A Mycologist's Proposal

Chop hoped her unease at Myco’s idea wasn’t obvious. The idea of marching into the place that had driven Birch mad put her on edge, and the Ancient Colony’s writing about deathborns had not soothed her fears.

Fern would be itching to join the expedition, emboldened by surviving a journey she was utterly unprepared and unallowed to go on. This sort of victory could make an ant arrogant, uncareful. This folly had lost her two legs and lost other ants their lives. No, Fern didn’t belong anywhere near the Ancient Colony. This was Birch’s ultimate fear, what she had, in a preposterous way, tried to prevent.

Here, a conflict of interest entered.

Chop was here to help these ants and stop this plague. If going back into the depths of the Ancient Colony would truly aid this quest, then she could not in good conscience follow Birch’s request. If Fern really could help, the same applied (though she doubted that). The idea of it stung all the worse knowing she had failed to keep her Oath. What sort of friend was she? Yes, her request was… it went against everything she’d been taught from grubhood, but it was still her last wish!

Memories of the day the Oath was made bubbled up, raw as the day they’d been made. Never in her life had Chop seen an ant, much less a nurse, lunge for a hatchling in the way that Birch had.

The mix of anxious scents in the air brought Chop back to the present. They were almost at the debate chamber from what she could tell, which meant Queen Wren’s room was nearby. Now she let herself smell nervous. Her fear would be interpreted as courtroom jitters and nothing more.

Myco peeked inside the court room. “Nothing,” she said, “To the queen’s room it is.”

When they arrived there, Queen Wren was tending to a huge chamber of larvae and cocooned ants. Nursery workers hustled alongside her, carrying meat and veg to feed the innumerable hungry mouths nested snug in their cradles. A nostalgic smell hovered in the air.

“Oh, visitors,” the queen didn’t pause in her work, “Hello, come in. Mind your step.”

Myco took a breath as she entered. Without so much as a greeting, she immediately launched into her pitch for another meeting, “Queen, I have come to request you give me one more chance in your court,” she said, “I want to propose a second”—

“Myco,” Queen Wren turned around at last, “Are you being serious? I… I am trying to have faith you are working your hardest, but the nobles grow frustrated with your lack of progress. They were visited by Twister early this morning, she gave a startling report.”

“I know. But I have my fellow researchers to back up my claims, I see no feasible options for us other than throwing random plants at it, or using the same old cures, which aren’t working. I need one more chance. Just one.”

Chop stepped up beside her. “There are unexplored areas inside that could hold answers,” she said, “There could be something extremely important we’ve missed down there.”

It felt strange, wrong to be going so flagrantly against Birch’s wishes.

Queen Wren hesitance overpowered the nursery’s fragrance for a moment. “There may be a logic in that the court will understand,” she said, “but do not get your hopes up. I will summon the nobles for a meeting, you may wait in your laboratory until they arrive.”

Well, they had one member of the court convinced. That wasn’t an awful start.

The group made their way back to the lab and reported the news.

“Oh, it feels like I’m going to throw up my heart,” a brown-shell shuddered, “I hope the request gets accepted this time…”

“What’ll we do if it doesn’t?” a blue-shell asked.

“Nothing,” Myco shrugged, “We’ll be fired, the lab will be repurposed. Or maybe we’ll be replaced by a new group.”

Quiet gasps rose from the crowd and panic flared.

“What’ll I do if I’m fired?” a brown-shell asked.

“Being a drifter isn’t so bad,” Fern said.

“I don’t know what a drifter is,” Myco said, “I don’t know how it works west, but here, you’ve got to find something to do. I suppose I could make it as a forager.”

Chop found herself uneasy at the implication of that.

“If we fail there might not be a queendom to forage for,” someone muttered.

The room fell quiet and remained that way until someone arrived to collect them for the meeting.

“Good luck,” Fern told them.

Myco thanked her as they left.

---

The air in the courtroom was thick with irritation. It lay stagnant on the floor, clinging to Chop’s spiracles as she entered. A hint of lighter scent—anxiety—swirled through the haze surfacing for a few counts before disappearing again. She couldn’t tell who the source was.

For a long while, it was silent. Queen Wren took it upon herself to speak first.

“Daughters,” she said, “I am aware your favor of Myco has been… lowered lately, but this court is to judge the ant before us based on the current evidence, not past grievances.”

“Past grievances?” a noble sneered, “They’re quite current! We received that report from Head Hunter Twister this morning! And now Myco wants to call us from our work to ask us a question we’ve answered twice.”

“You of all ants should know about your Head Hunter’s temper,” Myco said, “Twister is more wasp-hearted than the wasp she works with. She stormed into my lab, called me a fool, then yelled at me over nothing without giving me a chance to explain or defend myself. Did she mention any of that in her report?”

“Very well,” the raspy-voiced noble said, “Explain yourself.”

Myco took a breath and did just that. “I am out of options. I’ve done everything I possibly can with what you’ve allowed me to have, and it wasn’t enough. There might be more in the Ancient Colony we haven’t found yet. There were reports of deeper levels that were blocked by fallen debris, and the ant who was missing was lost in an extensive”—

“Had nothing to report,” a noble said.

“Don’t forget she was extremely ill with strangeroot at the time. We don’t know how deep she went, where she went, what she did while she was down there. We don’t know that it’s not worth it!”

“You are forgetting that the ant who went into that area of the colony was also infected. It may have been her who caused this outbreak!”

“Impossible,” a different noble countered her, to Chop’s surprise, “She was fully spotted at the time she was released from our care.”

“How else do you propose the strangeroot escaped?”

“I do not know”—

“Which is why we need to go on another trip,” Myco interrupted them, “Have you forgotten the bird’s toe Myco delivered earlier? It was covered in strangeroot sprouts! And the hunters who dispatch rooted insects have seen others. This is serious, we need to act!”

Chop winced.

The nobles above them scoffed, taken aback by the researcher’s rudeness.

“Myco!” Queen Wren snapped.

“No, I’m tired of this! I feel like I’m going crazy!” Myco snapped back, “If I can’t get back into the Ancient Colony, if I can’t get anything else to work with any other way, I’ll quit! You can find someone else to sift through what I’ve written for all I care!”

“Maybe that would be for the best!” a noble said.

Queen Wren hit the ground with a foreleg. “Stop! Stop it all, of you. This is getting us nowhere. If this plan is so foolish, please tell me what alternate plans you have in mind. Will we lock ourselves inside our territory and hope the strangeroot does not enter? We tried that at the beginning of this mess and it failed. We tried regular cures from east and west and they hardly worked!”

An argument exploded between the nobles and Queen Wren.

Myco sat back this time, not interjecting despite the comments made at her expense. She seemed dejected now, or maybe she was still tired from late night of work. That made this awful display even more terrible. Myco and her team really had been putting so much work into finding this cure.

Before this trip, if Chop had been told the most ant-hearted, collected bugs she would see in an ant colony would be their wasp visitors—stranded far from home with nothing but cramped tunnels for shelter—she would have assumed it was a joke. So much for saving face in front of visitors, she thought.

The arguing between the nobles and their queen continued for some time, until at last, Wren grew tired of arguing with her daughters and drew herself up to her fullest height. She ground her jaws together and hissed, “Silence all of you!”

The court obeyed.

“I grew up hearing tales of my grandmother’s queendom, how it died, how their ants were killed by disease and the horrors of it sweeping through their colony,” Wren’s voice was harsh and unwavering, “They were powerful, strong, wealthy, they had it all, and it was arguing like this which killed them. My mother and her siblings watched their entire family die. Our lineage almost died out. We may have only survived through her and her only sister’s foresight to make peace with each other and I will not have her life’s work be in vain.”

More silence.

“Myco goes to the Ancient Colony, I will not argue on this. I am done. I will dissolve this ridiculous council if I have to.”

Silence again.

Chop expected an uproar from the nobles, for them to fight tooth and nail for their votes, to tell Wren she couldn’t just decide something so important like that without others’ input, but it seemed the way the court worked around here was different.

The eldest ant among them bowed her head. “Your wish is my command, queen,” she said, “I shall assemble the necessary rations the moment I know how many ants you will send.”

One by one, the other members of the court did the same, vowing to use their various skills to help Myco’s expedition.

The queen turned to Myco and Chop.

 “You are dismissed.”