Chapter Seventeen - Mem Mumbles

Mem fought the stupid tent flaps for a moment before bursting out into the camp. She caught her foot on some rock, and went sprawling forwards.

Mem was long used to crashing on the ground face first though, so she didn’t even curse the rocks she landed on and all of their parents before scurrying to her feet and looking around.

Some of the humans around the fire had seen her trip, but they weren’t laughing or anything.

They’d laughed the first few times she fell, but that laughter soon ended. Mostly because she tripped over nothing so often that it stopped being funny.

Mem found this sad. She liked it when people were laughing, even when they were laughing at her. Her sisters were always laughing at her too, so she had long grown used to that kind of thing, and if all it took to make people laugh was Mem being herself, then that was for the best.

“Hello ma’am,” the mean cultivator said.

He was mean because he never laughed when Mem tripped over something, or when she dropped something, or when she forgot that she was supposed to be sneaking and asked a question. Instead, he always sneered at her and muttered rude things under his breath.

“Mem says hi,” she said while waving a scythe left and right. That was how the little humans said hello from far away. “Is food ready?”

The mean cultivator closed his eyes and sighed. “No. Food is... the food isn’t ready yet.”

“Oh, okay,” Mem said. She shifted from one side, then to the other.

Mem knew that she wasn’t a very good mantis. That was why she accepted the offer from the Ashen Forest sect. They gave her a whole bunch of humans, all of them were nice people they had grabbed from some little villages and trained up, as well as a much stronger cultivator. People to help her hunt down that no-good mean undead that Mother was secretly worried about.

Mem thought that it was her chance to become a better mantis. Sure, she was bad at sneaking, and hiding, and she wasn’t good at fighting, but maybe she could be good at people instead!

She was sad to learn that she wasn’t very good at people after all.

She tried her best. She knew a little bit about all the humans in her camp, and she hadn’t eaten a single one!

Bam had blown up some of hers, and Nom said she didn’t eat any, but when Mem had asked she had a leg still in her mouth.

Mem liked her sisters sometimes, but they could be a handful. And she didn’t even have hands, so that was even more than a handful. Probably. Mem wasn’t sure.

Sighing, Mem squatted down and raised her head to look into the sky. The mean cultivator huffed and walked off to do mean cultivator-y things, but Mem didn’t mind. She had given up trying to be his buddy.

The sky was pretty. All orange and dark, with a few twinkling stars winking at her from behind the clouds.

She wished that she could blink her eyes like the humans could, that way she could wink back at the stars.

“Miss Mem?”

Mem looked down to see one of the younger humans approaching her. He had a little smile, and was holding a steaming bowl in an outstretched hand. She recognized this human. He was one of hers, a boy they’d grabbed at some village and turned into a soldier. She wasn’t sure how that worked, exactly. It was a human thing.

Was it time for food already? “For Mem?” she asked.

The boy nodded, and didn’t flinch when Mem carefully took the bowl from his hands. He smiled at her some more and scampered off to be with the other humans in the camp.

She wished she could be with them, close to their little fire, and to all the talking and eating. It looked warmer there. But the mean cultivator said that she wasn’t allowed to do that. It wasn’t right for someone important like Mem to be with unimportant people.

She didn’t really understand. Mem had never felt important before. And sometimes the humans sang and told jokes, and Mem liked singing and hearing jokes. She laughed, even when she didn’t know why the jokes were funny.

Raising the bowl to her mandibles, Mem opened wide and slurped as much of the broth down as she could. Some of it ran down her mouth and onto her chest, but most of it reached her tummy where it warmed her up a little.

It was a nice night after all.

A scream sounded out in the distance, but cut-off quite suddenly. Not from her camp, but from another one not too far away.

Mem looked at her humans, but they hadn’t noticed.

She considered telling the mean cultivator, but he would be mean about it and... and she was allowed to go take walks. She wasn’t Gon, who often left and didn’t come back for a long time.

Walking all the way around the tents, Mem kept low and skittered from rock to rock. Her sisters' camps weren’t too far apart. Mostly because the cultivators from the Ashen Forest sect that came with them didn’t want them splitting up too much.

One of them, the cultivator that was with Man, was all big and serious and important in his sect, so he told the others that they would be best sticking together. Mem was alright with that. It meant that she got to stay close to her sisters.

She used to follow her sisters around a lot whenever they left on adventures or to hunt. She was one of the youngest though, and that meant that on top of being Mem, she was also very weak compared to her older sisters.

They always got mad when they found Mem tailing after them. Now, with the biggest, meanest sect man telling them to go together, Mem could be close to her sisters without it being her fault! It was nice.

She heard some people talking to each other, and as she approached the camp, she noticed some of the humans standing up and looking around. It was Gon’s camp, which meant that the camp was pretty much being led by Gon’s mean cultivator. Only... they didn’t seem to be around?

Mem found a nice perch on some rocks that jutted out of the ground a little. It was a quiet spot, where she had enough height to see Gon’s camp. To the back was her own camp, then Nom’s and Bam’s, both closer to the water. Man’s camp was a little ways to the right.

Mem leaned forwards as she took in the human’s settling back down. A group of them headed out into the rocky terrain farther from shore. Mem suspected that that was where the scream had come from.

She stretched up a little to see the men, even when they were away from the light of the camp.

They stopped after a while, and the four of them gathered around something on the ground. One of them bent down, then picked up something long and narrow. An arrow?

Mem jumped on the spot when two of the men sprouted more arrows and tumbled to the ground. Things, thin and fast, jumped out of some bushes nearby and crashed into the other men before they had time to scream.

She saw weapons rise and fall, then nothing.

“Mem doesn’t like this,” she muttered.

Jumping off her perch, she skittered down the side of the rocky outcrop, and moved over towards Gon’s camp. One of the humans there saw her. “Hey there!” he called out.

“It’s just Mem,” she said as she came closer. With a gesture, she pointed towards where the others had gone. “There’s things in the dark.”

The humans around the fire looked at each other. “Nah, Wu Lan just tripped or something,” one of them said.

Mem didn’t understand. “There’s things in the dark,” she said. “With weapons and arrows.”

A tent flapped open, and Gon’s cultivator stepped out. “What’s all this racket?” he asked.

Mem pointed to the darkness. “Things,” she said. “Mem saw them.”

He stared at her, then scoffed. “Oh, it’s you,” he said. “Go back to your camp. I’ll handle whatever’s going on.”

Mem shifted. She did want to go back to her camp. But there were things in the dark. She considered what to do for a moment, the indecision rooting her to the spot.

“Emperor, why did the dumb one have to come bother me,” the cultivator muttered. “Look, Mem, go back to your camp. Do you know where it is?”

“Mem does,” Mem said. “I’m leaving now. Just be careful with the things in the dark.”

“Yes yes,” he said with a roll of his eyes.

Mem didn’t like it when the humans rolled their eyes like that. They always did it when Mem had a hard time understanding things and asked too many questions. “Okay,” Mem said. “Bye.”

She scurried off, back towards her camp. But she was clever about it and made sure to listen hard and avoid any bushes on the way back. When she heard someone choking on something at Gon’s camp, she just kept moving. The cultivator would take care of it.

Mem barged into her camp and moved over to the fire in its middle. “Mem thinks we should go,” she said.

The humans, her humans, looked at her with obvious confusion. Her mean cultivator was the first to reply. “It’s night, ma’am. Can’t we wait until morning?”

Mem considered it. “No. Mem thinks we should go now.”

The mean cultivator crossed his arms. “And why’s that?”

Mem gestured back to Gon’s camp. “There’s things in the dark.”

“Shouldn’t we stay near the fire then?” one of her humans asked.

Mem thought about it. That would let them have some light, and humans needed that to fight well. But she had the impression that the things in the dark knew where they were. A mantis didn’t like being prey. It was meant to be the other way around. “No,” Mem said. “We go. Please.”

The mean cultivator shook his head, but Mem’s humans were faster. They picked up their long pointy sticks and some of them started belting on armour in a hurry. It only took a minute or two for all of them to get ready.

“That way,” Mem said, pointing towards the water, and towards the two camps in that direction. If she was with Bam and Nom, then maybe they could find out what was happening. Her sisters were a lot better than her at everything.

“Spent a day marching with peasants and now I’ll be up half the night,” Mem’s mean cultivator muttered as he rose up. “Fine, let’s go take a stroll.”

Mem’s mandibles twitched in a way she hoped looked like a smile. “Mem will keep you safe,” she promised.

They left the camp, some of her humans carrying torches, and headed towards the beach. Mem kept ahead of her group, eyes twitching this way and that to spot anything in the dark, but other than some strange bug way up in the sky, there wasn’t anything to see.

She was beginning to wonder if she made a mistake when she arrived near Nom and Bam’s twin camps.

“What are you doing here?” Nom asked as she held what looked like a rabbit close to her mandibles.

Mem shifted and looked to the ground. “There’s things in the dark,” she said.

“Are you a mantis or a wet kitten?” Nom said. “I wish you were a kitten, then I’d eat you. Stupid Mem.”

Mem made herself smaller. “Sorry Nom. But I was scared.”

“Stupid and coward,” Nom said. “Did you bring all your humans too?”

Mem nodded. “Don’t eat my humans. It’s not allowed.”

Nom’s mandibles twitched. “I won’t,” she said.

Mem was determined to keep an eye on her humans. “We just need to stay here until we’re sure there’s nothing in the dark,” Mem said.

“Whatever,” Nom said. She looked like she was about to dismiss Mom again when someone screamed.

“Undead!” came the horrified call of someone near the shore. “There’s undead in the water!”

Mem felt her blood chill, even as Nom cheered and raced back to her camp. She wasn’t ready to fight undead.

Still, she had humans to protect. It was her job!

Mem nodded. She could do it!

***