“Don’t make fun. I’m not saying it flowered just for us. Humans have been in the swamp for thousands of years. I’m sure the Creek Indians were tempted by it too. And the soldiers who drove them out, as well. And the lumbermen. All the early swampers. What value would the flower have to any creature but humans? If it’s really a disease cure-all—and at this point I believe it is—then it’s an enticing prize for the one animal that would know how to use it: people. I’m sure Cole wasn’t the first or last person to make a grab for the flower.”
“No, we were the last,” she reminded him. “And now it’s underwater and Grace is going to die.”
“Sorry,” said Tad. “I shouldn’t have brought this up.”
“You’re overthinking things. Mergo is nothing more than the plant version of the board game Hungry Hungry Hippos, gobbling up any creature unlucky enough to swim too close to its bladders.” Piper was tired of talking about it. Even if Mergo did grow the silver flower to bait humans, so what? It was waterlogged and rotting inside the vasculum at the bottom of the swamp, and every step they took away from Mergo was a blessing. Good riddance to bad roughage.
A few minutes later, without realizing it, they trudged into a graveyard. They mistook the first tumulus for a bump in their path. They walked around the burial mound, paying it little mind. But then they came upon another and another, and then they were surrounded by them on all sides. These tumuli were different than the one on Billy’s Island. That one was the length and width of a mobile home and was likely packed tight with dead bodies, like a gruesome burrito. The mounds in this forest were small, just roomy enough to fit one body each. They’d been there a very long time. Trees had grown up through some of them, splitting them open like baked potatoes. Thankfully, there were no skeletons dangling from the branches. To make matters creepier, there were fresh vines everywhere, growing over the tumuli, spreading across the forest floor. The vines were all thicknesses, from shoelace to gymnasium climbing rope. Several wound up around the trees and threaded through the canopy. Their tips split off into curled pinwheels that reminded Piper of fiddlehead ferns.
The kids stopped to rest and take it all in.
“I’ve never seen so many tumuli before,” Perch said. “Most of the ones on the other islands were demolished and razed flat by the earliest white settlers.”
“Looks like they missed these,” Tad said. “There must be hundreds of them.”
“Who do you think is buried here?” asked Creeper.
“Could be more Tasketcha,” said Perch. “Maybe these are the ones who died of natural causes.”
“These vines are weird,” Tad remarked, leaning in close to examine one draped over a low-hanging branch. “They’re everywhere.”
“Reminds me of last Halloween when some teenagers TPed our yard,” said Creeper.
“They remind me of the invasive kudzu vine back home,” said Tad. “They’re smothering the other plants.”
Creeper reached out to touch one.
“Don’t!” Piper warned. “It might be poisonous. The last thing we need now is for you to get some weird rash. You know how sensitive your skin is.”
Creeper withdrew his hand.
“They’re probably harmless,” Tad said. “But to be safe, let’s just avoid them.”
They exited the far side of the tumuli graveyard and continued through the forest. The vines continued with them, covering the ground like a haphazardly cast fishing net, the threads crisscrossed atop the leaf litter. The group stepped high to avoid them, but Creeper was still exhausted from his ordeal in the pod, and his legs were shorter than the others’. He started dragging the tips of his sneakers, and inevitably he tripped over a vine, jerking it hard. Creeper landed in a clumsy heap.
“Are you okay?” Piper jogged ahead to help him.
“I think so,” he replied. Creeper rocked back and sat on his calves. “I’m just really tired.”
The sound of rustling drew their eyes to the forest canopy.
“You guys hear that?” asked Perch. The leaves were shaking. The timber was creaking. “Something’s up there.”
The curled leaves at the tips of the vines—Tad called them fronds—looked strange to Piper. Like something from the age of the dinosaurs. They resembled rolled-up octopus tentacles, but they were green and lined with fine hairs instead of suckers. “Huh.” She squinted. “Those fronds…are they unrolling?”
She was correct—the fronds were rapidly unfurling.
“That can’t be good,” Tad said. “I think we ought to keep moving. Now.”
They hustled through the woods, keeping a close watch on the canopy.
“Look!” Creeper yelled. “They’re falling!”
When the tip of each vine had finished unfurling—most were as long as jump ropes—they snapped off, one by one, and dropped to the ground. It was raining vines.
When the vines landed, the most horrific thing happened. They slithered through the leaf litter silently, like faceless snakes, propelling themselves forward with a side-winding locomotion. Each and every one of them headed straight for the kids.
“Run!” Perch ordered. He didn’t have to tell anyone twice.
The snaky-vines were fast. The group had to run at full speed to keep ahead of them; Perch led the way, followed by Creeper, then Tad. Piper brought up the rear. She didn’t know what would happen if the snaky-vines caught up to them. She didn’t want to know.
She found out anyway.
A vine dropped right on top of Piper’s shoulder. Before she could shake it off, it coiled around her neck twice, crushing her windpipe. Piper stopped running and dropped to one knee. “Help,” she wheezed, hoping the boys could hear her.
They hadn’t, but Tad looked back to check on her anyway and saw that she was in trouble. He doubled back, dodging the vines raining down around him. The ground became a deadly obstacle course as the vines hit the earth with soft thuds and then sprang to the chase.
“Hey! Piper needs help!” Tad yelled, alerting the others. Creeper and Perch made a U-turn.
It was like being in a snake pit, only instead of hissing and biting, the snaky-vines were stalking their prey silently, twirling their heads (or bottoms—it was impossible to tell which end was which), sniffing the air for something good. Piper thought of the dodder vine Tad had told them about after Perch got tangled under the boat. She remembered Tad’s exact words: Plants don’t hunt. He was wrong. If these vines were hunting by scent, then the group was in serious trouble. They reeked of sweat and fear and probably smelled delicious.
Tad reached Piper. He jammed his fingers between the coils and tried to pull them loose. The vine wouldn’t budge. In fact, it tightened.
Piper was turning a deep shade of plum. Her eyes were bulging in their sockets. She’d choked once before, on a Goldfish cracker. Her mom had saved her then with the Heimlich maneuver. The Heimlich wouldn’t work this time.
Tad snapped his fingers at Perch. “Give me your knife!”
Perch unsheathed it and slapped it handle-first into Tad’s palm. “What are these things, man?”
“Plantlets, I think.” With extreme care, Tad severed the vine into three pieces. It fell away dead and Piper guzzled air.
Creeper saw the angry purple ligature mark around his sister’s neck and started to cry again.
“Don’t,” she wheezed. “I’m okay.”
He saw this was true, but he cried anyway because he loved her. She understood that now.
A snaky-vine wrapped itself around Perch’s ankle and started to climb in a spiral route up his leg. Tad tossed him the knife and with a precise downward swipe Perch sliced it off before it could reach his thigh. “Plantlets? What are plantlets?” One half of the bisected snaky-vine made another charge at him, so he hacked off both ends to be safe. He minced the body for good measure.
Snaky-fronds were slithering toward them from all directions.
“Can’t explain now!” Tad said.
Perch swung the k
nife over Tad’s head and slashed a falling vine in midair, saving them both a lot of trouble.
“Thanks,” said Tad.
“Don’t mention it.”
The boys checked on Piper. “Are you ready?”
“Ready.”
They fled and the vines followed.
Perch took the lead again, ushering them through a thicket of twisted black scrub oaks. They had to slow down a bit to navigate around the curved trunks and duck under crunchy beards of Spanish moss that had been growing for so long they had nearly reached the ground. Rip van Winkle beards.
Something dartlike whizzed past Perch’s face.
“Did you guys see that?”
“I did!” said Tad. “I saw it!”
Another dart zinged through the air, passing right through the fingers of Piper’s outstretched hand. It hit the side of one of the oaks with a thwok, lodged in the bark, and vibrated there. Thwok! Thwok! More darts struck the trees.
“Someone’s shooting at us!” Creeper yelled. “Stop shooting at us! We’re just kids!”
Piper scanned the forest for their assailant, but there was nobody there. Maybe the shooter was hiding.
Pank! Perch deflected a dart with the blade of his knife. He seemed more surprised by this than anyone. It was a lucky accident that kept the dart from piercing his hip.
They kept going, running, clambering over fallen trees, dodging darts, staying just ahead of the slithering snaky-fronds. Suddenly, they burst from the forest into a sunny clearing. It was an empty field except for three or four big oaks clustered in the center. The shooter ceased fire immediately. The snaky-fronds, however, followed them out of the forest. They slithered into the clearing, unwilling to give up the hunt.
But then the oddest thing happened.
Piper saw it first. “They’re dying!”
She was right; the vines were withering away. The moment they went beyond the tree line, the snaky-fronds began to spasm, roll into knots, dehydrate, and deflate, like a worm roasting on a hot sidewalk for days.
“Well, that makes zero sense.” Perch stepped on the snaky-frond closest to him, and they heard it crunch. He ground it to dust with his heel.
“It makes a little sense to me,” Tad told them. “Let’s go rest against those oaks and we’ll talk. I need to catch my breath. We all do.”
They walked and limped across the clearing. Behind them, just past the edge of the woods, a dune of dying vines piled up.
In a fit of frustration, Perch used his knife to decapitate a bunch of flowering pickerelweeds, whacking the purplish heads off as they tramped by. “Stupid plants,” he growled.
“That’ll show Mergo who’s boss,” Tad said, unimpressed.
“You know what?” Perch rounded on him and held the knife point out toward Tad’s chest. “Stop calling it Mergo! Plants don’t have names like people do!”
Tad froze on the spot. He hadn’t known Perch long enough to assume the boy was bluffing. “Calm down. I’m not the one who named it,” he reminded Perch. “Put the knife away.”
“It doesn’t deserve a name!” Perch flared. “It’s just a freakin’ weed. A weed that killed my friend! Killed Macey! I’ll come back for it soon. I’ll load a boat with bags of herbicide and dump them in the water. That’ll do the trick.”
“I doubt that,” said Tad.
“Perch, put the knife away.” Piper tried to calm him. “You’re not mad at Tad; you’re mad at Mer—” She caught herself. “I mean, you’re mad at the plant.”
“Yah, yer right,” Perch said. “I am.” He slid the knife into its sheath. They gave him space as they finished the walk to the center of the clearing.
They rested in the shade of a gnarled oak. As plants go, the tree seemed safe enough. Creeper scampered up to the highest bough that was still within hearing range of the conversation.
“Tad, if you know what that crazy obstacle course was all about, please clue us in,” said Piper. “You said those strangler vines were plantlets. What were you talking about?”
“Remember I said there’s another method of plant reproduction besides pollination?”
She nodded.
“Some plants reproduce through plantlets. I have several kinds in my greenhouse. A parent grows tiny baby plants in the margins of its leaves. Eventually, these plantlets break off and take root in the soil, where they grow into adult plants, like their parent. I think those vines that tried to choke us to death might be Mergo’s plantlets. Or, technically speaking, Mergo’s babies.”
“Merglets!” Creeper coined a horrible new word.
“How is that possible?” asked Piper. “We left Mergo back in the lagoon, didn’t we?”
“Did we?” Tad asked. It was an odd question.
Perch said, “What I want to know is who was the jerk firing darts at us, and why.”
“Nobody was firing at us,” said Tad. “No human, I mean.”
“Then what?” asked Piper.
“First off, they weren’t darts. They were nettles. Hollow stinging hairs that cover the leaves of some plants.” Tad held out his fist and opened it. There was a nasty-looking woody thorn resting on his palm. “This is a nettle. They’re usually a lot smaller than this one, like the hairs on a peach. If you brush up against a normal nettle plant, the nettles will break off and stick in your skin. Some act like hypodermic needles, injecting toxic chemicals produced by the plant into the bloodstream. Depending on the plant species, some of the chemicals can do serious harm to a person. They can blister the skin, cause excruciating pain, hallucinations…blindness. I’ve never heard of a plant that can shoot nettles like darts. Maybe the wind shook them down on us.”
“There’s no breeze here,” Creeper said, wiping sweat from his face. It was always hot in the Oke during August, but today the air was especially still and muggy.
Perch took the nettle from Tad and examined it. It was long enough and sharp enough to sew buttons with. “So you think the whole swamp is out to kill us? Is that it?”
“You should know better than that,” said Tad. “You work here.”
“Then what?” Perch asked.
“If I tell you what I think, you have to promise you won’t call me crazy,” said Tad.
“Can I at least think it?” Perch asked.
Tad shrugged. “I think Mergo’s reach extends beyond the lagoon. I don’t know how, but I believe the plant is hunting us on land too.”
Perch broke his promise. “That’s the most insane thing I’ve ever heard!”
“Perch…let’s just listen.” Piper didn’t want arguments. That’s not what they needed. They needed ideas, and so far Tad was the only one who seemed able to offer any.
“Fine.” Perch huffed. “We’re all ears.”
Tad thought Perch was ninety-nine percent mouth, but he kept that thought private. “When the Spanish conquistador Pizarro reached Incan territory in 1526, under royal order, his army conquered the forest people, turning many into slaves. One of those tribes, the Tasketcha, fled to the Okefenokee, and probably brought along things they’d need to survive, right? They’d want to bring seeds, of course. Maybe one of those seeds came from a unique species of plant. A plant found only in the dark heart of the South American rain forest. From those seeds would grow their protector, a monstrous killing machine to fend off any intruders who might want to harm them—or possibly steal their women. Picture it? Now what if this protector grew too large and too hungry and started preying on the Tasketcha too?”
“I’m not sure I’m following you,” said Piper. “Are you saying that Mergo was the Tasketchas’…pet?”
“Not pet. Protector. And I think the campfire story Perch told us may have some truth to it. I have a hunch that the Daughters of the Sun and the Tasketcha tribe were one and the same. There are similarities. Many South Americans have bronze-colored skin and jet-black hair.…”
“And they are often beautiful,” Piper chimed in. “Contestants from Venezuela won Miss Universe in 2008, 2009
, and 2013.”
Creeper snorted. “You would know that.”
“Hush up,” she scolded.
“I don’t think the Tasketcha were mystical or evil at all. I think they were innocent people who tried to escape Pizarro’s army, sought refuge in the Oke, and accidentally released an invading plant species that thrived here and eventually got too big and too hungry to handle. It responded to the poor quality of the soil by evolving quickly into a carnivore, and as time passed, it developed a ton of biological weapons, weapons it’s using against us.”
He carried on with his point. “There’s a botanical garden just outside a castle in England called the Alnwick Garden. I’ve been there. It’s walled off behind big black gates, for good reason. This garden is home to hundreds of the most deadly poisonous plants found anywhere on the planet. Now imagine if a single, extraordinary plant species—a super-adapter—evolved to take on the deadly properties of all of those plants: rapid movement, trap bladders, venomous nettles, plantlets that break free and hunt large game, animal-controlling chemicals, and a flower so tempting that it lures humans right into its clutches. When you think about it, Mergo is the perfect predator.”
“Get creepy much?” said Perch.
“Sorry.” Tad realized he was coming off as a little too enamored with the plant. “It’s just that there’s never been a discovery of this significance. Not since Pando.”
“Who’s Pando?” asked Creeper. “Mergo’s cousin?”
“No,” said Tad. “Pando is the largest living thing on the planet. A single male quaking aspen in Utah that produced an entire forest colony of clonal trees—trees that have the same genetic code. The trees share a single underground root system, technically making it one living organism. Collectively, Pando weighs over six thousand tons. It’s also one of the world’s oldest living things, having probably sprouted from a single seed more than eighty thousand years ago.”
“Wow,” said Creeper. “I didn’t know trees could live that long. I definitely want to climb Pando someday.”
“What does the name mean?” Piper asked. Tired of standing, she hopped up on one of the oak tree’s branches and almost ran her head through a spiderweb, but she noticed it in time and ducked. Piper scooted down the branch, away from it. She hated bugs more than anything, but after being imprisoned inside one of Mergo’s bladder, she had a little more empathy for them.
The Murk Page 22