Jonathan Rogers - The Secret of the Swamp King

The feechies grew quiet, trying to figure out what it meant. Hyko was the first to speak. “I don’t know what’s going on exactly,” he admitted, “but I do know that there’s feechies breaking the code, and that brings trouble on every feechie in the swamp.”

“Cold-shiny arrowheads…” Pobo’s lip curled in disgust. “Next thing, folks’ll be building civilizer houses all over the swamp and riding around on smelly horses and covering ever dry spot with furball, civilizer sheep. What kind of feechie would shoot a cold-shiny arrowhead?”

“Maybe the same kind of feechie what shoots out a whole egret rookery,” answered Orlo.

“And attacking civilizers on their side of the river…” Hyko shook his head. “That’ll just bring the civilizers to Feechiefen, with their horses and their cold-shiny spears.”

“I wish they’d try,” boasted Jerdo, puffing out his chest. “Can’t no civilizers whup us in our own swamp!”

“’Course not,” answered Hyko, “but we still don’t want a bunch of civilizers tromping around in the Feechiefen.” He rubbed his head nervously. “We got to hold a swamp council. We got to do something ’bout this before it’s too late.”

The swamp council was set to convene three nights later at Scoggin Mound, a tiny island one day’s journey into the swamp’s interior. Leaving before sunrise the day after the brushfire, the feechies dispersed across the northern part of the swamp to recruit feechies from various bands to participate in the council.

Aidan traveled with Tombro. Scoggin Mound was Tombro’s home village, and it was his responsibility to get things in order for the council. He and Aidan were to go directly to Scoggin Mound, or as directly as the Feechiefen would let them.

They continued due south through the pine flats. Then, around noon, Aidan noticed the vegetation abruptly changed. The open forest of big pines and wire grass was replaced by the enveloping greenness of lowland swamp. The ground grew soft beneath their feet and mucky more than sandy. Vines and thickets slowed their progress, and ferocious bugs descended from all sides.

Aidan tried to take the insect bites in stride, but the stinging flies were worse than anything he had ever encountered in the land of the civilizers. He slapped, swatted, and waved his arms, but they kept coming. He could hardly pay attention to where he was going, and twice he fell, tripped by vines that snaked across the ground.

The tanglewood closed in tighter as they pushed southward, and it soon became apparent that Aidan’s backpack couldn’t make the trip. Every low-hanging branch seemed to catch it and snatch Aidan backward, as if the forest itself were reaching out to hinder the civilizer’s progress toward its most secret places.

When Tombro finished disentangling Aidan from a grapevine for the third time, he said, “That’s enough of that, Pantherbane. Either you leave that civilizer back-pouch, or I’m leaving you.” Aidan knew Tombro was right. But he still couldn’t bear the thought of leaving behind everything he had so carefully packed for his quest.

“Whatever you got in there,” assured Tombro, “it ain’t what you need. You headed into the Feechiefen Swamp. Civilizer ways won’t be much good to you. Only feechie ways.” He casually waved away an attacking deerfly. “And the grace of the One God.”

In spite of himself, Tombro did have a look through Aidan’s belongings, just to see if a few things might be of use. He opened Aidan’s water bladder and took a sip of the clear, pure water, fresh from the spring at Last Camp. He spewed it out and staggered around as if he had been poisoned.

“Aaaach!” he choked, twisting his face into a grimace of disgust. “How can you drink that stuff?” He threw the water bladder over his shoulder. “Ain’t no need to haul that nasty stuff all the way to Scoggin Mound. Feechiefen’s full of water, nice black water. And there’s always a surprise floating in it, for extra flavor.”

He found Aidan’s quill pen and palmetto paper in the backpack. He took a bite out of the paper, but chew as he might, he couldn’t get it to go down. “That stuff ain’t fit to eat,” he declared as he balled it up and threw it into the bushes. He held up Aidan’s pen and laughed. “You can get plenty of feathers in the Feechiefen. And a heap prettier than that’un. Ain’t no reason to bring one from over the river.”

He uncorked Aidan’s inkpot and was about to take a swig when Aidan snatched it away from him and threw it into the woods to save Tombro the trouble. Tombro tried to throw away Aidan’s hunting knife, on the grounds that it was made of cold-shiny. But Aidan insisted on keeping it. The feechie relented but only after making Aidan promise to get a proper stone knife at the first opportunity. He did, however, convince Aidan to leave behind his bow and steel-tipped arrows, promising to get him a smaller feechie bow and arrows the minute they arrived at Scoggin Mound.

Tombro laughed at Aidan’s rope, pointing out that every tree was festooned with vines of every size that would do just as well. Everything else in Aidan’s pack met with similar ridicule, except the alligator jerky. That was something Tombro could see the use of.

Tombro was also pleased to find the rattlesnake hide that Aidan had used for a fire beater the previous day. “Hold on, now,” he said excitedly as he unrolled the skin. The smoke and heat from the fire had crudely tanned it. Tombro rubbed the scaly hide between his palms, then snapped it taut, testing its strength. He held it up to Aidan’s waist. It was more than long enough to wrap around; it almost went around twice. And it was broad enough to cover halfway to his knees. “You got yourself a kilt,” he whooped, “just like a natural-born he-feechie. You don’t need that civilizer getup at all! You can dress like one of us.”

Aidan saw the benefit in going native. Feechiefen was one place where it was best to blend in with the locals as much as possible. There was no need to draw attention to the fact he was a civilizer. Tombro went in search of just the right gray mud with which to coat Aidan, both for bug protection and camouflage.

Meanwhile, Aidan took off his civilizer clothes and wrapped the snakeskin around his waist. It was crinkly and stiff, but it was comfortable enough, and in the sticky heat of the wetlands, it would be cooler than his civilizer clothes. Believing he struck a dashing figure as a hefeechie, Aidan felt an unavoidable twinge of pride. But he was eager for Tombro to return with the mud. The mosquitoes and biting flies were making a banquet of his bare chest and back.

When Tombro came back with two big handfuls of foul-smelling gray mud, he hooted at the sight of the big white civilizer standing in his civilizer boots, holding his kilt up with one hand and furiously slapping at bugs with the other. But he applied the mud as quickly as he could. In spite of its smell, the mud soothed Aidan’s existing bug bites and protected him from getting new ones. In his side pouch, Tombro had an extra kilt clasp, made from the fangs of a rattlesnake. He fastened Aidan’s kilt with it, freeing the civilizer’s second hand.

Tombro took a step back to look at his handiwork. “Not too bad,” he mused. “You’re the right colors, at least, and you smell a little more like a feechie.” He looked at Aidan’s close-cropped hair. “Your hair needs some help. But you can’t grow a mane like this in a day.” Tombro ran his muddy fingers along the matted hair that draped down his neck. “Maybe we can skin out a muskrat. You could wear its pelt for a wig,” he suggested. “When we get to Scoggin Mound, you can borrow one of my turtle helmets.”