The Secret of the Swamp King (13 page)

“Well?” grumbled Doyno. “Let's hear it.”

Dobro closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and began again: “Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm … hmmm, hmmm, hmmm…”

“Confound you!” shouted Branko. “You stop that humming and commence to singing!”

“If you ain't singing real words by the time I count to five…” began Beppo.

Somebody butted in. “You can't count to five, Beppo.”

“Confound it all!” wailed Dobro. “I done forgot how the sadballad goes.”

None of the feechies was crying now. They hemmed Dobro in from either side of the singstump, and they looked ready for a fight.

“How can you remember all them preambulations,” asked Hyko, “and forget the main point?”

“You launched into a sadballad called ‘The Thing that I Done,'” pointed out Branko, “without you knew the thing that was done.”

Dobro looked more sheepish than ever. He now remembered that the one time he heard the sadballad sung, he had fallen asleep before it was over. Now Pobo scrambled onto the singstump to confront Dobro. His dirty face had clean streaks where tears had streamed down. “Do you mean to tell me,” Pobo began, “that you got me all wound up, worried sick over that person who done whatever he done, missing my own mama, and generally feeling miserable, for
nothing?
”

Dobro shrugged. “Sorry, Pobo,” he said. But Pobo was in no mood for apologies. He lunged for Dobro. Dobro ducked away from him, leaped off the singstump, and bulled his way through the encircling feechies to a nearby beech tree. He shinned up the tree like a squirrel, with hotly pursuing feechies streaming up behind him. But all stopped stock-still, even Dobro, when they realized the treetops were full of strange feechies retreating limb to limb away from them and deeper into the forest.

Aidan scrambled up the nearest water oak to join the pursuit through the treetops. But by the time he made the first leap, the sounds of the chase were far away. He was still a civilizer, after all. No civilizer, not even Pantherbane himself, could tree-walk like a feechie in a chase.

It was a moonless night; clouds had rolled in before dark to obscure even the faint light of the stars. Aidan climbed back down rather than risk further tree walking with no light and no feechies to guide him. He dropped from the lowest limb onto the leaf-strewn ground, just at the edge of the firelight.

Two shadows darted from behind the trees and closed on either shoulder. Aidan felt hot breath at his ears and smelled the unmistakably pungent odor of he-feechies.

“What sort of critter is this?” hissed a voice at his right ear. “He dresses like a feechie, but he wears foot covers like a civilizer.” He stepped on Aidan's boot.

“He tries to walk in the treetops like a feechie,” whispered the voice at Aidan's left ear, “but he moves like a civilizer.” The shadowy figure did an exaggeratedly stiff pantomime of Aidan's cautious movements in the treetop.

“He's got a turtle-shell helmet, but his hair looks like civilizer hair.”

“So is he a feechie or a civilizer?”

“I believe he's a feechielizer.”

“Whatever he is, I reckon the Wilderking will want to have a look at him.”

Aidan saw the glint of two shiny knives in the fading firelight. He opened his mouth to call for help, but a slimy, bony hand clamped over the bottom half of his face. One of his attackers tied his hands behind his back, and the other gagged him with a length of vine. They marched him to a flatboat waiting at the water's edge, then tied his feet, lifted him into the boat, and poled away noiselessly into the blackness of the swamp.

They poled throughout the night. Aidan crouched in the middle of the boat; his captors were at either end. The feechies never spoke a word, and Aidan, being gagged, couldn't speak either. He was alone with his thoughts for an entire sleepless night, wondering what fate awaited him.

At sunup, Aidan finally got a good look at his captors. They had a harder look about them than even the usual run of feechies. The feechie operating the push pole in the stern of the craft was as sharp-featured as a jackfish. His nose, his chin, and even the Adam's apple on his twig-thin neck all came to sharp points. The one sitting in the front had the look of a bottom-feeder. His rounded chin turned downward, taking his mouth with it. Even when he sat straight up, his lips pointed toward the bottom of the boat. His flattened nose had obviously been broken
more than once. It meandered down his face like the River Tam itself.

“Sunup,” announced the pole-pusher in a raspy voice.

“I ain't blind, Pickro,” grumbled Bottom-Feeder. “I can see the sun's up.”

“Just making conversation, Carpo,” Pickro answered.

But Carpo wouldn't let it rest. “I probably knowed it was sunup before you did.”

“How you reckon that?” snarled Pickro.

“'Cause I'm in the front of the boat.” Carpo showed all three of his front teeth in a pleased little smile.

“How'd you like to be even farther out in front of the boat?” asked Pickro, lunging to shove Carpo into the water. The boat lurched violently, and Aidan prayed for peace. Bound hand and foot, he didn't like his chances should he get dumped into the Feechiefen.

A gigantic alligator, much longer than the boat, opened its jaws in preparation for an easy breakfast. This had a sobering effect on Pickro, who returned to his post in the stern of the boat.

The flash of anger was over. “You reckon it's safe to float in the daytime?” asked Carpo.

“I reckon so,” Pickro answered. “We're a whole night's float from Scoggin Mound. Anybody out looking for this civilizer gots to be behind us. Can't be in front of us. We're better off to keep poling.” So they poled on, deeper into the dark heart of the Feechiefen.

Carpo looked back at Pickro. “Breakfast time,” he declared. “You hungry?”

“Starving,” answered Pickro. “I could eat a civilizer.”
Both feechies hee-hawed at this. Even Aidan couldn't help but smile a little, even though he was the butt of the morbid joke.

Carpo seemed impressed with Aidan's sense of humor. “How 'bout you, civilizer?” he asked. “You hungry?” Aidan nodded. Carpo pulled his shiny knife from his belt. Holding it up to the morning light, he admired its gleam almost involuntarily. Then he cut the vine gag so Aidan could eat.

“What you doing?” barked Pickro. “You want him hollering for help?”

Carpo looked in every direction. They were in the deep of the deep swamp. “What's he going to holler?” he asked. Then in a high, mocking voice he called out, “Help! I'm a civilizer! Save me from these mean old feechies!”

Pickro laughed. “You right, Carpo. Even if somebody heard him, they ain't likely to jump in on the civilizer's side, are they?”

When Carpo cut Aidan's wrist bindings, Pickro protested again. “Bless my liver! If you ain't the mollycoddlinest guard I ever seen! He's a prisoner, not a play-pretty!”

“Was you planning on feeding him his breakfast like a mama bird?” Carpo retorted. “He can't eat with his hands tied behind his back, can he?” He retied Aidan's hands in the front, an arrangement that Aidan found much more agreeable.

Breakfast was dried duckweed pressed into a flattened mass. Carpo pulled it out of his side pouch and passed it
around in palm-sized squares. It wasn't so bad—certainly not the worst feechie food Aidan had ever had. They washed it down with swamp water scooped up in their helmets.

While his captors chewed their breakfast and watched the swamp birds come to life, Aidan thought it was as good a time as any to see if his feechiefriend status would carry any weight with these feechies. He raised his bound hands in a series of elaborate morning stretches, in the hope that either Carpo or Pickro would notice the feechiemark on his forearm. But they just gazed blankly across the water.

Aidan decided to use a more direct approach. After all, they might retie the gag at any time. He might as well talk while he could. “You might not have known it,” he said as nonchalantly as he could manage, “but I'm a feechiefriend.” Carpo just grunted a little. Pickro said nothing.

Aidan pressed his case. “You know, ‘His fights is our fights, and our fights is his'n.'” The silence was deafening. But Aidan kept things rolling. “My feechie name's Pantherbane. You may have heard of me.”

“Sure we've heard of you,” said Pickro. It was the first time he had spoken directly to Aidan. “I reckon everybody in the swamp's heard of Pantherbane.”

At last!
thought Aidan.
Now we're getting somewhere.

“But Pantherbane's pretty old news down at Bearhouse,” said Carpo. “Now that we got the Wilderking on the island, we got some new rules. Wilderking give us a whole new way of doing things.”

Aidan held out his arms again and nodded at the red alligator scar on his forearm. “Does this feechiemark mean nothing to you?”

“In Larbo's band, we never put much stock in that kind of thing,” said Carpo. “Kind of did our own thing, if you know what I mean. When the Wilderking come to us last year, he was real interested in the feechiemark. He told us that if anybody with a feechiemark ever showed up in Feechiefen, we was supposed to bring him back to Bearhouse.”

Pickro picked up the story. “Word got around the swamp a few days ago that Pantherbane was going to be at a swamp council at Scoggin Mound. Bunch of us seen the chance to look in on the North Swamp boys and bring the Wilderking his feechiefriend all at the same time.”

“This Wilderking,” asked Aidan, “where did he come from?”

“Don't know exactly,” answered Carpo. “Chief Larbo showed up one day with a civilizer, and he told us he was the Wilderking. We'd all heard about the Wilderking when we was wee-feechies—how a civilizer king would rule over the civilizers and the feechies too. But none of us believed it much anymore.”

“Larbo explained how it was all true, and how this here civilizer was the man hisself,” said Pickro.

“That made us feel good,” explained Carpo. “Larbo's boys ain't always been the best-loved feechies in the swamp, so we was tickled to know the Wilderking come to Bearhouse Island and our little band, to get his Wilderkingdom started.”

“He talked so high-flown and smart,” said Pickro. “I could listen to the Wilderking talk all day long.”

“He give us a whole new way to think about ourselves,” added Carpo, “and the swamp too.”

“It's like the Wilderking says,” Pickro continued, “feechiefolks is good folks, with plenty of good qualities. Loyal, good fighters, we know the woods, got strong backs and a whole heap of energy. But most feechiefolks ain't got the ambition that God gave a salamander.

“But the Wilderking says that with a little gumption and discipline and a commitment to poor grass, we can make something out of ourselves.”

Carpo thought about what Pickro had said. “I don't think he said ‘poor grass.'”

“Sure he said ‘poor grass,'” said Pickro. “Wilderking says it all the time.”

“I don't think ‘poor grass' is right,” Carpo insisted.

“Commitment to progress?” suggested Aidan. “Was he saying commitment to progress?”

“Maybe that's it,” conceded Pickro. “Anyway, it's what feechiefolks need. Just look around you.” He waved his hand toward a stand of giant cypress. “Lot of folks'd call them trees. The Wilderking calls them natural race horses.” He leaned back and watched for the effect of his big words to sink in.

“Natural resources?” asked Aidan.

“Maybe that's it,” said Pickro. “But, anyway, you cut a few of them trees down, and a civilizer can build a house out 'em. And here's the best part: Civilizers will
trade you gold for a tree!” Pickro cocked an eyebrow at Aidan, judging the impact this revelation might have on the civilizer.

“But what do feechiefolk need with gold?” asked Aidan.

Pickro and Carpo looked at each other for a moment. They had never thought of that before. Finally, Carpo offered a feeble answer: “Because it's shiny! Ain't you never seen gold before?”

A snowy egret glided overhead. Pickro aimed an imaginary crossbow at it and shot. “Plume birds is a natural race horse too. We send plumes to the civilizers, and they give us arrows, spears, knives—not the sorry stone kind like the other feechies use but the kind made out of cold-shiny.”

Aidan's eyes narrowed. “What civilizers do you trade with?”

Pickro shrugged his shoulders. “I don't know. The Wilderking knows them. I think some of them live across the ocean.”

Pyrthens,
thought Aidan.
I knew it.

Pickro shook his head and chuckled. “Can you believe anybody'd be so thickheaded to trade you cold-shiny for something as useless as a bird feather?”

Carpo spoke in a singsongy voice:

Carpo's eyes gleamed like burnished steel. “And now the Wilderking's got feechies making their own cold-shiny on Bearhouse Island.”

“What are you going to do with that much cold-shiny?” asked Aidan.

“We going to rule this swamp,” answered Carpo, rubbing his hands together. “That's what we going to do with it.”

Carpo and Pickro seemed almost intoxicated by the idea of that much power. They couldn't keep it a secret. “The other feechie bands is going to find out what the Bearhouse boys is made of,” said Pickro. He pounded his chest.

“They not gonna hold their head so high,” added Carpo.

“And then,” whispered Pickro, as if someone might overhear, “after the Wilderking makes Larbo the king of the Feechiefen, a whole army of feechies gonna march on the civilizers.”

“Pickro, I don't think we're supposed to be telling folks about that,” warned Carpo. “Especially not civilizers.”

“Who's he going to tell?” asked Pickro. “He ain't never gonna leave Bearhouse Island. Anyway,” he continued, “Wilderking says the civilizers is gone soft. Says they couldn't stand up to a real feechie army.”

“You seen what we done to them foreign civilizers at the Eechihoolee,” said Carpo. “And that was without no training or cold-shiny. Wilderking says that was the powerfullest civilizer army in the world we whupped.”

“He told you true,” said Aidan, but he wasn't thinking about the Eechihoolee. He was wondering whether he could stop the lunatic posing as the Wilderking.