Jonathan Rogers - The Secret of the Swamp King

Talk turned inevitably to the strange happenings in the Eechihoolee Forest. “The best part of the whole thing,” said Burl eagerly, “was after we run the Pyrthens into the swamp, and they come running back to surrender.” He chuckled at the thought of the Pyrthens’ panic-stricken faces as they tripped over one another to be the first to hand themselves over to the enemy.

“After a quarter hour in the Eechihoolee, those old boys weren’t looking so proud and shiny,” added Floyd. “Their faces was as ashy as a possum’s. And their eyes was like this.” He held two disks of sweet potatoes to his eyes to imitate the Pyrthens’ bulging eyes. He ran around the circle of the fire, still holding the sweet potatoes to his eyes. “Help me!” he shouted in an exaggerated Pyrthen accent. “Save me from the lizard people! Save me from the tree alligators!” But the sweet potatoes obstructed his view, and he tripped over a chunk of firewood, much to the amusement of the others.

“What chapped my hide,” said Burl, “was the way our own officers tried to explain everything away. Said it was just crazy talk, said the Pyrthens was seeing things that wasn’t there.”

“Ain’t that just like town folks and hill-scratchers?” Massey interjected. “Anybody who’s spent any time out east here knows different. I’ve seen a lizard man my own self.”

“I’ve seen one too,” offered Chaney.

“We’ve all seen ’em,” Isom added.

“Sometimes you look across the river there,” said Burl. He pointed to the south bank of the Tam. “And them trees is just alive, just crawling.”

“Crawling with what?” asked Aidan.

“I don’t know exactly,” answered Burl. “But all that hollering and hooting we heard that day in the Eechihoolee right before the Pyrthens come running back out, that wasn’t the only time any of us Last Campers ever heard it.”

“It’s a long way from here to Tambluff,” said Massey. “In Tambluff, you can go for days and never have dirt underneath your boots, only cobblestones. You can tip your high-plumed hat at a lady on the street and neither of you think about how that plume got from a bird’s back to your head. You can watch the alligators lazying in the castle moat and pretend you’ve faced the beast. In Tambluff, you can believe we’ve got the whole creation under our control. Seems strange to me that the folks who make the decisions for this whole kingdom live in such a place as that.”

“But out here,” said Isom, “the nursery tales of feechiefolk and the Wilderking don’t seem all that fantastic-no stranger than the world that buzzes just across the river and in the forests all around us.”

Big Haze looked across the fire at Aidan. “You’re sitting at the edge of the world, Aidan. How does it feel?”

Aidan smiled. “I like it here. It feels more like home than Tambluff Castle.”

The hunters cheered and laughed, flattered by Aidan’s remark. Tambluffers were a rarity at Last Camp, and even rarer were Tambluffers who accepted the hunters on their own terms.

“Well, if you don’t mind my asking,” said Burl, “what brings you to Last Camp?”

Aidan measured his words. “I’m out here to fetch something for King Darrow.”

“You ain’t the tax man, are you?” asked Cooky.

“No,” Aidan assured him and laughed.

“So what have you come to fetch?” pressed Chaney.

“Ain’t no use asking,” Floyd interrupted. “Me and Massey had him surrounded three days on a raft, and we never got it out of him.”

Before anyone had a chance to ask another question, the forest erupted in a series of blood-curdling cries: “Haaa-wwwweeeeee! Haaa-wwwweeeeee! Haaa-wwwweeeeee!” The hunters dove to the ground and tucked themselves into tight balls in order to make smaller targets for the arrows that came whistling into the camp. Half a dozen arrows embedded themselves with a thwack in the logs where the hunters had been sitting. Another arrow glanced off Cooky’s stew pot, ringing it like a bell and careening into the forest on the other side of the camp. A spear stuck in the ground less than two feet from Aidan’s boots.

“Aidan! Get down!” shouted Massey. “It ain’t over yet!”

But Aidan didn’t get down. Among all the people at Last Camp, only he understood exactly what the forest hollers were: feechie battle cries. And he felt he could do something to stop the attack. He grabbed a small log that was half in the fire and brandished it for a torch, trying to catch the gleam of feechie eyes in the forest. Then, even as arrows continued to sail into the camp, he belted out a blood-curdling yell of his own: “Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo… Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo.”

The woods grew still as the echoes of Aidan’s watch-out bark subsided. Aidan thought he heard the slightest rustle in the treetops-a rustle that grew more distant as the attackers receded into the forest. Still bearing the torch, Aidan ventured a few steps beyond the camp into the trees, as if in pursuit of the attackers. But they were gone.

“What just happened?” asked Floyd. He was looking at Aidan with undisguised awe.

“What was that holler you just did?” asked Isom, equally amazed.

“It sounded,” gasped Chaney, “like the bark of the bog owl.”

But Aidan didn’t hear them. He was inspecting one of the short, white-feathered arrows the feechies had shot into the camp. “Who fletches an arrow with egret feathers?” he asked aloud. And the arrowhead was equally perplexing. It was made of burnished steel.

Bedroll, hardtack, water bladder, alligator jerky, tinder box…” Rocking with the flow of the River Tam and the push and pull of Massey’s oar strokes, Aidan took one last inventory of his backpack’s contents. He felt for the hunting knife at his belt and counted the arrows in his quiver.

“I don’t like this one bit, Aidan,” said Massey as he leaned back on the oars, propelling the little skiff across the water. “Not one bit.”

“I know you don’t,” answered Aidan, “but if you don’t row me over, I’ll just swim across.”

“And get et up by gators,” Massey grumbled. “Which, for all I know, ain’t no worse’n what’s going to happen to you once I’ve handed you over to the swamp critters on the south bank.” He nodded back toward Last Camp. “There’s a reason we call it Last Camp. It’s because you can’t go no further. Because when folks go past it, it’s the last time you ever hear from ’em.” He was hurt that Aidan had waited until this morning-the very morning of his departure-to mention he was crossing the river. Three days on the raft together-three days Massey could have had to talk the boy out of this foolishness-but he had waited until this morning to spring it on him. And Aidan still hadn’t revealed the real nature of his mission.

“King Darrow sent me across the river,” said Aidan matter-of-factly. “And I’m going across the river.”

Massey grunted but said no more. Neither of them spoke for the remainder of the crossing. The river was broader here than it was at Longleaf, and deeper, too, swelled by the waters of countless creeks and smaller rivers that joined the Tam along its twisting course.

When the little boat nosed into the high bank on the other side, Massey tied up to a root tangle, clambered to level ground, and reached a hand down to pull up Aidan and his gear. The old alligator hunter looked at the moss-hung trees and shuddered. “I ain’t never been on this side of the river,” he remarked.

“Looks a lot like the other side, don’t you think?” answered Aidan, shrugging into his backpack.

“Aidan,” said Massey suddenly, “Darrow ain’t king of Feechiefen.”