Jonathan Rogers - The Secret of the Swamp King

Hyko writhed on the ground, holding his nose, and Aidan held his swelling thumb, praying that the feechie fight was over. But Hyko answered the call of his shouting comrades and rose again to come after Aidan. Aidan raised his fists to be ready for him.

“Hold on! Hold on! Hold on!” The high, grating voice of Pobo interrupted the combat. He was staring at Aidan. When he walked over and grabbed Aidan by the arm, Aidan tried to jerk away, afraid that he was about to have to take on all three feechies at once. But Pobo wouldn’t let him go. With his finger he traced the alligator-shaped burn scar on Aidan’s forearm. “This civilizer’s got a feechiemark,” announced Pobo. “He’s a feechiefriend!”

“A feechiefriend?” exclaimed Hyko. “Why didn’t you say so?” He rubbed his nose. “Might have saved me a nose ache.”

Pobo asked, “What’s your name, friend?”

“It’s Aidan, Aidan Errolson of Longleaf Manor.”

“Well, I’m Pobo Sands. This is Orlo Sands, and the feller what’s been gnawing on your thumb is Hyko Vinesturgeon.” The three feechies butted heads with Aidan by way of greeting, then Aidan said, “Pobo Sands, Orlo Sands-are you brothers?” Both Sandses looked down at their bare toes and shook their heads. “Cousins?” asked Aidan. Still looking at the sand, they shook their heads again. Aidan realized he had touched a sore subject.

Hyko quickly intervened. “Aidan,” he said, “how ’bout you tell us how you come by that feechiemark?”

“Chief Gergo gave it to me,” he answered. “In Bayberry Swamp.”

“Gergo… Gergo…” Orlo was trying to put a face with the name. “He the one-legged feller with the scar across his forehead?”

“Naw,” answered Hyko. “That’s Chief Pardo you thinking about. Gergo’s the one missing two fingers and a eye. I got a cousin in Gergo’s band. Name’s Theto Elbogator.”

“Sure,” said Aidan. “I remember him.”

“So what’d you do to get made a feechiefriend,” asked Orlo, “instead of, you know, getting fed to alligators?”

Aidan laughed. “It was because I killed a panther, saved the life of a fellow named Dobro Turtlebane.”

“Ahhhhhww!” all three feechies gasped in recognition. Their eyes, previously narrowed in suspicion, now shone with awe. “You the one what’s called Pantherbane, ain’t you?” asked Hyko.

“That’s right,” answered Aidan. “That’s the feechie name Chief Gergo gave me, since I killed a panther.”

“Everybody in Feechiefen knows about Pantherbane,” explained Pobo, growing more excited. “How he kilt a panther with a rock slinger and grabbled a catfish bigger than he was…”

Ever modest, Aidan clarified: “It wasn’t that big!”

“He won the gator grabble the first time he ever tried it,” added Orlo. Both feechies spoke of him as if he weren’t right there.

“It was because of Pantherbane that we got to hide in the Eechihoolee Forest and scare off them foreigner civilizers with the black shirts made outta cold-shiny.”

“I don’t reckon I’ve had more fun than that in all my born days,” said Orlo. He smiled, remembering the terrified Pyrthens crashing through the forest, bouncing off trees, and falling over roots to escape the feechie ambush. Orlo quoted the feechiefriend ceremony: “His fights is our fights, and our fights is his’n.”

Hyko touched his nose with reverence. “Pantherbane hisself nearbout tore my nose off!”

“Say, Hyko, that reminds me,” said Pobo. “You and Pantherbane ain’t finished with your fight yet.”

“Awww, Pobo,” groaned Hyko, “I ain’t so interested in fighting him now that he’s Pantherbane.”

“Don’t start that foolishness,” shot back Orlo. “You know the rules. You boys has swapped rude. It ain’t over till somebody’s whupped.” Neither Orlo nor Pobo was willing to be cheated out of a chance to watch a first-rate fistfight.

“Well, how ’bout we just have a rassling match?” suggested Hyko. Pobo and Orlo reluctantly agreed, and Aidan, questioning the need for such strict and unbending rules regarding rudeswaps and fistfights and wrestling matches, squared off again against the feechie with the bear-claw necklace.

Orlo laid the ground rules for the match. Actually, there weren’t really any rules, except that the winner would be the first to pin his opponent’s shoulders to the ground for a count of three. At the last minute, however, Pobo thought of a new rule, a second way to win the match: If either competitor could stuff his opponent’s head into a tortoise burrow, he would be declared the winner.

The combatants locked up for the start of their match, face to face, arm on arm, hands on one another’s shoulders. They circled one another once, then twice, looking for any advantage to press. Aidan was much bigger than Hyko, even though Hyko was quite big for a feechie, but Aidan knew better than to put too much stock in a size advantage. Feechies could whip a bigger man out of pure caginess and meanness, and they were much stronger than they looked.

“Stop dancing and start rassling,” called Orlo, who had been named the referee.

“You look just like a couple of civilizers,” jeered Pobo, but he looked a little sheepish when Orlo elbowed him and reminded him that one of the wrestlers was a civilizer.

Hyko made the first move. He lunged to butt Aidan on the bridge of the nose. But Aidan was too quick. He bobbed his head out of the way, then lurched backward, pulling the off-balance Hyko on top of him. He grabbed the wiry feechie and easily twisted him in a knot. It was Aidan’s signature move, the one with which he had won the kingdomwide wrestling tournament. Hyko’s arms and legs were bent back in a contortion that had always caused Aidan’s opponents to surrender in tears. But Hyko was so limber, he seemed not to be bothered in the least. Aidan clamped down harder, determined to break the feechie’s stubbornness. But Hyko paid him little mind. In fact, the strain of the difficult hold seemed to be greater on Aidan than on his supposed victim. His forehead glistened with sweat, and his grip grew slippery. Hyko, on the other hand, actually smiled as Aidan wrenched his limbs into ever more strenuous contortions.

Aidan hoped Hyko was about to beg for mercy when the feechie twisted his head around so that his nose was a mere inch from Aidan’s. And when the feechie opened his mouth to speak, the word he spoke sounded at first like a cry for mercy: “Hhhhhelp!” It was a cruel trick. Hyko’s breath amounted, really, to an unfair advantage. The long, breathy “Hhhhhelp!” was like the opening of a furnace in Aidan’s face, except that it wasn’t just heat that blasted forth, but the nose-stinging, eye-burning vapor of old fish and wild onion that was the defining characteristic of feechie breath. Aidan reeled backward in horror, clutching his mouth and nose, trying to get his wits about him.

Hyko wasted no time. He mounted a fallen log, leaped from it, and laid his staggering opponent low with a smart elbow to the back of the head. But as Aidan fell, he grabbed Hyko’s ankle and by sheer strength spun the feechie to the ground beside him. He flopped onto Hyko and pinned his shoulders to the ground.

Though Orlo was supposed to be the referee of the match, he was so enthralled with the rough-and-tumble action that a couple of seconds passed before it dawned on him to start counting. And when he did start, he counted very, very slowly: “Ooooooooonnnnne…” The truth was, Orlo wanted to see one of the wrestlers stick the other’s head in a tortoise hole. To Orlo, that seemed like a wrestling match with real style. He didn’t want to see the match end with a pin. That was boring, unimaginative. And he certainly didn’t want to see the match end so soon. So he slowed the count even more: “Twoooooooooooooooo…”