Chapter 9
CHAPTER
Hundreds of flaming orange ants scurried around the tank, which Ms. Pincette had filled with waxy leaves and twigs. This far away, I couldn’t hear more than their endless, raspy droning, but a small part of me shivered at the way their voices seemed to echo each other’s.
Because they were all chanting the same thing, I realized with a jolt. Connected by more than just their formations and lines.
At that thought, the dull ache in the back of my head gave a jolt of its own, like it was trying to jump out. Fire ants. Fire ants. I’d known a fire ant once. Had talked to one. I was sure of it.
But I couldn’t remember how, or why Steeler might have taken that knowledge from me. What did fire ants have to do with him?
“Ants,” Ms. Pincette said, and my eyes jumped back to the front of the classroom, “have a special connection with each other that we as humans will never achieve. Their memories are collective, not individual, and they are able to transmit pieces of information to each other via the very air. Which…” She gave a rare smile down into the tank.
“Comes in handy if you need to talk to someone over a great distance, for our ant friends can then relay those messages for us.”
It took a few blinks from all of us before Ms. Pincette seemed to refrain from rolling her eyes and repeated herself.
“Wild Whisperers can talk to each other from across the very island, if they wish. As long as they utilize the hive mind.”
Rodhi whistled. Mitzi and Cilia gave an ooooh from the back of the class. Gileon squinted at his rhino beetle he’d placed on his desk, perhaps wondering if the giant insect could do the same thing.
Ms. Pincette seemed to follow his eyes and train of thought.
“I’m afraid very few species of insects have the ability to pass messages down the chain of their kind.
But while we have these ones here.” She looked up from the fire ants, her eyes analyzing each of us in microseconds.
I felt her gaze pause ever so briefly on me, then swiftly shift to Rodhi.
“Mr. Lockett, would you be so kind as to—”
Rodhi’s chair was already scraping against the floor from how fast he got up.
“—help me demonstrate,” Ms. Pincette finished, her mouth twitching.
She dipped a hand in the tank, waited for one of the ants to scurry up her outstretched finger, and nodded at Rodhi. “Your turn.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Rodhi mimed a salute and dipped his own hand inside until an ant scurried up his finger, too.
“Now.” Ms. Pincette didn’t even blink when her ant trailed up her arm, to her elbow, and turned around to hurry back down.
One bite, and her arm would form an itchy, swollen welt.
“The trick to connecting with the correct counterpart is to describe your partner to your ant. And in an ant’s case, smell is more important than any other type of description.
So, Mr. Lockett…” She turned to Rodhi and spread her arms wide. “Let’s get this over with. Sniff me.”
Emelle shot me a wide-eyed look that I flung back at her. Sniff me? In what version of reality would Ms. Pincette ever ask Rodhi to sniff her in front of the whole class?
All around us, gapes and smirks filled the room. Even Gileon had looked up from his rhino beetle with his mouth hanging open.
Lost for words for perhaps the first time in his life, Rodhi didn’t hesitate. He leaned forward, closed his eyes, and inhaled, looking as if he’d taken his Final Test and passed it early.
After a much-too-uncomfortable few seconds, in which I couldn’t help but squirm in my seat, he pulled back with a sloppy grin. “Got it.”
Ms. Pincette nodded. “And I have your scent down as well, I think. Okay, Mr. Lockett, describe me to your ant.”
Rodhi brought his ant up to his mouth and said in a raw, raspy voice that mimicked the insect’s accent, “I am looking to connect with a beautiful woman who smells like passionflowers in full bloom and the bark of a cinnamon tree when the sun’s hitting it just right.”
God of the Cosmos, that made me want to blush.
But Ms. Pincette’s cheeks didn’t warm a single shade as she brought her own ant to her mouth and said, in that same accent, “I am looking to connect with a young man who smells like coconut, obnoxious energy, and a hint of clove.”
The ants wiggled their antennas.
“Alright, Mr. Lockett, now we’ll see if we have described each other properly.
If you’ll go to that end of the classroom…
” Rodhi was already jogging around all the desks.
“I’ll stay here, and we’ll swap all the words we cannot tell each other face-to-face.
Hypothetically, of course,” Ms. Pincette added with a twist of her mouth.
This had to be the most intimate, awkward lesson I’d ever encountered, and it was only day one of our second year.
But I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised.
We were called Wild Whisperers, after all—and the wild animals of Eshol, much like the faeries who had gone extinct on this very island, relied on a sense of smell more than anything else.
I just never thought I’d hear Ms. Pincette relate Rodhi to a coconut. Wren was going to die when we told her.
Everyone had turned in their seats to watch Rodhi bring his ant to his mouth again, this time whispering something that nobody else could hear.
A moment later, Ms. Pincette brought her ant up to her ear, listened as it rasped something, and sighed.
“Yes, that would be something only Rodhi Lockett would say. Well done.” She jerked her head at him, those sharp eyes alight with something I might have dared call humor.
“The rest of you…” She faced the class again without whispering her own message to her ant, letting it spiral around her finger.
“Please find a partner, grab two ants of your own, and practice across the room from each other.”
Immediately, everyone began scrambling up, and Emelle and I clasped onto each other in a flash. I’d rather not sniff anyone’s armpits today, but if it had to be someone, I’d definitely pick her.
“Go ahead,” Emelle said once we’d retrieved our ants from the tank. Around us, everyone had burst into conversation—Rodhi now with Gileon, Mitzi with Norman Pollard, and Cilia tentatively facing Dazmine. Emelle spread her arms like Ms. Pincette had. “Take a whiff.”
I did, my knife handle digging into my hip as I leaned forward, my ant tickling my palm where it scuttled back and forth.
“Hmm. Vanilla, I think? And… maybe roasted cocoa beans?”
A flush surged up Emelle’s neck.
“What?” I asked.
“Oh.” She shifted on her desk. “I just… I’ve always thought Lander smells like cocoa beans.”
I shot her a smile that almost felt genuine on my lips. “Aww. Your scents have merged. How very primitive.”
Emelle huffed and leaned forward to smell me now, her eyes scanning my new dress with a hint of yesterday’s suspicion returning.
“Okay, I’m getting… climbing orchids. Like the kind that covers the back of the Wild Whisperer houses. And… is that bamboo?”
My skin prickled, as if a dozen fire ants were nipping at the back of my neck. Black bamboo—from Steeler’s body pressed against mine in that alleyway, holding my arms above my head? Or simply from the grove I practiced in? Or both?
Emelle seemed to watch each of my heavy blinks.
“Ready to swap all the words we can’t tell each other face-to-face?” she asked, a certain prickly note to her usually gentle tone.
I nodded, suddenly nervous, and we drifted to opposite ends of the classroom, where others had lined up to practice as well.
Bringing my fire ant to my mouth, I whispered Emelle’s description to it. Emelle mirrored me from across the room.
Just as I was wondering what to say, all too aware of Ms. Pincette’s attention scanning each of us, my fire ant rasped, “Where were you really last night after the Branding, during the induction chant?”
Shit. That was definitely Emelle’s message, passed through the hive mind and straight into my ear. Thankfully, nobody around me would have been able to hear, considering how loud the room had gotten, but…
I caught Emelle’s stare across the distance between us.
Another lie rose up my throat, another excuse.
But then I was whispering to my fire ant, “I can’t tell you. I’m sorry. Please don’t be mad at me.”
Please don’t leave me like Quinn did.
Emelle got the message. I could tell by the way her face fell.
“I’m not mad,” she relayed through my ant, “Just worried. And so is Lander. We’ve both noticed you’ve been…off lately.”
A ball formed in the base of my throat. I had tried so hard these last few months to throw on a smile, to keep Emelle and the rest of my friends far away from any part of this mission Dyonisia had shoved me into.
I couldn’t handle the thought of any of them getting exiled like Jenia had just because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut about it.
But Emelle had seen through my mask. Lander, too. And now, even though I couldn’t give them the truth, I couldn’t lie to her either.
“I don’t think you’ll need to worry for much longer, Melle,” I said, my throat thick. “I’ll be back to normal soon, I promise.”
When the Good Council caught Steeler this Sunday, to be exact. Then I’d lock away my knives and fold up these dresses for good.
Emelle didn’t answer for a long, long time. That thickness in my throat swelling, I watched my ant trace each of my fingers before she had it say, “Okay. Just promise me one thing, Rayna.”
“Anything,” I relayed back before I could think better of it.
Emelle’s shoulders seemed to deflate from across the room.
“Remember that we have your back. There’s nothing you could tell us that would make us turn away from you.
” My ant stopped scurrying on my palm, its mandibles flexing as it continued.
“So whenever—if ever—you’re ready to share what’s going on…
Lander and I will be here. And I’m willing to bet a thousand coppers the others will, too. ”
The others as in Wren, Rodhi, and Gileon.
That tightness in my throat stung with tears. I would never deserve Emelle or her graciousness, that was for sure. Even if I knew I couldn’t ever take her up on her offer. Couldn’t ever involve her in the dangerous things she didn’t have to be a part of.
Still, I whispered two words into the hive mind, into the vast invisible network I’d never given much thought about until now.
“Thank you.”
Wren did almost die when Rodhi gushed about Ms. Pincette’s scent over our quick lunch break between classes.
She covered her mouth, gagged, and choked out, “I remember that lesson from last year. Ms. Pincette paired herself with Lynthia Prescott to demonstrate back then, which made a lot more sense considering Lynthia slathers herself in lavender oil like, fifteen times a day.” She shook her head, surveying Rodhi with something like awe.
“Why would Ms. Pincette want to smell you?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Rodhi said sarcastically, shoveling a bite of his quiche into his mouth. “Maybe because she’s secretly in love with me too and has to hide it behind more professional interactions?”
Wren was still shaking her head by the time we all split ways for a second time that day. While she headed off to History, the rest of us flowed toward the arboretum, where Mrs. Wildenberg was waiting for us between perfectly pruned elderberry bushes.
“Hello class,” she said in that warbling voice of hers. “Welcome to your second year as Wild Whisperers… and your first class with me where we will do more than lie on our backs and listen to the music of the flora around us.”
Norman Pollard groaned. A few others echoed his sentiment. Last year, the Language of Plants 101 had been our reprieve from more laborious tasks. A time to just meditate and relax.
The Language of Plants 102, it seemed, would be a bit more rigorous.
“If you’ll follow me, we’re going deeper into the jungle today.”
Mrs. Wildenberg turned. It was a painstakingly slow trek upward as she led us all at a hobbling pace away from the arboretum, away from campus itself, and into the lush density of foliage and trees and vines.
Thanks to my dress, my bare arms and ankles had taken about a hundred different bug bites by the time we all came to a thicket of strange, towering plants I’d never seen before.
Pale green stalks rose high above our heads, swaying slightly although there was no wind. Bristles covered each of them, red and bulbed, with diamond-like dew drops glistening at the end.
“Do you hear that?” Emelle whispered to me. I was thankful that she hadn’t acted strange or angry after our talk in Ms. Pincette’s class.
I strained to listen, but… no. I didn’t hear anything.
Not even the usual hum of the trees, the croon of wildflowers, or even the hundreds of whining conversations of the same insects that had bitten the shit out of me on the way up.
It was as if the entire jungle had sucked in a breath and held it.
A second later, something snapped around my arm and pulled.