The Caterpillar King (12 page)

“You took her. You’re gonna keep her, too?”
I said.

“They say it’s for the good of our colony,”
said high-pitched.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“Who are you TALKING TO?” yelled Amanti. I
caught a glint of the knife in the air. My little friends fell
silent.

“It’s business,” I said. “Business you don’t
want to get caught up in. Now tell me what you think,” I said.

“I don’t get paid to think,” said
high-pitched.

“Great. You got anything to add?” I said to
low growl.

Low growl didn’t respond. He hadn’t changed
a bit.

“Where do I come into this?” I said.

“I can take you to her,” said
high-pitched.

“That’s a nice thought,” I said. “But it
won’t do much good.”

“You don’t want to come?” asked
high-pitched.

“Oh, I do,” I said. “I want to see the
boss.”

There was a long, unkind silence. It was a
silence that said a lot.

“Fine,” said low growl. “Follow.”

I would’ve disappeared into the darkness,
but Amanti was there. I told her as much as I could. I told her
everything I knew. But she didn’t believe a word.

“You’re hearing voices,” she said. “Voices
of worms.”

“Caterpillars,” I said.

“But for some reason
I
can’t see them
and Ned can’t see them.”

“Not true. Look at the kid. Even in the
dark, you can see him shivering. What do you think he’s scared
of?”

“
You
,” she said. “And now you’re
gonna crawl down some imaginary tunnel and follow them to an
imaginary place where a
real
girl is being held
hostage.”

“That’s about it,” I said.

“I don’t believe you,” she said. “But if
you’re going anywhere, I’m coming, too.”

I shook my head. “I work alone,” I said.

“Not this time,” said Amanti.

“You’ve got this-” I pointed to Ned- “to
look after. He’s in no shape to go anywhere.”

Even in the darkness, I could see her
concede.

“You’re gonna pull some Houdini shit and
disappear,” she said. “And then what? What do I do if you don’t
come back with Madeline? Better yet, what do I do when you don’t
come back at all?”

“Hard to say.” I grinned. “But if you stay
here long enough, they’ll come for you, too.”

In the darkness, I walked past Amanti. She
didn’t lay a finger on me. What a shame. I saw the two caterpillars
fading into the background. I passed by Ned and went to the far
corner of the cave. The darkness was nearly total. Up ahead, I saw
the two slivers of yellow. They were moving forward. I followed
them. The ground sloped down like the path to hell. The
caterpillars moved quickly. The distance between us was
growing.

“What’s the rush?’ I said.

The two caterpillars stopped.

Low and gruff talked. “Too fast?” he
asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t have twenty-five
legs,” I said.

I caught up to the two of them. “It’s never
too late to put my foot down,” I said. “I fed you for years.”

“And you were well-compensated,” said
high-pitched. “Now move. The king is waiting.”

I didn’t think the king waited for much. But
I kept walking just the same. We went deeper. We went deep enough
that I thought the trail would reach the center of the Earth. And
then we walked on.

There was a light up ahead. We went to that.
Light isn’t my favorite, but I wasn’t calling the shots. The light
opened up into a room, a square about that size of my basement. It
was a room full of dirt. Yellow globes of light hung high up along
the walls. If my grandmother had been a decorator, she might’ve
designed this exact room. My grandmother was blind.

I scanned the room. Darkness on the edges.
Three doors ahead. The one in the middle was the biggest. The king
was behind that one.

“We’re going in there?’ I said.

“
We
are going in there,” said
high-pitched. “You will wait here in the grand hall.”

I gave my surroundings a second look. They
weren’t grand. Before I could mention it, my little friends crawled
through the door in front of us. They disappeared through the
bottom like it was a dog door. I would’ve preferred dogs to these
bugs. Dogs weren’t devious.

I took a seat on the floor.

“Name, please?”

The sound was feminine and it came from the
dark edge.

“Who’s asking?” I said.

A circular light flicked on to my left.
Underneath it, a green caterpillar sat perched on a Y shaped
branch. She looked very satisfied with herself.

“I am. This is how we do business, Mr.
Blue.”

“Seems like you don’t need my help,” I
said.

“I thought I’d be polite,” she said. “But it
doesn’t look like you appreciate hospitality.”

I was starting to think every female in the
world had it out for me. Age, race, species- none of it mattered.
They saw something they didn’t like, and that was the end of it.
But I didn’t take it personally. I never have.

All but one light went out, the one above
the Green Goddess. I felt a presence. Like being watched, but
stronger. More like being hunted. Beady eyes reflected the little
light all around me. They were everywhere. There was a colony down
here. I realized I was on a suicide mission. What a fool I am.

“I hear you like the dark,” said Green
Goddess. “Am I mistaken?”

“Don’t do me any favors.”

“Mr. Blue, you have no idea what you’re
doing down here,” she said.

“You kidnapped a girl,” I said. “That’s
reason enough.”

“But unlike you, we
need
her,” she
said.

Before I could ask what that meant, my two
little friends came back out. Green Goddess turned all the lights
back on. The two crawled slow and kept their eyes down. They
crawled right past me without a word.

“What is it? What did he say?”

They didn’t answer me. Green Goddess
did.

“The king will see you now,” she said.

15.

Once we were a safe distance away from the
rock bridge, Tika and I made camp. Tika would’ve probably put it a
different way. She might’ve said after the rock bridge, I collapsed
on the ground and refused to move. It’s all a matter of
perspective, I guess.

“I can’t keep going,” I said. “I can’t.”

“You should not have been so foolish,” she
said. “Running away in the dark of night, without any thought. Now
we have no batteries and no nets. Next time, you listen to me.”

“Well, if I had gotten by the squirrel
without
being bitten, I would never have made a great
discovery,” I said. Then I explained my theory about the necklace:
how there were three parts, and we were recreating it one piece at
a time. I told her about the forks in the road, too. But she didn’t
look all that impressed.

“Hmm…” she said. “Maybe.” She considered it
for a while longer. “So in your thought, you must be bitten once
more to get the third piece?”

I nodded.

“And you are scared of being bitten again?
That is why you are crying like a baby and not continuing this
journey?”

“No,” I said, even though she was exactly
right. “That’s not it at all.”

“Then tell me your problem,” she said.

“I know how I lost my memory,” I said. “It
wasn’t some accident. It was
you
.”

Tika stepped back. She looked hurt.

“You are not understanding everything,” she
said. She turned and walked away, towards the forest in front of
us.

“What is it?” I said.

She didn’t say anything.

“Please,” I said.

She looked at me. “You were suffering,” she
said. “You did not want to remember anymore.”

Then she walked ahead into the grove of
trees.

The choice was simple: either I turned back,
or I kept trying to find my mother. In the end, I followed Tika
into the forest. After all, I couldn’t just stay at the edge of a
canyon forever. And while I couldn’t be sure who the woman in my
memory was, I knew I had
some
connection to her. At the very
least, it seemed like the right place to start.

The path was narrow, and the forest was very
dense all around us. It was like walking through a tunnel. A little
sunlight trickled through the treetops, and the white line lit our
way. Then we came to the mouth of a river. By our feet, there was a
wooden raft and two oars. One was a normal sized oar, and one was
tiny.

“This looks like the only way forward,” I
said. The white line trailed off into the water. Far up ahead, I
could see the river branching off in two different directions.
“Tika,” I said. “I think this is the third part. This is how we get
the last piece.”

But Tika wasn’t speaking. She looked
terrified.

“What?’ I said.

“I cannot swim,” she said.

“Well, good news,” I said. “Somebody left us
a raft to float on and a couple paddles to help us along. One of
them is just your size.”

Tika shook her head. “When I was little, I
went to a lesson once. The instructor made me jump in deep water,
and I stayed under for a very long time. He did not try to help me.
He wanted me to save myself. Finally, when I had nearly drowned, he
pulled me out. After that, I said, ‘Never again.’ I will not go in
the water. I do not even want to be this close.”

Tika crawled back a few steps and settled
down near the base of a tree. It did not look like she was going to
move any time soon. I wished we could’ve gone a different way for
her sake, but I didn’t see any alternatives. I dragged the raft
over to her and sat down on top of it.

“See?” I said. “It’s really great.” I was
exaggerating a little- it was mostly just a thin sheet of wood- but
she didn’t need to know that. She climbed on top of it and rocked
back and forth.

“I do not think it is sturdy,” she said.
“You are so much bigger than this raft.”

“But you’re so much smaller,” I said. “It
balances out.”

She smiled. “I do not think it works like
that.”

The daylight faded, and I couldn’t convince
Tika to get back on the raft. So I had to think of a different
plan. The last two times we’d run into trouble, there had been
another animal around- first a caterpillar, then a squirrel. I kept
waiting for a fish to jump out of the river, but it never
happened.

In order to convince Tika, I tried to come
up with other options for getting down the river. She rejected
every one of them, though. I don’t even think she gave them a fair
shot. For example:

“What if we had another pile of batteries?”
I said. “You could charge on them for a while, and then you could
run across the top of the water.”

She laughed. “They do not make us move
that
fast.”

She picked out the tiniest flaws in my
ideas, just so we wouldn’t have to go through with them. It didn’t
take long for me to get impatient. We had a raft. We had a river.
All we had to figure out was which way to go. As it turned out, I
had a pretty good idea about that.

“I already figured out which direction we
need to pick,” I said.

“Oh?” said Tika, looking surprised.

“We should go left. The first two were left,
so this will be left, too.”

“You do not understand probability,” said
Tika. “There is always a 50% chance you will be correct,
independent of the last result.”

“So you’re saying we should go right?” I
said.

She sighed. “I am starting to think you are
the fool.”

***

It was almost impossible to get Tika to
leave her tree. But the river was clearly the way forward. So I
took a different tact. If you can’t convince someone with words,
then maybe you can convince them with action. I dragged the raft
back to the mouth of the river. The water was calm, so I put the
raft on it. Then I sat down on top.

“Look at this!” I said. I held my hands in
the air. “I told you it was safe. Come over here and try it out.”
Still, she hesitated. “Look,” I said, “We won’t move anywhere.
We’ll just sit here for a few minutes until you feel comfortable.
Then you can decide if you want to float down the river, or go back
to land. OK?”

Tika took one step towards me. “I will make
an attempt,” she said. “But you must not let me drown.”

“That sounds fair,” I said.

I thought getting the both of us on the raft
would be easy, but I was wrong. First, I had to get off the raft
and drag the thing back to shore. Then I put Tika on the raft and
got ready to push off the edge. I was planning on jumping aboard
once she was on the water.

“No! No!” said Tika. “You must be seated at
the beginning. I do not want to be catapulted away.”

I didn’t think that was going to happen, but
she was anxious. So I did it her way. In the end, we decided it
would be best if I held her in the palm of my hand, and then pushed
off the shore with my leg. I got on the raft with Tika and pushed
us about three inches off land.

“We’re floating,” I said. “Not so bad,
right?”

She smiled. “It’s all right.”

Then the raft wobbled a bit.

“Oh!” she screamed.

“Relax, relax,” I said. “It’s fine.”

“I’m trusting you,” she said.

“You’re doing great. We’ll just stay like
this until you believe it’s safe.”

We sat like that for a couple minutes, with
Tika in my palm. There was no breeze or current. A little water
did
flow over the edge of the raft, and it got the side of
my pants wet. Of course, Tika noticed.

“What is that?” she said.

“The raft must’ve rocked a little. It’s not
a big deal.”

“I am not sure,” she said. “That much water
could have washed me away.”

“There’s nothing to be worried about,” I
said.