The harvest stood at roughly seventy percent when the first one arrived.
Someone was stomping them flat and killing them, but it was no use. Instead, the call went out to collect them.
Torches were lit. Even if it was like water on a hot stone, it didn't matter.
The women were herded inside. Gaps in the houses were sealed with mud and cloth. "It'll be dark inside, but don't light any fires"—that was made perfectly clear. They were also told to have food ready that could be eaten at once. If insects squeezed through the gaps, they were to kill them on the spot.
Nianzhen—
the house couldn't hold all the harvested locusts. Barley was placed inside the temple. It was so narrow that no one could get in. Every gap was sealed with earth until not even a sliver of air could pass through.
Insect repellent was sloshed into every last house. Whether it would actually help, nobody knew.
The tents had far too many gaps. Useless for storage, they were repurposed as temporary refuge for villagers still outside.
Basen—
he had a great net. It was probably meant for fishing, but he swung it with wild abandon, snatching locusts out of the air. Then and there, he plunged the catch into a large water bucket to drown them.
Que—
leather bags were being distributed. Instead of rice, the villagers were given sweetened goat milk. Preparing for a long siege.
Rikuson—
he was going from house to house. Anxious voices came through the air holes. "It'll be all right," he reassured them, spotting new gaps where insects were getting through, swatting them away, and packing the openings shut.
Gradually, their field of vision narrowed.
In terms of color, it shifted from white to gray to a murky, muddy brown.
You could almost call it black.
Forget walking—they couldn't even open their eyes. Bitten, gnawed, torn apart. They couldn't even open their mouths. They managed to cover their faces with cloth.
Nothing but noise. They couldn't even tell who was saying what.
Covering their faces with both hands, they managed to barely pry their eyes open.
Basen was still visible, swinging his great net. As soon as it filled, he slammed it against the ground and trampled the catch. By now, the water bucket was overflowing with locusts.
There were those who went mad from the bites. Shrieking, they swung torches and blades in each hand. The locusts didn't die—they turned toward the villagers.
Que swiftly closed in and swept the feet from under the rampaging man. The fallen man was tied up with rope.
Rikuson was still making the rounds, speaking to each household. People go mad—they lose their minds without light. He was keeping that from happening.
But there were those whose voices could not reach.
A fire broke out in one of the houses. An old woman and a child burst out of the sealed-up dwelling, their faces twisted in agony. In the child's hand was a flint.
Inside lay freshly harvested wheat, and the fire blazed up quickly. In this season, far from the rainy period, the air was dry enough to burn well.
Bashin sprang into action immediately. He kicked the beam of the house. The structure, little more than a shanty to begin with, wobbled instantly.
"…!"
He was saying something loud. The water source was far away—was he suggesting they demolish the house to put out the fire? Bashin was the type to excel in moments like these.
Having torn the place apart almost single-handedly, he brought over a water bucket with dead insects floating in it and dumped it over the flames.
Sparrow shoved the sniffling child and the old woman into a tent. Everywhere was crawling with locusts, but anything was better than staying out there.
No one knew how much time had passed. It could have been a quarter of an hour, or several hours.
Everyone feared, hated, and then—
"Maomao."
She felt a tap on her shoulder.
She turned. Rikuson was there. Locusts clung to his hair, to his clothes. Maomao reached out to pull them off.
"Please stop making medicine. Your hands are going to be useless."
Maomao's hands were red and raw.
(Oh right.)
The insect repellent was nothing more than a placebo.
Maomao had been scattering insecticide with single-minded determination, over and over, but it was never enough. Locusts kept swarming in.
Why isn't it working, why isn't it working?
It was working. But they kept coming in greater numbers.
The starving locusts gnawed at even poisonous plants. They bit into people, gnawed at clothing, tried to eat the very pillars of houses.
Worse still, the fallen insects seemed to devour each other's bodies.
This was the madness born of overpopulation.
Maomao, too, had gone mad.
She kept gathering herbs effective against insects and boiling them down.
Huge chunks of ice floated among the locusts in the great pot, herbs shoved in root and all.
Whether her blistered hands had torn out the herbs barehanded, or whether the poisonous herbs meant to kill insects had gotten the better of her, it was impossible to tell.
Rikuson was still gazing at the sky thick with insects. There were insects in the sky, but she was looking even higher than that.
"A calamity for a calamity — if only it would come to pass."
She had no idea what that meant. But Maomao, too, stared up at the dark sky.
"Ouch!"
Something struck her with a heavy thud.
Wondering what it was, she looked down. A chunk of ice lay on the ground.
More pain lanced across her back and shoulders.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The air had grown cold.
"Hail?"
Large chunks of ice, frigid air. The insects' movements appeared to have grown sluggish.
"A calamity for a calamity."
No, this was no calamity. This was heaven's blessing.
Maomao arrived at a conclusion she would never normally reach.
"Fall! Fall more!"
Her madness veered in yet another direction. She leaned out into the hail, into the swarm of insects — not praying for rain, but praying for hail.
Neither the pain of insects biting nor the pain of hail striking registered.
It was the result of her desperate wish that something — anything — would put a stop to this endless swarm of locusts.
A tremendous impact cracked against the top of her head.
"Maomao!"
She remembered Rikuson rushing toward her, and that was all.
Maomao was struck by a chunk of hail and lost consciousness.