms rolled like a wind through the fronds. She closed her eyes and twisted her body, and her brown feet pattered against the ground, making better music than the boy's hands could, making her own song. 

Underneath its drumming, Horatch heard another patter, deep, mighty. The Great One, moving! Had their moment come already? If Milyi could answer her summons now, before they reached the city...no other candidate would have done as much. 

He hugged the tree and listened, watched the girl and prayed. But the Great One's motions told a different story. Horatch felt the desperation in it, the pain. He needed to supervise the girl, his girl, with the spy. But more than that, he needed to quell the restlessness thrumming from the next clearing over. 

Damn. He bolted up the tree trunk, left Milyi to her dancing for only a moment. Once the foliage hid his movements, Horatch leapt between the fronds, flew to the spot where they'd left the giant spider only to find the clearing empty.

No! The jungle parted in a swath of mangled brush where the Great One had made no gentle passing. Horatch scurried after it, followed the obvious trail, the trail any fool could see. The foliage bent and twisted. The canopy gaped. From above, that gash would lead the enemy straight in.

And the Great One had made little progress. Horatch found it only a few spans farther along, jerking it's leg free from a vine and leaning heavily to one side. Its frustration vibrated through the jungle. Fury at a body that no longer obeyed the massive mind's commands. 

Horatch drummed to soothe it. He begged it to stop, to still itself again, to wait for the girl. He could fetch her soon enough. 

She cannot come. 

Horatch drummed assurance. Yes. He could bring her now.

Our hands cannot reach us. We must leave the burrow. Must find our hands. 

The Great One had left its hole with this intention. Horatch felt it, felt the desperate need that should have come as summons only. The candidate always traveled to the burrow. The joining must happen where they pair were safely ensconced. 

But the Great One's thoughts were muddled. Its body had not survived the Wisp attack unscathed. It pulled one foot free, jerked forward only to find another stuck and resisting. 

Must find our hands.

Perhaps the poison had dulled its thoughts as well. But then, it had left its burrow long before the Wisps had done their damage. Horatch drummed again, pleaded Milyi's case, her talent and her proximity through his toes. 

Our hands cannot reach us. 

Horatch tapped and pleaded, but the Great One freed its mighty foot and moved forward again. The gigantic body still leaned. The paralysis still had an effect on the spider's movements, but it continued, as ever, toward its goal. Single-minded, once the summons was upon them. And if that drove the Great One away, then Milyi was not the correct candidate for it. 

Their time had not yet come. 

He stopped his drum, watched the orb of the Great One's abdomen vanish into the jungle, and sent a prayer after it. He wished for its safety and a success that Horatch felt was utterly impossible. Then he dashed to the nearest tree and back through the canopy to the firelight and the girl whose long journey would not end today. 

She'd moved around the fire. Now she danced close beside the boy. He'd stopped drumming, and his body leaned out. His attention fixed on the girl's movements, and both of them swayed together, entranced, synched in the dance. 

Failure. Horatch could see that from the highest fronds. He'd failed to stall the Great One, and here, with Milyi and the Wisp spy's laughter singing a happy chorus, he'd failed all over again.

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Episode Twenty-Seven

Niatha stretched and let the sunlight warm the nervousness out of her legs. Still time--many of the scouts had yet to return. She'd been unreasonable expecting Horatch first. Three times the gates had opened with her heart in her toes. Three times. And still her setalia did not come home.

She flexed and rubbed one of her long rear legs over the bulb of her tiger-striped abdomen. Three hands so far and four of her scouts back. Good numbers. She'd call it a success if Horatch would only return alive. She'd call it a good plan, if only the distant jungles didn't seethe with danger. 

The stones beneath her vibrated, a familiar patter, and one that gave her no alarm. At least it wasn't her beastly mate approaching.

"High one?"

"Yes, Tofar. You may come."

"T-thank you, High One."

They still tread lightly around her, even now. Though she'd ruled them peacefully for more than eight sun cycles, and she'd only ever eaten one messenger. Perhaps it was her position they feared, or perhaps, Metacha had been telling tales. 

"You are healing well, scout. How are your remaining limbs?"

"Fine. Thank you. I'm hoping to recover fully next molt. I know they say you cannot tell, but I feel it. Just a little in my--"

"What brings you to the top of my temple, Tofar?"

"Rifani has spotted another scout returning." He shifted his legs absently, could not sit still in her presence. "She had watch at sun up, and saw them coming across the rift bridge."

"Excellent news!"  She moved too quickly, drew her legs back underneath her and scared poor Tofar over the lip of the pyramid. "Tofar? Who is it? Have they reached the gates?"

The sun had been up for half the day. The bridge was wide, but not so much so that it took all day to cross. She knew it, when Tofar's chelicerae peeked over the edge, cautious, afraid not of her but of the news he'd been told to bring her. 

Horatch.

Niatha leapt at him. Before the trembling front legs could gain purchase on the wall, she'd scared Tofar into a further slip. No matter, she continued over the edge after him, diving where he fell. 

"What is it, Tofar? What has happened?"

"The one who comes is...they're..."

 "What!"

"Wounded. The going is slow. Rifani thinks--"

She scrambled around him and down to the next shelf. The tower had the best view, and Niatha gauged her distance and jumped, flew from one, crumbing stone temple to the next, lower one. 

Across the plaza. She skittered over the top of the lesser temple and leapt again. The air fluttered through her setae and Niatha stretched her legs out, long and wide, and landed on the outer wall.

She ran the length of the complex, reached the tower on her meager eight legs and still the gates didn't open. The drums didn't sound. 

Rifani met her at the tower base.  The junior T'rants worked as sentries once they'd reached their final instar, and though Rifani already showed the bulky, fat-legged shape of her breeding, she'd yet to finish her adult molt. Her legs lacked the velvety orange of her mother's, and her body was dull brown instead of black. 

"High One!" She dropped to her belly as soon as she noticed Niatha.

"Who comes, child? Are they over yet? Who is it?"

"I-I'm sorry, High One. We cannot see the T'rant from here, and they aren't drumming."

No drumming. It could mean a missing palp. Horatch had been close to molting--she'd smelled it on him. She never should have sent him out there so near to...

"The candidate is  damaged," Rifani continued, broke Niatha's anxious train of thought. "I believe her T'rant is busy guiding her over."

"The candidate? The Hand is wounded?"

"It seems so," Rifani waved her front leg toward the rift. "She has trouble walking, nearly fell from the strands once already."

"Send help."

"Braffin and the First of Hands have gone already."

"Good." It was fitting, a Hand helping her. Niatha lifted her body a hair higher, unclenched her legs a little. "The First of Hands will be more help than we could. He's got the strength of a Great One in him. Show me."

"This way, High One." Rifani swiveled and climbed back up the stones. Each corner of the Temple city had a watchtower built into the wall. The south-western tower offered the best view of the rift and bridge. Both eastern towers looked out over secure territory, even if it was dry wasteland. It was there's still, land unpolluted by the enemy. 

Unwanted by the enemy. 

Niatha climbed behind the juvenile and ruminated, calm now that she knew the damaged individual could not be her setalia. The Wisps ignored the waste. She'd often wondered why? Was is strictly the lack of Hands in the deserts that kept the enemy out? Or was there something there, something in the wastelands they might use in defense...

"There, High One. He's got her." Rifani pointed with her foremost appendages. "The First of Hands is carrying the girl across."

Niatha sprang to the top of the tower and did her best to make sense of the view. The strand bridge shimmered, barely visible over the chasm. It made a twinkling ribbon above the darkness and the jungle painted an emerald backdrop. Mostly a smearing of colors in her many eyes, broken by the stuttering movement across the gap. 

Not much use staring at them. No one drummed. She'd find out who came with the broken Hand at the gates instead. 

"Keep watch, Rifani. Well done."

The juvenile mumbled something, drummed a respectful rhythm in reply, but Niatha had already bolted. She heard the sounds behind her, another disruption, another distraction between her and the T'rant scout approaching the city. 

Over the wall she ran, around the next tower and onto the very center of the Temple city's gate. There she paused, for the softest drumming trembled through her toes now. They'd made it across, and the girl had their First of Hands to assist her. Her T'rant was free to communicate.

Not Horatch. 

Niatha listened to the message with the sensitive bristles on her toes and tried to still the squirming of fear in her abdomen. Not yet. Not home yet. This scout was a female, a leggy orange with a nasty temperament and speed that Niatha would have killed for...would have killed with.  If she'd had Tonathi's speed, Metacha never would have survived knocking a second time.

The city drums repeated the message: COMING OVER. CANDIDATE IN DISTRESS. WISPS IN THE JUNGLE.

Niatha flew to her tip toes and gazed out, listened with every single hair for that sound. The sound that had never been heard in her lifetime, in any of their lifetimes. She'd know it just the same, the drone of the enemy. She'd know it in her core, and even though the far trees were silent now, suddenly, that silence felt like waiting. 

Waiting.

Tonathi tapped the warning. WISPS. She drummed it to them all, and Niatha could not doubt her, not even if she wanted to. Not with the Great Ones stirring.  It had been too much to hope they were the only ones waking. 

Now she couldn't wait for Horatch. She couldn't wait for anyone else, no matter how her insides boiled. The enemy was coming, and if she meant to have a city in which to welcome the Great Ones, Niatha would have to prepare her T'rants for something far less pleasant.

She'd would ready her people for war.

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Episode Twenty-Five

Milyi squatted beside the river, soaking the red cloth until her fingers numbed. The boy slept now, but his sweat had soaked through his garments. He'd wandered in and out of lucidity for most of the night, and Milyi caught snatches of his story through his mumbling. She'd gathered he'd fallen and that he'd lost someone important to him.

A woman he called angel. 

Through his fever, he'd called to her so fervently Milyi hadn't been able to help crying for them. The boy's face, so clenched with emotion, impassioned and tortured at the same time. He had soft skin, brown and bright as the inside of a bark strip. His eyes, when open, shone with so much intensity--she'd stared into them, hadn't been able to resist searching for some hint at his mystery in their depths.

 Such strong hands,  and yet, the odd wounds. 

"You should have left him in the river." Horatch vaulted from the edge of the jungle. He landed on a boulder near the water. Not on her shoulder, she noted. The T'rant had kept his distance since Saku. 

"You saw the colors...and the stings."

"I should have left him to die?"

"It would have been more humane."

"Why?" She dragged the cloth out of the current, red as blood, as a Wisp's wings. Horatch knew more than he meant to tell her, as usual. This time she needed to know, however. This time, she'd had enough of his riddles. "What do you know about him? About this?" 

She flipped the garment and icy drops sprayed across the rocks. Horatch remained in the shower, and when the drops pattered against his snowy carapace, Milyi cringed against a flash of guilt. He'd saved her life. He'd defended her when her own people refused to. 

"Horatch, I need to know. That boy...his body is covered in..."

"The Wisp poison does not kill your kind." His voice came like a breath of wind, softer even than the babbling of the river. "Not unless they choose to. More often, the stings are very calculated."

"How do you know this? How is it my own people don't know this?"

"Because your people have chosen to forget. Or perhaps, that choice was taken from them. Milyi, this is an ancient war, and you Hands are caught up in the center. My people would choose you as partners, allies against that color you hold.  The Wisps would use you as a tool, as pawns, thoughtless drones kept subservient by the poison underneath your skin."

"Saku?" She stared at the cloth. The slick fabric darkened under the weight of river water, looking like old blood now. "You mean he's..."

"Under their control, Milyi. The boy is our enemy."

"No." She shook the thought away, unsure why she resisted so fiercely. "You can't know that. He's all alone out here."

Like she was. Was that it? Saku had no people either, and as much as she had come to trust the T'rant, he was not of her kind.

"Milyi, I understand."

"You don't know for sure. You haven't even spoken to him."

"And what would happen if I did? Do you think any of your people would greet me as a friend?"

"I did."

"Because you are special."

"Maybe he is too." That was it. Saku was special. Milyi had felt it from the start. It had tingled through her hands as she pulled him from the river and grown into shivers of revelation as she'd watched over him through the night. The boy was different, too. He was like her. "Maybe Saku is special."

"Would you risk my life to find out?" Horatch tapped a punctuation on the rock with his foremost appendages. "Would you risk the Great One's life to test that theory?"

"I-no." Milyi's belly squirmed. Her memory flashed red and black, death from above. She'd saved the Great One in the end, but it's huge legs still seized beneath him, and he'd barely managed to consume the food they'd pressed to his face, the water they'd dribbled over his bristles. "What do we do then? I can't just...I won't."

"Maybe not," Horatch said. "Maybe the boy is special. But you must promise me, Milyi. Promise me you won't let him near the Great One."

"I promise." Milyi nodded for emphasis. She'd feared worse, had expected Horatch to demand she roll Saku back into the river. Still, he didn't sound thrilled with her, and eventually they'd move on to his city. If the Great One continued with them, would Horatch just leave Saku behind? 

What would she do if he did?

"The Great One cannot flee or fight," Horatch said. "And the boy will be mobile very soon. Perhaps, we can send him away."

"He might help us." She tried again, though she read the T'rant's mood enough to know his answer already. "If the Wisps hurt him, he might want to come with us."

"Let's see." Horatch flipped his legs up and down, not only tapping but actively fidgeting now. His round butt lifted and lowered, flashing its ink patterns like an irritated flag. "I propose a test, Milyi. We'll let the boy recover, let his strength return and then...if you are still interested in his assistance, we'll see what he thinks of me."

"You?" Milyi's throat went dry. It was one thing to believe in the feverish boy, but fully healed...she'd lived among her people too long to expect a miracle. "Won't that be dangerous?"

"Most definitely. But I don't intend to come down and sit in his lap. I am capable of great caution, you'll remember."

She did. Milyi remembered a white streak against dark bark. Had Horatch spoken to anyone else in her village, she had no doubts the T'rant would not have survived the encounter. She wanted to believe in the boy. She wanted Saku to be special, to prove Horatch wrong. 

More than that, she wanted the sinking feeling, the knot of dread growing in the pit of her stomach, to mean nothing.

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Episode Twenty-Four

Horatch chewed the larvae until it was pulp. He resisted the urge to drink this, instead spinning a dense layer of  webbing to scoop the meal into. Once he had the goo packaged and portable, he began the arduous task of dragging it nearer to the Great One. 

Paralyzed, but not dead. Bless his girl. 

The mind of the giant spider tickled at his thoughts. He could wrap understanding around the smaller communications, pain, surprise, gratitude, but the Great One's consciousness was too broad to fully grasp. Horatch thought it was glad for its survival, but he couldn't be completely certain. 

He'd know soon enough, however. All he had to do was get his offering up to the Great One's mouthparts. 

He wrestled his gift across the vines until it was directly underneath the giant fangs and then, on reflex, he bowed his forward segment low to the ground and lifted his abdomen high in a gesture of respect. His homage was echoed only by the Great One's frustration.

It couldn't reach his meal. He would have to bring it up, hold it against the mouthparts that may or may not even be mobile enough to suck. Horatch needed his Hand. He needed Milyi, and the girl had wandered back to their campsite to wash. 

She'd saved the giant, but she'd been in a hurry to rid herself of the evidence. They had a long way to go still, but after the way she'd fought for the Great One's life, Horatch would have happily trusted the girl with his own. 

He drummed of waiting and patience to the paralyzed Great One and scurried to the nearest trunk. Leaping between the trees, he listened always with his toes for the hum that would mean their enemy had returned. He focused on the vibrations of the jungle and the air above it, and he almost leapt down to where  Milyi had built a fire without looking first. 

Almost.

When he saw the flash of red and black, his toes tightened. His tiny claws held fast to the bark, and Horatch flattened his body against it and became only another lump in the shadows. Milyi's voice drifted from the firelight, low and shaky against his metatarsi.

"Horatch?" She called for him, but the red and black beside her held him at bay. "I don't know where he is."

"Still a little cold." An even lower voice joined hers, strange and dark. Definitely another human and yet, the colors, the unmistakable sign of a Wisp. 

"Come closer to the fire...your clothes were all wet." Milyi moved, a blot of black against the background of flames. She snatched at the red and black shape, dragged it around the fire and spread it out. Clothes. Wisp colored clothing. 

"Milyi," Horatch called for her and jumped to another tree to mask his location. 

She looked up at the spot where he had been. "Horatch? Are you there?"

"Milyi, I need you." He jumped again. Spoke from a different tree and then made a third leap. "Help me."

The girl stood and spun in place. Her hair fanned out like the fronds he hid in. Horatch waited for her to work it out. Come to the clearing. He willed her to understand and, eventually, her feet shuffled in the right direction. 

"I'll be right back," she said. "Stay in the heat."

Horatch jumped ahead of her. He reached the battlefield, the trampled patch of jungle where his Great One waited, and then scampered down a trunk. When the girl passed, he leaped to her shoulder. 

"What's wrong?" She'd adjusted fully to him, didn't even flinch when he sprang at her. "Are you okay? I found a boy in the river."

"The Great One hungers." Horatch ignored her revelation for the moment. "I cannot feed him alone."

"What can I do?" She walked without fear to the front of the T'rant's god. Amazing. The girl tilted her head and stared into the wide chelicerae. "Is he going to get better?"

"I think, if we can keep him strong, that he might regain his ability to move."

"Good." 

"The food is underneath," Horatch crawled farther down her arm, nearer to the elbow and waved his pedipalps toward the bundle on the ground. "But it must be held against his mouthparts."

"Oh." She bent down without questioning him. "It's leaking."

"If we hurry, it will be enough."

She squatted and only cringed once when she lifted his package. Green ichor dribbled between her fingers, but the bulk of the meal he'd prepared remained inside the webbing. Milyi lifted it and held it up directly against the Great One's fangs.

"Below there," Horatch said. "Where the red bristles are."

" Sorry." She moved the bundle, pressed it against the mouth, and Horatch held his breath. He tensed and listened for any hint of their success. "The boy would have drowned."

"Shhh, Milyi." He would need to tell her about the boy, about the red and black clothing, but he could sense already that she wouldn't like to hear it. There had been something in her voice, something tender, when she spoke to him. "Is he eating?"

"How can I tell?" 

Before he could answer, the sucking sounds began. The red bristles did not move as they should, but a mighty slurp echoed through the clearing, and Milyi pressed the meal more tightly against them. Perfect. If they were lucky, the Great One's strength would return.  If they were lucky, the red and black would be weak from his near drowning. 

If Horatch was lucky, Milyi would not balk at killing the boy.  But fortune had been very kind to them so far, and today, he had a bad feeling. When it came to his girl and the red and black, Horatch had a feeling his luck had just run out. 

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