Down and down we walked. A basket of glowstones had been thoughtfully set at the edge of the boundary, and when the Masters indicated one of us was to carry it, I jumped fastest and grabbed it. The tunnels grew darker, and we followed the clicking sound of the Masters’ hard feet on the floor. The glowbasket only lit a few paces in front of us, and we huddled together in its light. Masters had no need of it, and skittered ahead of us.
The quiet pressed in on my ears. No hallways bisected ours, and no chambers branched off. There was only this long, twisting corridor, ever downward into the forbidden heart of the Hive.
Up ahead, I could feel the corridor widen. The light of the glowbasket reflected off the walls around us, but the Masters left us behind and entered into a chamber that emitted its own glow from the damp blue slime. One of them turned back to us and clicked in its elegant language.
“Prepare for Queen.”
I had no idea what it meant. The Masters scuttled around us, pulling at our tunics and adjusting our loose pants. The tunics were long and loose, worn with a sash around the waist, which the Masters bit straight through and pulled away, dropping them into a pile of cloth at the edge of the room. They touched us all over with their soft feelers, and I held in a sneeze when the feeler tickled my nose.
Finally it was time.
“Come. Silent.”
The Hive’s highest honor was upon us. I doubted any of us could make a sound even if we wanted to.
They led us across the room to a round, open doorway. I left the glowbasket where it sat, because the room beyond the doorway emitted enough light that I wouldn’t need it. The sound of trickling water reached my ears from somewhere beyond, and the air was damp and still.
The Masters entered the room before us and we filed in behind. They blocked our view, pressing us back into the walls.
When they moved, my eyes filled with a glory I couldn’t imagine.
The Queen.
She took up almost the entire chamber. Her body was shaped like the Master Soldiers around her, which I had always thought were enormous but now were dwarfed by her magnificence. She had a tiny head at the top of her thorax, which lacked the hard armor of the smaller Masters around her. She sat rocked back on a wide rear end that disappeared behind her so that all eight of her legs waved toward us. Her thorax was almost white in the dim glow.
One by one the three Masters approached her. They bowed their heads before the soft, pale thorax, honoring the Queen. The first stepped forward, and she lowered her head. The Soldier rubbed its head against the top of the Queen’s. She wrapped four of her legs around the Soldier’s body, two Masters wrapped together. When the Soldier stepped back, a white, waxy sheen of oil covered its head, and it sagged for a moment, forelegs limp in awe. The Queen clicked at it and it backed up, allowing the next to receive her moist blessing.
I ached to follow them. I could almost feel how it would be to rub my own head into hers. She would fold her legs around me as she did them, and I would belong to her forever. Was this the secret? Was I worthy of such glory?
The smallest Master I had ever seen scuttled around the edge of the chamber. He crawled right over the Queen’s back without a glance at us. The King. Father of the whole Hive. His head only came up to my waist, but I wanted to bow before him.
The Queen clicked at the Masters, and they turned to where we huddled against the wall, stupefied in awe in the presence of the enormous, hulking Queen. One Master stood in front of each of us.
There was no signal that I could hear. No click from Queen or Master.
In an instant, the Masters swung their tails around, digging their stingers into us.
My breath caught in my throat. It broke the spell of the Queen, and I whipped my head around to see Gil and Jerome on either side of me mirroring my posture, hands clutching at the sides of their bellies where the sting had caught them.
I knew what came next. The Masters used those stings to protect us from lesser insects that would steal our food and invade our Hive. My mind got fuzzy as my body weakened. I couldn’t feel my hands or feet. I flopped to the floor, my head banging against Jerome’s knee. I tried to roll over, to cry out a question, but all I could do was flail on the floor. Numbness crept up my arms and legs until my twitching stopped. My heart pounded, and my breathing was soft and slow. My eyes darted around the room, the only part of me I could move.
Was this some ritual? Some final test?
The Masters dragged Jerome away from where I lay, and my head, which had been propped on his knee, banged into the ground. It didn’t hurt, but I couldn’t turn my neck to follow where they took him. I stared at the ceiling, which faded from the bright blue of the slimy walls into a black, featureless cave overhead, and listened to the sounds around me. There was a soft, squishy sound, then the grating of a boy being dragged away.
They came for Gil.
My mind was still fuzzy, drifting in and out of focus. It seemed like no time at all before they came for me.
I couldn’t feel them grab my shoulders, or the rough sliding of my butt on the floor as they dragged me around behind the Queen. What I had seen as her backside turned out to be the start of a huge, fat tail. It reared up around her, and as the tip of it descended toward me, I had a moment to bask in her glory once more. She was going to touch me with her tail. Me. Noah. The Queen was going to touch my skin.
They laid me down and her tail approached me. The tip was round and wet, quivering in the blue light. The Masters pulled my tunic up to my neck.
Her tail dropped beyond my vision. I couldn’t feel her touching me. But out of the extreme lower corners of my eyes, I could see it. The sight should have filled me with rapture as her tail touched my skin. Instead I was filled with horror at the grotesque sight.
Eggs. Each time her tail contacted my skin, it squeezed out a glistening, translucent egg the size of my fist. Along with each one came a sticky white goo that cemented the eggs onto my skin. One by one she deposited them onto me, covering my exposed belly with soft round eggs.
It lasted forever. The squishing sound of each deposit screamed betrayal into my ears. But this was my Queen. This was the highest honor in the Hive. I’d worked all my life to get here, and the joy I should have felt at her attention warred with the numb fear in my paralyzed body.
Finally it was finished. The Masters dragged me away behind her, out another open doorway.
If I could have screamed, the corridors would have echoed with sound. But all I could hear was the steady trickle of water, and the gritty noise of my body as they dragged me away from the majesty of our enormous Queen.