Tad strategically placed another stick on the fire. “Grafton is probably back at the car by now. He’ll be worried when we don’t show up. I know he said he’d leave without us, but I doubt he was serious. I wish we could call him.”
Piper checked her phone for bars and frowned. “No signal.”
“Yeah, same here. We could ask Perch to use his, but I’m sure he’s in the same boat.”
“Same boat…” Piper stared at the fire, deep in thought.
“That doesn’t bother you, though, does it?” Tad asked.
“What doesn’t bother me?”
“Being in the Mud Cat all day with Perch.” As soon as he’d said it, he wished he could take it back. It was petty, the result of a stressful day. But Tad noticed the way her eyes lingered on Perch, and it hurt his feelings.
Piper glared at him. “Ugh, Tad. What is wrong with you?”
She really doesn’t know, he thought, surprised. He tried a different tactic. “I’m just saying he’s not so bad, that’s all. Creeper seems to like him.”
Her posture relaxed. “Oh. Yeah. I guess he’s all right.”
Tad smartly changed the subject. “Did you learn anything else from Cole’s map?”
“No,” she said, skimming the vellum with the flashlight. “But I keep thinking I’ve heard this word Mergo before. It rings a bell.”
“Yeah?”
“It’ll come to me, maybe.”
As the sky darkened, the flashlight’s halo grew brighter on the map. Piper trained it on the circle with the flower inside. “It’s there,” she said. “I know it. It’s been there all along, just waiting for us.”
“Let’s hope so,” said Tad.
Twilight was beautiful but brief. Darkness descended. In the Oke, night wasn’t just a time of day. It was a transformation. The landscape shifted from swamp to ocean. An ocean of stars. Piper had never seen so many in her life. Or any so bright. She now understood how by simply adopting planets, stars could also be suns. And with the stars came music, the orchestral din of frogs. Each species added its own unique instrument: a trill, a bleat, a chuckle, a sound like the pluck of a banjo. The swell of throaty croaks was unsettling.
“I wish they’d hush up,” Piper complained. “Stupid frogs are driving me nuts.”
“The little ones got the biggest mouths,” Perch said, emerging from the gloom. To demonstrate this point, Creeper skipped past him, singing loudly. “Fish for sale! We got fish for sale!” There was a chain of checkered-scaled sunfish dangling from his hand. It stretched all the way to his socks, enough meat for two meals, dinner and breakfast.
“Wow, great job!” Piper clapped.
“The warmouth sunnies were biting,” Perch said. “Macey showed your brother how to tie a grinner knot. I’ve never seen her display such uncommon patience. I think they’re best buds now.”
A tiny, flitting orange light farther down the trail gave Macey away; she’d found an escaped cigarette at the bottom of one of her overall pockets and was taking her sweet time puffing the stick of ’backer down to a nub before returning to camp.
Creeper handed the fish off to Tad.
“Um, thanks.” Tad had no clue what to do with them, so he just draped them over the end of the log and waited for something to happen to them.
“You hear those booming grunts?” Perch cupped his hand around his ear. “That’s a pig frog. He’s a little guy, a few inches long, but by sound alone, people mistake him for a bull gator.”
“I wish he’d dunk his head,” Piper growled.
“Don’t worry,” said Perch. “You’ll get used to the music of the Oke. Y’all had a big day. You’ll sleep fast tonight.”
Piper knew better.
To Tad’s relief, Macey took over the job of cleaning and gutting the fish. She was a flurry with a knife, handing chunks of meat off one by one to Perch, who ran them through with sticks and roasted them over the crackling fire. Tad passed out juice boxes. He’d brought plenty to go around.
“Now it’s a party,” Perch declared, stabbing the tiny straw into the top of his box.
They sat on their logs, awash in the orange glow of the fire, picking pieces of crispy flesh off their fish kebabs.
“This is delicious!” Creeper said, stuffing his mouth.
“Warmouth is my personal favorite,” Perch said. “The meat’s so flakey. Pickerel is good too.”
Macey weighed in. “Nothin’ beats a good catfish.”
“I don’t know,” said Piper. “This may be the best fish I’ve ever had.”
Perch waggled his eyebrows. “You could thank this swamp frog with a kiss, Princess.”
Tad had had enough. “Let it go, dude. And quit calling her Princess. Her name is Piper.”
Perch gave Tad a curious look. “Huh,” he said. “I didn’t pick up on it before, but I see it now. I’m usually quicker about this sort of thing.”
“What are you talking about?” Tad grunted.
“Nothing,” Perch said. “Nothing at all.”
Macey stretched and yawned like a lion. “You kids can stay up jawin’. I’m hitting the hay. We get on the stick at dawn, so be up or I’ll water yas.”
Piper didn’t know what “water yas” meant, and she didn’t want to know.
There was one pup tent on the Mud Cat, and without being told, everyone knew who belonged to it. Macey unzipped the flap and disappeared inside. Two minutes later she was snoring like a buzz saw.
“I think I preferred the frogs.” Piper snorted.
Perch grinned. “This is the Okefenokee, land of the trembling earth. Some days it trembles more than others.”
Tad, reminded of his ordeal on the hammock, didn’t think Perch’s joke was funny.
The kids sat quietly for a while, listening to Macey snore. When Creeper finished his fish, he tossed his stick and fish bones into the fire and then bemoaned the absence of marshmallows. “What good is a campfire if we don’t do campfire stuff?”
“What’s campfire stuff?” Tad asked. He’d never been camping before. During his travels, he usually stayed in hotels, or at worst, hostels, which were a bit like the YMCA. Even the hostels had electricity and running water.
“You know!” Creeper said. “S’mores, sing-alongs, ghost stories.”
Perch mulled it over. “Well, we don’t have the ingredients to make s’mores, and if we sing, we might wake Macey—and trust me, you don’t want to wake Macey. So I guess that leaves us with stories.”
“Know any good ones?” Creeper asked. “The scarier, the better.”
Tad had a request. “How about a tall tale from the Oke? As a swamp guide, you must know plenty. Tourists eat that stuff up, right?”
“I’m not in the mood for a ghost story,” Piper said. “My nerves have been jangled enough for one day.”
Perch thought for a moment, then said, “Actually, I have a story that might be right up your alley. It’s about princesses.”
“I don’t want to hear some mushy story about a glass slipper and Prince Charming,” Creeper groaned.
“It’s not that kind of story. No kissing frogs either. This one takes place in the Okefenokee a long time ago.”
Creeper perked up. “Okay, but if there’s romance, tell me now so I can go to bed.”
“Piper?” Perch asked permission.
She nodded. “Go ahead. But keep it light. Nothing too scary. I don’t want Creeper having nightmares tonight.”
Perch slid down to the grass and leaned back against the log, draping his arms over the top of it. He sat cross-legged to keep his feet away from the fire.
When he was settled comfortably, he told them the story of a magical island in the Okefenokee and the mystical people who lived on it. The story of the Daughters of the Sun.
“Thousands of years ago, the first humans arrived in the swamp and settled on an island somewhere deep within its dark heart. The legend says that the women of this tribe had black glistening eyes, like onyx, and skin the color of copp
er. They were so beautiful that any man who looked upon them would fall hopelessly in love forever. The women were, each and every one, princesses of the Oke, so beautiful that their island became known as the Land of the Daughters of the Sun.
“Naturally, the braves of the tribe wanted to keep these women for themselves and sought to safeguard them from invaders. When the first Seminoles arrived in the swamp and discovered the island, they became smitten with the Daughters of the Sun and begged the women to let them live on the island with them. The Daughters said no and warned the outsiders that their braves would be returning from a hunt soon and would surely kill the strangers on sight.
“The Seminole men left the island and returned to their people. But those lovesick puppies couldn’t get the Daughters of the Sun out of their heads. So they gathered all their best warriors and set off in canoes. They figured they could use stealth and surprise to defeat the men of the island and take the squaws as their prize.
“As they neared the island, the Seminole warriors heard a horrible screeching noise above them, like from a giant bird. One they’d never heard before. An instant later, they were hit by a great wave that rolled in at them from across the swamp, seemingly out of nowhere. Most of their canoes were shattered and many men drowned, descending to their watery graves. The warriors who survived refused to give up, so bewitching was the beauty of the Daughters of the Sun. They continued on until they came to a wall of high sedge separating them from the island. They pushed through it, whooping and hollering their most fearsome war cries. But when they paddled out onto the lake where the island was supposed to be, they were met with shock and disappointment. The island was gone. Vanished without a trace. The Island of the Daughters of the Sun and its inhabitants had disappeared, never to be seen again.”
Perch fell silent. He tore a few more strips of roasted warmouth off the bones with his teeth, then tossed the scraps into the fire. For a long while, he stared quietly, mesmerized by a fluttery moth that had come to court their flame. When Perch came out of his trance, he was surprised to find the others still staring at him with anticipation.
“Oh, um…The end,” he concluded. “Forgot to add that part, sorry.”
Creeper spread his hands to clap, but Perch raised a finger to his lips and glanced toward Macey’s tent. “Bad idea.”
Creeper whispered, “Do you suppose the sun people will ever come back?”
Perch lifted himself up onto his log and said, “It’s just an old folktale, Creeper, my man. But to this day I still hear stories of some poor dummy who ventures into the Oke looking for the island and its women, and ends up lost.”
“I bet the sun people are aliens,” said Creeper. “And their island is a spaceship! I bet they come back every few years. Maybe Cole sneaked aboard their ship and was transported to some other dimension. I bet that’s why he disappeared! Maybe he’s trapped and needs our help!” Creeper was thinking like a true video-game addict.
“You’re a fairly decent storyteller, Perch,” Piper said. Stiff from sitting in the boat all day, she sat up tall on the log and twisted side to side until her back cracked twice. “But I think you got my brother worked up before bedtime.”
“It’s a work of fiction, buddy,” Perch assured Creeper. “Trust me, if there was an island of beautiful women somewhere in the swamp, I would have found it by now.” He knocked on the side of his head. “I’ve got built-in radar for that kind of thing. If you want my opinion, there’s only one princess in this swamp, and we’re sitting with her.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?” Piper asked. “Who cares if I do pageants? It doesn’t make me a bad person.”
“Whoa there. I never said it did,” Perch replied. “But for the life of me, I just can’t figure you out. Tell me again. Why are you here?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked. “I told you: I’m here to find the flower. I’m here to save Grace’s life.”
This answer didn’t satisfy Perch. “This is a swamp. Pageant princesses don’t come to swamps. For any reason. You’re out of your element. It’s painfully obvious how uncomfortable this all makes you: the alligators, the bugs, the heat…me.”
Piper grew agitated. “So I’m not the best fit for a swamp. Big deal. What are you saying, that I should have stayed home and let my sister die?”
“Not at all,” Perch said. “I’m saying most people would have just convinced themselves that the flower is a myth. But you did the opposite. You convinced yourself it’s real. You believed, and it’s because of you and you alone we’re all here. That’s what’s got me stumped. There’s some missing piece to the puzzle. Something you’re not telling me. Something you’re not telling any of us.”
Piper picked with her fingernails at a bit of moss on her stump and sat quietly.
“I’m not wrong, am I?” Perch said. “Look, Piper, I’m going to help you find the flower if I can. You’ve made a believer out of me. Well, you and that vasculum. If I can trust you, then you can trust me.”
Piper breathed a weary sigh. “I believe that the flower is a second chance. A chance to redeem myself for breaking a promise.”
Somewhere off in the woods, a barred owl asked the strangest question: “Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you?” The call of this bird was unmistakable.
In Tad’s mind, there was only one question that needed answering. “A promise to whom, Piper?”
The flames cast deep shadows across her face as she made a troubling confession. “A couple of years ago, I overheard our parents talking. They’d just come back from a visit to the doctor. My mother was crying. Dad was upset too. The doctor told them they couldn’t have any more kids. Both of them came from big families. They wanted a big family too.”
“I didn’t know that,” Creeper huffed. “Nobody tells me anything.”
“You were the baby of the family,” Piper told him. “And totally spoiled. You were so jealous when we got a cat that we had to give it away. Plus you were too young to know.”
Her brother pouted. “Oh.”
“Our parents weren’t the only ones who took the news hard,” she continued. “I was heartbroken. I desperately wanted a sister. More than anything. I’d always imagined what it would be like to have someone I could fuss over. Take care of. A little version of me I could teach things to, like how to catch fish or pitch a tent. A sister I could tell all my secrets to…”
“And the promise?” Perch asked.
“I remember the date, because it was just two days after Christmas, right after my parents got the bad news. It was nighttime. I was outside on the porch, staring up at the stars, freezing my butt off. One star drew my focus. It was pink, and at the time I hated pink. But I sure didn’t hate that star. It was beautiful, frozen in place, like God had pinned it to the sky just for me. I knew it had to be a sign.”
“So you wished on a star?” Perch asked. “You wished for a baby sister?”
“Nope. I knew wishing wouldn’t be enough,” she said. “I felt I had to offer something in return. I promised that star…I promised the whole universe that if it would give me a baby sister, I’d take care of her like she was my very own. I would never be cross or mean or ignore her. I would keep her safe, no matter what. She could always have the last piece of cake, and I’d always let her watch her show on TV, even if Supernatural was on a different channel. I would do everything I could to make her life a happy one. That was my offer, and I knew that if I got my wish, I’d have to honor my promise no matter what.”
“And then?” Perch prodded. “What happened then?”
Piper sniffed. “Ten months later, Grace was born.”
A deep hush settled over their camp. The frogs were taking five, and the owl stopped interrogating them about the cook. The fire continued to pop and hiss, but even it seemed subdued, like someone had adjusted its volume control.
“That’s an incredible story,” said Perch.
“I don’t put faith in astrology or omens or any of that st
uff,” said Tad. “But in your case, I think something special really did happen that night.”
Feeling grateful, Piper put her head on Tad’s shoulder. His support meant more than he knew.
“You made a promise, and the universe delivered,” said Perch. “Seems like a bona fide miracle to me.”
“That’s how I felt,” said Piper. “And I kept my part of the promise. For the first year, I acted like I was Grace’s second mother. I couldn’t have loved another human being more ferociously.”
Perch thought he understood. “So you came to the Oke because you’re living up to your end of the bargain. It all makes more sense now. I knew there was more to the—”
“No, that’s not why I came.” Piper could no longer hold back her tears. “Last year Grace was almost killed. I made a mistake, and I wasn’t there to protect her. I blamed Tad unfairly, but it was my fault, not his. After that incident, I started to obsess over all the horrible things that might happen to Grace if I kept pretending I was her protector. I’d come so close to losing her once—I couldn’t risk it again. I decided she was better off without me. I’d failed her, and rather than try harder, I pushed her away. I convinced myself it was for Grace’s good, so I went back on my deal, and now the universe is punishing me. Grace is going to die, and I know it’s because I broke my promise. I wished for a miracle and got one, and now she’s fading away and there’s nothing…there’s nothing…”
Piper put her face in her hands and sobbed.
Tad slid across the log and wrapped his arm around her. “Grace did not get sick because of anything you did or didn’t do. She got sick because people get sick. Even babies.”
“I wish I could think that way.” She sniffed. “But I can’t. I believe in miracles.”
“Well, like I said, you’ve made a believer out of me too,” Perch said. “And that ain’t an easy thing to do. You’ve earned your chance to make things right. If the flower is out here, we’ll help you find it.”
Tad gave Piper a squeeze on the shoulder. “Tomorrow we’ll know.”
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