Jonathan Rogers: The Secret of the Swamp King

“Is it something I can get for you?” asked Aidan hopefully.

“Perhaps you can. The old lore promises one sure cure for melancholy: the essence of the frog orchid. Bring me a live frog orchid, and I will have no reason to doubt your loyalty.”

“A frog orchid?” barked Lord Cleland. “I know a little of the old lore, too, Darrow. The frog orchid grows only in the depths of the Feechiefen Swamp.” Darrow nodded knowingly but without apparent concern. Cleland continued. “Nobody has ever come back alive from the Feechiefen Swamp!”

But Aidan was relieved to have been offered the chance to prove his loyalty, even if the offer came in the form of a seemingly impossible task. “I’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

Lord Cleland wouldn’t let it lie. “You’re sending Aidan to his death, and you know it!” he protested.

“You weren’t so squeamish three years ago, when the boy offered to fight the giant on the Bonifay Plain,” Darrow retorted. “What was it you said, Cleland? ‘If the boy wants to die for his country, why not let him?’”

Cleland was ashamed of the words he spoke the first time he ever met Aidan Errolson on the battlefield at Bonifay. But he couldn’t deny them.

“Well, if the boy wants to die for his king,” continued Darrow, “why not let him?”

But Aidan wasn’t there to hear this exchange. He was already headed toward his sleeping quarters to pack a bag for his trip to Feechiefen.

Aidan was nearly finished packing when the door swung open and Prince Steren stepped into the room. He looked at the backpack on Aidan’s bed, and his face filled with horror. “You’re not really…” he began. “Into the Feechiefen?”

Aidan didn’t answer but kept packing.

“Don’t do this,” Steren pleaded. “You know how Father is. Tomorrow he will have forgotten all about this. Why don’t you go away for a few days? Go see your father and brothers at Longleaf. Father will be all right.”

“It’s been a long time since your father’s been all right,” Aidan answered. “Toward me anyway. He’s lost faith in me, Steren. I can’t stay here if my king has no faith in me. Yet I cannot bear to leave the court of Darrow. I must complete this quest.”

Then, almost as an afterthought, Aidan added, “Besides, if the essence of the frog orchid really does cure your father’s melancholy, that will be a service to the whole kingdom.”

“But nobody ever comes back from the Feechiefen,” Steren persisted. “What makes you think you will?”

Aidan rolled back his sleeve to expose a red scar in the shape of an alligator on his right forearm. “That’s the feechiemark,” he said. “It means any feechie I meet is obliged by their code of honor to be a friend to me.”

“Like Dobro,” Steren observed.

“That’s right,” answered Aidan. “By the providence of the One God, I believe the feechies will see me through the Feechiefen.”

“Do you even know how to get into the Feechiefen?” Steren asked.

“Just what we all learned in geography lessons,” said Aidan. “Follow the Tam to Last Camp and turn south. You can’t miss it. But I’ll stop by Longleaf tomorrow to see what my brother Jasper can tell me. He knows the old lore backward and forward.”

Both boys were silent for a moment, then Steren spoke up with the determined voice of a person not accustomed to being told no. “I’m coming with you, Aidan.”

Aidan shook his head. “No, Steren. This is my mission.”

“But you’re my best friend,” Steren insisted. “I can’t let you face that kind of danger alone.”

“We may be best friends,” said Aidan, “but your responsibilities to Corenwald outweigh your friendship to me. You’re the crown prince, King Darrow’s only heir. You can’t go galloping off to the Feechiefen Swamp.”

Steren saw Aidan’s point. “I’ll pray for you, Aidan,” he said. “Every day.” He turned to leave, then stopped.

“Was any of it true, Aidan? About you believing that you’re the Wilderking?”

It was a hard question for Aidan to answer. So he answered another question instead: “No one has ever been more loyal to the House of Darrow than I am.”

Aidan was about to turn his horse off River Road and into the cart path leading to the manor house when his brother Percy burst through the gate at a dead run and lurched to a stop in front of him. Percy was eighteen now, and his responsibilities at Longleaf Manor were growing as he moved into manhood. But in his enthusiasms, he was as boyish as ever.

“Aidan!” he shouted breathlessly, not even bothering to say hello to the brother he hadn’t seen in nearly a year. “You’ve got to see this!” He grabbed the horse by the bridle and, horse and brother in tow, ran down the trail that led to the River Tam.

Aidan was anxious to see his father, his other brothers, and the old home place after so long an absence. But it was hard not to be carried away by Percy’s enthusiasm. “What’s at the river?” he asked. But as soon as the question was out of his mouth, the river came into view and he could see for himself.

Around the upstream bend a huge timber raft slid along the surface of the water. It must have been constructed from forty full-grown pine trees lashed together, and they made a floating floor more than half the size of the floor in King Darrow’s great hall. At the front of the raft, two men wearing buckskin and coonhide caps were straining at a long pole that reached into the water. The pole was an oar-sweep-a forty-foot-long paddle whittled from a single pine sapling and balanced on a waist-high oar bench. In the spring of the year, when the water was high, a skilled rafthand could stand at the back of a raft and, using that one long oar, guide a hundred tons of pine trees around any bend or whirl the River Tam might offer.

But these obviously weren’t skilled rafthands. The back of the raft was where the front was supposed to be, and the front was where the back was supposed to be. They were drifting down the river in a slow spin, in spite of their efforts with the oar-sweep. They were utterly at the mercy of the current. Aidan shielded his eyes against the high sun and peered upriver at the vast bulk of pine logs lumbering toward them, sideways now. “Who are those people?” he asked.

“A couple of gator hunters up from Last Camp,” answered Percy. “They bought a load of logs from a farmer clearing a field above Hustingreen.” The Errolsons watched one of the gator hunters get knocked into the river by the swinging oar-sweep, and Percy couldn’t help chuckling while the other hunter, the bearded one, fished him out. “They thought it would be a good idea to build the logs into a raft and float them down to Big Bend.”

“Big Bend?” snorted Aidan. “I’ll be amazed if they make it around the next bend. How do they expect to make it all the way to Last Camp?”

The Errolsons watched the approaching vessel get closer. For the moment it was oriented correctly: bow in the front, stern in the back. But it was already going into another rotation. “Ebbe was at Hustingreen this morning when they came barreling through,” said Percy, smiling at the old house servant’s description of the scene. “Said they had the whole village in an uproar. They came shooting out of the upper shoals like a hog on ice, taking out everything in their way. Smashed up a few fishing skiffs, barely missed the ferryboat, and the whole time those two swampers are shouting and yelling at one another, riding that sweep like a bucking horse.” Percy pointed at the raft and chuckled. “About like they’re doing now.”

The raft was less than a hundred strides away, and they could hear the hunter-raftsmen yelling at one another.