Aidan spoke at last. “You have broken Father’s heart.”
Maynard’s smug little smile cracked for a second, but he recovered himself. “Father doesn’t have a heart.” Then he added, more quietly, “Not for me.”
The two brothers stared at each other: the future Wilderking and the false Wilderking. A realization dawned on Aidan. “You wrote the letter to King Darrow, didn’t you?”
Maynard laughed out loud. “Of course I did! One of my plume hunters dropped it in the mail wagon.”
Now Aidan was the one smiling. “It was your letter, you know, that made King Darrow send me to the Feechiefen.”
The irony wasn’t lost on Maynard. His scheme to destroy Aidan had instead destroyed his own little kingdom. But he merely shrugged. He gestured at the sword in Aidan’s hand. “So are you going to stab me? Run me through? Cut me into little pieces?” Maynard stood with outstretched arms, baring himself to his brother’s sword. Aidan didn’t raise his hand. Maynard snorted. “I didn’t think so.” He turned toward the water, stepped into the boat, and began to pole away.
Aidan stepped to the water’s edge. “But, Maynard,” he called after him, “how did you do it?”
Maynard laughed his mean laugh. “Ask your feechie friend,” he called back. “Ask Dobro.”
Aidan stood at the verge of the island and watched his brother disappear around the buttress of a cypress tree. He didn’t move, just stared at the upside-down world reflected in the black water. He was so confused. His dead brother was alive. And yet it didn’t seem like good news. He thought of his father, who was so nearly broken by Maynard’s death. What would it do to him if he ever found out about Maynard’s life, the wickedness to which he had applied his energies these last two years? Maynard could hardly have hatched a scheme better suited to hurt his family, to violate everything Father had taught his sons about the responsibilities of Corenwalder nobles. But one question kept nagging Aidan: Was this all his fault? It was Aidan, after all, who planted the seed of this scheme in Maynard’s head. Maynard would have never believed feechiefolk existed if it weren’t for Aidan.
Aidan turned and ran into the forest. Low-hanging boughs closed above his head, blocking out the light and making it impossible for Aidan to tell east from west, north from south. But Aidan didn’t care. Ground vines reached up and slung him to the forest floor time and again. But he staggered on, unseeing. He pushed through thorny thickets, unmindful of the briars that raked across his bare chest and back. He sweated off the gray mud that had been his only protection from the vicious insects of the Feechiefen. But he didn’t even swat at the bugs or slap at their stings. He was too confused and grief-stricken to care. For hours he blundered in the forest on the south end of Bearhouse. He was broken, bleeding, lost—both inside and outside. He couldn’t even remember how to pray.
Then he blundered into a clearing. He stood on the sandy bank of a blackwater pond, a lagoon in the middle of the island. Huge live oaks, hundreds of years old, sprawled their sturdy branches over Aidan’s head. Their beards of gray moss nodded reassuringly in the gentle breeze. The birds that roosted in their tops had begun their warbling evensong.
The pond was a perfect circle, a little spot of order and symmetry in the teeming, chaotic wildness of Bearhouse. This, Aidan realized, was Round Pond that Carpo and Pickro had spoken of, the planned site of a new, bigger forge that would use the pond for a cooling pool and the great oak trees to feed the fires. He rejoiced that this place of tranquility and beauty had been rescued from his brother. He threw back his head to gaze high into the crowns of the overarching trees. The most beautiful white flowers he had ever seen were suspended in mid-air, soaring from branch to branch. And Aidan remembered what had brought him to Feechiefen in the first place.
Here was the spot described in the Frog Orchid Chant, where oak trees bordered a perfectly black and perfectly round pond.
In deepest swamp, the house of bears,
An orchid in the spring appears
On oaken limb around a pond
As black as night and round as sun.
It floats in air, a ghostly white.
It soars and leaps like frog in flight.
And in the orchid’s essence pure
Is melancholy’s surest cure.
Each orchid was a dazzling white, its wide mouth and three petals forming a body about the size of a bullfrog. And from that main body, two long streamers dangled, long and bent like the legs of a leaping frog. They grew on long stems arching from the high branches of the live oaks. When the breeze blew, the frog orchids bobbed up and down in midair like leaping frogs, their long legs coiling and stretching with the motion.
There were hundreds of them in the treetops, a whole squadron of frogs flying through the evening air. Aidan laughed for the joy of the frog orchids. He cried, too, for their beauty. His melancholy was cured. And a prayer was answered that he hadn’t been able to pray.
Chapter Twenty-two
The Way Back
The next day, the feechies lit the Bearhouse forge fires again. But this was the last time. They fanned the fires to a white heat only so they could melt their cold-shiny weapons and implements back to raw, unformed metal. North Swamp feechies and Bearhouse feechies alike spent a festive day throwing things into the fire and watching them burn—steel swords and axes, arrows and spears, iron shovels and hammers, padlocks and hinges—anything made of cold-shiny.
They planned a big fire jumping for that evening, but Aidan was anxious to leave. He had King Darrow’s frog orchid, still attached to the tree limb it grew on, and he didn’t want to wait a day longer than he had to, lest the orchid not survive the trip.
The feechies left the forge fires long enough to see Aidan off. He was nearly senseless from the head butting by the time he actually made it to the landing. Before stepping into the boat, Aidan sought out Orlo and Pobo, who no longer answered to the name of Sands. Their heroics leading the attack on the false Wilderking’s palisades had earned them last names. “Orlo Polejumble,” Aidan intoned with exaggerated dignity, “Pobo Smashpine.” He bowed deeply. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Tombro, Hyko, and the rest of the fire crew from the pine flats all cried, howled, and carried on to see the feechiefriend leave. Tombro tried to give Aidan directions to the spot where they had left Aidan’s backpack and civilizer clothes, but all his landmarks were stumps and fallen logs, which mostly look alike to a civilizer. Carpo and Pickro offered to pole him back as far as Scoggin Mound because, as Carpo put it, “We was the ones what brung you here.” But Aidan was looking forward to a long boat journey with Dobro, his first and best feechie friend.
When Dobro poled off from the landing, a much-humbled Chief Larbo led the crowd in a farewell cheer: “Hee-haw for Pantherbane! His fights is our fights and our fights is his’n!”
Dobro and Aidan weren’t alone in the flatboat. Benno Frogger was making the trip to the North Swamp too. He had decided to leave Larbo’s band and rejoin Gergo’s. It had been nearly two years since he had seen his mama, and he was in a hurry to get back to Bug Neck.
There had been so much to think about in the last day that Aidan had almost forgotten the last thing Maynard said before poling off into the southern reaches of the swamp. “Ask Dobro,” he said, if Aidan wanted to know how Maynard had pulled off his scheme. How could Dobro have played a part in this? Aidan had to know what Maynard meant, and they weren’t even out of sight of Bearhouse before he asked.
“Dobro, the false Wilderking—did you know he was my brother?”
“What?” Dobro asked incredulously, his face scrunched into a frown. Then a look of recognition dawned on his face. “Curly brown-headed feller? Looks a lot like you?”
Aidan nodded his head. His eyes narrowed. “How did you know that?”
Dobro sat down on the poling platform and let the push pole drag behind. His look of recognition was changing into a look of open-mouthed horror. “Did I … ?” he muttered. “Could
I have…?”
“When I asked my brother how he did it, how he tricked a whole band of feechies, he told me to ask you.” Aidan’s tone wasn’t exactly accusatory, but neither was it the warmest Dobro had ever heard. “Did you meet my brother? What did you tell him?”
Dobro put fingertips to his temples, trying to think. “No,” he said. “It couldn’t have been…”
Aidan was getting impatient. “What happened?” he urged. His voice was a little louder. “Tell me what happened.”
“I was coming up the river,” Dobro began, “up near the meadow where you set with your sheep sometimes. I looked through the trees, and I saw you setting under that big oak tree. Least I thought it was you. I decided I’d drop in on you.”
Dobro thought for a minute, trying to get the details right. “No, wait a minute. It wasn’t just me. Who was it with me?” He furrowed his brow in concentration. “Wait … It was you, weren’t it, Benno?”
Benno turned around for the first time since Dobro started his story. “Huh? What’d you say? I weren’t listening.”
“I said you was with me the day I dropped in on Aidan’s brother in the sheep meadow.”
“Oh,” Benno answered vaguely. “Now that you mention it, I do remember that.”
“Anyway,” Dobro continued, “we dropped out of the tree to howdy you, only it weren’t you. It was your brother.
“And the peculiar thing,” Dobro continued, “he wasn’t surprised to see us. I mean, he was jumpified at first. I think we woke him up, if you want to know true. But it was almost like he was waiting for us to come. Ain’t that right, Benno?” Benno gave a little grunt of agreement, but he had nothing to add.
“Well,” continued Dobro, “we howdied him, and he howdied us back. And it weren’t long before he commenced to asking us all kind of questions about feechie ways. Wanted to know about your feechiemark, Aidan, and what it meant. Wanted to know where we live and what kind of weapons we hunted with and did we know about the Wilderking and did we ever make war on other feechies.”
Dobro shivered to recall it. “Made me feel uneasy in my mind. I know I ain’t been the keerfullest feechie in the swamp when it comes to civilizers, but even I ain’t gonna answer that kind of question.”
“So what did you tell him?” pressed Aidan.
“Didn’t tell him nothing,” answered Dobro. “Just hemmed and hawed, and first chance we got to climb back up the tree, we took it.”
“So you didn’t give my brother anything that would help him trick Larbo’s band?”
“Naw, Aidan. I promise. Cross my gizzard. Ask Benno.”
Benno nodded his head. “Dobro told true. He didn’t tell him nothing.”
“And Benno didn’t neither,” added Dobro. “I can vouchify that.”
Aidan’s brow creased. He shook his head. “I don’t understand,” he murmured. “Maynard told me to ask my friend Dobro.” Aidan tried to piece the whole thing together. How could Maynard have gotten a start on his scheme with no more than that to go on? How could Maynard have gone from that little bit of information—no information, really—to ruling a whole band of feechies as the Wilderking?
“Awwww hawwwww hawwww hawwww!” Benno burst into sudden, violent tears. “Awwww hawwwww hawwww hawwww! It was me what brought that rascal to the Feechiefen! It was me what brought such misery and heartache! Awwww hawwwww hawwww hawwww!”
Aidan and Dobro stared at Benno, astounded, as he continued to wail. “Slow down, Benno,” Aidan coaxed. “What are you saying?”
“After me and Dobro was back in the woods,” Benno sniffed, “I made out like I had somewhere else to be, and we parted ways. I circled around and found Maynard again.”
“But why?” asked Dobro. His voice was full of hurt and betrayal.
“’Cause you had a civilizer friend and I wanted one too,” bawled Benno. “’Cause you and the rest of the band thought I was a know-nothing show-off, but here was somebody wanted to listen to me talk.”
Dobro looked down at his hands. It was true that he had never taken Benno very seriously. He had always waved off Benno’s attempts to get attention and gain acceptance.
“So I told him everything he wanted to know,” continued Benno, “and then some. I told him how I never got the say-so I deserved from my people, and he said he knew what that was like. I told him how I was figuring on going over to Larbo’s band where I could get some respect, and he reckoned that wasn’t a bad idea.”
Benno reached into his side pouch and pulled out a steel hunting knife, identical to Aidan’s. It had escaped the forge fires that morning. “And he give me this.” Benno sighed as he watched the sun play on its burnished steel. “I knowed I had no business with a cold-shiny knife. But it shined as pretty as the sun on swamp water. And it made me feel special, you know, to be the only feechie in the band with a cold-shiny knife. Even if I never showed it to nobody, I liked to have it in my side pouch and know I was a little better than the folks around me, with their poor old stone knives.
“Every new moon, me and Maynard met in the sheep meadow, and he’d ask me questions about feechie ways. I felt just as smart and important as Chief Gergo hisself.
“Then one day Maynard asked me if I’d take him to meet Chief Larbo. I knowed that weren’t a good idea. But I done it anyhow ’cause it made me feel important, you know, to say, ‘Chief Larbo, let me introduce you to the man can outfit you with enough cold-shiny to whup this whole swamp.’”
Benno started crying again, loudly, sloppily. “I wanted to show you I was somebody, Dobro—you and everybody else in the band who treated me like a no’count big-talker. I was mad at all of you. I just wanted to feel better.” He wiped his eyes. “By the time it was over, I’d done ruint a whole band of feechies, and we weren’t too far from ruining this whole swamp.” He moaned like a wounded animal. “And I still didn’t feel no better!”
He looked again at the hunting knife in his hand. The glint of the sun on its surface made little prisms through his tears. Then with a sudden, lurching movement he flung the knife into the deep blackness of the swamp. They watched the circles expand from the spot where the knife splashed down.
“Do you feel a little better now?” asked Dobro.
“Yeah,” Benno answered. “A little better.” A little smile softened his sorrow-crumpled face.
Aidan reached out to touch Benno’s shoulder. “You’re almost home now, Benno.”
Chapter Twenty-three
The Last Leg
At Scoggin Mound, Benno left Dobro and Aidan to pole east toward Bug Neck. After a short visit with Aunt Seku and her grandchildren—which involved a snack of frog-egg jelly, much marveling over the frog orchid, and the happy return of Aidan’s cold-shiny hunting knife—Aidan and Dobro poled on toward the scrub swamp at the northern edge of the Feechiefen. The travelers parted ways where the scrubby tanglewood lifted itself out of the black water. They bid one another good-bye with promises to meet again at the second full moon where the Bear Trail meets the River Trail, the spot where Dobro joined Aidan and Steren’s boar hunt.
The scrub swamp was a challenge. Tree walking required two free hands, and one of Aidan’s hands was occupied with the frog orchid. He managed at last to push through to the pine flats beyond. He didn’t, however, find his backpack and civilizer clothes and so he had to cross the pine flats bare-chested, wearing his snakeskin kilt and turtle helmet. The pine forest, he was happy to find, was recovering nicely from the brushfire he and Hyko had started. In the two weeks since the fire, wire grass had already sprouted tender and green among the charred remains of its parent grass. All over the fire site, gopher tortoises munched on the fresh shoots.
When Aidan arrived at last at the broad river, he stood on the high bank and shouted toward Last Camp on the other side: “Massey! Floyd! Isom! Burl! Cooky!” Someone came to the bank on the civilizer side of the river. It was Isom, Aidan thought, but it was hard to tell so far away. Whoever it was, he didn’t recognize Aidan, who jumped,
waved, and yelled like a wild man. “It’s me!” Aidan shouted. “Can you bring a boat?”
The river breeze carried Aidan’s words downstream. All the hunter heard on the other side was incoherent hollering from what appeared to be a savage in a skirt and helmet. The hunter disappeared, and a dejected Aidan began preparing to swim one-handed across the wide, alligator-infested water.
But soon the hunter was back at the far bank, and he had several hunters with him. Aidan jumped around and wheeled his arms in a broad come-here gesture, but the men only stood in a knot, talking, obviously discussing what to do about the wild man on the other side of the river.
They were still talking when another man—tall and white-haired in a dusty tan robe—pushed past them and leaped into the nearest rowboat. When two goats jumped in after him, Aidan knew Bayard the Truthspeaker was pulling across the river to him.
“Bayard!” Aidan shouted when the old man nosed the rowboat into the root tangle at the river’s edge. “What are you doing at Last Camp?”
“I heard about your fool’s errand,” the old prophet answered, “and I was headed into the Feechiefen to see if you needed rescuing. I was to leave Last Camp tomorrow morning.”
Bayard looked at Aidan’s outfit and laughed. “I’m not sure those boots go with that skirt,” he remarked as he helped the young hero into the boat. Aidan situated the frog orchid at the boat’s prow, where Bayard’s goats would have to get past him to get to it. The poor flower was wilted and already brown around the edges, but it wasn’t dead yet.
“So you found the frog orchid,” the old man observed as he rowed the boat out of the eddy and into the open river.
The Secret of the Swamp King Page 16