Tom Piccirilli - Emerald Hell

They were so used to the semi-solid, soft ground that they hardly threw any mud as they went by. They moved with ease through the runty bay bushes and matted catclaw thickets. They slithered and hopped, bounded and rollicked, and kept up a steady stream of patter in what sounded like a half-dozen different languages. Granny Lewt's ears weren't helping him at all with understanding any of them, and he was wondering if the magic might be wearing off a little by now.

Luckily Fishboy Lenny didn't happen to look like a catfish. Hellboy was thankful for small graces, thinking, Jesus, no more catfish for the time being, all right? The kid just looked like your average fish, with flippers instead of hands, two slashes of nostrils where a nose ought to be, and a mouth that was hardly more than a small hole through which he made lots of happy noises. The boy also had vestigial gills just under his shrunken ears.

Fishboy Lenny's name was the only one he'd managed to catch, although all the kids had introduced themselves. But Lenny, he just swept up through the mud and said,"Fweep mwah fsshhh. Lenny." So there it was.

Every now and again one of the kids would turn back to Hell-boy and playfully grab his hand, trying to get him to move along a little faster.

But he didn't feel all that hot to trot at the moment and Lament looked even worse. The hillbilly's hair was singed, his wounds still bled a bit, and he had welts across his face and burns on his arms and hands. None of it slowed him up much though, and he pulled out his mouth-harp and started to play a tune.

The girl on Lament's shoulders knew the song and began to sing, keeping time by tapping at his chest with her soft unformed feet. Soon the rest of the children joined in on the liking melody. Hellboy didn't understand the words at all.

When Lament finished and put his mouth-harp back in his pocket, the girl gestured to be let down. Hellboy lifted her off Lament's back and put her on the ground, where she swung herself along wriggling and using her arms as crutches. Soon the pumpkin-headed kid and the kid with insectoid eyes each gripped one of her hands and carried her between them.

Lament stopped and threw a shoulder against a hurrah bush, breathing sharply. Hellboy asked him, "You need a rest?"

"I could use hot meal," Lament said, "a bubblebath, a lengthy foot massage, a long drink of moon, some dry long Johns, and a warm downy bed, but even without them kind privileges I s'pect I'll survive." He turned and smiled. "How you holdin' up, son? Wishin' you'd never had no truck with us southern folk?"

"I've had a lot of truck with southern folk before," Hellboy told him,"but none of that trucking ever turned out quite like this."

"Make your memoirs interesting though."

They trudged on. They'd already walked at least a couple of miles, and Hellboy kept wondering about the kids' parents, if they'd be worried. They had to be, right? If all the noise and fire and smoke hadn't drawn them out to the Mother Tree, there still would've been a chance they'd wound up on gator ground or in some other kind of trouble. Lost in the woods, attacked by wolves, bitten by snakes. He mulled and started to brood a touch.

Lament picked up on it right away. "What's the matter with you?"

"What are they doing out so far from home?"

"What do you mean? This is home. They were just playin'."

"What were they doing out there by the flats?"

"They heard tell that some swamp men got drawn away from their homes and decided to take a looksee for themselves. No child can resist a good mystery."

"They could've been hurt."

Nodding, Lament said, "Coulda been killed. No different than a city child walkin' home from school, I reckon."

"I'm not so sure about that."

But of course he was. He'd been in the Syrian desert with kids only a little older than these who'd been his contacts and guides. He'd seen children playing in bombed out cars in Beirut. He'd once visited a monastery in China and met with a ten-year-old Buddhist abbot whose only purpose in life, along with his brotherhood, was to recite one hundred million prayers to hold back the undoing of all creation. He'd met a lot of kids who had been put into the thick of things.

"What's really on your mind, son?" Lament asked.

Good question. Hellboy glanced at the kids and could almost see how it would be if they ever decided to leave their swamp village. The prejudices they'd face. The pain of not fitting in. Even if you didn't want to fit in, even if nobody else needed you to fit in with them. The kids were oblivious now, but they wouldn't always be. It struck him deep, knowing what it would be like for them eventually.

Hellboy hissed something and Lament said, "What's that?"

"How's this happen?" Hellboy repeated. "How does something like this happen?"

"How's what happen?" This .

With a little heat in his voice, Lament said, "You think you got the bloom on strange births?"

"I didn't say that."

"No, you didn't. The Lord don't differentiate between the unsightly and the adorable. We're all born under Heaven. We're all God's children, every one of us, you never heard that before?"

"I've heard it," Hellboy said, his hooves sinking deep in the muck, and thinking Lament might just be a little on the stupid side after all. "Never figured it applied to me."

"Oh, you're just feelin' a touch of melancholia. That's natural enough after the day we've had, for a man far from home. The world is full of odd beauty. I already done told you that, iffun you recall. No different here than anywhere." They marched along and, after a while, Lament went on. "I'm sorry son, I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. How's this happen? You can have your pick of answers. There's plenty of them. Maybe none are true or maybe all of 'em are."

"I wasn't really asking. It was rhetorical. I know about mutations."

Lament's face hardened. "Maybe you only think you do. Got your mind set on poisoned moonshine and improperly buried bodies during epidemics, don't ya? Or we can talk about all the toxic waste dumping going on. I seen them chemical polluters myself, throwing in barrel after barrel. I fought 'em off with fists and a good hunk'a chicory. Men from the town kept a watchful eye for a year or two, and sent some of them boys runnin' with their keesters full of buckshot. But I don't know that it ever stopped them. There's too much money to be saved dumpin' into these depths. Corporations aren't always righteous. Nor the government."

Hellboy, who'd been a part of the government practically since he was born, said nothing.

"And the granny watches," Lament went on, "they say there's ancient forces in the blackwater, and you and I know that's true. Whether said evils reach into the blood of men and women to affect the children or not, I guess everyone has their own say about that."

Putting it like that, Hellboy wondered exactly how it was that all these people weren't on the verge of mutation or cancerous illness or zombification.

"The real question is, why you askin' the question at'all?"

"I don't know."

"Yeah, you do. You thinkin' about family."

"I don't think about family. Ever."

"Iffun you say."

Far ahead, the pumpkin-headed boy turned and rushed back, excitedly chattering to Hellboy although Hellboy couldn't understand him. Lament would have to translate.

"Enoch says we're almost there."

"That's his name? Enoch?"

"It's biblical."

"I know it's biblical. How is it you can speak their languages?"

"They just speakin' English, as well as they can manage it."

Fishboy Lenny went,"Fweep mwash. Wooph."

Hellboy said, "I can't understand a word of it."

"Neither can I."

"You don't know the language, the language knows you." Lament let out a smile. "That's right, son. Now we're confabulatin'."