The Secret of the Swamp King

by Jonathan Rogers

  Chapter Fourteen

  Seep Hole

  Aidan squeezed cool mud between his fingers and dug his blistered feet in the mud beneath the shallow water to soothe them. A huge mud-coated sycamore leaf was plastered on his scorched brow like a cooling rag. Tombro had led the troop of firefighters to this shady seep hole to recover from the rigors of their day. Three of Tombro’s hunting party stayed at the fire site to make sure the smoldering fire didn’t burst again into flame. But everybody else—Aidan, Hyko, Orlo, Pobo, Tombro, and Jerdo—was sprawled in the ankle-deep water of the seep hole, lolling in the mud.

  “This is living,” observed Pobo, glopping a handful of sticky mud onto his chest and slathering it around.

  “A leech!” squealed Orlo, raising his leg out of the muddy water. Aidan blanched at the sight of a glistening black sluglike mass, about the size of a pinky finger, attached to the feechie’s ankle. And he felt sick when Orlo pried it loose and popped it whole into his mouth.

  “Mmmmm,” Orlo murmured contentedly as he chewed. “Could things get any better?”

  “Lucky,” muttered Hyko as he checked his own arms and legs for leeches.

  Aidan was starting to doze, but he was awakened by a question from Tombro. “Hey, Pantherbane,” he called. “What’d you say your civilizer name was?”

  “It’s Aidan, Aidan Errolson.”

  “Errolson?” asked Tombro. “What’s that name supposed to mean?”

  “Well,” Aidan began, not sure what the feechie was asking, “it means I’m the son of Errol. That’s how all civilizer last names work. I’m Aidan son of Errol so my name’s Aidan Errolson. My father’s the son of Finlay, so his name is Errol Finlayson.”

  “So civilizer names don’t mean much of anything then,” observed Tombro. “Every feechie name tells a story—tells about something you done or something one of your people done.” He was up on one elbow now, the better to gesture while he talked. “Take my name,” he said, “Tombro Timberbeaver. My daddy won the swampwide log-cutting contest five years straight and never picked up a ax.” Aidan looked doubtful, but Tombro pressed on. “He had a family of beavers he trained. And when he told them beavers where to gnaw, they whirled in there and fairly made the chips fly! That’s how my people came to be called Timberbeavers.”

  Aidan smiled wanly. He wasn’t sure he believed Tombro’s story, but he didn’t want to offend by expressing doubt. He had already survived one feechie fight that day and didn’t feel up for another.

  “Ask Hyko,” suggested Tombro. “Ask Hyko where his last name come from.”

  “All right,” Aidan obliged. “Hyko, how’d you get your last name?”

  Hyko smiled. It was a favorite feechie pastime to tell name stories, and the story of the Vinesturgeons, Hyko’s clan, was always a favorite. “My granddaddy used to hunt sturgeon when they come upriver,” he began. “Had him a little flatboat, and he’d stand up in the bow like this here.” He got to his feet and stood in a crouch, feet apart. He raised his right fist to his ear as if he had a spear at the ready. “Them big, ugly fish’d come cruising up the river—some of them bigger than Granddaddy’s boat—and when he saw a big fin break the water…” He reared back and flung his imaginary spear at Jerdo, who happened to be lazing directly in front of him.

  “That’s when the fun would commence. ’Cause the spear had a long vine attached to it, and Granddaddy hung on to that vine for a owdacious ride. Up the river. Down the river. Across the river.” Hyko zigzagged around the seep hole, pretending to be towed this way and that. “He’d hang on, and that ugly old sturgeon would pull the boat ever which way until he just played out.

  “But Granddaddy was a little feller, and sometimes the big fish’d pull the vine right out his hands. He lost two fish in one morning that way—two good spears too. He told his fishing buddies he didn’t aim to miss the next one.

  “Sure enough, he speared him a third sturgeon that morning. And this’n didn’t pull the vine outta Granddaddy’s hands. It pulled him clean outta the boat, but Granddaddy wouldn’t turn loose. It dragged him underwater. Granddaddy still wouldn’t turn loose. Ever now and then his head popped out of the water, first here, then there, now way over yonder.” He pointed another zigzag. “But still he wouldn’t turn loose.

  “The sturgeon finally played out, and Granddaddy’s buddies fished Granddaddy and the fish both outta the river. They hung Granddaddy upside down from a tree limb just to drain all the water out him. But they figured out why he didn’t let go of that vine: He’d done tied it ’round his waist! He couldn’t have let go if he’d a wanted to.” Aidan and the feechies hooted with laughter. “And from that day to this,” concluded Hyko, “all my people been called Vinesturgeon.”

  Aidan applauded Hyko’s performance. He was fascinated by the feechies’ naming customs. “So Dobro Turtlebane,” he asked, “where does his name come from?”

  “Oh, the Turtlebanes are a clan of fierce turtle hunters,” answered Hyko, “the bane of turtles’ existence.”

  “How about your cousin, Theto Elbogator?”

  Hyko was ready with that story too. “There’s a crook of the Tam the feechiefolks calls the Elbow. Used to be a big alligator lived there. We called him the Elbow gator. He’d smash up boats that floated through, eat whatever folks fell out. Theto kilt that alligator. Ate him too. Ever since, his family’s been called the Elbogators. Before that, they was just plain old Sands, like Orlo and Pobo there.”

  Aidan was confused. “I thought you weren’t related!” he said, looking at Orlo and Pobo.

  “We ain’t,” answered Pobo. “Sands is just the name you get stuck with if you or none of your folks ain’t done nothing special.”

  “If you ain’t kilt no ravaging critters or won no contests or half-drownded yourself chasing after a fish, folks just call you Sands,” Orlo explained.

  “We’re just as common and no’count as dirt, I reckon,” moaned Pobo. “So folks calls us Sands.” Orlo and Pobo both looked to be on the point of tears, and the other feechies were quick to offer words of assurance.

  “You’ll get you a name one of these days.”

  “You boy’s ain’t all that no’count.”

  Hyko thought about giving Pobo a hug, but Pobo drew back as if to punch him in the nose. Hyko changed his mind, thinking it better to change the subject instead. “Pantherbane,” he called, “how come you’re out here nearbout to Feechiefen, instead of across the river where civilizers belong?”

  Aidan decided to tell the whole truth on that score for the first time since he left Tambluff. “I’m going into the swamp to fetch a frog orchid for King Darrow.”

  “You?” asked Jerdo, a little sarcastically. “Headed into Feechiefen alone?” The feechies all laughed at the idea of a civilizer—even Pantherbane himself—venturing into the Feechiefen alone.

  Aidan ignored their mocking laughter. “I was hoping I could find a feechie guide. Do any of you know where the frog orchid grows?”

  The feechies just shrugged. “I don’t know ’bout no frog orchid,” said Hyko. “The Feechiefen is full of orchids—pink orchids, white orchids, yellow orchids, purple.”

  “Some of them bigger around than your head,” offered Orlo. “Some of them would set on your finger-nail.”

  “There’s orchids that grows on the ground, orchids that grows on trees,” said Tombro.

  “Some orchids grows on other orchids,” Hyko continued. “I’ve seen orchids shaped like a turtle, orchids shaped like a gator’s mouth. There’s some that smells like rotten lizard eggs. But the one you call a frog orchid, I don’t know what that is.”

  Aidan’s face fell. He had assumed that any feechie he met in the swamp would be able to take him straight to the frog orchid. “So you’ve never heard the Frog Orchid Chant?” The feechies all shook their heads. Aidan recited a couple of lines to see if it jogged anyone’s memory: “In deepest swamp, in house of bears, / An orchid in the spring appears.”

  “House of bears?” sno
rted Jerdo. “That don’t narrow things down too much. Ever dry spot in the swamp’s a house for bears.”

  “Unless it’s talking about Bearhouse Island,” suggested Orlo.

  “Well, I ain’t guiding nobody to Bearhouse!” yawped Pobo.

  There was a general grumble of agreement.

  “Me neither!”

  “I heard that!”

  “Uh-uh, not me.”

  “I’m skeered of Bearhouse Island,” confessed Hyko, “and I’m fearless.”

  “Where’s Bearhouse?” asked Aidan.

  “Spang in the middle of the swamp,” Hyko said. “Five days’ poling from the swamp edge.”

  “That’s five days for a feechie, born and raised in the Feechiefen,” put in Orlo. “And that don’t count the time you’d spend fighting off the biggest alligators in the swamp.”

  “But even that ain’t the worst part of it,” continued Jerdo. “The worst part’s the feechiefolks that runs things on Bearhouse.”

  “Chief Larbo’s band,” Hyko explained. “And them boys is mean.”

  “Aren’t all feechies mean?” Aidan asked.

  “Well, sure,” said Pobo, with a hint of pride in his voice, “but we ain’t talking about regular feechie mean. Folks that’s too nasty to live with the rest of us, that’s who joins up with Larbo’s band.”

  “Folks what don’t care a lizard’s tail for the Feechie Code,” said Orlo.

  “Folks what don’t love their mamas.” Tombro shivered as he said it.

  The feechies’ description of Larbo’s band of outlaws made Aidan think of the attacks on Last Camp. “Somebody’s been attacking a hunting camp on the other side of the river,” he said. “I think it’s feechies. Could it be Larbo’s band?”

  “On the civilizer side?” Tombro shook his head. “Even Larbo wouldn’t attack on the civilizer side.”

  “But they shot from the treetops,” said Aidan. “And when they ran away, they ran away through the treetops. Civilizers can’t do that.”

  Hyko’s brow wrinkled. “That do sound like feechiefolks…”

  “You say they was shooting,” said Tombro. “What kind of arrows did they shoot?”

  “I saved one,” said Aidan. He pulled the white-feathered arrow out of his quiver and handed it to Tombro.

  “See there?” said Tombro triumphantly. “Cold-shiny arrowhead. Can’t be feechie.”

  “But that shaft…” Hyko began.

  “What about it?” Tombro retorted.

  “It’s black bamboo. Feechiefen’s the only place where black bamboo grows. A civilizer couldn’ta made this arrow.”

  Taking the arrow from Tombro, Orlo fingered the white feathers. “Egret feathers,” he observed. “Few days ago, me and Pobo come up on a egret rookery where somebody’d kilt all the birds and left them dead on the ground—just plucked out the big plume feathers and left them there.”

  “Pitifullest thing I ever seen,” said Pobo.

  “Plume hunters are shooting out the rookeries on the civilizer side too,” said Aidan.

  The feechies grew quiet, trying to figure out what it meant. Hyko was the first to speak. “I don’t know what’s going on exactly,” he admitted, “but I do know that there’s feechies breaking the code, and that brings trouble on every feechie in the swamp.”

  “Cold-shiny arrowheads …” Pobo’s lip curled in disgust. “Next thing, folks’ll be building civilizer houses all over the swamp and riding around on smelly horses and covering ever dry spot with furball, civilizer sheep. What kind of feechie would shoot a cold-shiny arrowhead?”

  “Maybe the same kind of feechie what shoots out a whole egret rookery,” answered Orlo.

  “And attacking civilizers on their side of the river …” Hyko shook his head. “That’ll just bring the civilizers to Feechiefen, with their horses and their cold-shiny spears.”

  “I wish they’d try,” boasted Jerdo, puffing out his chest. “Can’t no civilizers whup us in our own swamp!”

  “’Course not,” answered Hyko, “but we still don’t want a bunch of civilizers tromping around in the Feechiefen.” He rubbed his head nervously. “We got to hold a swamp council. We got to do something ’bout this before it’s too late.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Into the Feechiefen

  The swamp council was set to convene three nights later at Scoggin Mound, a tiny island one day’s journey into the swamp’s interior. Leaving before sunrise the day after the brushfire, the feechies dispersed across the northern part of the swamp to recruit feechies from various bands to participate in the council.

  Aidan traveled with Tombro. Scoggin Mound was Tombro’s home village, and it was his responsibility to get things in order for the council. He and Aidan were to go directly to Scoggin Mound, or as directly as the Feechiefen would let them.

  They continued due south through the pine flats. Then, around noon, Aidan noticed the vegetation abruptly changed. The open forest of big pines and wire grass was replaced by the enveloping greenness of lowland swamp. The ground grew soft beneath their feet and mucky more than sandy. Vines and thickets slowed their progress, and ferocious bugs descended from all sides.

  Aidan tried to take the insect bites in stride, but the stinging flies were worse than anything he had ever encountered in the land of the civilizers. He slapped, swatted, and waved his arms, but they kept coming. He could hardly pay attention to where he was going, and twice he fell, tripped by vines that snaked across the ground.

  The tanglewood closed in tighter as they pushed southward, and it soon became apparent that Aidan’s backpack couldn’t make the trip. Every low-hanging branch seemed to catch it and snatch Aidan backward, as if the forest itself were reaching out to hinder the civilizer’s progress toward its most secret places.

  When Tombro finished disentangling Aidan from a grapevine for the third time, he said, “That’s enough of that, Pantherbane. Either you leave that civilizer back-pouch, or I’m leaving you.” Aidan knew Tombro was right. But he still couldn’t bear the thought of leaving behind everything he had so carefully packed for his quest.

  “Whatever you got in there,” assured Tombro, “it ain’t what you need. You headed into the Feechiefen Swamp. Civilizer ways won’t be much good to you. Only feechie ways.” He casually waved away an attacking deerfly. “And the grace of the One God.”

  In spite of himself, Tombro did have a look through Aidan’s belongings, just to see if a few things might be of use. He opened Aidan’s water bladder and took a sip of the clear, pure water, fresh from the spring at Last Camp. He spewed it out and staggered around as if he had been poisoned.

  “Aaaach!” he choked, twisting his face into a grimace of disgust. “How can you drink that stuff?” He threw the water bladder over his shoulder. “Ain’t no need to haul that nasty stuff all the way to Scoggin Mound. Feechiefen’s full of water, nice black water. And there’s always a surprise floating in it, for extra flavor.”

  He found Aidan’s quill pen and palmetto paper in the backpack. He took a bite out of the paper, but chew as he might, he couldn’t get it to go down. “That stuff ain’t fit to eat,” he declared as he balled it up and threw it into the bushes. He held up Aidan’s pen and laughed. “You can get plenty of feathers in the Feechiefen. And a heap prettier than that’un. Ain’t no reason to bring one from over the river.”

  He uncorked Aidan’s inkpot and was about to take a swig when Aidan snatched it away from him and threw it into the woods to save Tombro the trouble. Tombro tried to throw away Aidan’s hunting knife, on the grounds that it was made of cold-shiny. But Aidan insisted on keeping it. The feechie relented but only after making Aidan promise to get a proper stone knife at the first opportunity. He did, however, convince Aidan to leave behind his bow and steel-tipped arrows, promising to get him a smaller feechie bow and arrows the minute they arrived at Scoggin Mound.

  Tombro laughed at Aidan’s rope, pointing out that every tree was festooned with vines of every size that would do j
ust as well. Everything else in Aidan’s pack met with similar ridicule, except the alligator jerky. That was something Tombro could see the use of.

  Tombro was also pleased to find the rattlesnake hide that Aidan had used for a fire beater the previous day. “Hold on, now,” he said excitedly as he unrolled the skin. The smoke and heat from the fire had crudely tanned it. Tombro rubbed the scaly hide between his palms, then snapped it taut, testing its strength. He held it up to Aidan’s waist. It was more than long enough to wrap around; it almost went around twice. And it was broad enough to cover halfway to his knees. “You got yourself a kilt,” he whooped, “just like a natural-born he-feechie. You don’t need that civilizer getup at all! You can dress like one of us.”

  Aidan saw the benefit in going native. Feechiefen was one place where it was best to blend in with the locals as much as possible. There was no need to draw attention to the fact he was a civilizer. Tombro went in search of just the right gray mud with which to coat Aidan, both for bug protection and camouflage.

  Meanwhile, Aidan took off his civilizer clothes and wrapped the snakeskin around his waist. It was crinkly and stiff, but it was comfortable enough, and in the sticky heat of the wetlands, it would be cooler than his civilizer clothes. Believing he struck a dashing figure as a hefeechie, Aidan felt an unavoidable twinge of pride. But he was eager for Tombro to return with the mud. The mosquitoes and biting flies were making a banquet of his bare chest and back.

  When Tombro came back with two big handfuls of foul-smelling gray mud, he hooted at the sight of the big white civilizer standing in his civilizer boots, holding his kilt up with one hand and furiously slapping at bugs with the other. But he applied the mud as quickly as he could. In spite of its smell, the mud soothed Aidan’s existing bug bites and protected him from getting new ones. In his side pouch, Tombro had an extra kilt clasp, made from the fangs of a rattlesnake. He fastened Aidan’s kilt with it, freeing the civilizer’s second hand.

  Tombro took a step back to look at his handiwork. “Not too bad,” he mused. “You’re the right colors, at least, and you smell a little more like a feechie.” He looked at Aidan’s close-cropped hair. “Your hair needs some help. But you can’t grow a mane like this in a day.” Tombro ran his muddy fingers along the matted hair that draped down his neck. “Maybe we can skin out a muskrat. You could wear its pelt for a wig,” he suggested. “When we get to Scoggin Mound, you can borrow one of my turtle helmets.”