Chapter 15

"Ah, geez, they're going to eat her!" thought Gregor, springing to his feet and smacking his head into the ceiling. "Ow!" It had been a mistake to take off his hard hat to sleep.

A hand grasped his shoulder to steady him, and he made out Vikus with a finger pressed to his lips. "Sh! Halt them not!" he whispered urgently.

"But they're going to hurt her!" Gregor whispered back. He hunched down and put a hand to his head. He could feel a big lump already rising out of his scalp.

"No, Gregor, they honor her. They honor Boots in a manner most sacred and rare," whispered Solovet from somewhere next to Vikus.

Gregor looked back at the roaches and tried to make sense of it. Boots didn't seem in any immediate

danger. None of the bugs was actually touching her. They just swayed and turned and bowed in their slow, rhythmic dance. There was something else, the solemnity of the scene, the complete silence, the absorption. It hit him: The roaches weren't just honoring Boots -- they were worshiping her!

"What are they doing?" Gregor asked.

"It is the Ring Dance. It is said the crawlers perform it only in the greatest secrecy for ones they believe to be chosen," answered Vikus. "In our history, they have only performed it for one other human, and that was Sandwich."

"Chosen for what?" whispered Gregor, worried. He hoped the cockroaches didn't think they could keep Boots just because they did some dance around her.

"Chosen to give them time," said Vikus simply, as if that explained it all. Gregor translated that in his head to mean "chosen to give them life."

Maybe it was something simpler. From the moment they'd landed in the Underland, the roaches had felt a special connection to Boots. If they'd just found him, he'd have had a one-way ticket to the rats, end of story. But Boots had befriended them so quickly. She hadn't been repulsed or superior or scared. Gregor thought the fact that she had liked the roaches had made a great impression on them. Most of the humans had such a low opinion of them.

Then there was that strange thing about recognizing Temp ... he still couldn't explain that.

The roaches did a series of turns and landed flat on the ground facing Boots. Then, circle by circle, they melted away into the darkness. Boots watched them go without comment. When the chamber had cleared, she gave a head-splitting yawn and padded over to Gregor. "I seepy," she said. Then she curled up against him and nodded right off.

Gregor took the flashlight from her hand and in its beam saw that all the other Underlanders were awake, staring at them. "She's sleepy," he said as if nothing unusual had happened. He clicked off the light.

When they woke, the roaches announced that Temp and Tick would be joining the quest. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that they were coming because of Boots.

Gregor was torn between being very proud and wanting to laugh his head off. It turned out Boots was special weaponry after all.

The party quickly readied itself to depart. Temp and Tick absolutely refused to ride on any bat without Boots. This caused a brief argument because Boots had to ride with Gregor and that meant one bat had to carry both the Overlanders and the roaches. The bats could handle the load, but it meant four inexperienced fliers would be alone on one bat.

Vikus gave the job to Henry's big black bat, Ares, as he was both strong and agile, and Henry rode with Luxa. Ares was instructed to fly above the others just in case one of the roaches fell off and had to be caught before it hit the ground.

None of this talk seemed to relax Temp and Tick, who were obviously terrified at the idea of soaring through wide-open spaces high above the ground. Gregor found himself trying to reassure them, which was ironic since he didn't much like flying, either. He also wished he could have any bat but Ares. Henry's bat probably disliked him as much as Henry did.

They didn't have time for breakfast, but Mareth passed out chunks of cake and dried beef to eat on the journey. Vikus told Gregor they would be flying several hours before they took a break, so he put a second diaper over Boots's first one. He also repositioned her in the backpack so that she was looking backward instead of over his shoulder -- that way, she could chatter with Temp and Tick and maybe distract them from their fear.

Gregor gingerly climbed up on Ares's back and dangled his legs off the bat's shoulders. Temp and Tick scrambled on behind and clung to Ares's back fur for dear life. Gregor thought he saw the bat wince a little, but Ares didn't say anything. The bats hardly ever spoke out loud, though. It seemed to require a lot of effort. They probably talked to one another in squeaks too high for human ears to hear.

"We must now travel to the land of the spinners," said Vikus. "Remember how frequently the rats patrol this area."

"Fly close together. We may have need of one another's protection," said Solovet. "To the air!"

The bats took off. Boots was pleased as punch with her new traveling companions. She sang her whole repertoire of songs, which included "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star"; "Hey, Diddle, Diddle"; "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider"; "The Alphabet Song"; and, of course "Patty-Cake, Patty-Cake." Having finished, she sang them again. And again. And again. On about the nineteenth round, Gregor decided to teach her "Row, Row, Row Your Boat" just for a little variety. Boots picked it up immediately and then tried to teach it to the roaches. She didn't seem to mind their off-key voices, although Gregor could feel the muscles in Ares's neck getting tighter with each verse.

Gregor could tell the roaches' domain sprawled over a much larger area than Regalia or the bats' caves. The humans and bats had small, densely populated lands that could be protected easily. The roaches lived across miles and miles of the Underland.

How did they keep themselves safe from attack with all this space to defend?

The answer came to him as they flew over a valley that held thousands of roaches. The crawlers had numbers -- huge numbers, compared with the humans. If they were attacked, they could afford to lose more fighters. And with so much space, they could retreat endlessly and make the rats follow them. Gregor thought about the roaches in their kitchen at home. They didn't fight. They ran for it. His mom swatted a lot of them, but they always came back.

After what seemed like an eternity, Gregor felt Ares coasting in for a landing. They settled down on the bank of a lazy, shallow river. Gregor hopped off and onto something soft and spongy. He reached down to investigate, and his hand came up filled with a grayish-green, leafy vine. Plants! Plants grew down here without the help of the gaslight the Underlanders used.

"How does this grow without the light?" he asked Vikus, holding out a handful of the stuff.

"It has light," said Vikus, pointing into the river. "There is fire from the earth." Gregor peered into the water and saw tiny jets of light shooting out of the river bottom. Fish darted in and out of a variety of plant-life. The long vines of certain plants crept onto the banks.

"Oh, they're like miniature volcanoes," thought Gregor.

"This river runs through Regalia as well. Our cattle live off the plants, but they are unfit for humans to eat," said Solovet.

Gregor had been eating beef jerky all morning without wondering what the cows ate. He could probably spend years in the Underland figuring out how it worked. Not that he wanted to.

Cockroaches who were fishing along the banks had a quick exchange with Temp and Tick and pulled several large fish out of the river with their mouths. Mareth cleaned them and set them on the torches to grill.

Gregor set Boots down to stretch her legs and asked the cockroaches to keep an eye on her. They ran up and down the bank steering her away from the water and letting her ride on their backs. Word of her arrival spread quickly, and soon dozens of bugs appeared. They settled down just to watch "the princess."

When the food was cooked, Vikus made a point of inviting Temp and Tick to join them. "It is time," he said in response to Henry's frown. "It is time those of the prophecy became of one journey, of one purpose, of one mind. All are equal here." Temp and Tick still sat off to the side, behind Boots, but they ate with everyone else.

"It is not far now," said Vikus, pointing at a small tunnel. "One could make it shortly even on foot."

"To my dad?" asked Gregor.

"No, to the spinners. We must persuade two to join us on the quest," said Vikus.

"Oh, yeah. The spinners," said Gregor. He hoped they were more into the trip than the roaches had been.

They were just finishing up the meal when all five bats jerked their heads up. "Rats!" hissed Ares, and everyone started moving.

Except for Temp and Tick, all the roaches vanished into the shallow tunnels that led away from the river-bank.

Vikus thrust Boots into Gregor's backpack and shoved them toward the tunnel he had pointed out earlier. "Run!" he ordered. Gregor tried to object, but Vikus cut him off. "Run, Gregor! The rest of us are expendable; you are not!"

The old man vaulted onto his bat and joined the other Underlanders in the air just as a squad of six rats stampeded onto the riverbank. The leader, a gnarled gray rat with a diagonal scar across his face, pointed at Gregor and hissed, "Kill him!"

Stranded on the riverbank without a weapon, Gregor had no .choice but to sprint for the mouth of the tunnel. Temp and Tick scurried after him. He glanced back for a second and saw Vikus knock the scarred rat into the river with the hilt of his sword. The other Underlanders, blades flashing, were attacking the five remaining rats.

"Run, Gregor!" ordered Solovet in a rough voice so unlike the quiet one he was used to.

"Make haste, make you, make haste!" urged Temp and Tick.

Using his flashlight, Gregor started down the tunnel. It was just high enough that he could run upright. He realized he had lost Temp and Tick somewhere and turned back to see the entire tunnel, floor to ceiling, filling up with roaches. They weren't attacking the rats. They were using their bodies to form a barricade that would be nearly impossible to penetrate.

"Oh, no," thought Gregor. "They're just going to let themselves be killed!" He turned back to help them, but the roaches nearest him insisted, "Run! Run with the princess!"

They were right: He had to go. He had to get Boots out of there. He had to save his dad. Maybe he even had to save the Underland from the rats, he didn't know. But right now he could no more get through the fifty-foot wall of cockroaches to fight the rats than the rats could get to him.

He took off down the tunnel, setting a pace he thought he could maintain for half an hour.