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Menace hung over The Arids, droning its way across the dying waste, closing in on the General’s War Council. Leftenant Chaz didn’t care that it was hours till sunrise; he and his squad flew whenever his uncle ordered.
Landing at the base entrance, the leftenant left his men to harangue the prisoners while he reported in.
“General Hai,” Chaz announced, interrupting a Council discussion, “we have prisoners. They need marking.” He turned his back and left.
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“…and I believe if we just position all our troops at the border, we will stop any hostile who dares to attempt to enter Fen on the ground or at the river as easily as we’ll stop them in the air, without mounting a full scale offensive,” Captain Avery concluded.
Smoothing the rough surface of her irritation with a smile, Queen Lilian waited to respond until the captain, blinking uncertainly, began shifting from foot to foot.
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Scaling the tree next door to the Captain’s, Drago Galadeen called, “Captain Avery, sir!”
A snoring scimitar beak snapped shut, a pair of gleaming citron orbs snapped open, and the feathery face surrounding them swiveled two hundred and seventy degrees, searching for the call’s source.
“Who is it? What happened? Did they attack?” the owl asked, now as alert as if he’d known Drago was coming. “What are you doing over there, Galadeen?”
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Sirehta’s brothers had spread the word among The Arids’ disaffected residents of a meeting that might save their futures. Now the meeting place was crammed with silent creatures. Cahret rose from his coil to face those who had answered the call.
“You are here because you hate tyranny, yet you do not know how to stop a tyrant. Alone, you hide in your own defense, but you believe you are too weak and helpless to protect anyone else.”
Shifting beneath a hard skin of shining scalloped scales, a pointy-faced insectivore lumbered to her feet. “Each of us grows to become our own protector. We can’t be responsible for anyone else.”
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“Man, maybe we should give Sam and her mom some privacy to work out their feelings. What about those snake guys King Arnie sent to The Arids on a secret mission? How’s that going?” You might be thinking.
“All righty, then. Meanwhile, out in The Arids…” Me, accommodating as ever.
~~~
“I hear you’ve been looking for me.” Girdliz’s soft, fuzzy voice drifted down from the boulder through heat-shimmered air onto Sirehta’s back as he slithered past over the relentless dust of The Arids.
Raising his head… his neck… his body to cock an eye at the stony little lizard, the viper nodded like a drowsy sunflower in a summer breeze. “Yes. I understand you are no friend of the General.”
Scrunching his forehead to scrape its scales together, Girdliz jittered from foot to foot. “He’s scary,” he confided. “Scary and mean.”
“And your fear makes you helpless?” Sirehta asked.
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Dinner among the recruits was a noisy, energetic affair. Sharing stories about their training — their failures and their triumphs — brought laughs and complaints, taunts and praise. Their natures began to sort them into a team of leaders and followers.
As word of Sam’s prowess spread beyond the stinging Fliers to the other training groups, she became the most sought-out trainee in the Meadow.
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Inside the hive, Sam slipped into a small chamber out of sight around a corner. The first creature to exit a short while later was a darkly exotic female, the like of whom Clifton had never seen.
“Come with me,” she said as she walked past him.
Feeling his heartbeat in his wingtips, Clifton stammered, “Uh, sorry. I… uh, I’m… waiting for someone.”
“Yeah. Me.”
“You’re Sam?”
“Yeah. What of it?”
“Nothing,” he assured her. “It’s just that… well, I was expecting a… a guy.”
Sam crossed her top arms and stuck her lower fists on her hips. “You males are all alike. Andre didn’t tell you he’s my little brother, did he? Well, half-brother really; Mother used to travel. Come on.”
Sam interrogated Clifton as she hurried him through a maze of empty honeycomb.
“So what’s this war about?”
Clifton felt a need to match his speech to the speed of his legs. “This crazy tyrant wasp in The Arids calls himself General Hai and claims he’s the rightful King of Fen. He wants to take back the Hive and take over Bog and the Freelands, too.”
“Is he?”
“Is he what?”
“The rightful King of Fen?”
“No!” Clifton exclaimed. “The Hive has been in my family for generations. There was a wasp uprising against Queen Lilian’s mother a long time ago, and that became the Great War. Another attack happened recently, but it was personal.”
Sam turned left into an unoccupied reserve storage room and shot Clifton a pointed look. “All wars are personal against somebody, aren’t they? What about the rest of the Kingdom?”
Clifton stood tall. “We support the Queen. We’re free to live the way we want to — within the law — but nobody thinks the laws are unreasonable. We’re happy.”
“Except for the wasps, apparently,” Sam commented.
“No,” he corrected her, “including the wasps who are citizens. Only the Great War’s exiles were unhappy. In fact, my aunt is engaged to a wasp.”
“What?”
“We have good lives in Fen,” Clifton told her. “I can’t imagine not having friends from other tribes.”
“We don’t need friends from other tribes,” Sam countered.
That belief must be so old nobody questions it, Clifton thought. “See, that’s what’s changing. If the General comes to the Freelands, it’s going to be a lot easier for him to take over if he only has to fight one tribe at a time. First he’ll conquer the wasps, then he’ll move on to the bees or the voles or somebody else. His army is greater than any of your tribes alone. If you guys don’t help each other, the Freelands won’t be free for long.”
Sam’s brow furrowed. After a longish pause, she issued an order.
“Take me to this Alliance of yours. I’m signing up.”
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“…and Lady Lucy is dead.” Queen Lilian repeated in disbelief.
“Yes, your Magnificence,” the drenched Hopper said as rain dripped from his antennae to the floor. “She didn’t know the Assassin had escaped from the Freelands and beaten her back to the Arids. The General caught her in her lie, gave the order, and the Assassin carried it out.”
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“If you know who I am,” Sirehta replied bringing his face close to the speaking crack in the wall, “you have the advantage. Come out and let yourself be seen. You will come to no harm.”
Two twitching antennae and a round little head poked out from the crevice. Locking eyes with the viper, the oversized hopper scaled the wall to rest on a protruding stone at the top, facing the snake full on.
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Flying to hang in front of Sirehta, the General scraped a sparking red powder from his back with a rear leg, and said, “To seal your commitment, each of you will submit to marking. Allow me to demonstrate. Pietro!”
Scuttling forward, the little Stinger stopped directly below him. The wasp descended to press his foot against Pietro’s back which began to sizzle and steam, leaving a grooved scar. The General rose, scraping his back again. It was only then Sirehta noticed the youth’s carapace bore countless identical marks.
“Is this agreeable?” the wasp asked.
Sirehta waited for each of his brothers to nod in approval.
“It is,” he replied.
Lowering his head, he resisted his instinct to snatch the General out of the air, and accepted the searing pain without flinching.
So it was with each serpent.
Instructing Sirehta to remain behind, the General divided the viper force into pairs and sent each team in a different direction.
“Your first assignment is to scout to the edge of the Arids and rid the region of any who don’t belong here. Report back to me at dawn.”
“How are we to know which don’t belong?” Cahret asked.
“Residents are marked. Report back at dawn.” General Hai retreated to the cavern without a backward glance, followed by his loyal throng.
The General’s response chilled Sirehta’s blood. Alone, he watched his brothers blend into the night until a tiny voice coming from a chink in the wall caught his attention.
Space, Time, and Raspberries 
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