The Secret of the Swamp King (5 page)

Aidan spent the rest of the afternoon in the library with Jasper. He was hungry for any old lore related to the frog orchid, the Feechiefen Swamp, or the ways of the feechiefolk.

The two brothers leaned over a huge map of Corenwald, stretched out to cover the whole library table. Here was the kingdom in its entirety. In the north, the high mountains towered over dales, hollows, and high country lakes. A different kind of wildness prevailed there—not the swampy, sandy wildness of Aidan's native haunts, but a wildness of crags and rocks and waterfalls, of elk and brown bears three times the size of a man.

South of the mountain range rose the foothills, where miners scratched out a living under the ground. A low plateau stretched across the middle of the island. This was
Corenwald's breadbasket. Its lush and rolling land was sectioned into farms arranged in tidy grids. Here the map was dotted thickly with villages and towns. Here the world seemed orderly and safe.

At the bottom edge of the plateau, the capital city of Tambluff, the gleaming jewel of Corenwald, was tucked into a bend of the River Tam. From there, to the south, east, and west, the land dropped to a low and sandy plain where the rivers meandered slowly, taking their sweet time on the last long leg of their journey to the sea.

On the western coast, the chief city was the deep-harbored port of Middenmarsh. The first settlers of Corenwald landed there and radiated east across the Bonifay Plain and toward the River Tam. In the southwest quarter of the island, the land drained by the Eechihoolee River, the population was sparser than in the center of the island. But still, the map showed farms and villages stretching as far down as the southern coast, where oranges and lemons grew.

The swampy heart of Corenwald was in the south and east, where the River Tam flowed. Here the map grew murky indeed. Flowing south from Tambluff, the river rolled through Hustingreen, then along the edge of Longleaf Manor. But as the river flowed through the Eastern Wilderness, the map showed nothing else for leagues and leagues. No village, no settlement, no farmstead. Beyond Longleaf, there was only one more marking on the map. The river made a looping bend before turning east for its last push to the sea. This was Big Bend. And situated on the very bottom of the bend, on the
north side of the river, was Last Camp. It was the last outpost of civilization in the Eastern Wilderness.

To the south of Last Camp, across the river, the bottom right corner of the map was simply labeled “Feechiefen Swamp.” There was no further detail—no islands, no waterways, not even an outline of the swamp. No one really knew what lay beyond Last Camp. Jasper dug up every map he could find. Pretending to look for something in the Eastern Wilderness, Aidan let his eyes wander down to the southeastern extremity of each map. But each was the same. No matter how detailed the map, the Feechiefen was a big blank. As far as the mapmakers were concerned, Feechiefen was beyond the edge of the world. The only thing to be learned from the maps was what Aidan already knew: To get to Feechiefen, he would have to go to Last Camp and turn south. And pray to the One God.

Jasper rolled up the last of the maps. Aidan remarked, “Lord Cleland mentioned something called the frog orchid. Do you know anything about a frog orchid?”

“Ah, the frog orchid,” answered Jasper. “Not one of the more well-known bits of lore.” He dug into the scrolls again and pulled out a manuscript. Jasper was loving this; someone was interested in the old lore he loved so much, someone he could instruct and show off for. He unrolled the manuscript and ran his finger down the elaborately scripted lines. “Here it is,” he said eagerly, and he began reading aloud:

Aidan whistled. “What on earth does that mean?”

Jasper shrugged. “A lot of the lore-masters think it doesn't mean anything,” he said. “They think it's just a little song. After all, if nobody's ever come back alive from Feechiefen Swamp, who could have written it?”

“But let's say it does mean something,” said Aidan, undeterred. His king had sent him in search of the frog orchid, and he was going to make the attempt, whatever the lore-masters might think about it. “Let's say it actually does give clues for finding the frog orchid. What could it mean?”

Jasper's brow creased with concentration. “‘In deepest swamp, the house of bears.' What would be a house of bears?”

Aidan thought. “A cave? A bee tree? A canebrake?” He shook his head. “I don't know. Could be a lot of things.” He turned to the next line of the chant: “‘An orchid in the spring appears.' That makes sense, at least.”

Jasper picked up the chant. “‘On oaken limb around a pond / As black as night and round as sun.'”

“So the orchid is black? And round?” asked Aidan.

“No,” Jasper answered. “I think that's the pond where it grows. The pond is round and black.” Jasper returned
to the next two lines: “‘It floats in air, a ghostly white. / It soars and leaps like frog in flight.'”

Aidan's head was swimming. “So it floats? I thought it grew on oak trees. And since when did frogs fly?” He was getting discouraged. No wonder the lore-masters thought the Frog Orchid Chant didn't mean anything.

Jasper shrugged again. “That's the way it is with the old lore. Sometimes you run across something that seems like it couldn't possibly make sense.” Then he added, “But then one day you find out it was true and right all along.”

“What other feechie lore do you have in here?” Aidan asked, thumbing at some of the manuscripts on a reading stand.

Jasper walked to the shelf where he kept scrolls of children's stories and folk tales. “Let's see,” he muttered. “I had a scroll here that Maynard used to come in and read quite often.”

“Maynard?” said Aidan, surprised. “When did Maynard ever come to the library?”

“Oh, he and I spent many evenings in here reading together after you went to Tambluff,” said Jasper.

Aidan was floored. “I just never knew Maynard to be interested in the old lore or in anything the rest of us were interested in. What sort of thing did he read?”

“Feechie tales mostly.” Jasper gave up looking for the scroll of feechie lore, which obviously wasn't in its place. He noticed the look of open-mouthed wonder on Aidan's face. “I know, I know. Maynard always thought you were lying about the feechie in the bottom pasture.
He acted like feechie talk was the craziest thing he had ever heard of. But people can change.

“After you went to Tambluff,” Jasper continued, “Maynard tried harder to be a good son and a good brother. He even took your place watching sheep in the bottom pasture for awhile. It was like he was trying to make something up to you, or to Father.”

Jasper shook his head. “I think that's part of the reason Father has taken Maynard's death so hard.”

Aidan looked out the window. Father was returning from the melon field with Percy. He looked very old. “Poor Father,” Aidan whispered.

The morning sky was still pink with the sun's first rays when the alligator hunters boarded their raft. A night's rest in real beds had rejuvenated them, and they were eager to take on the river again. The previous day's difficulties seemed a distant dream.

Besides, they now had an extra rafthand. They had convinced Aidan to float with them to the Big Bend. They would need him, for they had another oar-sweep now. Carver, besides replacing the broken oar-sweep, had carved them a second one and built another oar bench in the front of the raft. It would make the raft more maneuverable, but it also meant they could use an extra pair of hands. For his part, Aidan couldn't resist the adventure of a raft trip down the river, even if he could get to Last Camp more quickly on the Overland Trail. Besides, he liked the alligator hunters, and he preferred not to travel alone if he didn't have to.

Errol rode down to the landing with Percy and Jasper to see his youngest son off. He didn't say much. The only smile he could muster looked tired and sad. Somehow he sensed that Aidan's journey was to be much more perilous than he had let on. When everything
was in order, just before Aidan stepped onto the raft, Errol caught him by the tunic and enfolded him in his arms. The strength of his father's embrace nearly squeezed the breath out of Aidan. There was plenty of life left in the old man, despite his haggard, world-weary appearance. That knowledge heartened Aidan and strengthened him for his journey.

“God go with you, Aidan,” said Errol. “And be careful.” Then, where no one else could hear, he whispered, “I couldn't bear to lose another son.”

Aidan embraced his brothers and exchanged farewells. Jasper handed him a small cage containing one of his homing pigeons. “Take this with you,” he said, “and send us a note when you get where you're going.” Aidan knew he wouldn't be taking a pigeon into the Feechiefen, but he took the bird with the intention of sending his family a note from Last Camp.

Aidan joined Massey and Floyd on the raft. Jasper and Percy untied the heavy mooring ropes from the cypress trees and tossed them onto the raft timbers. The alligator hunters leaned against the sweeps, pushing off from the landing, and Aidan felt the Tam's strong, slow current catch the timbers and carry him away—away from the safety of his father's house, toward a wilderness that would never be tamed, a wilderness that nobody came home from. He watched his father and brothers get smaller in the growing distance. Then he raised his hand in a silent salute as they disappeared around the bend.

In the cool of the morning, scattered fog—the last of the night airs—lay in wisps on the surface of the water.
The trees along the riverside were loud with the songs of birds exulting in a new spring day. The forest bugs, too, were coming to life, tuning up the click and buzz that would grow slowly louder throughout the day and finally reach a crescendo in the hour before dark. The water was high with the spring rains and muddied a little more than usual, but the floods were past. It was perfect rafting water: high enough to submerge most of the logs and snags that might slow them but not high enough to sling them over the banks and into flooded swamps beyond.

Aidan discovered he had a natural talent for reading the river's current, and he assumed the role of pilot. The key to raft piloting, he discovered, was not reacting to the current's push but anticipating it—having the raft in position to manage every swirl, shoal, and eddy before it got there. He kept his two-man crew busy at their posts, but he stayed busier himself, running from bow to stern and back again to help whichever oarsman was pulling hardest at the moment.

They named their craft the
Headstrong,
for once it went in the wrong direction, it took the strength and perseverance of all three raftsmen to get it back on course. The greatest danger was the raft's tendency to drift out of the current. Sometimes, when the nose drifted toward the bank, the current would whip the back end around and send the raft into an uncontrolled spin. Other times, the raft might languish in the sluggish water near the river's edge, requiring great effort to get it moving again.

But when they did it right, the river did most of the work for them. Aidan soon learned to keep the
Headstrong
in the swiftest current even in the river's sharpest, most treacherous turns. It was always tempting to pull into the slower water, to take what would seem the safer route and avoid the inevitable, bone-jarring slam of the stern on the high outside bank as it swung around in the current. But a river bend was no place for shrinking back. Aidan adopted the old rafters' cry as they shot into the river bends: “Keep to the current, boys, and let her slam!”

Even Massey and Floyd, it turned out, weren't bad at guiding a raft now that they could steer from either end. Under Aidan's guidance, the two alligator hunters were able to keep the raft booming along. The previous day's bickering over who should be captain disappeared. Everyone was too busy with his own tasks to worry about anyone else's.

For long stretches, the river was mostly straight and the raftsmen had little to do but talk and watch the river go by. For sheer joy of the river, Massey sang a rafting song he learned from timber rafters on the Eechihoolee River:

Drifting by a willow bank the rafters saw a great blue heron, still as a statue, gazing fixedly at the water. It was watching for the shadows of fish beneath the water's murky surface. “Look at that craney-crow!” shouted Massey. Its concentration broken, the great blue-gray
bird rose into the air with four slow, lumbering flaps of its wings, then tucked its long beak on its breast and glided along the surface of the water to a spot where it could have more privacy.

“When I was a boy,” said Floyd, “there was a man in our village taught a craney-crow how to read.”

“He never did!” answered Massey. “What do you mean he taught a craney-crow to read?”

“I mean you put some writing in front of that long-legged bird, and he could read it.”

“You're telling me a bird could look at a paper and tell you what the writing said?” asked Massey, sure his hunting partner was putting him on.

“I didn't say the man taught a craney-crow to talk,” answered Floyd. “I said he taught one how to read. He'd just read quiet to himself—didn't even have to move his lips like you do, Massey.”

“Then how in tarnation,” asked Massey, “could you know he was reading and not just looking?”

“He had a real wise and solemn look in his eye,” said Floyd. “Just looking at him you could see he knew what he was about.” Massey didn't seem convinced, but Floyd went on, “And if you wrote something nice, like ‘Good day, Craney-Crow' or ‘Your baby chicks is growing big and pretty,' he'd bob his head like this here, like he's agreeing with you.” Floyd jutted his head in imitation of a heron's head bob. “But if you wrote something he disagreed with, or if he felt like you was insulting him, he'd cock his head like this here and just stare at you—wouldn't blink or nothing—just stare at
you like he was astonished somebody'd say such a thing to a self-respecting craney-crow.”

Massey had his doubts, but he dropped the subject when he noticed two round eye-knobs and a pair of horn-rimmed nostrils poking from the river, just out of the main current a short distance in front of the raft.

“Look a-here, Floyd!” he shouted, pointing excitedly.

Floyd rose to his feet. “I see him, Massey.” Alligator hunting was one subject Massey and Floyd could always agree on. Massey started making a loop in the mooring rope at the near corner. “Man the bow oar,” he ordered, and Floyd was glad to oblige. The nose of the raft was almost even with the alligator now, but it wasn't quite close enough for Massey to throw the lasso with any confidence.

“Pull, man!” cried Massey to his partner. “Swing the bow around toward the gator!” Floyd strained against the long oar-sweep, struggling to nudge the nose of the massive craft a few feet to the left.

“Floyd? Massey?” Aidan interrupted. “That's a bad idea.”

But there was no talking to Floyd and Massey. They were alligator hunters first and last. Floyd had made progress moving the bow. Seeing that the raft was getting diagonal to the current, Aidan ran to the stern oar to straighten it. He leaned his full weight against the oar-sweep, but it was too late. By the time Massey was ready to throw his lasso, Floyd had pulled the raft's nose out of the current. The back of the raft, still very much in the current, swung around. The raft was completely crossways in the channel before Massey and Floyd noticed
what they had done. They pulled at the bow with everything they had, but the raft was completely out of control.

They were still spinning when the
Headstrong
was swept into the Narrows. The river was swift there and twisted between high bluffs on either side. They were at the river's mercy, and the river didn't appear to be feeling very merciful that day. The stern of the raft got drawn into a swirl as it careened around the first part of the bend. The raft was in a hard spin now, and the back corner slammed into the embankment. Aidan had lost his grip on the stern oar, and the force of the collision threw him into the swirling water.