Perch agreed. “I think that’s our cue to get some rest. If we don’t beat Macey to rise, she’ll do as she threatened and water us. While that ain’t as bad as you’d fear, it ain’t as polite as you’d hope. Trust me, I know.”
“Are you going to be okay, Creeper?” Piper received no reply. Not even good night. Her brother got up, dragged his sleeping bag a few feet farther from the fire, and wriggled his way inside. He rolled over, turning his back on her, and lay still.
“What’s his problem?” Tad asked.
“Who knows?” Piper shrugged. “Past his bedtime, I guess.”
The two older boys made sure the fire was well contained. Perch offered to stay up to watch for snakes. “The fire’ll keep bears and gators away,” he explained, “but rattlers are attracted to heat. I’m not worried, but since I don’t sleep much anyway, I’ll keep an eye out. Besides, Macey’s got the tent, and I only brought three sleeping bags.”
“If it’s all the same, I’d like to take first watch,” said Piper. “I already know I won’t be able to sleep—I’m too anxious about tomorrow. And even though you said I’d get used to the frog jamboree, I’m pretty sure I won’t.”
“You want company?” Tad asked, hoping she’d say yes. “I can stay with you for a while.”
“I’ll be fine,” she promised. “You guys get some rest.”
“If you get chilly, there’s a heavy blanket on the Mud Cat. Second bench. I can fetch it for you,” Perch offered.
She smiled appreciatively. “I can get it. Thanks.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Good night, Piper.” Tad didn’t feel comfortable leaving her alone, but he could tell that’s exactly what she wanted.
“Good night, Tad.”
It wasn’t long before everyone was fast asleep except for Piper. She hunkered down by the fire and tuned her ears to the rattlesnake channel. She thought of another rattle, the one in Grace’s crib. Piper’s heart ached at the mental image of her sister’s perfect little face staring up at the lazily rotating teddy bear mobile above. Next she imagined the street in front of her house lined with police cars, their red and blue flashing lights shining through her neighbor’s windows, drawing them out into their driveways in pursuit of gossip. She pictured police officers rifling through her house. The one in charge standing with a notepad, talking to her shell-shocked father. And another in the kitchen, pouring coffee for her sobbing mother. Several more were tearing her room apart, looking for clues that might explain why she and Creeper hadn’t come home. It was all just horrible, and it was all her fault. She had to make sure the pain she was putting her parents through counted for something. She had to find the flower.
Piper drove the scenario from her mind and opened Cole’s journal. Now that she’d spent time in the swamp, his insights made more sense. They weren’t just the rambling of an excitable naturalist in his element, as she’d first thought. His account was a careful gathering of clues by a remarkably observant detective in pursuit of the swamp’s number one most wanted—the silver flower.
When she reached the journal entry dated August 27, 1823, she reread a passage that brought her to a halt.
Because of my love of taxonomy, or perhaps out of sheer boredom, I have decided to assign this imaginary beast a fitting name. A good and proper Latin name. I have chosen one that translates literally as this: I drown, I bury, I overwhelm. I dub this laughable creature Mergo.
Mergo.
There it was. She knew she’d seen it before. Cole hadn’t just scrawled the word in blood on the map; he’d mentioned it in his journal too.
According to Cole’s Seminole guides, Mergo was an evil spirit that existed solely to protect the flower from those who would seek to steal it from the swamp. Tad was right; Mergo was Latin. I drown, I bury, I overwhelm. She let that sink in. But Cole chose the name as a joke. Piper didn’t think the joke was funny at all. She’d never really understood “nerd humor.”
Piper decided not to share her findings with the others. The word meant nothing. Less than nothing. Slowly, quietly, she ripped the page free, wadded it up, and tossed it into the fire. She watched the paper blacken and shrivel until it fell between a gap in the charred kindle and vanished.
Mergo. I drown, I bury, I overwhelm.
Piper shivered.
She decided she wanted the blanket and set off down the trail toward the Mud Cat, using the flashlight as both a lamp and a snake detector. As Piper made her way to the dock, she had the unnerving sensation she was being watched from the shadows. And she knew it was likely that she was being watched. Not by evil spirits, but by the many nocturnal creatures that lived on Billy’s Island. She played with one of the buttons on Perch’s flashlight and discovered that by clicking the button, she could change the color from white to red to blue to green. She didn’t know what the other colors were for, but white was brightest, so she clicked back to it. Bright was good.
When she reached the water, Piper crossed the dock and boarded the Mud Cat with great care. (Her brain couldn’t fathom the horror of falling into the water at night. She would have a heart attack, for sure!) She retrieved the thick wool blanket inside the second bench. As she shut the lid, she heard a splash in the water behind her. Startled, she spun quickly and cast her light across the surface. At first there was nothing to see—just thousands of stars reflected on the swamp’s mirrorlike surface. She breathed a sigh of relief.
But then she noticed that the stars had a strange greenish tint. They began to blink out, one by one. And then back on. And out again.
“Oh…” She understood now. They weren’t stars at all.
She ran the beam up and out across the swamp, and everywhere the flashlight shone, it reflected back as tiny gleams in thousands of little eyes. All eyes were on her. They started moving toward the boat. Piper had never been so creeped out in her life. With the blanket in hand, she leaped onto the dock. Right into someone’s arms.
“Gah!” she screamed.
“Don’t be afraid,” Perch said. “I’ve got you.”
“What are you doing here?” she hissed, pushing him away. “You scared the poop out of me.”
“Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to. I woke up and noticed you were gone. I was worried, so I went looking for you.”
“Well, you found me. I just came for the blanket you mentioned. I don’t feel like standing out here all night.” She moved to go around him.
Perch blocked her way. “You saw something upsetting. I can tell. What was it?”
“What did I see? Hmm, nothing much. Just this!” She shined the light on the water and waited for his appalled reaction, but he just raised one eyebrow and frowned. The green glints were gone. “I don’t get it.…There were a gazillion blinking eyes in the water. Where’d they all go?”
“Probably just frogs. I’m not surprised they took off,” Perch said. “You scream like a banshee when you’re scared.”
“Oh,” she said, feeling stupid. “I suppose I did startle them.”
“Yep.”
“There were so many.” she said. “Is that normal?”
“Frogs are amphibians and need both land and water to survive. I suspect they’re displaying good sense by staying close to the islands.”
“They’re creepy. Why do their eyes glow like that?”
“It’s not a glow,” he corrected her. “It’s a shine. Some animals have what’s called a tapetum lucidum. It’s a layer of tissue right behind the retina that reflects light. Humans don’t have it. Most nocturnal animals do. Now, what’s really interesting is that the color of the shine varies from animal to animal. Horses have blue eyeshine. Dogs and cats, green. Coyotes and rats have red eyeshine. Alligators have red eyeshine, too, which is why some folks think they look evil when you put a light to ’em at night. But the red is a reflection of the light, not of their nature.”
“The eyes I saw were green,” said Piper. “Maybe they were catfish.”
He chuckled. “Nope, I w
as right. Frogs. Funny thing about them is how sensitive they are to their ecosystems. More so than any other species in the swamp. They’re usually the first to know when something’s off kilter in the water. Like if there’s too much pollution or a surge in a predator species. I’ve noticed the frogs in the Oke have been acting a little screwy lately, but I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”
“Screwy? In what way?”
“For one, they’re not as shy as they used to be. Well, you saw. They weren’t afraid of you until you screamed at ’em. There were thousands, you say? That’s an unusually big army.”
“They were hardly an army,” Piper scoffed.
“I didn’t mean it to be cute,” Perch said. “An army is the term for a group of frogs. Although come to think of it, they should probably be called a navy, since they spend most of their lives in the water. Dang it. I wish I’d brought my gigger.”
“What’s a gigger?”
“A frog gigger is a four-pointed spear especially designed for sticking Kermit. There’s nothing more delicious than roasted frog’s legs for breakfast.”
“Ugh. You’re like one of those pendulum clocks that swings back and forth between almost bearable and downright annoying. Please see a clockmaker to have that fixed at your earliest convenience.”
“Ha! Well, Miss Piper, you’re like a watch that’s stuck on mean thirty.”
“Mr. Gentner,” she said in her best Southern belle voice, “I don’t have to stand here and let you wind me up further.” She shined the flashlight in his face. “You can come back with me to camp, basking in my spotlight, or you can stay here in the dark with more like-minded companions.”
“Princess, you are a hoot.” He took the blanket from her and tucked it up under his arm. “Lead the way.”
Behind them, in the black water, a thousand eyes rose like bubbles to the surface.
The Field Notes of Botanist Dr. Brisbane Cole
August 27, 1823
Today is the nineteenth day of the expedition. While the swamp offers an embarrassment of botanical riches, the silver flower continues to elude us. Inclement weather has grounded our party on “Billy’s” island for the day. The evening’s downpour carried on into the morning and now into the afternoon. Nokosi believes it is safer to wait for the storm to pass, and I am left with no option but to defer to his timidity. As I write this entry, I sit just inside the flap of my tent, in the shadow of the great tumulus, watching purple veins of electricity pierce the dark skies in the distance. I understand the pivotal role that lightning plays in the swamp. It is the Lord’s deputized arsonist. The fires sparked in its fury clear back the woody plants that would otherwise choke the waterways and make the swamp impenetrable. While I am grateful for this as a man of science, I am still just a man, and in that regard it unnerves me to be so flimsily protected inside the reach of nature’s awesome tantrum.
But then there are a great many things that have tarnished my mettle over the last few days. It hasn’t escaped my notice that Nokosi is deliberately keeping us on the cusp of some invisible border, confining our search to the east. I have heard one word repeated time and again during his heated conversations with Bolek, and always in fearful tones: Isti-Papa. I have yet to let on that I know this word. Isti-Papa is the name of the Creek culture’s boogeyman, a name invoked to scare children into proper behavior. Isti-Papa translated literally means “Big Cannibal.” I have yet to understand if and why this creature of bedtime stories is impeding my quest. It seems as though Nokosi believes Isti-Papa is real and that this creature, whatever it is, has laid claim to the west, establishing its monarchy there. I have traveled to the farthest reaches of the globe, immersing myself in many cultures, all of which told tales of wild beasts and malevolent spirits, and all turned out to be nonsense. I can no longer tolerate this fanciful impediment with good humor. I will speak to Nokosi when the rain breaks and insist that we forge west in the morning.
I admit I find the rather vague names the Creeks bestow on their natural surroundings to be a bit perplexing. Isti-Papa, for instance. A name should say more about a thing than just its dinner preference. A name lasts forever; therefore, it’s important to put thought into the naming. Because of my love of taxonomy, or perhaps out of sheer boredom, I have decided to assign this imaginary beast a fitting name. A good and proper Latin name. I have chosen one which translates literally as this: I drown, I bury, I overwhelm. I dub this laughable creature Mergo.
Tomorrow, my guides must acquiesce. We will venture forth boldly into Mergo’s sovereign domain together, or I will be forced to go alone. Tonight I will finish my work on the map. Even in this abysmal humidity, the vellum takes my ink well. Thank heavens for small blessings.
This lightning makes me silly.
At first light, Piper awoke to a soft hissing. She bolted upright in her sleeping bag and scanned the ground for snakes but saw none. The hissing, she realized, was the sound of their dying campfire being pelted by a drizzle of rain. Despite the fact that Macey was still fast asleep and dry in her tent, the group was being watered.
Piper and Tad scrambled to make sure Cole’s map and journal were safely protected inside Tad’s waterproof backpack. Perch and Creeper crammed the sleeping bags back into their compression stuff sacks before they could soak up moisture.
“Looks like we won’t be cooking this morning,” Perch said, pouring rainwater that had collected in Tad’s sneakers into the sputtering fire to finish it off. A billow of smelly smoke rose like an evil genie, and Perch dispersed it with a wave of his hand. “I guess we’ll have to make do with the snacks Macey keeps under her bench.”
Tad snatched his shoes from Perch. “Great! Cigarettes for breakfast. Yum-yum.”
“I heard that,” Macey growled. The mama bear emerged from her nylon cave. She straightened slowly, one hand pressed flat against her lower spine for support. “Keep it up, boy, and you can starve.”
Tad whispered to Piper, “Remind me to stop saying stupid things around that woman before she kills me.”
“She’s out of her ’backer,” Piper reminded him. “Tread carefully.”
Creeper was still in a dismal mood. He worked fine, carrying more than his share to the dock, but he didn’t say one word during breakfast (crackers, peanut butter, Fruit Roll-Ups, and some of Macey’s homemade deer jerky, which Piper couldn’t eat because of the movie Bambi). His attitude remained sour even after they were back on the water and the drizzling had stopped.
“Sleep okay?” Piper asked him.
“I s’pose.” He grunted, feigning an overly keen interest in a blue heron strutting in the shallows. The bird was looking for something edible to spear with its harpoon of a beak.
Piper figured her brother was just tired and didn’t press him to talk. She, on the other hand, was wide awake, bursting with excitement. Macey had them plying the water at top speed (which was still slower than Piper would have liked, but Oke law stated that all boat motors had to be ten horsepower or less). They were heading west toward the spot Cole had circled on the map two hundred years earlier. No longer aimlessly wafting like a leaf, they were traveling straight and purposefully, like a torpedo.
A low fleece of mist hovered above the water in all directions. Piper drank in a deep breath. The Okefenokee was a swamp, so it would always have the musk of decaying plants and primordial earth, but after the rain, the air was fresher and the tannin-stained water gave off a pleasing scent like the iced tea at Cracker Barrel she loved so much.
“How long until we get there?” Tad asked Perch.
“Couple of hours. We got a good jump this morning, so with luck we’ll be there before it gets hot.”
For the first time, Piper noticed the red spiral cord running between a hook on Macey’s overalls and a plug on the outboard motor. Piper plucked the cord. “What’s this for, Macey?”
“Some people call it a dead man’s switch, but that’s a little morbid for my taste. Its proper name is a kill switch.”
> Piper didn’t see much of a difference. “What’s it do?”
“It’s a safety precaution,” said Macey. “If I fall out of the boat, the red lanyard”—she held up the coiled cord—“will tug on the kill switch and pull it free of the motor, shutting it down. Keeps the boat from leaving me behind, or worse, running me over.”
“Couldn’t Perch stop the boat and fetch you?”
“I used to cruise alone, so I needed it. Now it’s just a habit.” Macey patted her chest pocket again, but no cigarettes had magically appeared. “Sometimes good habits are as hard to break as the bad ones. Having a kill switch in place is never a bad idea.”
An hour into the voyage, the Oke’s ecosystem changed dramatically. The western half was much different from the eastern half. They left the prairies and hammocks behind as the waterways shrank and flooded forests dominated the swampscape. Pond cypress trees, some a hundred and fifty feet tall, compressed the passages, shaping the natural architecture of the west. Piper saw that the needles on the pond cypresses did not droop like the ones in Washington. Instead, they stood straight up on their branches, as if they’d seen a ghost. Maybe they had—the Oke felt full of them.
She noticed something else unusual about the cypress trees. A few feet from their submerged trunks, several small knobby stumps jutted up from the water. The stumps looked a bit like melted candles, but they were wood, not wax.
“What are those, Creeper? You’re the tree expert.”
He shrugged. “Dunno.”
“Them’re called knees,” Macey said. “We don’t know much about them. We think they’re support systems, absorbing nutrients from the air and passing them along underwater to the tree.”
“Cool!” Piper said. “Isn’t that cool, Creeper?”
He shrugged again.
“Maybe after we find the flower, we’ll stop and you can climb one of the big ones. What do you think?”
This time he didn’t even give her the courtesy of a shrug.
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