“Ahhhhhww!” all three feechies gasped in recognition. Their eyes, previously narrowed in suspicion, now shone with awe. “You the one what’s called Pantherbane, ain’t you?” asked Hyko.
“That’s right,” answered Aidan. “That’s the feechie name Chief Gergo gave me, since I killed a panther.”
“Everybody in Feechiefen knows about Pantherbane,” explained Pobo, growing more excited. “How he kilt a panther with a rock slinger and grabbled a catfish bigger than he was…”
Ever modest, Aidan clarified: “It wasn’t that big!”
“He won the gator grabble the first time he ever tried it,” added Orlo. Both feechies spoke of him as if he weren’t right there.
“It was because of Pantherbane that we got to hide in the Eechihoolee Forest and scare off them foreigner civilizers with the black shirts made outta cold-shiny.”
“I don’t reckon I’ve had more fun than that in all my born days,” said Orlo. He smiled, remembering the terrified Pyrthens crashing through the forest, bouncing off trees, and falling over roots to escape the feechie ambush. Orlo quoted the feechiefriend ceremony: “His fights is our fights, and our fights is his’n.”
Hyko touched his nose with reverence. “Pantherbane hisself nearbout tore my nose off!”
“Say, Hyko, that reminds me,” said Pobo. “You and Pantherbane ain’t finished with your fight yet.”
“Awww, Pobo,” groaned Hyko, “I ain’t so interested in fighting him now that he’s Pantherbane.”
“Don’t start that foolishness,” shot back Orlo. “You know the rules. You boys has swapped rude. It ain’t over till somebody’s whupped.” Neither Orlo nor Pobo was willing to be cheated out of a chance to watch a first-rate fistfight.
“Well, how ’bout we just have a rassling match?” suggested Hyko. Pobo and Orlo reluctantly agreed, and Aidan, questioning the need for such strict and unbending rules regarding rudeswaps and fistfights and wrestling matches, squared off again against the feechie with the bear-claw necklace.
Orlo laid the ground rules for the match. Actually, there weren’t really any rules, except that the winner would be the first to pin his opponent’s shoulders to the ground for a count of three. At the last minute, however, Pobo thought of a new rule, a second way to win the match: If either competitor could stuff his opponent’s head into a tortoise burrow, he would be declared the winner.
The combatants locked up for the start of their match, face to face, arm on arm, hands on one another’s shoulders. They circled one another once, then twice, looking for any advantage to press. Aidan was much bigger than Hyko, even though Hyko was quite big for a feechie, but Aidan knew better than to put too much stock in a size advantage. Feechies could whip a bigger man out of pure caginess and meanness, and they were much stronger than they looked.
“Stop dancing and start rassling,” called Orlo, who had been named the referee.
“You look just like a couple of civilizers,” jeered Pobo, but he looked a little sheepish when Orlo elbowed him and reminded him that one of the wrestlers was a civilizer.
Hyko made the first move. He lunged to butt Aidan on the bridge of the nose. But Aidan was too quick. He bobbed his head out of the way, then lurched backward, pulling the off-balance Hyko on top of him. He grabbed the wiry feechie and easily twisted him in a knot. It was Aidan’s signature move, the one with which he had won the kingdomwide wrestling tournament. Hyko’s arms and legs were bent back in a contortion that had always caused Aidan’s opponents to surrender in tears. But Hyko was so limber, he seemed not to be bothered in the least. Aidan clamped down harder, determined to break the feechie’s stubbornness. But Hyko paid him little mind. In fact, the strain of the difficult hold seemed to be greater on Aidan than on his supposed victim. His forehead glistened with sweat, and his grip grew slippery. Hyko, on the other hand, actually smiled as Aidan wrenched his limbs into ever more strenuous contortions.
Aidan hoped Hyko was about to beg for mercy when the feechie twisted his head around so that his nose was a mere inch from Aidan’s. And when the feechie opened his mouth to speak, the word he spoke sounded at first like a cry for mercy: “Hhhhhelp!” It was a cruel trick. Hyko’s breath amounted, really, to an unfair advantage. The long, breathy “Hhhhhelp!” was like the opening of a furnace in Aidan’s face, except that it wasn’t just heat that blasted forth, but the nose-stinging, eye-burning vapor of old fish and wild onion that was the defining characteristic of feechie breath. Aidan reeled backward in horror, clutching his mouth and nose, trying to get his wits about him.
Hyko wasted no time. He mounted a fallen log, leaped from it, and laid his staggering opponent low with a smart elbow to the back of the head. But as Aidan fell, he grabbed Hyko’s ankle and by sheer strength spun the feechie to the ground beside him. He flopped onto Hyko and pinned his shoulders to the ground.
Though Orlo was supposed to be the referee of the match, he was so enthralled with the rough-and-tumble action that a couple of seconds passed before it dawned on him to start counting. And when he did start, he counted very, very slowly: “Ooooooooonnnnne… .” The truth was, Orlo wanted to see one of the wrestlers stick the other’s head in a tortoise hole. To Orlo, that seemed like a wrestling match with real style. He didn’t want to see the match end with a pin. That was boring, unimaginative. And he certainly didn’t want to see the match end so soon. So he slowed the count even more: “Twoooooooooooooooo….”
Meanwhile, Hyko broke free and scrambled to his feet. He bulled Aidan to the ground, and the two of them writhed and rolled on the ground like a pair of fighting snakes. Orlo and Pobo cheered the match. Reluctant to take sides, they shouted words of encouragement without specifying whom they were intended to encourage.
“You get him, boy!”
“Stuff him down a turtle hole!”
“I saw that!”
The wrestlers migrated dangerously close to the cooking fire, which was still burning. Hyko’s flying leg scattered hot coals and burning sticks well beyond the banked sand that formed the boundary of the fire. But soon they flopped away from the fire. Hyko was getting the better of Aidan now and was having some success cramming the civilizer’s head into a tortoise hole. By Pobo’s rule, a head-cram was deemed complete—and the match over—when both of the losing wrestler’s ears were completely in the hole and not visible above ground. Hyko’s head-cramming task was complicated because the tortoise hole wasn’t as big around as Aidan’s head.
Aidan’s ears, like his mouth and nose, were full of sand, so it was hard to understand the chant Orlo and Pobo had struck up while he was being stuffed into a small hole in the ground. But when Hyko suddenly let go of his hair, Aidan raised his head and saw a broad sweep of wire grass being consumed by an orange flame, just a few feet from the cooking fire. Now he understood what Orlo and Pobo had been chanting: “Fire! Fire! Fire!”
Chapter Thirteen
Backfire
Aidan scrambled to his feet and ran toward the licking flames. He stomped at the burning grass, smothering the fire in boot-sized patches. The feechies joined, too, stomping as best they could. But even feechies aren’t tough enough to stomp out a wildfire with bare feet.
A steady breeze from the west fanned the fire and it grew, carrying flames from one tuft of wire grass to the next. Aidan fetched his extra tunic from his backpack and used it to smother flames, but it was too late for that. The fire had stretched itself into a long line marching eastward before the prevailing wind. A small holly tree had already caught fire and sent popping cinders out ahead of the fire line. Little troops of flames licked around the bases of the big pine trees, looking to burst into magnificent flame among the long straw of the overstory. But the old trees resisted, and the ground fires died at their feet.
The vanguard of the fire kept marching onward. Rabbits fled before it, as did pine voles, little ground sparrows, and other animals that depended on the high, thick grass for cover. Rat snakes and cotton mice, normally predators and prey
, entered a truce born of emergency and sought refuge together in the dark coolness of the tortoise burrows, deep below the crackling fire.
Behind the fire line a swath of charred and smoking ground expanded. But the fire was insatiable. It pushed eastward, devouring every blade of grass, every bush, every little sapling in its path. Aidan looked past the fire to the forest beyond. Dry wire grass waved as far as he could see—leagues and leagues of fuel for a fire that looked as if it might never stop.
The feechies were running in every direction, yelling and waving their arms but not doing anything helpful. They soon lost what little self-control they had and began crying and moaning, heartbroken at the prospect of their beautiful forest going up in flame. Hyko took it especially hard; his leg, after all, had kicked the burning log into the grass to set this conflagration in motion.
But they all snapped to attention when Aidan announced, “I know what to do.”
Hyko wiped his eyes and sniffed a long, wet sniffle. “You do?”
They didn’t understand what Aidan was doing when he pulled burning limbs out of the fire and handed one to each of them. But they were encouraged by the apparent sense of purpose with which he shouldered his pack and raised his own firebrand like a cavalry officer’s sword. “Follow me!” he ordered, and as he ran across the smoking ground toward the fire line, the three feechies followed.
“Ow! Ow! Ooooh! Ow!”
“Hooo! Hooo! Hot! Hot!”
The poor feechies didn’t have the benefit of a layer of boot leather between their feet and the hot ground, and the closer they came to the fire, the hotter it was.
“I’m ’bout to burn up!” complained Hyko above the crackle of flames. But neither he nor the other two feechies turned back.
“It’s cooler on the other side!” shouted Aidan. And with that, he leaped into the chest-high hedge of flame. The feechies closed their eyes and followed him.
“Haa-wee!” Aidan shouted exultantly when he made it through the flames. He turned around just in time to see Hyko throw down his firebrand and barrel into him. Civilizer and feechie fell to the ground.
“Stop it!” yelled Aidan. “Stop it!” But Hyko didn’t stop. He rolled Aidan over on his back as if to pin him. These feechies don’t know when to stop! thought Aidan as he struggled to get away. Then Orlo and Pobo jumped into the fracas and started slapping at him.
“What’s the matter with you!” Aidan screamed. He was good and angry now. A brushfire was bearing down on them, but all these feechies wanted to do was fight and wrestle.
“You’re on fire!” shouted Hyko, and Aidan realized it was true. The flapping tail of his tunic had caught fire as he passed through the flames. The three feechies rolled him back and forth and slapped at his smoking tunic until they were sure the fire was out.
But there was little time to reflect on the near disaster. Aidan relit his smoldering firebrand in the encroaching fire line and led the feechies onward, ahead of the fire, across the open forest. He didn’t stop until he was more than three long stone’s throws away from the fire line. He stopped in a spot where the grass was sparser and more sand showed between the clumps.
The feechies’ eyes grew wide when Aidan touched his firebrand to the wire grass and set it ablaze.
“What’s a matter with you!” barked Orlo, stomping at the burning grass. “I thought we was going to fight this fire, not feed it!”
“It’s called fighting fire with fire,” Aidan explained. He touched off another clump of grass. “A wildfire can’t burn what’s already burned.” He lit another tussock near his feet. “If we can make a backfire we can control, we might be able to kill the wild one.”
Hyko was starting to understand. “We burn out the grass from this end, and when the wildfire gets here, it’s got nowhere to go.”
“As long as this one doesn’t get away from us too,” cautioned Aidan.
Hyko jigged around excitedly. Like all feechies, he liked playing with fire and was glad to have a good excuse. “Hee-haw! This civilizer’s got what it takes!” He set his torch to a tussock of grass, then another and another.
“Whoa, horse!” laughed Aidan, stomping out one of Hyko’s fires. “Don’t make more fire than you can handle!”
Orlo and Pobo were skeptical of Aidan’s scheme, but in the absence of a better plan, they touched their firebrands to the grass.
The westerly breeze tried to push the backfire into the firefighters. Occasional gusts sent them scrambling, stomping out fresh blazes. Aidan stomped and leaped like a buck-dancer and made good use of the long, broad rattlesnake hide as a fire beater to smother the flames. Since his feet were protected by boots, Aidan took sole responsibility for killing errant sparks while Orlo, Pobo, and Hyko broadened the reach of the backfire. Back and forth he ran, up and down, responding to the urgent cries of his men when a stray clump of grass ignited or a popping cinder threatened to set a bush ablaze.
The occasional gust of wind was a crisis, threatening to send the backfire in the wrong direction, to make it an accomplice in the ravages of the wildfire. And as the feechie crew succeeded in stretching out its line of defense, Aidan had farther to run and more emergencies to deal with.
They seemed to be making progress. A band of blackened wire grass grew longer and broader, and though it was ugly, it represented the best hope that the grass for miles beyond would be spared the same fiery fate. The wildfire lengthened its reach even as it was getting closer. The backfire still wasn’t nearly long enough to contain it.
The strain of the work was starting to show on all the firefighters. The heat and smoke were exhausting. They were all blackened beyond recognition. And Aidan had been running in the smoke for close to an hour without a rest. He was getting discouraged, ready to surrender and let the wildfire burn to its heart’s content, when an unfamiliar voice sounded behind them.
“What’s going on here? Why you burning up my woods?”
The firefighters turned to see a hunting party of five feechies who had materialized from the forest. “Tombro!” Hyko shouted joyously to the strange feechie who had spoken. Tombro squinted, unable to recognize Hyko for the coating of soot and ash. “It’s me, Hyko Vinesturgeon.”
Tombro nodded his head slowly. “Yeah, I reckon you’re Hyko. But with that black face, you look more like a old hog bear.” He turned to the other two soot-blackened feechies. “Then you must be Orlo and Pobo?” He looked quizzically at Aidan, who was still running furiously up and down the line of the backfire and stomping at flames. Aidan was so thoroughly blackened that the newcomers didn’t even notice he was a civilizer.
“That’s Pantherbane,” explained Orlo. “The civilizer.”
The new feechies gaped in wonder. “The Pantherbane?” asked one of them.
“That’s right,” said Pobo. “Sure as you’re standing there.”
The hunters waved shyly at Aidan, who waved back, though he didn’t stop his frantic dance to do so. “We need help,” he announced. “A lot of help. We’re making a backfire.” He looked at the approaching wall of flame. It was only fifty strides away.
“Sure, sure,” nodded Tombro eagerly, and his four companions nodded with him. None of them understood what Aidan was talking about, but they were honored to help the famous Pantherbane any way they could. Pobo fetched firebrands for them. Aidan pointed to the wildcat hide that one of the new feechies wore for a cape. “Can you use that for a fire beater?” he asked.
The feechie hesitated a moment. The cape was his most prized possession. Tombro had little patience with such foolishness. “Jerdo, give me that cat hide,” he grumbled, unhooking the claw catch from around Jerdo’s neck. “If Pantherbane needs help, we gonna help him.”
The extra hands were a huge help to the firefighters who needed all the help they could get. The wind had picked up, and the wildfire was coming faster. Seven feechies were lighting fires now, and Aidan and Tombro worked frantically up and down the line, beating and stomping out fires that sprouted up ever
more quickly.
When the leading edge of the wildfire was a mere ten strides from them, Aidan called a retreat. He wasn’t sure what would happen when the two fires collided, and he didn’t want anyone to get hurt.
The wildfire roared over the smaller backfire like a tidal wave. It looked unstoppable, throwing sparks and cinders in front, little flaming outriders scouting out new grass to burn, new bushes to swallow up. The fire made its own wind, searing waves that pulsed at the nine firefighters, who winced not just at the heat, but at the dread of the wildfire jumping their hard-won firebreak and swallowing the vast expanse of forest behind them.
A few flying sparks and airborne cinders did clear the firebreak and land in the flammable grass beyond. But vigilant firefighters quickly squelched them before the fire could find purchase. Most of the sparks, however, landed in the blackened trail of the backfire, where they died for lack of fuel. The main body of the wildfire spent itself. It had nowhere else to go, no way to propel itself farther.
At the south end of the line, however, the wildfire outflanked the backfire. For a few tense minutes it appeared enough flames had survived to grow again into an unmanageable blaze. But Tombro dropped to the ground and started digging furiously with a flat stone, about the size of his hand, that he pulled from his side pouch. The other seven feechies had similar tools in their own pouches, and together they were able to dig just enough of a trench to slow the fire.
The fire jumped the feechies’ trench but not all at once. As the flames licked across, the firefighters were ready for them and snuffed them out. Aidan handed his snakeskin to Pobo and took off his own tunic to use as a fire beater. Jerdo’s cat hide was a blackened mess by now, but the three fire beaters were more than enough to contain the last remnants of the fire.
“Hee-haw!” yodeled Tombro. “We whupped it!”
Aidan surveyed the black and smoking scene before him. “We whupped it,” he rasped, almost too blistered and exhausted and thirsty to care. “We whupped it.”
The Secret of the Swamp King Page 9
