Jonathan Rogers - The Secret of the Swamp King

Aidan was trying to ignore the feechies, but he couldn’t help himself. “Tambluff Castle?” he blurted. “You want to live in Tambluff Castle?” He threw his hands in the air. “Let’s just say this impostor Wilderking does overthrow King Darrow and makes himself king of Corenwald. Do you really think he’s going to set you up with big houses and big estates? If he brings you to Tambluff, it will only be to get more work out of you.”

He swept his hand in a broad gesture. “Look at this place. Do you really think this is how the true Wilderking would do things? There’s no wilderness here. The trees are gone. The birds are gone. You can hardly breathe for the smoke.” He pointed at a group of feechies shuffling past with shovels over their shoulders. “Look at them! Look at you! You were a free and happy people before this Wilderking came along. He’s made you slaves. Not with chains but with empty promises of power and riches and ease.” He nodded his head toward the nearest forge, where sweating feechies were heaving big chunks of wood onto the fire. “Is this really the way you want to live?”

Aidan shook his head. “Don’t you understand? This pretended Wilderking has wiggled into the worst part of your nature, and he’s enslaved you. That’s not how the real Wilderking is going to do it.”

The feechies stared at Aidan, astonished by his outburst. They seemed to be considering what Aidan had said. But Pickro spoke at last. “Don’t listen to him, Carpo. He’s just jealous.”

“Just jealous,” repeated Carpo. “It’s like the Wilderking says: Civilizers ain’t gonna like it when feechiefolks come to get what’s ours.”

“That’s right,” Pickro added. “Wilderking says you civilizers think us feechiefolks is second-class sun-setters. But we ain’t.” Pickro folded his arms in the gesture of a man who has made his point. Aidan squinted at him, trying to make some sense of what the feechie had said.

“I don’t think he said ‘second-class sun-setters,’” said Carpo. “I think he said ‘second-class setter-suns.’”

Aidan blinked, still confused. Then a light dawned at last, and he couldn’t help laughing. “Second-class citizens,” he said. “The civilizers think you’re second-class citizens.”

“See?” said Pickro to his partner. “He don’t even deny it.”

Aidan’s second day in the cage went much like his first, except that the ceaseless, idiotic chatter of Pickro and Carpo was layered on top of the monotony and misery of being locked in an unshaded cage in the middle of a swamp. Aidan paced back and forth to keep his blood flowing, and he watched the dull-eyed feechies go about their daily labors. He watched smoke billow and curl in black violation of the Feechiefen sky. He saw plume hunters arrive with their hateful trophies and another plume bale go out toward the world of the civilizers.

But he still didn’t see the man who called himself the Wilderking.

The third day was very much like the second. The tedium and the sun’s unremitting glare, however, were starting to do their work on Aidan. He didn’t feel like pacing that day but instead lay in the back corner of his cage watching the sun make its way across the sky. The conversation of a new pair of guards sounded to Aidan more like the buzzing of wasps than intelligible speech. He left his duckweed cakes untouched and didn’t drink much of the water his captors provided.

Aidan didn’t even seem to notice that night had fallen or that Pickro and Carpo were back on post. He drifted into a fitful sleep that didn’t seem very different from the dull waking of the daytime. His dreams were confused and vivid. Calling out in his sleep, he spoke many more words than he had in the whole previous day.

The feechie settlement was midnight-still when Aidan began to awaken. A first-quarter moon hung high in a clear sky, spilling its silver light across the sandy desolation of Bearhouse Island. Aidan was startled out of a dreamy half sleep when he caught a glimpse of a white cloud hovering like a phantom just outside his cage. When his eyes adjusted, he saw that the cloud was a spray of egret plumes. It was a headdress, worn by a man-a civilizer, judging by his size-who crouched a few feet away. Aidan knew at once that, unless he was still dreaming, this had to be the false Wilderking watching him sleep.

“Who are you?” Aidan asked.

The visitor answered in a whisper. “I am you.”

“I am you?” scoffed Aidan. “Nobody talks like that.”

“All right then,” continued the stranger, still whispering. “I am what you might have been if you hadn’t been so stupid.”

Aidan tried to get a look at the stranger’s face, but the night was dark and his face was mostly obscured by the egret plumes anyway. The headdress seemed to glow with its own light, but it didn’t illuminate its wearer’s face.

“I am the Wilderking,” the stranger continued. “The boss of this swamp, as the feechiefolk say. And before long I’ll be the boss of all Corenwald.”

Aidan strained to hear any trace of a Pyrthen accent-indeed, any clue to where this impostor had come from. But any such clues disappeared in the whispered speech.

“You could have so easily been where I am,” the pretender continued. “But you didn’t seize your chance when you had it. That’s the only real difference between you and me.” He shook his head, and the egret plumes waved extravagantly. “After Bonifay, you had a lot of people convinced you were the Wilderking-civilizer and feechie alike. But you frittered it away. Did you think somebody was just going to hand you the kingdom?” He snorted a short, mean laugh. “And now it’s too late. Your moment’s past.”

Aidan racked his brain. A courtier? Was this someone he knew from King Darrow’s court? “You know a lot about me,” he said.

“I have made you my study,” the false Wilderking hissed back. With that, he left and made his way back to the stockade. Aidan lay listening to the raucous snoring of Pickro and Carpo, whose sleep was undisturbed. It wasn’t long before Aidan joined them in sleep. He dreamed of feechiefolk in Tambluff Castle.

While Aidan was trying to eat his breakfast the next morning, a fist-sized rock came sailing into Pickro’s helmet. Thwack! He slumped into a pile in front of Aidan’s cage. Pickro had scarcely hit the ground before Dobro Turtlebane whirled in like a tornado from behind the one tree remaining on the north end of the island. He snatched Pickro’s spear from the ground and cracked the butt across Carpo’s helmet. Carpo, too, dropped to the ground before he realized what was happening.

Dobro rattled the cage door, looking to make a quick getaway with Aidan. But he had never seen a padlock before-he had hardly ever seen a door-and he didn’t understand why the door wouldn’t open. “I’m gonna get you outta this cage,” he said, breathing hard. “I’m gonna get you out.”

Four Bearhouse feechies patrolling nearby heard the commotion. They saw their comrades lying motionless on the ground and a strange feechie trying to open the civilizer’s cage. They started running for Dobro.

“Oooik!” their leader barked. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“It’s locked!” Aidan shouted at Dobro. “It won’t open. Run away!”

But Dobro didn’t run away. He kept rattling the lock, pushing and pulling against the door that wouldn’t budge.

“I shouldn’ta left you at Scoggin Mound,” he kept repeating. “I shouldn’ta left you!”

“It doesn’t matter, Dobro. Run!”

The feechie patrol had Dobro surrounded, but Dobro paid no mind. He worried the lock and rattled the door, as single-minded as a raccoon. Cold-shiny spearpoints gleamed all around him, but he paid no mind.