Nokosi unrolled the vellum map. Using his finger as a writing quill, he drew a circle around our location and then scrawled the word Mergo, the name I’d coined in jest. My friend mocks the mocker. While I still can’t claim to share his superstitious belief in spirits and demons, I can no longer dismiss them so cavalierly. There is something here, bewitching this place. I sense it too. Something unnatural and yet also born of nature. We must remain vigilant.
“It’s a straightforward plan.” Perch attached the belt hook of his sheathed bowie knife to his belt with a carabiner. “Macey, you sidle the Mud Cat up to the hammock and drop me off. Then take the boat out away from the hammock—forty feet should do it. I’ll tiptoe over to the plant stalk and saw a wedge out of it with my knife, bending the stalk in the direction of the boat. If I do the math right—and I’m good at math—the tip of the stalk should land right across the Mud Cat. Then y’all can cut off the flower with this.” He handed Tad the fish scaler Macey had used on the warmouth. “Once the flower is safely aboard, come pick me up.”
“Then we go home?” Creeper asked.
Perch winked. “Then we go home, buddy.”
Tad had his doubts. “That stalk is huge. Are you positive it won’t flip the boat? Or smash through the hull?”
“Nah, the plant isn’t woody like a tree,” Perch said. “Without branches, it’ll be too slick to climb. Cutting it down is our best course of action. Not to worry, Big Brain. As long as the stalk hits the gunwales on both sides, the pressure will be distributed evenly. It’ll bounce the boat a bit, but the Mud Cat was made to take a beating. That’s why I picked her. Just make sure none of you are directly under the stalk when it lands.”
“Be careful, Perch,” said Piper. “If the flower falls into the water—”
Perch chuckled. “Have a little faith in me.”
Piper did. He’d earned it. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
Macey puttered over to the hammock and swiveled the tiller handle to swing the boat alongside it. Perch lowered himself overboard and tested the integrity of the hammock with the weight of one leg. They knew from experience that the water in this part of the swamp was much deeper than the water in Floyd’s Prairie. Perch couldn’t afford to be cocky.
“Wait—” Piper squeaked. She reached out and clutched Perch’s pant leg.
“I got this,” he assured her. “Relax.”
She let go.
Perch kept a tight two-hand grip on the gunwale as he gradually lowered his full weight onto the peat. The hammock trembled. It was quaggy, but it held.
“It feels solid enough,” he told them, standing slowly. “I think it’s safe.”
Macey wiped a dew of sweat off her forehead. “Good. Be careful, son. Go it slow.”
“I will,” he promised. “Take the Mud Cat out, Mace.”
Perch began the twenty-foot walk between the edge of the hammock and the center, where the stalk had at one time burst upward through the peat then kept growing toward the sky.
Macey undocked from the hammock, took the Mud Cat forty feet out, and swung parallel to the hammock so that the stalk would fall across the middle of the boat, as planned.
Creeper glanced back toward the opening of the narrow, then did a double take. “Hey! Where’d all the animals go?”
“I plum forgot about them,” Macey said. “Looks like they skedaddled.”
“Why would they leave?” asked Piper. For the last few hours, the presence of the animals behind the boat had made her incredibly nervous, but their sudden absence worried her more. It didn’t seem likely that after all this time, they’d collectively lost interest in the boat and its passengers.
“Let’s just count our blessings and be grateful they’re gone,” said Macey. “This is going to be tricky enough without them milling around, waiting for table scraps.”
Piper understood that by “table scraps” she was referring to Perch. If he fell though the hammock, he’d be at the animals’ mercy.
When the Mud Cat was in position and Perch had reached the stalk, he unbuttoned the sheath and drew his knife. He eyeballed the boat, then glanced up to the tip of the plant. “Looks like you’re in the right place, Macey! Here I go!”
He picked a spot on the stalk about three feet up from the peat, set the blade of the bowie knife against the rubbery green cellulose of the plant, and started to saw.
At the very moment the saw teeth of the blade ripped into the stalk, the peat beneath Perch’s feet tore open, and the snout of an enormous bull alligator burst upward through it.
“Holy hell!” Perch yelped in surprise.
The gator opened its mouth wide and thrashed its head side to side as it tried to grab hold of Perch’s leg. Perch lifted his foot high, avoiding the beast, but it was a narrow escape. When the gator made a second lunge for him, Perch let go of the blade handle and jumped back, leaving the knife embedded in the plant.
There came a chorus of warnings.
“Perch!”
“Look out!”
“Get out of there!”
The group was helpless to do anything but watch the attack unfold.
Perch needed a weapon. Luckily, he had one. He jerked the knife free of the stalk and cocked his arm back to put some weight behind his thrust. The gator didn’t wait around to be stabbed. It dropped down through the tear in the peat and vanished.
“You okay, Perch?” Macey hollered. Her deep voice echoed around the lagoon.
“Yeah! I’m alive! I guess the gators weren’t done with us after all!”
“Stay put!” Macey ordered. “I’m coming to get you!”
“No! Stay there! I’m gonna try again!”
Perch slipped the knife back into the groove he’d already cut—there was no sense in starting over. He checked the gaping hole in the hammock, but there was nothing inside it. He resumed cutting the plant. The juice just beneath the tender cellulose skin began to ooze out.
The weave of peat directly below Perch’s shoes lifted several inches in the exact shape of an alligator snapping turtle’s shell. Perch surfed down the side of the moving mound and it instantly fell flat. The turtle had dropped away from the underside of the hammock.
“Son of a gun!” Perch cursed. “Crazy animals! They won’t let me finish!”
He took a step back from the deflated thatch and nearly tripped over the snout of another gator that had erupted through the hammock behind him. A third gator—or possibly the first one returning—started gnashing at the peat, but the dead vegetation snagged between its teeth and it couldn’t break through, though not for lack of trying.
“Incoming!” Macey hollered.
Two huge sirens squirmed up out of the hole that the first alligator had made. They dragged their fat, slimy bodies across the peat, using their front, and only, legs. The stout amphibians wriggled toward Perch, their mouths agape and hissing like cats.
The first siren to reach Perch got the toe of his sneaker in its soft underbelly. The siren yelped as it flew through the air, then it landed on the fringe of the hammock and rolled off into the water. The second siren latched on to Perch’s ankle. “Get off!” Perch yelped, shaking free. He punted it back into the hole. Without teeth, the sirens weren’t a major threat. The gators were a different story. There were several of them now, tearing through the peat all around him. The hammock was bubbling. To escape their snapping jaws, Perch leaped high onto the stalk, wrapping his arms and legs around it tightly, dropping the knife onto the hammock in the process. The thick stem was too slick to climb, so he just hung on for dear life. The stalk was slippery, like a fireman’s pole. As hard as he tried, Perch couldn’t prevent himself from sliding slowly down toward the gnashing jaws.
But once again the attacks stopped, and the gator heads slipped back into the water. Perch waited until the hammock went completely flat. Then he dropped into a crouched position on the peat. He picked up his knife. He looked at it. He looked at the stalk. He looked at the knife. He looked at the gaping ho
le in the hammock. He put it all together.
“They’re protecting the flower!” Perch yelled to the others.
“What are you talking about?” Tad hollered back.
“Every time I cut into the stalk, the animals go nuts! When I stop cutting, they fall back! I’ll show you!”
Keeping a watchful eye on the peat, Perch set the edge of the bowie knife against the stalk, and with one swift stroke he sliced off a piece of cellulose no thicker than an apple peel, just a sliver. Instantaneously, bulges appeared in the hammock, like mice trapped under a carpet. Perch stepped away from the stalk and waited. As he’d expected, the bulges disappeared.
“The deeper I cut into this thing, the crazier they become, and the harder they try to get at me!”
“I think I finally understand what’s been happening with the alligators and the other animals,” Tad said.
“You do?” Piper asked, surprised.
“Yes,” said Tad. “I think the plant is controlling the animals’ minds.”
Piper thought Tad’s theory sounded like bull-pucky. “You mean it’s using telepathy or something?”
“No, I’m talking about chemical manipulation.”
Macey scratched her bristly head. “Speak English, son. You’re not making sense.”
Tad tried to put it into simple terms. “Every time Perch wounds the plant, the animals go on the offense. When he stops, they stop, right? The plant and the animals are connected. The plant is telling the animals it’s under attack and commanding them to protect it.”
“So you’re saying…the plant is the sheepdogs’ master?”
“Yes, Piper.” Tad nodded. “There’s a precedent.”
“A president?” Creeper struggled more than the others to keep up.
“No, a precedent, Creeper,” said Tad. “What I mean is, there are other examples of this phenomenon in nature. The acacia tree, for example. When its leaves are under attack by beetles, worms, or even hungry mammals, the tree releases a chemical distress signal called a volatile into the air. The volatile affects the brains of the ants that live on its branches. It whips them into a frenzy. The ants charge the invaders, biting them over and over in an attempt to drive them away from the plant. They’ve been known to chase off full-grown giraffes.”
He continued. “Some species of plants can even summon specific insects based on the nature of the threat. Butterflies land on the leaves of the black mustard plant and lay their eggs. The plant sends a volatile into the air that is only attractive to wasps. The wasps fly in like the cavalry and attack the butterflies and their eggs, keeping them from hatching into caterpillars, which would feast on the plant’s leaves.”
“So you think the plant is sending out—what did you call it—volatiles into the air?” Piper asked.
“No,” Tad said. “I think it’s sending them into the water, which is something unheard of in science. And it’s not summoning insects; it’s—”
“Calling all alligators!” Piper blurted.
“Exactly,” Tad said. “And every other slimy predator that lives in the water. The alligator snapping turtles, the gars, the sirens…the plant is mind-controlling all of them, and I think it has been ever since we entered this part of the swamp.”
“I guess we finally know what happened to your ancestor,” Piper said.
Tad frowned. “Yeah, I think we do.”
Perch brought their attention back to his precarious situation. “There’s no way these gators will let me hack through the plant’s stem! Anybody got a plan B?”
“Are you sure you can’t climb it, Perch?” Piper asked. “You won’t hurt the plant if you climb it, right? The animals won’t come after you, and even if they do, they won’t be able to reach you.”
“Unless he falls,” said Macey. “A fall from even ten feet up might send him straight through the hammock. That’d be the end of him, for sure.”
Perch glanced up the stalk to the flower. From the hammock, it looked like a tiny silver speck. “It’s too tall, and the stem is too slippery! I’d try if I thought I had even the slightest chance, but I know better.”
Macey had an idea. “What if we tie a rope around the stalk and use the Mud Cat to bend it down to the water?”
“Won’t work!” Perch said. “I won’t be able to get up high enough to rope off the upper part of the stalk. If I tie it too low, it’ll just crimp the stem at the middle, and the whole thing will bend the opposite way, dropping the flower into the water.”
Piper was beyond frustrated. She hadn’t come all this way and endured a night on Billy’s Island and two baths in the swamp only to be thwarted by the flower itself.
“Ugh! This is ridiculous!” she said. “There has to be something we—”
“I’ll climb it.”
All heads turned to the smallest member of their party.
Creeper stood up, his expression was one of stone-faced resolve. “I’ll climb it,” he repeated. “I can climb the flagpole at my school. I’m the only one who can reach the flag. I’m light and I know how to grip with my feet. Climbing is what I’m good at. I know I can do this. Grace is counting on me.”
Piper loathed this idea, but they were out of options. They had to let him try.
Macey ferried Creeper to the hammock. Piper looked over the port side of the boat as the starboard side nudged against the edge of the hammock. She could make out the wraithlike animals swimming beneath the hull, orbiting the base of the plant below. Piper knew they were waiting for the plant to tell them what to do. She changed her mind.
“No. I’m not letting you do this, Creeper,” she declared with finality. “We’ll think of something else.”
“It’s not up to you,” her brother said, untying his shoes. He slipped them off and set them to the side on the floor of the Mud Cat.
“Of course it is!” she shot back. “I’m the closest thing you have to a parent out here!”
Creeper responded with a derisive snort. “You don’t have to protect me. I’m not your perfect, wonderful sister. I’m the brother you didn’t wish for, remember?”
He was about to climb out of the boat when Piper grabbed him and pulled him into a deep, crushing hug.
“I’m going and you can’t stop me!” Creeper tried to wriggle free. He didn’t understand that she wasn’t trying to restrain him.
“I’m hugging you, dummy,” she told him.
“Oh.” He stopped fighting, but he remained stiff and suspicious. “What for?”
“Because I love you. That’s why.” She clutched his shoulders and moved him to arm’s length. “I’m sorry if I ever said or did anything to make you think you’re less important to me than Grace. I don’t know if you’ll believe me now, but I swear, you mean just as much to me as she does. You can be crazy and weird and impulsive sometimes, but those aren’t always bad traits. I promise if it was you that got sick, I’d be right here looking for the silver flower. And if something happens to you…” A tear spilled out of her eye and rolled back toward her ear. “I just couldn’t live with myself. I just…I couldn’t.”
Creeper smiled. He’d been waiting to hear those words. Not just this trip, but his whole life. “Stop blubbering. I’ll be okay.” He hugged her back.
Click. Tad took a picture. “Well, this is the strangest thing I’ve seen all day.”
“Shut up,” Creeper said, laughing.
“You don’t have to do this,” Piper said. “I can try to climb it.”
“Sure, that’s a great idea. Not! Unless Perch has a very long chain saw in one of the benches, I think it’s all up to me.” With that, Creeper scooted out of the boat and onto the hammock. It barely jiggled, he was so light.
“Take Perch’s vasculum,” Tad said, handing him the gold box, showing that he’d made peace with the treasure’s ownership. “You don’t mind if we use this to keep the flower fresh, do you, Perch? The moment Creeper cuts the flower off the stalk, it’ll start to die. We stand our best chance of getting it to Grace
alive if he puts it into the vasculum immediately, as soon as he lops it off. That’s what they’re designed for.”
Perch gave Tad a thumbs-up. “Happy to help the cause. Bring it on over here.”
At half Perch’s weight, Creeper walked across the peat easily.
“Welcome to the party,” Perch said. They high-fived.
“Here, you can hang on to this.” Creeper gave the vasculum to Perch. “I can’t climb with it. Think you can toss it to me once I get to the top?”
“You bet,” said Perch. “Can you carry my knife with you, or do you want me to throw that at you too?”
“Uh…I’d better carry it. I’d like to keep my body free of holes. Er…except for the ones I was born with.”
Perch grinned and handed him the bowie knife. Creeper put the handle in his teeth, leaving his hands free to climb. Perch helped Creeper up onto his shoulders, then gave him a boost up the stalk.
“Let me know when you’re ready,” Perch said. “I’ll throw you the vasculum, and then I’m gonna walk out a ways. I won’t leave you, but I don’t want to be right near the stalk when you start cutting off the flower. The gators ain’t gonna like it, and I don’t want to be in the middle when the Whac-A-Mole fun begins.”
Creeper took hold of the stem and started to climb. He scampered up the length of it like a lemur. His unbelievable dexterity reminded Piper of a documentary she’d seen about Hawaiians flying up coconut trees to gather nuts. In less than half a minute, he was eye-to-petal with the flower. The creatures below the hammock didn’t seem to notice his accomplishment.
“What’s it like?” Piper hollered.
Creeper took the knife out of his mouth. “It’s pretty!” He took a good whiff of the flower. “Smells like Apple Jacks!”
“I’m going to throw the vasculum up to you,” said Perch. “Ready?”
“Ready!” Creeper put the knife between his teeth again and leaned back, holding one arm out.
The Murk Page 18