The Murk

by Robert Lettrick

  The gympie-gympie tree is a type of stinging nettle plant with neurotoxins so potent they can cause extreme pain that can last for weeks or even months; or, in worst-case scenarios, it can kill a man. And then there is a type of eucalyptus tree that produces extremely flammable oil. The tree explodes during forest fires and emits clouds of flammable gas into the air that can turn into massive fireballs when sparked. A forest fire, accelerated by the tree’s oils, will burn up all other plants encroaching on its territory and blocking its sunlight. Deep inside each eucalyptus is a fresh shoot, protected by its outer shell. When the smoke clears, all the surrounding trees are dead and the eucalyptus stands as the lone survivor. The tree is the ultimate example of the kill-or-be-killed nature there.

  And yet Australia is where I found Edwina. To think! Such exquisite beauty living amidst the most abhorrent life-forms. But this is the mischievousness of nature, for some of the most inviting flowers bloom on the unwelcoming arms of the cactus, and the most ornately painted birds thrive in the emptiness of the sun-scorched desert. Beauty within the beast.

  They left the lagoon, Mergo, and their nightmare behind. They were bushed. Physically and mentally spent. Tad’s eyesight was worse; he could detect only light and shadow now. Piper could no longer pretend she was okay. The burns caused by Mergo’s digestive juice were unbearable. She had ugly white-and-yellow blisters on her right hand, her neck, her face, and her shoulders. Added to this was the pain of the wounds the tentacle hooks had carved into her back. Piper lay on the bench and writhed in agony.

  Seeing his sister this way was more than Creeper could bear. He went into the vasculum and tore off one of the flower’s petals.

  “Don’t do that!” Piper scolded. “Grace needs that!”

  He batted her good hand away. “So do you! Now be quiet and lie still.”

  Piper wasn’t used to Creeper taking care of her. She was angry that he was wasting even a bit of the flower on her, but she was also proud of him for taking charge, and she was in no condition to resist. Plus she needed to know if the flower was really the miracle cure Cole believed it would be.

  Creeper folded the petal into a thick pad and gently patted her ugliest burns with it. Piper screamed and pushed him away.

  “You’re torturing me!” she cried.

  “I’m not! I’m helping you! You have to let me, okay?”

  “It hurts so bad…” she whimpered.

  “I’m sorry,” he said with all sincerity. Then he began to treat her again.

  Gradually the pain lessened. After a while the areas Creeper labored over the most started to feel numb. Eventually Piper felt well enough to take over the job herself. Creeper sat next to her, relieved. She dabbed at her blisters and cuts with the soft petal until they faded into discolored spots or disappeared entirely.

  “I’ll be danged,” said Perch. “It works.”

  Piper decided her thigh could wait. “Your turn, Tad.” She tilted his head back and wrung the petal until a little liquid dripped into Tad’s open right eye. She saved some for the left. Piper pressed the petal to the right socket. He put his hand on top of hers, and they held it there together for several minutes. When they removed the petal, Tad found that much of his vision had been restored. He could see everything, although things far off in the distance were still a little blurry.

  He sighed. “So much better.” He switched the petal to the left eye and nursed it for a while.

  Through it all, Perch didn’t say much. He just sat on Macey’s bench and stared ahead with his piercing green eyes.

  Piper sat down next to him and kissed his cheek and offered quiet comfort. There was no miracle fix for the loss of a loved one. Piper thought back to when she’d hurt Creeper’s feelings and Macey had sheltered him under her strong arm. Against her big heart. Piper hadn’t known Macey long, but she would certainly remember the sacrifice the woman had made for them all. Especially for Grace, whom she’d never even met.

  “I think she’d be okay with this,” Perch said when he finally spoke. “I knew Macey better than anyone. Her only real regret in life was what happened to her daughter. She’d be glad to know that her sacrifice helped save your sister’s life.”

  When they reached the part of the swamp that had been shrouded in mist and watched over by jewelwing damselflies, they found the mist and the dazzling blue insects gone. A unique kent-kent-kent call drew their eyes upward. There was something else flitting about, high in the charred, scaly trees.

  “I don’t believe it,” Tad said. His vision, fully healed, was now the sharpest among them. “There must be hundreds of them.…How is that possible?”

  The trees were teeming with birds. Many of them had a red peaked crown, but some did not, a distinction between male and female. The birds were primarily a blue-black color, but they also had white markings trailing on the undersides and upperparts of their wings, and a narrow white stripe running up their necks and ending at their bills. Their bills were white. Ivory white.

  “I don’t believe it either,” Perch said. “Those are ivory-billed woodpeckers. Every one of them.”

  “I thought they were supposed to be extinct,” said Tad.

  “They were,” said Perch. “But here they are.”

  “I saw one earlier,” said Piper. “Right after Macey died. It flew over the lagoon. I took it as a sign.”

  Some of the birds were hammering their beaks into the bark in search of hidden insects. The distinct double-tap drum offered positive identification of a species that had reached near-mythical status almost a hundred years ago.

  Tad chuckled. “Grafton would flip his lid if he were here to see this. I wish I still had my camera. Each bird sighted has a fifty-thousand-dollar reward attached, right?”

  Perch did the math. “That’s roughly fifteen million dollars’ worth of woodpeckers in those trees. I don’t get it, though. Why are they concentrated here? Why don’t they spread out through the rest of the swamp?”

  “I know why,” said Piper. “It’s because here they have a protector. A guardian from hunters, careless campers, and polluters.”

  “Mergo,” said Creeper. “Mergo keeps them safe.”

  “Yeah. Or at least it did.” Perch nodded at the ribbon-wisps of smoke behind them, now far off in the distance. “We may have just killed the woodpeckers’ last best hope for survival.”

  “I honestly don’t know how to feel right now,” Piper admitted. “If Mergo does burn to ash underground, then it can no longer prey on unsuspecting people. But on the other hand, it’s the protector of a fragile species. Without Mergo, those birds might be doomed.”

  “That’s a somber thought,” said Tad.

  Piper watched the precious woodpeckers darting in and out of holes, oblivious to the probable death of their custodian. Sometimes the cosmos awards custody of fragile life to the most unlikely keepers. A few years ago she’d bargained for a baby sister, and then her beloved Grace was born. Here in this secret green cradle called the Okefenokee the cosmos had seen fit to appoint a giant killer plant as the ward of some of its most vulnerable creatures. Who was she to say that Mergo was a monster? Who was she to destroy something so utterly and wonderfully unique? After all, until they’d come along, Mergo was just following its survival instincts. Was it so different from any other living thing? Was it so different from her?

  Tad read her mind. “Charles Darwin believed it wasn’t necessarily the strongest or the most intelligent creatures that would survive but the ones that could best adapt to change. Until now, Mergo could adapt to anything. My guess is it’ll survive this, too.”

  “I wonder what Darwin would think about us,” said Piper. “About what we just survived.”

  “I don’t really know,” said Tad. “But after all we went through to keep each other alive, I’d say we’re more than just survivors.” He glanced around the boat. At Creeper and Piper. Even at Perch. “Darwin also believed that a species whose members could work together as a team has the best chance
of success. I think we proved his theory today.”

  “Smart fella, that Darwin,” Perch said. “I bet he would have loved the Oke. I still do.”

  “You know,” Piper said, “when we get home we’re going to have to tell people about Mergo. We can’t let it kill again.”

  “I know,” Tad said. “It’s the responsible thing to do. Let’s just hope that if it’s still alive when they come to study it, they’ll also come to protect it. And the woodpeckers too.”

  They traversed the swamp, eventually crossing back within the boundaries of the state park. It was dark, deep into the evening when they reached the demarcated canoe route known as the Red Trail. The refuge typically cleared out at dusk, but tonight it was a highway of brightly lit motor boats, puttering along at duck speed. Their people on the boats were using megaphones, calling out the kids’ names.

  “It’s a search party,” Perch said. “I didn’t think. Of course people would be out looking for us.”

  It was by sheer coincidence that the first boat to meet them would be piloted by someone Perch knew. It was an overweight man with a bushy white mustache—Bill Kite, from the park office. Bill was traveling in an airboat, the kind with an enormous fan on the back. He was sitting in the elevated pilot’s seat closest to the cage. There were three or four other people in the lower seats, all with flashlights aimed in the Mud Cat’s direction, making it hard to see their faces.

  Perch steered the Mud Cat into their path, and Bill swiveled the boat’s pole-mounted spotlight to better see who was on board. When he recognized Perch’s face, Bill pumped his fist in the air and whooped.

  “We found them! They’re all right!” Bill hollered over the hum of the boat’s fan to his shipmates. “Let the others know!”

  One of Bill’s men raised a plastic gun into the air and shot a sizzling red flare into the sky. A single firework to celebrate the good news. Piper heard dozens of muted boat horns sounding off in the distance.

  “You kids okay?” Bill asked.

  “We’ll be fine after a hot shower and a couple dozen pizzas,” Perch replied. “Hold the veggies. We’ve had our fill for a lifetime.”

  As the two boats gently bumped prows and came to a stop, the kids were greeted by an unexpected voice.

  “You losers were supposed to meet me at the car,” Grafton scolded them from his seat below Bill’s boots, but the look on his face was one of pure relief, not anger. He was wearing the same clothes from the day before, which meant he’d never left the swamp. Grafton lifted a megaphone to his mouth and blasted them point-blank with “You’re a little late, don’t you think?”

  “Just by a day,” said Tad over the ringing in his ears. “I thought you swore you wouldn’t wait on us.”

  Grafton lowered the megaphone and grinned. “I honestly didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to get lost out here. I guess that was my mistake. My dad is so angry, he wouldn’t even ride in the same boat. He’s somewhere behind us with your parents.”

  “Whose parents?” Creeper asked.

  “All of your parents,” said Grafton. “And half the town of Jesup too. You got us into quite a mess. Thanks to you, I had my driving privileges revoked for six months. I’ll be ticked at you later. Right now, I’m just glad to see you alive. It almost makes up for not spotting my woodpecker.”

  “About that…” said Tad.

  “All right, you’ve had your little reunion,” Bill huffed. Piper could tell that the man was ravenous for answers. “I want to know what happened out there, and you’d better have one heck of a story or I’d advise you to make one up.”

  “We do, Bill,” Perch promised.

  The man stopped him. “Not from you, silver tongue. I need to hear from a passenger. How about you, girl?” Bill gestured to Piper. “Where the heck have you kids been for the last thirty-six hours?”

  “Go ahead,” Tad put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay. Tell him everything.”

  Piper Canfield took a full breath and began.

  The Field Notes of Botanist Dr. Brisbane Cole

  August 28, 1823

  The sunset paints the lagoon in lavish hues of coral and salmon and molten silver. The orange sphere dips to meet its watery twin while clouds that remind me of panicles of lilac float across the dimming sky above it. But it’s not the shimmering light dancing on the surface of the water that I should concern myself with, but the shivering life-form that awaits hapless victims in the murk below.

  Nokosi is dead. Bolek has betrayed us both. I am injured, and my canoe was apprehended by a patch of reeds near the shore. Despite the bleakness of my situation, I can’t help but feel a sense of wonder. I think of my unborn child, and I hope he or she will have a chance to see such places of breathtaking beauty someday. What traits of mine will be passed on to the little one and perhaps to subsequent generations? My spirit of adventure? My inclination to root out nature’s hidden treasures? Or maybe just an illimitable appreciation for the simple miracles that surround us always. Why do humans choose this lonely life fraught with hardship to seek out something so common as plants? Since Queen Hatshepsut of ancient Egypt sent the first plant hunters to retrieve frankincense trees from the land of Punt, there has existed a burning passion to find new specimens, many of which have changed the course of history. We venture into the wild, I believe, to both lose and find ourselves within it. The great adventurer Alexander von Humboldt once said, “This view of a living nature where man is nothing is both odd and sad. Here, in a fertile land, in an eternal greenness, you search in vain for traces of man; you feel you are carried into a different world from the one you were born into.” And yet I now understand that there is nothing so important as the bonds we make in this life. Our friends. Our family. Those we hold dear. To pass from this world alone...that is the true sin against nature.

  With Edwina in my thoughts, I’ll make one last attempt to reach the flower. I leave the story of my journey on these pages in the hope that should I die, someone will find this journal and learn from my effort. If I fall short, then let my words be a testament not to my failure but to the boundless love one person can have for another.

  It is getting late. And so I climb.

  A tremendous amount of credit goes to my agent, Lauren MacLeod, for setting me on the grisly path of middle-grade horror and for not blocking my e-mail address even though I routinely send her links to gory science articles whenever I’m doing research for a new book.

  A huge thank-you to my insightful editor, Ricardo Mejías, and the terrific team at Disney • Hyperion for a job well done. And to Mark Fredrickson for another fantastic cover. And to Maria Elias for her superb design. I’m fortunate to work with some truly talented people.

  A special thanks to Chris Cannon, Rosemary Olairez, Zoraida Cordova, Funmi Oke, Anna Berger, my agency siblings, and the fine folks of Write-O-Rama for supporting my work in various important ways.

  A posthumous bellow to Oscar the alligator (and his harem of girlfriends), who left behind thousands of toothy descendants in the Okefenokee. The swamp’s thriving gator population is just one of the many, many reasons why the Oke is such a remarkable place to visit. To learn more about America’s largest blackwater swamp, visit the following websites:

  U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge (http://www­.fws­.go­v/re­fuge­/ok­efen­okee)

  http://www­.face­book­.com­/ok­efe­no­kee­wild­life­re­fuge­

  Or better yet, just visit the Oke.

  And thank YOU for reading The Murk! Until next time—see you later, alligator!

  ROBERT LETTRICK has worked as a freelance artist for Marvel Comics, Marvel Films, and Harris Publications. He earned his BA in fine arts at Atlantic Union College and was one of the first students enrolled in the Sequential Arts MA program at Savannah College of Art and Design, where he learned from many writers and artists. Robert is the author of Frenzy, a middle grade novel. Learn more online at www.robertlettrick.com.

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  Robert Lettrick, The Murk