* * *
It took all day to reach the queen’s hive. We left the purple forest of flowers and entered the area of tree mountains. I recognized my hive’s scent as we passed the tree we burrowed under. Even farther west, toward the setting of the sun, was a strange little complex of hills above ground. My new queen’s hive. Surrounding it, the earth had been cleared of flowers and plants, pathetic, little sprouts growing up instead. Heavy in the air was the odor of burning wood and plants.
I didn’t like it.
Attendants greeted the queen and helped her and her injured worker down. She leaned against me for support, smoothing her warm claws over my armor. She chattered away, waving her upper appendages. I was starting to think those slender little limbs I’d thought of as claws were antennae. Her voice was lower than that of a fresh hatchling, but without the range of second-stage larva, and certainly nothing close to what an adult possessed. If she had slowed down and spoken that way to the fuzzipillar instead of screeching at it, she would have been rewarded with a mouthful of nectar. But then, from what I’d experienced, queens did do a lot of screeching.
I marched beside her, observing the way her attendants regarded me. A buffet of tastes vibrated in the air from the six of them: first shock and awe, then suspicion and disgust. I had expected this. It would take time for my scent to adapt to theirs and for me to fit in. One of them with a swollen belly bigger than the Black-Eyed Queen tentatively brushed an antenna/arm over my thorax. I felt no compulsion to mate with this one. Perhaps she was a honey-pot not yet so burdened with nectar that she couldn’t walk.
The queen gave me one last stroke before her attendants ushered her away. Young Honey-Pot twitched her claw at me, making chittering sounds more like my kind than yours. Was that her way of getting me to follow? I did so, taking in the smooth sides of the hills we passed, peering through surfaces as clear as water but as hard as rock. I know because I tapped on a few, startling the workers within.
Young Honey-Pot waddled along on her two legs, taking me to the walled circle where more fuzzipillars lounged amidst piles of leaves. It looked very much like our stable, only above ground and with far more beasts of burden than we ever housed. I realized where all our stores of fuzzipillars must have gone, captured by this other hive. No wonder our resources had grown so scarce over the years.
Smooth rock enclosures to one side housed more fuzzipillars lounging in the shade. I supposed the fuzzipillars would be able to hide under the overhang if a flesh-eating mothrafly came along. However, I couldn’t imagine how they would escape an arachnipede. Didn’t this hive see its folly? Perhaps this area was free of arachnipede tribes.
The sun sank below the horizon, the sky turning green and then black. Brilliant twin moons, purple as a queen’s belly, rose into the sky. Never having seen them before, I now understood why the workers of my tribe called them the sky queens. I ducked under the cover of the shelter and dug myself a hole. It was difficult work, hindered by my wings. My shelter was only large enough to house myself, but I had done much manual labor in that one day. I couldn’t make myself do more.
The last task I completed before I collapsed into my shallow hole was to bite off my wings. The first one I tore free sent a lance of fire down my back. Forcing myself to bite off the other, I then slid into my hole, too exhausted even to sing for nectar from the fuzzipillars.
I would have liked to sleep for an entire season after that long day. Instead, I learned all too soon that this area was not free of arachnipedes.