Ancient and squat, the tree stump sat in the middle of the rainforest like a fat, limbless toad. Gray pieces of bark lay piled around its base like a scree of bones, and its once mighty roots, long dead, looked like fingers half-buried in the earth. Still, the stump teemed with hidden life. The inhabitants, replacing rotted wood with dirt, had constructed a city of caverns and passages, of great halls and intimate nurseries.

As twilight fell across the stump, tiny red drops appeared from dozens of well-concealed holes. The drops, resembling blood, flowed over the weathered surface, filling the night with a sweet aroma.

The race was on.

***

Winded, dazed, Rachel stood at the mouth of the tunnel at the threshold of freedom. The fading golden hue of twilight touched her eyes-eyes that had never known light-and momentarily stung them. Two workers prodded her from behind, encouraging her to take to the air, but she ignored them. On six reed thin legs, now shaking with fear and uncertainty, she stumbled forward.

The swelling crowd of ants quickly pushed her down the side of the stump, and she lifted her feelers to sniff for her friend. It took a moment to find her, and when she did, her heart thumped.

Rachel shoved her way through the jostle of flesh and reached out to Kari. The two young Leafcutter Queens embraced feelers. Then, still clinging to one another, they turned and took their first whiff of the chaotic, frightening new world that awaited them above the nest.

Wonderstruck, they stared down the side of the stump at what appeared to be an endless marshaling of Leafcutters issuing from thousands of concealed holes. Most were workers of various sizes, but a few dark red defenders stood proud and vigilant among their smaller sisters, their powerful mandibles pointed skyward in defiant challenge to unseen enemies.

Several Queens were already lifting away from the stump. Most were poor fliers, at least initially, skimming and bouncing across the backs of those below them before eventually becoming airborne, as if plucked away by the dangerous tossing wind. The evening air was cool, and Rachel shivered deep inside the soft flesh beneath her hard outer skin. She wasn't sure what she had expected, but it wasn't this terrifying, exhilarating place. Kari had begun to unwrap her two pairs of wings, and Rachel got a clearer picture of her now, in these confused moments, than in the seven days they'd spent together in the inky darkness of the nurseries below.

Small black hairs grew across Kari's face and abdomen, and like all Queens she stood taller and thicker through the chest than even most defenders. Four spines jutted from the back of her thorax, and her six legs elbowed outward, giving her a low, balanced stance. Her head was triangular, her two unblinking eyes separated by a crevice running down the center of her face. While Rachel was busy scrutinizing her, Kari's own feelers, a study in awe, curiously explored her face.

"Why are you shivering?" Kari tapped her two feelers against Rachel's. Like all ants, she was incapable of vocalization or perceiving sound. She could communicate only through the silent yet expressive movement of her feelers.

"I thought I was going to die." Rachel's bolt up through the stifling tunnels was fresh and horrific in her mind, almost beyond comprehension.

Kari nodded, then frowned, her feelers pitching a stern communiqué. "You didn't spit it out, did you?"

Rachel curled back her tongue and found the snippet of fungus in the pouch at the back of her mouth. The fungus felt spongy and moist, and a little of its sweetness spread across her taste buds.

"I still have it."

Kari fanned out her wings. "Good. Hold it tightly and don't let go. Look, there they are!"
A fresh charge of energy cuffed the air the instant the first black male appeared at the mouth of a tunnel. He was panting-Rachel could see his waterdrop-shaped abdomen pulsate with each breath. Without pausing to consider where he was, his wings caught the wind and he started to climb. Even more awkward than the Queens, his unwieldly body yawed and dipped, until, by brute strength alone, he slowly mounted an undercurrent and ascended away.

More of his ebony brothers began pouring from the nest, their warm bodies turning the air rife with lusty, masculine pheromones. Spurred on by their appearance, the thousands of Queens still holding onto the stump flourished their wings and rose into the air.

Kari started to flap hers as well, but Rachel lowered her head and crossed her feelers in a weak attempt to shut it all out. Wings and bodies whooshed and whirled around them, and she knew it was wrong, even shameful, but all she could think about was retreating back down into that peaceful nursery where she'd been born.

"Rachel, it's time. Open your wings."

"I don't-"

"Quickly, grab hold of me." Kari slid two of their hind legs together, locking claws. She nodded with the tip of one feeler. "There. Now nothing can separate us. Promise me you won't let go."

"I promise, but I don't think I can-"

"You must. But don't stop. I don't care if you're tired or afraid, don't stop. The workers will kill you if you land near enough to the nest. You have to get get beyond the weeping wind and find the deep end of the forest. It's the only safe place."

"The what? I don't understand."

Kari's feelers broke into a grin, and she spread her wings wide. "Neither do I. Fly with me, Rachel! Fly with me into the firmament, the dark skies be damned!"

***

Although she had never used them, Rachel was conversant with her wings, for often in the nursery she had rubbed them together, preening away dust and dirt and sticky oils. They were frail and scaly, and she had kept them flat against her sides to protect them from damage in the close quarters of the tunnels. Only now did she dare open them.

Rachel and Kari took flight together and rode the surprisingly strong updraft; up past the rainforest's protective undergrowth and into the midstory where vines hung heavy and flowers had closed for the night. Soon they emerged into clouds of other airborne Kings and Queens from two neighboring Leafcutter nests.

At that moment, flycatchers, motmots, foliage gleaners and bats began to swoop in from all directions. Soon their mouths overflowed with squirming, biting ants. Later, stuffed until they could hardly breathe, those who could survive the gauntlet of night predators would return home to their hungry chicks.

To her surprise, Rachel took to flying with ease. At first she rode the updraft full of expectancy, holding tight to Kari's hind leg. Then, as if she had passed some invisible line, her hope turned sour. She started to see dismembered wings and body parts drifting silently downward like drops of bloody ash. Her sense of danger escalated, but there was no turning back.

They were somewhere high in that macabre netherworld when the heavy black body of a male hurtled out of the darkness and grabbed hold of Kari's legs. The impact sent her veering wildly off course. At first they repelled each other, but then their bodies warmed to one another, and Rachel watched in amazement as they began a reckless waltz through the air.

Dragged along behind like a leaf on a string, Rachel refused to let go of Kari's hind leg even when their erratic dance threatened to tear her leg from its socket. She cried out, only to have the pummeling wind steal the vibrations from her feelers. Around her, dark things swirled and circled, appearing and then disappearing as if lit by flashes of lightening. She caught glimpses of torn wings and half-chewed bodies, but even worse were the things she could not identify. Monstrous, unfamiliar shapes whisked by, sending the three of them whirling in their tail winds. She felt her grip on Kari's leg grow weaker. How long could she hold on?

Then it happened. Oblivious, Kari and her lover did not see the open mouth. Yet in that final instant before the tragic end, Rachel saw an enormous rushing black hole. She would have been swallowed along with them had her hind leg not caught in the corner of the mouth, which threw her back against the feathered cheek. The rictus snapped shut, stealing her leg even as it cut her loose.

At once she began to twirl earthward. She might have plummeted all the way back down to the nest, already beaten, but from out of the inkiness a leg grabbed her. Five more followed, and she felt a warm, urgent body pressing against her back. Slowly at first because he lacked experience, the male began to grind the inflamed tip of his abdomen against her. When she reached back to touch him, he pushed her feelers away. Then, using his four strong wings, he circled back up through the weeping wind, taking her with him.

He coupled with her, and they waltzed, their fluttering wings like sparks in the night. Rapturous screams stampeded from her feelers and she swooned, floating on whitecaps of ineffable pleasure. The wind stopped blowing. The night seemed calm around her. And for a few precious moments she resided in a better place.

Then, with suddenness that felt like a punch, she broke free from his weakened hold, turned to face him. She squeezed him to her chest, once, to savor his colorless embrace. Then, with toughness arising from need, she kicked him away. His silver-tipped wings riffled in the wind and he was gone.

Without his support she immediately spun into another free fall. Long moments passed before she was able to get her wings moving. She hovered, then started to climb. She was making good headway when another black body grabbed hold of her. When he was done with her, but not before she was done with him, she shoved him away too. One by one others came to her, attracted to her feminine scent. With a single touch she could tell which ones were her brothers; and her brothers, discovering she was not a potential mate, quickly let her go. After each encounter she gained a little altitude.

Each beat of her wings took her higher and farther from home, until eventually she passed beyond the tempest and out of range of the last needy male. The air became uncomfortably still and tense, and she sensed knife-edged outlines pressing in from all sides. She flew cautiously, shaving past thickly grown foliage. A craving to stop and rest gnawed at her, but when she curled her feelers down she smelled slow-moving forms shifting across the leaves and branches.

How long she flew she did not know. She pressed on past weariness, until the muscles connecting her wings to her thorax seemed to function solely on resolve. Later, when even that waned, she tilted her feelers down, unaware that she'd topped out above the tall trees. The sun had fallen well below the horizon, and the forest canopy, a dark, measureless ocean, had turned somber beneath a pale moon.

Like a seed carried on the wind, Rachel sailed away.

***

She billowed across the tops of the trees, alone and unnoticed, until she came at last to a narrow slit in the forest canopy. The wind now cupped her wings, guiding her down past immense, sheer walls of leafage that rose up on all sides. Below lay an open glade.

It's here or nowhere.

Her abdomen was racketing hotly, every breath a huff, and she feared that if she didn't find safety soon, her wings, already pushed beyond their endurance, would fold.

She drifted down and down and down some more, until she neared the open floor of the forest. The wind gusted briefly, then died away, and she stole quietly down through the twigs and fronds, relying exclusively on her acute sense of smell. She stretched out her legs, searching for somewhere to alight, but the forest floor, hidden in a snarl of low vegetation, did not seem inviting. The only halfway suitable spot was a fallen log, one end of which pointed back in the direction of the glade. She veered toward it.

Despite the uneven surface of the bark, she landed without falling on her face. It felt good to be on solid footing again, and after a few moments spent catching her breath, she began to clean her feelers through a notch in her left foreleg.

The air throbbed with the eclectic scents of a tropical rain forest. She inhaled the velvety fragrance of flower pedals, closed now and awaiting dawn, as well as the musky scent of wood seedlings swaddled in lichen. She caught the distant scent of impenetrable walls of hanging moss, and the closer smell of wet bark, ferns, and moldy leaves. These were friendly scents, but there were others too, and she wasn't so sure what to make of these. Soft rustles. Covert stirrings.

The nurses had cautioned her never to let her guard down.

"You must be quick," they had instructed. "You're a runner, not a fighter, so don't waste time dawdling. Above all, you must never let them smell your fear."

She bent around and licked her empty leg socket. The wound itched, but the worst of the pain had passed unnoticed.

Since pushing away the last male, she had clung to life with a kind of anesthetized stubbornness that did not require her to think, only to react. Now, as if they were only waiting for her to slow down long enough to catch up, the troubling thoughts returned. She remembered the horrible wind and the twisted dead things. The monstrous shapes. Then, in her mind, she saw again the rushing black hole.

For the first time in her life, Rachel felt the viperous arms of grief and self-pity pulling her down. She lifted her feelers in mute supplication to the indifferent night. They had made plans. They had promised each other they would never let go. Hadn't she held on? Hadn't she?

Tears welled up in her feelers, tears not of moisture-of which she was incapable-but of quivering. She could smell the naked vulnerability rise up from her soft underflesh and leak out through her outer skin. She stood paralyzed, unable to stop her abdomen from heaving.

It was almost too late when she finally noticed a big insect lumber out of the darkness. It must have been drawn to her scent, yet at the last instant instead of catching her head in its mandibles, its blocky face struck her and knocked her asprawl. It lunged again.

"Get away from me, you deformity!" She smacked her feelers against its flinty skull and dodged to one side. The thing was slow, lubberly, with a single horn protruding from the right side of its head-more than that she didn't wait around to find out. She turned and fled down the log, not stopping until she had left it far behind, along with her grief that had been scared out of her.

Soon a high, patchy ceiling of yellow leaves materialized overhead. Beneath her feet, the log's surface became ever rougher and more treacherous. Deep fissures appeared, giving her cause to walk with care. Even so she allowed herself to relax, if only a little, and her feverish breathing slowed.

Just then a tiny beetle, no bigger than her head, popped out of one of the fissures. Its powerful back legs kicked, propelling it in a high arc through the air. Before she could react, its squat body dropped down in front of her. It reached out and tried to hoop its two rubbery feelers around hers, but she deflected it and stepped back.

"What do you think you're doing?"

Unfazed, the beetle made another grab, and this time successfully latched on to her feelers. It sat back on its haunches.

"You have wings but you do not fly. Far from home?" it tapped.

Unsure how to reply, Rachel opened her thickset mandibles, blades made for chomping, not slicing. Maybe they were right, maybe she couldn't fight. But she could snip his feelers in half. Yet she hesitated.

"I don't want to hurt you."

Other brown bodies were beginning to hop out of the nearby fissures. While a few of the beetles seemed shy and kept their distance, most began to prance about in what appeared to be play, apparently unconcerned by her presence.

"No harm," the little beetle tapped.

"Let go of me!" The nurses had taught her a few things about the forest-mostly having to do with running away as fast as she could-but they'd neglected to mention that she might actually have to communicate. A genuine threat or not, he was thwarting her attempts to pass. Sight unseen, the glade drew her on with the hope, perhaps only imaginary, of safety.

"I'll bite you."

"No, only touch."

"You're in my way-"

"Only touch." The beetle raised his hind end off the wood, and with a wiggle originating from inside his shell, released a minty scent. One by one the other beetles stopped frolicking, turned to look at her. They, too, began to wiggle inside their shells, and that's when Rachel felt her awareness drift apart like scattering clouds. She tried to focus, but the world quickly grew fuzzy around the edges as the fragrance entered her, hallucinatory and light. She felt it cracking open doors in her mind, sensed it gliding through her memories like a dream perfume. Her feelers went swimmy, limp, and the night dissolved.

In her mind she was once more home, surrounded by ants just like herself, Queens with folded wings and untested fortunes. She touched their smiles, felt their laughter on her feelertips. Their innocence was her innocence, their joy her joy. Yet she sensed at some intuitive level that time could not linger long in this happy place, and she was right.

The happy images vanished beneath a rockslide of horror. She was now running up through torrid tunnels with too many bodies and not enough air, as her sisters fell underneath her and were trampled to death. "No, they're Queens!" she screamed, her feelers both silent and full of motion. Pushed from behind, driven up through the nest by a population frantic to be free, she was forced to step over the dead and wounded. Then the tunnel walls were gone and she was standing outside in the gloaming, cold and flustered and out of breath, looking around for Kari...

The real world sifted in, dispelling her memories with slow, sure strokes that left her feeling light-headed. She sniffed the air for any sign of the beetles, but they had drifted into the night as mysteriously as they had appeared. Though she sensed that time had passed, just how much she could not guess.

She took three halting steps, rotated a feeler, and to her surprise discovered all four of her wings lying neatly across the wood. They've plucked them from my thorax. It seemed incredible. She leaned around and inspected her body, half-expecting to find fresh blood, yet there was nothing, not even a discomforting bruise. Equally amazing, her empty leg socket now glistened under a layer of curative saliva. The beetles had licked it clean, draining away the soreness.

Essential as they had been, her wings had served their purpose. The weight of them had been lifted from her back, and now, back on solid ground, it felt good to be free of them.

"Thank you," she whispered, tip-tapping her feelers across the night air. Her helpers were gone, and that was just as well, too. For whatever mysterious reasons they might have had, they had brought her a little healing, a little compassion that would keep her going. Grateful but more exigent than ever, she hurried on.

***

Rachel crawled off the end of the fallen log and into the glade, upbeat about her chances of finding shelter, perhaps even refuge. Moonlight spilled down into the gorge and across the glade like a tidal ocean, illuminating the sparse scrub grass. She moved swiftly, for nothing so awakens an ant's optimism as the reassuring sensation of dirt beneath her feet.

She started out with a quick burst of enthusiasm, relieved to be out of the trees, but it wasn't long before she slowed to a walk. She looked up to see blades of grass towering overhead, their yellow-hazed skins tinted not by the color of the moon but by some grave malady. Shallow rooted, many of the blades were bent, and some oozed an oily black substance that smelled awful. When she rapped the ground with a feelertip, she felt only dry, cracked soil. Over everything, the motionless air pressed down upon her like a low ceiling, heavy with the funk of decay.

Turn around, go back into the trees. But then she shook her head and thought darkly: Where I'll be right back among those soft rustles and covert stirrings.

In the end, it was neither fear nor exhaustion that decided for her, but her five legs, which simply marched on, taking her ever deeper into this land of washed-out scents.

***

He watched her with smoldering hunger. His many legs began to stretch and move, touching lightly on this, his hallowed hunting ground.

***

Rachel was deep into the glade when she found the stone. She circled it three times from a distance, using the stalks of grass for cover. She wasn't sure what it was, only that it was large, dome-shaped, and set snugly into the ground. Finally she got down on her belly and inched forward. When she was right up next to it, she ran a feelertip across its cold gray surface. It wasn't alive, and touching it lessened her fear.

She circled the stone again, touching here, sniffing there. On the far side she discovered a tunnel. Excitement welled up in her. A tunnel meant walls, a ceiling, a dirt floor. A hideaway. But if she found the glade's lingering sickness worrisome, how much more frightening was a tunnel that burrowed beneath its soil?

A faint odor brushed over her, vaporous and ghostlike, and she fanned out her feelers. For a moment she thought she sensed something moving among the grass, but the scent, if there really had been one, evaporated before she could figure out what it might be.

You're an idiot. The only thing alive in this cursed place is your imagination. They'd warned her about that, too. How paranoia would eventually set in if she didn't find a place to hide. When that happened, she'd find herself jumping at every scent, every movement.

She leaned down into the tunnel, and a surprising thought occurred to her: Might the glade actually be a good place to hide, a desirable place to raise her daughters? Since stepping off the log, she had seen no evidence of other insects-no footprints, no scent-markings, no soft rustles. If prey avoided this place, wasn't it also possible that predators might also?

She ran her feelertips along the tunnel's crumbly walls, but the sunless passage revealed no secrets. She slipped inside, and tried to ignore the nervous heat in her palpitating abdomen. It was easy to imagine what horrors might lie ahead; looming faces, grotesque and disfigured; tentacles bursting forth from the walls, reaching out of the darkness...

Yet the walls mummed a story of neglect, that was all, of repairs long overdue, of abandonment. Trust me, they murmured. There's nothing here.

Wanting to believe, wanting so badly to believe, she blinked away her trepidation and crept on.

***

His tall shadow eased along the stone. He was in no hurry-was in fact enjoying this little hunt-but he was done hiding.

***

A nondescript green leaf lay across the dirt floor, yet something made her hesitate. It possessed a strong odor, not altogether unpleasant, and maybe that was why she distrusted it.

It's too late to go back, so don't even think about it. Get past the leaf and face what's on the other side

Rachel took a deep breath, sprinted across, and suddenly understood why an insect would go to the trouble of finding and then dragging a leaf all the way across the glade. Why it would bring it down into this lonely tunnel.

It's here to obscure what's beyond, that's why.

The passage continued straight, then sloped upward before funneling into an open space. A few more strides and Rachel once more stood on level ground, looking up into the interior of a small cave. The walls were circular and made entirely of smooth gray stone. Before she could make out anything else, she turned and reeled, gagging on the smell of decay and death. She staggered to the right, following the curve of the rock with her feelers.

Her terror should have driven her back down into the tunnel but was actually beckoning her deeper into the cave's recesses. When she next looked up she was standing at the rear of the cave, her backside pressed against cold stone. She took a few moments to compose herself, then took a close look at her surroundings.

Before her, stacked in the shape of a U, were at least twenty dead insects. Time had sucked the moisture from their bodies, making their legs shrivel and causing their feelers to lay slack across their thin, decomposing faces. Rachel stared down each arm of the U as it curved back toward the tunnel. Slowly, she reached out to the corpse directly in front of her.

The darkling beetle had been turned upside down and positioned in strict alignment with the others. When she touched it, its round shell swayed. Hugging the beetle's chest was a small red bug with too many legs. Whatever the thing was, it had grabbed onto the beetle in what might have been a death hold-or a last act of desperation, it was hard to tell which. Unlike the other corpses, the bug's soft, lightly haired body still possessed a slightly warm scent.

Not wanting to know more, Rachel started back the way she had come in her brief delirium, down the left arm of the U in that wide space between the insects and the stone. The ordered arrangement of dead morbidly fascinated her, and touching each starchy skeleton helped her terror subside into forceful disquiet.

They're only dead bugs, that's all. Most of these strange insects appeared to have been dead for quite some time, but she wasn't sure if that reassured her.

She crawled past a meal moth, a leaf beetle, a cricket, a pallid-winged grasshopper with bulging eyes-

And stopped.

Three black ants.

Although they weren't Leafcutters, the scent of her own kind stunned her. One was missing its head, the other its legs. The third ant's torso was riddled with puncture marks. Rachel hurried by them, refusing to think about what kind of creature could surprise, then kill, three adult ants.

A toad bug lay on its back, its legs outstretched toward the ceiling. A few more steps and she'd be able to peek around it, where she'd have a clear view of the tunnel, the way out.

Just two more, she told herself, but the minute hairs across her back and along her feelers had already started to tingle, and she felt her breathing ratchet up a notch. She dropped into a low crouch, the corpse of the toad bug pressed up against her side. She started to sneak a feeler around it-then pulled back.

Why are you working yourself up like this? There's nothing there.

But there was, and she felt its ugly-natured presence walk into her mind. The feeling was sharp, as painful as if she'd been jabbed in the eyes, and Rachel suddenly stepped out from behind the toad bug. She tried to undo her foolish panic with a backward step, but it was too late.

A spider had entered the cave and now wandered out of the tunnel on hairy, stalklike legs. He had eight eyes of various sizes planted up and down his furry, ovate face. Two fat jaws, each tipped with a single curved fang, dominated the lower portion of his face; a pair of shorter clublike appendages rested alongside them.

Fully into the cave now, he halted in mid-stride. For a time he stood there, his giant body breathing in and out. Then he started forward, taking long, loose strides. She was certain he was coming for her, but when he stopped, it was before a dead fly at the opposite end of the U. She nearly grayed out with relief. With his back to her, he pawed at the fly with a foreleg.

Rachel knew that fright would paralyze her if she didn't move, and broke into a full run across the hard dirt floor. The tunnel mouth loomed ahead; if she could make it to the leaf, she'd at least have a fighting chance.

FEAR ME, YOUNG QUEEN.

He spun and charged, she grimaced and leapt. She was almost through the opening when she felt strong claws clamp down on her right middle leg. With a casual flicking motion that sent her cartwheeling through the air, he threw her to the side and back; she bounced off the stone ceiling and fell face down into the outstretched legs of the toad bug. The impact briefly knocked her unconscious.

When she came to, she mistakenly thought she had fallen into the spider's shackling legs, and immediately began to bite and struggle. Even dull-edged, her blades easily tore through the toad bug's frangible chest. She reached in and pulled out tufts of dried innards, and might have gone on ripping out its guts but the round shell listed, dropping her to the floor with a thud.

Her right feeler hanging limp, Rachel cowered as he stood over her. His silhouette pulsated, his eyes glazed in crimson as he savored her terror. He held a foreleg off the floor, and something dangled from it.

At first she didn't know what he was showing her, except that the object was slender, with thinly-spaced hairs. The muscles beneath the skin still thrashed with life. Then, comprehending, her mandibles went slack.

No!

Her leg. He was holding her leg.

Mesmerized by the intensity of his gaze, she thought she would not be able to resist him, that he would take her volition as easily as he had taken her leg. But her will to live had not yet been broken. Somehow she closed her feelers to his hooking persuasion, got up, and began to limp back down the corridor between the insects and the stone.

WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING, YOUNG QUEEN?

Please, I can't die here.

YOU HAVE SOMETHING FOR ME, DON'T YOU?

A ripple of nausea pulsed through her abdomen, and she shuddered at the implications. Her babies! He wanted her babies.

She began hobbling away, but with ferocious suddenness he appeared before her, a towering wall of ragged fur, the light turning his gaze to a lusterless stare. Rachel let loose a screaming tremble from her feelers and aimed the tips of her mandibles at his two biggest eyes. She twisted her blades deep into the bloodless orbs, and his face, to her amazement, began to crack and fracture. Four of his eyes slipped from their sockets, and one fang jiggled free and fell to the floor. She must have severed a hidden seam, because the head began splitting apart. Slowly, the rest of his body cracked open; through the breach she smelled the wall just beyond, and to the left, the tunnel entrance.

She stumbled back, confused.

DO YOU THINK I CAN BE KILLED SO EASILY?

She turned, saw him pressing forward between the insects and the wall. The wicked light was back in his eyes, and his intent stride froze her heart.

COME, MY YOUNG QUEEN, LET ME SEE IF YOUR BLOOD IS WARM YET.

It's only been his molted skin.

On the verge of total exhaustion, she scrambled over the skin, tripped, sprawled, got up, ran. Her limp grew worse with each step, and her thorax burned as if consumed by a fever. Again she was within a step or two of the tunnel; again he scooped her up.

Rachel scratched out clawfuls of his bristly black hair, but her mad thrashing meant nothing to him. When he smacked his jaws against her face, the force sent a bolt of pain chugging through her head. He lifted her high over his head until she nearly touched the ceiling, pulled off her two hind legs, and tossed her bleeding body back to the ground.

***

What passed for amusement-a cold and bitter glee-shivered through him as he watched her strike the floor, roll end over end, and fetch up against the darkling beetle at the back of the cave. He was hungry, yes, but she was not yet done cooking in her fear. Terror did something wonderful to a prey's blood, and he would not be denied that pleasure.

After a time, with long, loose strides, he came for her.

***

After several cold, black moments of unconsciousness, Rachel opened her feeler to the darkness, to the silence and to the moldering stink of the dead. She was lying in a pool of her own blood, a painful fuming gash across her forehead, but she could move, at least that. Her right feeler still hung limp from the first time she had been thrown against the wall, but now, aching and broken, it was also useless and blind. Her four empty leg sockets throbbed, crying out for their missing legs.

ARE YOU AFRAID, YOUNG QUEEN?

I won't let you kill me.

Her protest was more whimper than defiance, and it shamed her. At that moment everything-the race to the firmament, the brief ecstasies in the embrace of strangers, the flight through the night sky, the puzzling little beetles, the glade, this cave-it all came down to one brutal, irrefutable fact: escape was impossible. No matter how fast she thought she could drag herself around the cave by her two remaining front legs, it would only be a pitiful show, nothing more. She could fight him, feebly at most, but she was no match for him.

"Fly with me, Rachel! Fly with me into the firmament, the dark skies be damned!" Kari's taps, a memory out of nowhere, reminded her how filled with hope the two of them had been, how they had stood at the edge of the world, looked up, and marveled. Such misplaced expectancy now seemed only a naive fantasy.

Rachel pushed herself up on one foreleg, and with the other grasped the large object in front of her. The darkling beetle's shell tilted to her touch, and she pulled herself up, clawhold by clawhold, onto its flat stomach. The shell swayed, and she was struggling to keep on top when she felt the chilling sensation of prickly hairs caterpillaring across her back.

PAIN, MY CRIPPLED YOUNG QUEEN. MUCH MORE PAIN.

Don't, please, I've come so far.

His hairy leg brushed her spines, and she tried to squirm away. The shell abruptly canted, pitching her to the floor, then flipped over and came down on top of her. She felt something soft press against her chest-a cushion of some sort between her and the darkling beetle-followed by the beetle's entire girth. She expected to be crushed, or at least have the wind knocked out of her, but the beetle's innards had withered away to dust.

YOU CAN'T HIDE FROM ME.

Ever so delicately, the spider lifted the beetle off her and placed it on top of the colorful plant bugs. He took a step back and considered this new arrangement. Apparently dissatisfied, he picked up the beetle again, turned it upside down, and patted it with a heavy leg until it no longer rested on top of the plant bugs but between them. His ghoulish sense of symmetry and aesthetics restored, he stood over her with raised legs. Saliva-like fluid trickled from his fangs, and she smelled something gassy and sour coming from his open mouth.

That she should be reduced to such a wretched state seemed to please him. Slowly, he lifted her battered body before his face. With a silent shudder, Rachel folded her legs around the soft red creature still pressed against her chest; its skin, slightly rubbery in texture, had stuck to her. She wanted to bite him, but her blades, enfeebled with fear, would not open.

The spider pinched his fangs together, Rachel clenched her claws. She anticipated the piercing of her flesh, followed by the racking pain that would send her into nullity, but neither came. Rather, she felt the creature bulge against her chest as the spider, mistaking the creature's body for hers, pumped his venom into it. When the little red body had filled with poison, the spider withdrew his fangs.

From their place beside his jaws, he brought forward his two clublike appendages. Designed to crush prey, they pressed up against Rachel's sides and began to squeeze; she felt the pressure build up inside her as her soft insides pressed up against her outer skin. This did not have the intended effect-the quick evacuation of her liquefied insides-and the spider shifted his grip. Again he squeezed, this time so tightly she nearly blacked out.

Displeased, he readjusted his grip. When he did, Rachel felt the pressure lift away from her and shift to the creature. With a violent squeeze that would have split her down the middle had he not released her, the spider ruptured the creature's skin, sending a spray of intestinal acid down his throat.

The effect was devastating. The spider immediately threw her to the floor and stepped back, his eight eyes becoming dark and strangely liquid. His legs shook with powerful convulsions, which caused him to stagger as if the floor were teetering violently beneath him.

Then he hissed, a shrill, keening intrusion that rapiered straight through Rachel's skull. She cringed. But in her mind, as in the cave, there was nowhere left to hide.

***

The spider reared back as if run through by an electrical current. He felt the acid scald his throat on its way down to his stomach. He took several clumsy steps, his long legs scattering dead insects, his claws raking the stone wall hard enough to leave behind two bloody streaks. The smell of his own blood brought swells of fear, and he spun, searching for the cave's exit with senses that were simultaneously boiling over and shutting down.

Through his agony he recalled the recent day when the rains had driven the wicked little spider to seek shelter beneath his stone. He'd fought it, chased it, been careful not to let it bite him. Desperate to escape him, the little red spider had climbed into the legs of the darkling beetle; but he, the more devious predator, had snuck up from behind and killed it.

The spider found the exit and lurched into it, where he hunched, twisted.
Took another step.

Fell.

***

Rachel watched him, feigning the stillness of a corpse. She had fallen on her side, and it hurt to breathe. The spider's body blocked the tunnel's mouth, a mass of hair and legs whose scent was already growing lukewarm. Was this more of his mockery, some kind of trick?

Later, drowsy and aspirating weakly, she admitted to herself that he was dead. When that moment finally came, all she felt was the quiet relief of a survivor. She pushed the little red creature off her chest and crawled across the floor to the center of the cave. She was through touching dead things.

The spider had crippled her, beaten her down until she would never walk out of this cave. Yet already she sensed the seed of optimism growing inside her. Her feeler wandered the cave, contemplating the future. She had begun this night insulated within the walls of her nursery, never imagining her journey would take her to such a place. Her children would purge everything, haul the corpses to the surface and let the scavengers take them. In the fullness of time they would transform a spider's crypt into hallowed ground, into her Royal Chambers.

Such wonderful thoughts.

Her feeler lolled, taking her inward and downward. Soon the cool inviting waters of sleep spirited her away to places even eight-eyed, eight-legged nightmares could not go.

***

Rachel awoke with a start, shook her head to rid it of sleepiness, and propped herself up on her two legs. She groped with her tongue for the fungus at the back of her mouth. Even now she could recall Kari's cautionary advice as clearly as if she were standing before her.

Kari would have been proud, for the snippet of fungus was still there-the only link, however fragile, to her future. The sponge-like fungus was moist and sweet, and when she brought it out of the pouch and into her mouth, she gently bit down on it. The moistness wetted her parched throat, spreading a warm, replenishing glow over her. She spat out the little brown package and watched it slowly inflate.

In her mind's eye she pictured the nurse who had given her that little package, her mouth pressed up against hers. Nurses were always running around regurgitating fungus-juice for the Queens to drink, but this particular nurse had made a point of explaining that this snippet of fungus was special. Every Queen received her own special snippet, she had tapped, and this was Rachel's. After explaining how fungus grew on leaves collected from the forest, and admonishing her not to lose the snippet, the nurse had given her a last instruction.

"When you're safe, spit out the fungus, then fertilize it. Your first born will be hungry, but you mustn't let them drink the fungus-juice. Feed them eggs. They won't be eager to eat their unborn sisters, but they will.

"Those first workers will be frail and unseasoned; few, in fact, will return from their foraging trips. But those who do will bring fresh leaves and flower petals. They'll establish a garden, or try to, and that's when you must add the snippet of fungus-without it, the leaves and petals will produce only inedible mold. The fungus must grow and spread. If it doesn't, your nest will cannibalize itself and wither away."

Rachel watched in amazement; the little piece of fungus, now exposed to air, had almost doubled in size. Such a small thing. Such an important thing. She dragged her hindquarters across it, loosened a pellet from her bowels, and settled back down. She would have nothing else to do but care for it while she waited for her daughters to grow inside her.

The spider lay where he had fallen, facedown in congealing yellow blood, blood that still leaked from his mouth and eyes. His once menacing bulk was already starting to pucker at the edges, and she found satisfaction knowing that by the time her first daughters arrived he would be just another desiccated corpse among his victims. Yet because of what he was, even in death he would deter the curious, the hungry, the shelter-seekers. The irony did not escape her: The thing that had almost killed her was now the thing that would keep her alive.

So this is the deep end of the forest.

A serene sense of fulfillment danced across her feeler. Such dreams. Already she could imagine her daughters surrounding her in the abiding darkness, envisioned them touching her egg-filled body and licking the beaded moisture from her honey-flavored skin. They moved in a bustle of solicitous adoration, and she knew each one, could peer into each heart.