by Rebecca Daff
Only when the last frog plopped to the ground did Chris take her hands off her head and look around. She and Micah were shin-deep in frogs which covered every square inch of land as far as she could see. The mercenaries must have known what was about to happen and hightailed it out of there. Micah was already standing, shaking a frog out of the open hood of his cloak. He looked a bit paler than usual.
“You okay?” she asked him, even though she wasn’t entirely sure she was.
“Yeah,” he said. “Are you hurt?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Awesome.”
What a weird word choice for that particular moment.
“What about you, Fly? You alright?” she asked.
He nodded his head, making sure to keep well above the frogs below him. Chris hadn’t thought about it, but this must have been a living nightmare for him.
“Just keep out of range of their tongues,” she warned him, speaking from experience.
He nodded again and flew a little higher. Frogs hopped all around them. Some hopped only to land right back in the holes out of which they’d came. They seemed disoriented. Chris supposed they were wondering where to go from here.
She could sympathize.
* * *
They spent that night on a firm bit of land, a rare piece of solid ground where they wouldn’t sink into the water. A dense patch of tall reeds concealed them. Chris was exhausted. It had been so long since she’d slept her eyes closed as soon as she laid her head down. Even the random jumping frog didn’t wake her. And she saw Leroy for the first time since he had appeared to her in The Middles.
She was sitting in the lotus position, cross-legged, back straight, near one of the frog geysers. Her arms were laying on her own legs and her thumbs and middle fingers were pressed lightly together. “Ommm…” She held out the end of the word before drawing another breath and repeating it on the next exhale.
It was night in her dream, too. The sky was star-speckled, the swamp stagnate like always, but out of the stillness came a deep croak. Chris looked for a frog, not moving but searching all the same. It belched again, this time closer than before. The moonlight reflecting off the water revealed nothing. Only when Chris stopped looking for it and returned to her meditative “Om” did she see Leroy’s unmistakable clawed hand reach up out of the hole next to her. Then his other arm appeared and he hefted himself out of the pit like a zombie crawling out of its own grave. Chris didn’t scream or run. She remained seated, surprising herself with the way she kept calmly repeating her “oms” while he came closer.
Leroy stopped in front of where Chris sat, his sharp teeth glinting like razor wire in the moonlight. She wasn’t prepared for it when he finally spoke. His breath smelled just like King Karniv’s had—all blood and sweetness.
“I know you’re here,” he said. “We can all sense our own.”
Chris stopped her chanting long enough to say, “I’m not yours. But I am coming for you.”
“With what?” he asked. When she didn’t respond, he laughed.
The world around them began to shake and Chris thought not again. More frogs were coming and she had the feeling it was going to be even more than the last time. The geysers were going to erupt and no amount of head-covering was going to keep her from getting bludgeoned to death by their falling bodies or suffocating beneath their bulk once they covered her.
Suddenly, Chris couldn’t breathe.
“Fly. Micah.” She tried to call out their names but the only thing that came out was a thin wheezing. She tried to move but was frozen in place. She struggled to free herself from her meditative pose, but she remained stuck while Leroy laughed so hard tears streamed down his cheeks. The ground began to bubble.
Micah woke her with a hard shake. Chris bolted into a sitting position, trying to catch her breath. Her hair was plastered to the sides of her face, her heart thumping fast and hard. The Fly hovered next to them looking west, earnest in his watch. Micah knelt in front of her looking concerned.
“Nightmare, huh?”
Her breathing was finally returning to normal. “Yeah,” she said, though “nightmare” seemed an understatement. It was as if Leroy was really with her in her dreams on Kellet. As if he had been checking in on her journey from time to time, trying to scare her, make her abandon her mission.
“You were kicking in your sleep,” Micah said. “What were you dreaming about?”
She swiped a stray strand of hair away from her mouth and said, “Oh, frogs and Swampers. Normal Kellet stuff.”
He nodded. He didn’t have to ask if she was scared about what they were about to do, just like she didn’t have to ask if he was.
They talked about the upcoming fight, the different scenarios they could face, even though Kellet had proven that literally anything could happen, especially once you got closer to the magic in the swamps. Then they talked about the first things they were going to do back on Earth: showers and food topped the list. They were trying to be optimistic, imagining that they would indeed make it home, that both of them had futures to look forward to. Chris hoped with everything she had that would be the case, that she would go home and her biggest problem would be trying to explain to her mom where she had been all this time.
They talked and the dream slowly faded and Chris laid back down to sleep. She needed rest if she was going to kill Leroy and earn her ticket home.
CHAPTER 27
Something strange had been happening to Chris. Something on a basic physical level. It had started when she had left Toad Island, but there had been hints of it ever since she’d left Nightwell Hold. The closer they’d gotten to the Swamplands the more frequently she had felt it. It was like somewhere out in the swamp someone was holding a magnet and that magnet had been adjusted so it only attracted one thing: her. For days, it had seemed her heart was leaning forward, pitching in a westerly direction against her chest wall. She could feel it straining against its arterial tethers like she was one of the extras in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom, her heart about to be ripped from her chest by an evil cult leader.
If she were back on Earth she would be like, “Hey, somebody. Feels like I’m having an early-life heart-attack here.” But she doubted anyone could do anything about it on Kellet. Besides, Chris decided it had less to do with her heart and more to do with Leroy’s magic.
As she continued to struggle through the swampy mess, she wondered what Micah was thinking about. Here they were slogging through a swamp on very little sleep because they had taken turns on watch, and they were hoping to recover Hannah’s body while planning murder. She would have asked Micah why he was so quiet but she was out of breath, trying not to think about the way her heart was pulling away from her.
They were all tired. The Fly looked to be the least tired of all of them, but Chris was betting he was getting there. She and Micah looked like they’d been mud wrestling. Their clothes were coated in mud and swamp water. That morning, she’d woken to worms the size of her thumb crawling all over her, and ever since she’d been itching something awful. She could still feel them even though it was midday and far from where she had slept. She sighed, wondering if she would carry the phantom worm sensation with her all the way to the end.
She was daydreaming about a hot shower when The Fly stopped in front of her and held out a leg.
“Mercenaries?” Chris whispered. If it was, the most they could do was lie in a patch of reeds and hope they weren’t spotted.
The Fly shook his head.
They were headed toward trees, which was good. Finally, they would have some cover. The trees were tall with straight trunks, and Chris could see the fingers of their roots plunging into the marsh below. The water between the trees and patches of land was specked with blue lily pads.
Micah stood next to her and he sucked in a sharp breath. “Look at all of them,” he said.
Chris could hardly believe what she was seeing. There couldn’t be that many. There just couldn’t.
Every bit of water was occupied. Not one puddle was without a blue lily pad that looked just like the one Leroy had on top of his head. And that’s just what she could see. Who knew how many Swampers were below the ones on the water’s surface or if the rest of the marsh was as densely populated as the section they were approaching. Chris was suddenly filled with doubt. She doubted if they could ever find Leroy among all the thousands, or maybe millions, of Swampers ahead. She doubted that even if by some miracle they could find him that they could do it without the whole Swamper colony attacking them.
It’s not worth it, she thought. And for a moment she was tempted to actually believe it. But then she recognized the sound of the voice inside her head. The voice that had suggested that she turn tail and run was the same voice she’d been enthralled with that night in her father’s study, that had almost captured her until she and Micah had gone through the portal. Leroy was close, and he was trying to convince her to turn back. That meant he was scared. Which was exactly why she shouldn’t be.
Chris took a deep breath and let it out, watching the drifting blue discs, steeling herself for what was to come.
* * *
It was almost sunset, so they set up camp. They had all agreed it should be a good distance from the “lily pads” given that the blue discs were actually the tops of Swampers’ heads. Micah was right. There were so many of them. It was a minefield of monsters. Chris wondered what would happen if she or Micah were to fall into the water. Would they get swarmed, attacked by all those gangly arms, the claws and teeth that were probably waiting for them to slip up? Would one misstep alert the whole Swamper colony? There was no telling, but they knew their best bet was to go in rested and prepared.
They all agreed on a simple strategy: stealth. Their plan was to quickly and quietly cross Swamper Central, careful to not so much as dip a toe into the water. The Swampers could be like fish, alert to even the slightest ripple.
“So we’re not going to upset the water,” she said aloud. “A sword will only help us so much if we’re surrounded.”
Micah and The Fly nodded. She looked at the sword hanging from its sheath at Micah’s side. Why did she have to go and lose her dagger? When she had been practicing, the sword felt heavy and awkward. She had swung it, two-handed, and it seemed like it could do some damage, but it would be useless if Leroy got close. She should have gone back to Toad Island and looked for the dagger while she had the chance.
As soon as Chris had the thought she dismissed it. Going back to the island would have been too risky. Besides, it was lost somewhere in the water. There was no telling where it was now. She needed to accept that it was gone and use what she did have: the sword. It wasn’t ideal, but it was better than nothing.
* * *
They could all feel it in their own way. Like in the caravan after the fire at The Middles, they could each sense something coming. That morning as they packed up camp and ate their breakfast, there was an air of finality to every act. This was the breakfast, the departure.
While she and Micah packed up camp she said, “Remember, I have to be the one that kills Leroy.”
“I know,” he said, handing over the sword and its sheath. She strapped it around her waist. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t get in a hit or two.”
It didn’t get much better than Micah.
Chris gathered him into a warm hug. “Thank you for everything you’ve done. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”
There was no reason to speak of the obvious—their reservations about what they were about to do, their fears, what might happen. Chris had decided that it all came down to just doing. When all was said and done, she had learned that thought without action was just pretend. And she was done with that. Why pretend when you can be? Wasn’t that the point, after all? Be until you aren’t.
Chris was done with hypotheticals, anticipation, and worry. No more regrets. There was just being and doing and hoping that she would continue to be when this was all over.
She pulled out of the hug and looked at Micah, not as a friend but as the person she’d wanted to be with ever since she’d met him. He looked back at her and for once he didn’t smile. Chris held his face in her hands and pressed her lips to his. He wrapped his arms around her waist. His lips were warm, softer than they looked. The two of them stayed like that for a while, kissing each other like they’d both wanted for so long, until they finally pulled away. Chris’s heart was thudding again, but in a good way this time. She grinned and Micah smiled back at her, his cheeks red. The Fly buzzed between them, puckering his lips and making little kissing noises.
Chris took Micah’s hand in her own. As they stood facing the spotted field of earth and water they finally felt ready for what was coming. Chris pulled the sword out of its sheath, holding it at her side. They marched forward, treading carefully, searching for Hannah and Leroy.
CHAPTER 28
Micah broke a limb out of one of the trees. It was the width of his wrist and as long as his arm, far too large for them to whittle the end into a stake, so he would have to use it as a club instead. Going into the Swampers’ nest without a weapon just wasn’t an option. It would have to do.
The two of them wove between the massive trees, dodging the knee-high nubs the roots had shot up out of the ground for oxygen, The Fly guiding them to Leroy. The air was sticky with humidity. Mosquitoes whined and attacked them. They reminded Chris of the one in Toad One, and she wondered if he was still alive, if he was still inside the toad’s mouth with the firefly. She shook her head and rolled her right shoulder to relieve some of the tension that had accumulated in it from carrying the sword. She couldn’t help the mosquito or the firefly now. And she needed to focus on the task at hand, even if all she and Micah had been doing for the last hour was trying not to get eaten alive by mosquitoes or step in the swamp’s murky waters.
The Fly was ahead of them, showing them the way, but he did an abrupt turnabout and flew back to Chris, stopping inches from her nose. He pointed frantically in the direction he’d been flying then put a leg in front of his lips. Chris nodded her head. She turned to Micah and pointed. That way. Then put her index finger on her lips, telling him they needed to remain silent, before creeping forward and hiding behind a tree. Micah followed, taking shelter behind another tree directly across from where she stood.
Ahead of them stood a mercenary in the trademark brown hooded robe opening the door to a large cage. Except that it wasn’t just any mercenary. It was the same one Chris had seen time and time again in Polaris’s courtyard. The very same one who, on the day Chris had fled the castle forever, had slit Hannah’s throat in front of a cheering crowd. Chris felt rage boiling in her gut as she watched the dinosaur-like creature pull an elderly woman out of the cage. The woman struggled, resisting him, her iron gray hair flying around her. She snarled and spit at the mercenary, cursing him and his kind. Chris made a move to help her but Micah waved his hand, grabbing her attention, and shook his head. It wasn’t time. Not yet.
The mercenary pulled the woman, still fighting, to a massive stump in the middle of the clearing. The tree they had cut down must have been ancient. Candles that looked as if they had been used many times were lit on it now. Their thick wax coated the stump’s surface. The robed creature pushed down on the woman’s shoulders, forcing her to kneel in front of the makeshift altar. Then he yanked out some of her hair and held it over a candle’s flame. It caught fire and quickly vanished.
At first nothing happened. Chris thought it was a strange ritual, all that violence and buildup for nothing, but then something moved in the water nearby. A hand broke the surface and Chris recognized the claws, the iridescent blue-green skin, and knew who it was before he ever climbed out of the water. Leroy pulled himself out using his long arms to boost himself onto land.
“I almost forgot my packages were coming today,” he said. He looked at the woman at the altar, bowed to her sarcastically, and stepped around her to walk to the cage. The Marke
d inside of it, people of different ages and colors, backed against the far side. Chris wondered how many of them had ever seen a Swamper before, how many of them had understood that this was what was behind everything wrong on Kellet. She wondered if she saw what was at the root of everything wrong on Earth if she would recognize it. Probably not. Things were never that simple.
“This should be a good batch,” Leroy said, strolling back to the altar. Once there, he leaned in to peer into the eyes of the mercenary’s prisoner. “Do I look the same as I did in your dreams?” he asked.
“How—”
“How do I know about your dreams?” He stood straight and said, “Every time they ask, don’t they?”
The mercenary remained silent and nodded once.
“It gets tedious answering all their questions, doesn’t it?”
The mercenary just nodded again. Leroy tilted his head to the side, taking stock of the woman one more time before telling the mercenary, “Do it,” and the mercenary simply pulled out a blade and cut the palm of her hand in one clean movement.
This time it was Micah who was going to run out into the clearing. Chris frantically waved her free hand and stopped him just before he gave away their location. Rage contorted his face. He was ready to fight.
Not yet, she mouthed to him.
Leroy picked up a doll from the ground on the far side of the tree trunk. It was in the general shape of a person but had no features, no hair or clothing. He swiped some of the woman’s blood from where it mixed with the candle wax then licked it off his hand. The doll began to change. It pulsed with a white light, its shape contorting, facial features and hair appearing, until Leroy held a miniature replica of the gray-haired Marked in his hands and the light faded. The prisoner lifted her head. The fight that had been in her eyes—that defiance she’d had before—was gone. Now she had the same look Chris had seen in the woman The Last Resort corralled in the savannah: vacant and total submission.