Apple Monster's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Apple Monster stood with the shovel at his feet while the Queen Ant watched him from her flat rock. The flood of workers kept pouring around his tree, carrying eggs and pale grubs on their backs. He could see the ants. He could not see the fire under the ground. That was the whole problem. If the burn reached his tree's roots, the trunk would cook from below, and he would not know until the leaves went brown. "I need to see it," he said. "The fire. I have to know where it's going." The Queen tilted her head. "You can't. It's below the clay. Even my scouts only feel the heat when a wall gives." "Then your scouts know where it is." She was quiet a moment. "They know where it was an hour ago. That is not the same." He knelt by the split mound. Heat came off the crack like an open oven. He pulled his hand back and looked at the Queen. "Show me. Please. Send them out and mark where the ground is hot. I'll follow." She considered him with steady dark eyes. "My workers are carrying eggs. I can't spare many." "Spare a few. If the fire reaches the tree, it reaches whatever's north of it too. Your path north burns with my roots." Her antennae moved once. "That is true." She lifted a leg and tapped the rock twice. A dozen workers broke from the column and gathered at her feet. She spoke to them in a low click he could not follow. They scattered in six directions across the grass. Apple Monster ran to his shed for flour. He came back with the sack open and followed the first scout. Where she stopped and pressed her body flat to the dirt, he poured a small white circle. He did this for each one. Twenty minutes later he stood back and looked at his yard. The white circles made a shape. A long curved line, ten yards wide, running from the split mound straight under his tree and out past the fence toward the neighbor's field. The fire was not coming toward the tree. It was already beneath it. His knees gave. He sat in the grass. "How deep?" he said. "Six feet. Maybe five now." The Queen had followed him. Her voice stayed even. "The clay above it is thin. When it breaks, it breaks upward." "How long?" "A day. Perhaps two." He stared at the flour under his tree. The bark was still whole. The leaves were still green. Underneath, the ground was cooking his grandfather's roots, and he had one day to do something he did not yet know how to do. He stood up. The shovel was the wrong tool. He needed water, and a lot of it, and he needed someone who understood what was burning down there. He turned toward the road.