Jonathan Rogers: The Secret of the Swamp King

Mostly to fill the dead air, Percy asked, “Do you boys ever run into plume hunters in the Eastern Wilderness?”

Massey looked a little shocked, as if someone had asked him if any of his friends were grave robbers, but Massey did his best to answer politely. “No, plume hunters know they ain’t welcome at Last Camp, and they stay clear of us in the forest too.”

Errol’s face went from red to purple, and he pounded the table. “Percy!” he shouted. “How can you sit at my table and even speak of plume hunters?” He pushed his pie away. His appetite was ruined. “The vile criminals-how I’d like to get my hands on a few plume hunters!

“It’s a mean business, plume hunting. Trading a heron or an egret’s life for two feathers on a dandy’s hat-to pluck a dead bird’s plumes and leave the rest of it on the ground to rot. Nobody gets fed. Nobody gets clothed. Just feathers for a dandy’s hat.”

It was a good thing, thought Aidan, that his father hadn’t been to Tambluff lately. His old-fashioned frontier sensibilities would have been shocked by the extravagance of the latest spring fashions. The Pyrthen Empire may have been Corenwald’s bitterest enemy, but the Pyrthens still defined clothing styles for the known world, and wealthy Corenwalders worked hard to mimic the Pyrthens’ outlandish dress. Men and women alike, bowing and nodding their elaborately plumed hats at one another, bobbed up and down Tambluff’s High Street like tall ships under sail.

“That’s not the worst of it either,” continued Errol. “The navy stopped a smugglers’ ship near Middenmarsh last week. They found bales and bales of plumes.” He paused a minute, finding it hard to finish saying what everyone at the table could figure out for himself. “Those plumes were headed for Pyrth. There’s hardly a plume bird left on the continent. The Pyrthens have used them all up for hats and horse bridles. So somebody is sending them ours… for as long as they last.”

Errol wiped his mouth with his napkin and stood to leave. It was clear from his abrupt manner that he was finished talking about plume hunting. “Percy,” he said, “go get a field wagon and carry me around to see how the melons are coming along.”

Aidan spent the rest of the afternoon in the library with Jasper. He was hungry for any old lore related to the frog orchid, the Feechiefen Swamp, or the ways of the feechiefolk.

The two brothers leaned over a huge map of Corenwald, stretched out to cover the whole library table. Here was the kingdom in its entirety. In the north, the high mountains towered over dales, hollows, and high country lakes. A different kind of wildness prevailed there-not the swampy, sandy wildness of Aidan’s native haunts, but a wildness of crags and rocks and waterfalls, of elk and brown bears three times the size of a man.

South of the mountain range rose the foothills, where miners scratched out a living under the ground. A low plateau stretched across the middle of the island. This was Corenwald’s breadbasket. Its lush and rolling land was sectioned into farms arranged in tidy grids. Here the map was dotted thickly with villages and towns. Here the world seemed orderly and safe.

At the bottom edge of the plateau, the capital city of Tambluff, the gleaming jewel of Corenwald, was tucked into a bend of the River Tam. From there, to the south, east, and west, the land dropped to a low and sandy plain where the rivers meandered slowly, taking their sweet time on the last long leg of their journey to the sea.

On the western coast, the chief city was the deep-harbored port of Middenmarsh. The first settlers of Corenwald landed there and radiated east across the Bonifay Plain and toward the River Tam. In the southwest quarter of the island, the land drained by the Eechihoolee River, the population was sparser than in the center of the island. But still, the map showed farms and villages stretching as far down as the southern coast, where oranges and lemons grew.

The swampy heart of Corenwald was in the south and east, where the River Tam flowed. Here the map grew murky indeed. Flowing south from Tambluff, the river rolled through Hustingreen, then along the edge of Longleaf Manor. But as the river flowed through the Eastern Wilderness, the map showed nothing else for leagues and leagues. No village, no settlement, no farmstead. Beyond Longleaf, there was only one more marking on the map. The river made a looping bend before turning east for its last push to the sea. This was Big Bend. And situated on the very bottom of the bend, on the north side of the river, was Last Camp. It was the last outpost of civilization in the Eastern Wilderness.

To the south of Last Camp, across the river, the bottom right corner of the map was simply labeled “Feechiefen Swamp.” There was no further detail-no islands, no waterways, not even an outline of the swamp. No one really knew what lay beyond Last Camp. Jasper dug up every map he could find. Pretending to look for something in the Eastern Wilderness, Aidan let his eyes wander down to the southeastern extremity of each map. But each was the same. No matter how detailed the map, the Feechiefen was a big blank. As far as the mapmakers were concerned, Feechiefen was beyond the edge of the world. The only thing to be learned from the maps was what Aidan already knew: To get to Feechiefen, he would have to go to Last Camp and turn south. And pray to the One God.

Jasper rolled up the last of the maps. Aidan remarked, “Lord Cleland mentioned something called the frog orchid. Do you know anything about a frog orchid?”

“Ah, the frog orchid,” answered Jasper. “Not one of the more well-known bits of lore.” He dug into the scrolls again and pulled out a manuscript. Jasper was loving this; someone was interested in the old lore he loved so much, someone he could instruct and show off for. He unrolled the manuscript and ran his finger down the elaborately scripted lines. “Here it is,” he said eagerly, and he began reading aloud: In deepest swamp, the house of bears, An orchid in the spring appears On oaken limb around a pond As black as night and round as sun. It floats in air, a ghostly white. It soars and leaps like frog in flight. And in the orchid’s essence pure Is melancholy’s surest cure.

Aidan whistled. “What on earth does that mean?”

Jasper shrugged. “A lot of the lore-masters think it doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “They think it’s just a little song. After all, if nobody’s ever come back alive from Feechiefen Swamp, who could have written it?”

“But let’s say it does mean something,” said Aidan, undeterred. His king had sent him in search of the frog orchid, and he was going to make the attempt, whatever the lore-masters might think about it. “Let’s say it actually does give clues for finding the frog orchid. What could it mean?”

Jasper’s brow creased with concentration. “‘In deepest swamp, the house of bears.’ What would be a house of bears?”

Aidan thought. “A cave? A bee tree? A canebrake?” He shook his head. “I don’t know. Could be a lot of things.” He turned to the next line of the chant: “‘An orchid in the spring appears.’ That makes sense, at least.”

Jasper picked up the chant. “‘On oaken limb around a pond / As black as night and round as sun.’”

“So the orchid is black? And round?” asked Aidan.

“No,” Jasper answered. “I think that’s the pond where it grows. The pond is round and black.” Jasper returned to the next two lines: “‘It floats in air, a ghostly white. / It soars and leaps like frog in flight.’”

Aidan’s head was swimming. “So it floats? I thought it grew on oak trees. And since when did frogs fly?” He was getting discouraged. No wonder the lore-masters thought the Frog Orchid Chant didn’t mean anything.