Chapter 24
Gregor stared at the ground for a while, before he realized he was looking at something he recognized. Obscured by the muck was the mirror he had given to Boots to play with. She must have dropped it. He pried it up and slowly wiped it clean on his shirt. "At least Boots and Hazard didn't have to watch the battle," he thought. Hazard hadn't seen his dad and Frill die. And Boots hadn't seen Gregor hacking away at the ants.
"Why did they do it?" Gregor said finally. "Why did the ants want to destroy the cure?"
"They view us as an enemy," said Ripred. "All of us warmbloods but the rats in particular. Hasn't helped much that the humans pushed us up against their borders." Gregor vaguely remembered Ripred talking about this, when was it? Before he had gone after the Bane. At dinner in Regalia, a long, long time ago. Ripred had accused Solovet of starving the rats, of driving them up against the ants' borders.
"It was an excellent plan, you have to give them credit for that," said Ripred. "All they had to do was come, obliterate this field, and their problem with the warmbloods would soon be only a memory."
"How did they know where it was?" asked Gregor.
"Oh, that wouldn't be hard to find out. Probably the whole Underland knew we'd gone after the cure. And you can't take a mixed pack, as Hamnet called us, into the Vineyard without causing a lot of gossip. All they needed to know was when and where we'd found the cure. Any number of insects would have been happy to supply that information, right, Temp?"
"Any number," agreed Temp. "Hated here, the warmbloods are, hated here."
"Why?" asked Gregor.
"We have the best lands. The most plentiful feeding grounds. What we do not have and covet, they say we take. We are thought to be lacking in respect for other creatures," said Nike with a sigh.
"Well, you are. I mean, you all treat the cockroaches like trash," said Gregor. "Like when everybody laughed at Temp at that meeting. Do you make fun of the ants, too?"
"The ants are a completely different situation. They have little sense of self. Everything they do is for the collective benefit of the colony. So you see there would have been no trouble sending an army into the jungle. If they lost a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand soldiers, it would be nothing if it meant our destruction," said Ripred. "And every one has such blind loyalty to the queen...No, we don't make fun of the cutters much. They can be too dangerous, as we have all just witnessed."
Gregor's eyes wandered across the field. It was littered with dead ants. But they had done their job. Not a stalk of the starshade was left standing.
"What shall we do now?" said Nike.
"What is there to do but go home, and choose a good place to die?" said Lapblood. "The starshade is gone."
"It does not make sense," said Luxa. "We did all the prophecy asked. Brought the warrior and the princess. Joined with the gnawers to seek the cure. Why have we not succeeded?"
"I do not know. But I do not believe we have ever understood the prophecy. Possibly we fail because we still do not see the when," said Nike.
"What?" said Lapblood.
"'You see the what but not the when,'" Nike quoted from the prophecy.
"I've seen the when. It was when the cutters destroyed this field, and we didn't see it coming," said Lapblood.
"Maybe, but if you are wrong..." Nike trailed off.
"What are you thinking, Nike?" said Luxa.
"Perhaps, the cure still exists somewhere. Perhaps there is more starshade right here in the Vineyard," said Nike.
"Doesn't seem likely somehow. Doctor Neveeve said there was only a single field. I think we're sitting in it," said Ripred. "If this is the cradle, then this was the cure."
"Then there is no hope at all," said Luxa.
A long silence followed. Gregor could hear the tinkling of the white flowers and thought how easy it would be to walk into them and never come out. So much easier than going back to Regalia to watch his mom die. So much easier than watching Ares, if by some miracle he still lived, give up when he found out Gregor had failed. He didn't know if he and Boots would ever make it home. Probably they'd been infected with the plague. Would that handful of leaves they'd eaten be enough to keep them safe?
"Not the cradle, unless this be, not the cradle," said Temp.
Since everyone had drifted into their own dark thoughts, Temp's comment made little sense. Besides, no one ever much listened to the crawlers.
"What, Temp?" asked Gregor, more out of politeness than anything else.
"Not the cradle, unless this be, not the cradle," repeated Temp.
It took Gregor a bit to swap Temp's words around and make sense of them. Unless this be...not the cradle. The last one who had spoken before Temp had been Nike, who had said there was no hope. Unless this be not the cradle. Yes, Temp was right....
In the cradle find the cure
For that which makes the blood impure.
The cure could still be somewhere if the Vineyard of Eyes were not the cradle!
"But this is the cradle," said Lapblood.
"Is it?" said Ripred. His eyes began to come back to life. "Who says it is? Some dusty book written by humans years ago? Why, we don't even really know if this is the same plague, or just one with similar symptoms. And if Temp is right, it would explain one thing."
"What?" asked Luxa.
"The point of having a crawler on this whole hellish trip! Honestly, how has he added to anything of significance? No offense, Temp, you've been a real champ about babysitting, but what have you contributed? Nothing! Maybe this is it! Your big moment! Maybe this is why Sandwich put you in the prophecy," said Ripred. "To see this wasn't the cradle!"
The big rat began to pace back and forth, the wheels turning in his head. "Let's roll it around the ground a bit and see where we get. All right, say this isn't the cradle, and the starshade wasn't the cure. We saw the what, which is still the plague, but not the when. So, what is the when? Think, everyone! Just say anything that comes into your head!" said Ripred. "You saw the plague but not when —!"
"Not when it would take my pups," said Lapblood as if she could not help herself.
"Not when the cutters would use it against us," said Nike.
"You saw the plague but not when—!" Ripred turned sharply to Luxa.
"Not when Ares got it," Luxa burst out. "I mean, if he caught it from those mites, none of us saw that. And not only when but why? Why don't Gregor and Aurora and I have it?"
"That's what Mareth and I were saying. Especially me. I rode on his back for days with open cuts on my arm and he was bleeding and...and...how can I not have the plague if he got it when the mites bit him?" said Gregor.
"Let's say he didn't," said Ripred. "Let's say your other mates, Howard and Andromeda, they caught it when they brought him in sick from his cave. So, where did Ares get the plague?"
"Well, the answer could be anywhere!" snapped Lapblood in frustration.
"No," said Nike. "It could only be somewhere Ares had been."
"Somewhere he had been and somewhere that the plague could exist," said Ripred. "Luxa, you know his habits best. Where would he have gone?"
"To find Aurora and me, probably," said Luxa. "Back to the Labyrinth. And his cave...the flier's lands...Regalia."
"No, he did not go into your city or the flier's lands," said Nike. "After his trial, no one saw him in either place."
"Yeah, he was afraid he'd be executed. He wouldn't even go to the hospital to have his wounds treated. He went...He went..." Gregor found his eyes locked on the pool of Hamnet's blood that had spread almost to his toes. He could see the light reflecting back from the red surface. It was strangely familiar. "Where did I see that before?" he wondered. And in an instant, everything began tumbling into place. Somewhere that Ares had been...and somewhere that the plague could exist..."Oh, geez. Oh, geez," he said.
"What, Overlander? What?" said Ripred.
But Gregor couldn't speak his thoughts yet. The red pool of blood in Neveeve's office...The fleas gorged on blood...The empty plague container...brand-new...because the old one had broken. Not that day, or the day before. Neveeve had said it had broken months ago. She had had the plague months ago, before Ares had even gotten sick!
"Ares went...he went to the lab...for his bites...to get medicine..." he stammered.
"Yes, so what?" said Ripred.
"Neveeve, she had the plague there," Gregor said.
"She had the plague germs there, yes, to study them, to try and find a cure," said Nike. "After the plague started."
"No, I think...I think she had it way before," said Gregor. "She said a plague container broke months ago. Ares must have been there in the lab when it happened! That's when he caught it! And that's why I don't have it! Or you, Luxa! Or Aurora!"
And Neveeve — jumpy, twitchy, nervous Neveeve. She wasn't just stressed because there was a plague, she was stressed because she had started it!
"That makes no sense. What use would the plague be to the humans?" said Luxa dismissively.
"A great deal, Your Highness, if they had the cure as well. They could wipe out every gnawer, every warm-blood who displeased them, safe in the knowledge that none of them could die!" said Ripred. "Oh, that's a fine weapon indeed to be brewing up in your labs."
"'The remedy and wrong entwine, / And so they form a single vine,'" said Nike with an agitated voice.
"That could be Doctor Neveeve. She could be the vine. Both the remedy and wrong in one."
"This seems like wild conjecture to me," said Luxa.
"Really? It seems very plausible to me. But I suppose if we can't convince you, we can't convince the other humans, either. Think harder, boy! What else do you have?" said Ripred.
What else did he have? There must be something. Gregor was clutching the mirror so tightly it hurt his hands. The mirror! He thought of the hours he'd spent before the bathroom mirror, holding up the prophecy, trying to make sense of it. "The mirror!" he said holding it up urgently for them to see. "You know how you need a mirror to read the prophecy? You have to look in a mirror...and when you do, you see...What do you see?" He flipped it around and pointed it at each of them.
"Yourself, you see, yourself," said Temp.
"It was the humans. They had the plague all along!" spat out Lapblood.
"No, even in the worst times we humans would not create something so destructive to so many. Something that could turn against us," said Luxa defiantly.
"Turn...yes, 'Turn and turn and turn again,'" said Ripred, his ears sticking up. "That's it! Don't you see? It's like Boots's annoying little dance." Ripred glared into the field. "We started out heading toward the jungle looking for the cure. But if you turn..." He turned 180 degrees. "And turn..." He swung back around to the jungle. "And turn again..." He spun halfway around again. "You're not facing the jungle, Your Highness. You're facing Regalia."