Jonathan Rogers - The Secret of the Swamp King

They seemed to be making progress. A band of blackened wire grass grew longer and broader, and though it was ugly, it represented the best hope that the grass for miles beyond would be spared the same fiery fate. The wildfire lengthened its reach even as it was getting closer. The backfire still wasn’t nearly long enough to contain it.

The strain of the work was starting to show on all the firefighters. The heat and smoke were exhausting. They were all blackened beyond recognition. And Aidan had been running in the smoke for close to an hour without a rest. He was getting discouraged, ready to surrender and let the wildfire burn to its heart’s content, when an unfamiliar voice sounded behind them.

“What’s going on here? Why you burning up my woods?”

The firefighters turned to see a hunting party of five feechies who had materialized from the forest. “Tombro!” Hyko shouted joyously to the strange feechie who had spoken. Tombro squinted, unable to recognize Hyko for the coating of soot and ash. “It’s me, Hyko Vinesturgeon.”

Tombro nodded his head slowly. “Yeah, I reckon you’re Hyko. But with that black face, you look more like a old hog bear.” He turned to the other two soot-blackened feechies. “Then you must be Orlo and Pobo?” He looked quizzically at Aidan, who was still running furiously up and down the line of the backfire and stomping at flames. Aidan was so thoroughly blackened that the newcomers didn’t even notice he was a civilizer.

“That’s Pantherbane,” explained Orlo. “The civilizer.”

The new feechies gaped in wonder. “ The Pantherbane?” asked one of them.

“That’s right,” said Pobo. “Sure as you’re standing there.”

The hunters waved shyly at Aidan, who waved back, though he didn’t stop his frantic dance to do so. “We need help,” he announced. “A lot of help. We’re making a backfire.” He looked at the approaching wall of flame. It was only fifty strides away.

“Sure, sure,” nodded Tombro eagerly, and his four companions nodded with him. None of them understood what Aidan was talking about, but they were honored to help the famous Pantherbane any way they could. Pobo fetched firebrands for them. Aidan pointed to the wildcat hide that one of the new feechies wore for a cape. “Can you use that for a fire beater?” he asked.

The feechie hesitated a moment. The cape was his most prized possession. Tombro had little patience with such foolishness. “Jerdo, give me that cat hide,” he grumbled, unhooking the claw catch from around Jerdo’s neck. “If Pantherbane needs help, we gonna help him.”

The extra hands were a huge help to the firefighters who needed all the help they could get. The wind had picked up, and the wildfire was coming faster. Seven feechies were lighting fires now, and Aidan and Tombro worked frantically up and down the line, beating and stomping out fires that sprouted up ever more quickly.

When the leading edge of the wildfire was a mere ten strides from them, Aidan called a retreat. He wasn’t sure what would happen when the two fires collided, and he didn’t want anyone to get hurt.

The wildfire roared over the smaller backfire like a tidal wave. It looked unstoppable, throwing sparks and cinders in front, little flaming outriders scouting out new grass to burn, new bushes to swallow up. The fire made its own wind, searing waves that pulsed at the nine firefighters, who winced not just at the heat, but at the dread of the wildfire jumping their hard-won firebreak and swallowing the vast expanse of forest behind them.

A few flying sparks and airborne cinders did clear the firebreak and land in the flammable grass beyond. But vigilant firefighters quickly squelched them before the fire could find purchase. Most of the sparks, however, landed in the blackened trail of the backfire, where they died for lack of fuel. The main body of the wildfire spent itself. It had nowhere else to go, no way to propel itself farther.

At the south end of the line, however, the wildfire outflanked the backfire. For a few tense minutes it appeared enough flames had survived to grow again into an unmanageable blaze. But Tombro dropped to the ground and started digging furiously with a flat stone, about the size of his hand, that he pulled from his side pouch. The other seven feechies had similar tools in their own pouches, and together they were able to dig just enough of a trench to slow the fire.

The fire jumped the feechies’ trench but not all at once. As the flames licked across, the firefighters were ready for them and snuffed them out. Aidan handed his snakeskin to Pobo and took off his own tunic to use as a fire beater. Jerdo’s cat hide was a blackened mess by now, but the three fire beaters were more than enough to contain the last remnants of the fire.

“Hee-haw!” yodeled Tombro. “We whupped it!”

Aidan surveyed the black and smoking scene before him. “We whupped it,” he rasped, almost too blistered and exhausted and thirsty to care. “We whupped it.”

Aidan squeezed cool mud between his fingers and dug his blistered feet in the mud beneath the shallow water to soothe them. A huge mud-coated sycamore leaf was plastered on his scorched brow like a cooling rag. Tombro had led the troop of firefighters to this shady seep hole to recover from the rigors of their day. Three of Tombro’s hunting party stayed at the fire site to make sure the smoldering fire didn’t burst again into flame. But everybody else-Aidan, Hyko, Orlo, Pobo, Tombro, and Jerdo-was sprawled in the ankle-deep water of the seep hole, lolling in the mud.

“This is living,” observed Pobo, glopping a handful of sticky mud onto his chest and slathering it around.

“A leech!” squealed Orlo, raising his leg out of the muddy water. Aidan blanched at the sight of a glistening black sluglike mass, about the size of a pinky finger, attached to the feechie’s ankle. And he felt sick when Orlo pried it loose and popped it whole into his mouth.

“Mmmmm,” Orlo murmured contentedly as he chewed. “Could things get any better?”

“Lucky,” muttered Hyko as he checked his own arms and legs for leeches.

Aidan was starting to doze, but he was awakened by a question from Tombro. “Hey, Pantherbane,” he called. “What’d you say your civilizer name was?”

“It’s Aidan, Aidan Errolson.”

“Errolson?” asked Tombro. “What’s that name supposed to mean?”

“Well,” Aidan began, not sure what the feechie was asking, “it means I’m the son of Errol. That’s how all civilizer last names work. I’m Aidan son of Errol so my name’s Aidan Errolson. My father’s the son of Finlay, so his name is Errol Finlayson.”

“So civilizer names don’t mean much of anything then,” observed Tombro. “Every feechie name tells a story-tells about something you done or something one of your people done.” He was up on one elbow now, the better to gesture while he talked. “Take my name,” he said, “Tombro Timberbeaver. My daddy won the swampwide log-cutting contest five years straight and never picked up a ax.” Aidan looked doubtful, but Tombro pressed on. “He had a family of beavers he trained. And when he told them beavers where to gnaw, they whirled in there and fairly made the chips fly! That’s how my people came to be called Timberbeavers.”

Aidan smiled wanly. He wasn’t sure he believed Tombro’s story, but he didn’t want to offend by expressing doubt. He had already survived one feechie fight that day and didn’t feel up for another.

“Ask Hyko,” suggested Tombro. “Ask Hyko where his last name come from.”

“All right,” Aidan obliged. “Hyko, how’d you get your last name?”

Hyko smiled. It was a favorite feechie pastime to tell name stories, and the story of the Vinesturgeons, Hyko’s clan, was always a favorite. “My granddaddy used to hunt sturgeon when they come upriver,” he began. “Had him a little flatboat, and he’d stand up in the bow like this here.” He got to his feet and stood in a crouch, feet apart. He raised his right fist to his ear as if he had a spear at the ready. “Them big, ugly fish’d come cruising up the river-some of them bigger than Granddaddy’s boat-and when he saw a big fin break the water…” He reared back and flung his imaginary spear at Jerdo, who happened to be lazing directly in front of him.