Jonathan Rogers - The Secret of the Swamp King

A swarm of feechiefolk was on Dobro in an instant. “Where do you think you’re going?” asked Beppo. “You get up and finish that sadballad.”

“Put him back on the singstump,” somebody shouted. The angry feechies carried Dobro roughly over their heads and deposited him back on the sweet gum logs, where he stood sheepish and silent for a few moments.

“Well?” grumbled Doyno. “Let’s hear it.”

Dobro closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and began again: “Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm, hmmm… hmmm, hmmm, hmmm…”

“Confound you!” shouted Branko. “You stop that humming and commence to singing!”

“If you ain’t singing real words by the time I count to five…” began Beppo.

Somebody butted in. “You can’t count to five, Beppo.”

“Confound it all!” wailed Dobro. “I done forgot how the sadballad goes.”

None of the feechies was crying now. They hemmed Dobro in from either side of the singstump, and they looked ready for a fight.

“How can you remember all them preambulations,” asked Hyko, “and forget the main point?”

“You launched into a sadballad called ‘The Thing that I Done,’” pointed out Branko, “without you knew the thing that was done.”

Dobro looked more sheepish than ever. He now remembered that the one time he heard the sadballad sung, he had fallen asleep before it was over. Now Pobo scrambled onto the singstump to confront Dobro. His dirty face had clean streaks where tears had streamed down. “Do you mean to tell me,” Pobo began, “that you got me all wound up, worried sick over that person who done whatever he done, missing my own mama, and generally feeling miserable, for nothing? ”

Dobro shrugged. “Sorry, Pobo,” he said. But Pobo was in no mood for apologies. He lunged for Dobro. Dobro ducked away from him, leaped off the singstump, and bulled his way through the encircling feechies to a nearby beech tree. He shinned up the tree like a squirrel, with hotly pursuing feechies streaming up behind him. But all stopped stock-still, even Dobro, when they realized the treetops were full of strange feechies retreating limb to limb away from them and deeper into the forest.

Aidan scrambled up the nearest water oak to join the pursuit through the treetops. But by the time he made the first leap, the sounds of the chase were far away. He was still a civilizer, after all. No civilizer, not even Pantherbane himself, could tree-walk like a feechie in a chase.

It was a moonless night; clouds had rolled in before dark to obscure even the faint light of the stars. Aidan climbed back down rather than risk further tree walking with no light and no feechies to guide him. He dropped from the lowest limb onto the leaf-strewn ground, just at the edge of the firelight.

Two shadows darted from behind the trees and closed on either shoulder. Aidan felt hot breath at his ears and smelled the unmistakably pungent odor of he-feechies.

“What sort of critter is this?” hissed a voice at his right ear. “He dresses like a feechie, but he wears foot covers like a civilizer.” He stepped on Aidan’s boot.

“He tries to walk in the treetops like a feechie,” whispered the voice at Aidan’s left ear, “but he moves like a civilizer.” The shadowy figure did an exaggeratedly stiff pantomime of Aidan’s cautious movements in the treetop.

“He’s got a turtle-shell helmet, but his hair looks like civilizer hair.”

“So is he a feechie or a civilizer?”

“I believe he’s a feechielizer.”

“Whatever he is, I reckon the Wilderking will want to have a look at him.”

Aidan saw the glint of two shiny knives in the fading firelight. He opened his mouth to call for help, but a slimy, bony hand clamped over the bottom half of his face. One of his attackers tied his hands behind his back, and the other gagged him with a length of vine. They marched him to a flatboat waiting at the water’s edge, then tied his feet, lifted him into the boat, and poled away noiselessly into the blackness of the swamp.

They poled throughout the night. Aidan crouched in the middle of the boat; his captors were at either end. The feechies never spoke a word, and Aidan, being gagged, couldn’t speak either. He was alone with his thoughts for an entire sleepless night, wondering what fate awaited him.

At sunup, Aidan finally got a good look at his captors. They had a harder look about them than even the usual run of feechies. The feechie operating the push pole in the stern of the craft was as sharp-featured as a jackfish. His nose, his chin, and even the Adam’s apple on his twig-thin neck all came to sharp points. The one sitting in the front had the look of a bottom-feeder. His rounded chin turned downward, taking his mouth with it. Even when he sat straight up, his lips pointed toward the bottom of the boat. His flattened nose had obviously been broken more than once. It meandered down his face like the River Tam itself.

“Sunup,” announced the pole-pusher in a raspy voice.

“I ain’t blind, Pickro,” grumbled Bottom-Feeder. “I can see the sun’s up.”

“Just making conversation, Carpo,” Pickro answered.

But Carpo wouldn’t let it rest. “I probably knowed it was sunup before you did.”

“How you reckon that?” snarled Pickro.

“’Cause I’m in the front of the boat.” Carpo showed all three of his front teeth in a pleased little smile.

“How’d you like to be even farther out in front of the boat?” asked Pickro, lunging to shove Carpo into the water. The boat lurched violently, and Aidan prayed for peace. Bound hand and foot, he didn’t like his chances should he get dumped into the Feechiefen.

A gigantic alligator, much longer than the boat, opened its jaws in preparation for an easy breakfast. This had a sobering effect on Pickro, who returned to his post in the stern of the boat.

The flash of anger was over. “You reckon it’s safe to float in the daytime?” asked Carpo.

“I reckon so,” Pickro answered. “We’re a whole night’s float from Scoggin Mound. Anybody out looking for this civilizer gots to be behind us. Can’t be in front of us. We’re better off to keep poling.” So they poled on, deeper into the dark heart of the Feechiefen.

Carpo looked back at Pickro. “Breakfast time,” he declared. “You hungry?”

“Starving,” answered Pickro. “I could eat a civilizer.” Both feechies hee-hawed at this. Even Aidan couldn’t help but smile a little, even though he was the butt of the morbid joke.

Carpo seemed impressed with Aidan’s sense of humor. “How ’bout you, civilizer?” he asked. “You hungry?” Aidan nodded. Carpo pulled his shiny knife from his belt. Holding it up to the morning light, he admired its gleam almost involuntarily. Then he cut the vine gag so Aidan could eat.

“What you doing?” barked Pickro. “You want him hollering for help?”

Carpo looked in every direction. They were in the deep of the deep swamp. “What’s he going to holler?” he asked. Then in a high, mocking voice he called out, “Help! I’m a civilizer! Save me from these mean old feechies!”

Pickro laughed. “You right, Carpo. Even if somebody heard him, they ain’t likely to jump in on the civilizer’s side, are they?”

When Carpo cut Aidan’s wrist bindings, Pickro protested again. “Bless my liver! If you ain’t the mollycoddlinest guard I ever seen! He’s a prisoner, not a play-pretty!”

“Was you planning on feeding him his breakfast like a mama bird?” Carpo retorted. “He can’t eat with his hands tied behind his back, can he?” He retied Aidan’s hands in the front, an arrangement that Aidan found much more agreeable.