more astonished than hurt by Dobro’s feat of strength and agility.
“You civilizers is the stick-jobbinest bunch I ever seen,” observed Dobro. “It ain’t good manners.” He ran a finger along the steel spearhead. “You could hurt somebody with this cold-shiny thing.”
Aidan was laughing now. “Who’d have thought the crown prince of Corenwald would get a lesson in courtesy from a feechie? Steren, meet Dobro Turtlebane. Dobro, this is Steren Darrowson, son of the king.”
For a moment, Steren had gone surly, annoyed at Aidan for laughing at him after he had so bravely intervened on his behalf. But at the mention of the word feechie, he stared bug-eyed at Dobro as if he were seeing an elf or a unicorn.
“Well, I reckon any friend of Aidan’s is my friend,” said Dobro, “whatever his manners is like.”
He stepped forward to offer Steren a friendly head-butt, but Aidan stepped between. “Steren’s head is sore enough, I imagine,” said Aidan.
Steren stood open-mouthed, still staring at Dobro. “I thought feechiefolk were made up,” he said. “Just in stories.”
Dobro was offended. “Made up? I’m as real as you are, brother!” He held out his hand as evidence. “Here, poke me. See, ain’t I real?”
Steren reached out a finger and gingerly touched the back of Dobro’s muddy hand.
It suddenly occurred to Dobro that he had said too much. Keeping civilizers ignorant of feechie ways-of feechies’ very existence-was a cornerstone of the Feechie Code. “If it’s all the same to you,” said Dobro in a confidential tone, “let’s keep this between us. Things work out better for us feechies when civilizers don’t believe in us.”
Steren nodded slowly, blankly. He wasn’t likely to tell anyone about this meeting in any case. Nobody would believe him; everyone would probably think he was crazy.
“Truth is,” Aidan explained, “Corenwald is crawling with feechiefolk.”
Steren looked doubtful. “Then why haven’t I ever seen one before now?”
“Because we’re sneaky rascals,” explained Dobro. “We stay in treetops and under the water when there’s civilizers around.”
“And they usually stay away from the civilized parts of the island anyway,” added Aidan.
“We run things around the Feechiefen Swamp,” said Dobro. “Then there’s the hill feechies up north, the beach feechies on the east edge of the island. There’s a pretty big band of feechiefolks lives in the Eechihoolee Marshes, down below the plain you call Bonifay. And the scouts go up and down the rivers all over the island, keeping an eye on things.
“If it makes you feel any better,” Dobro said to Steren, who still looked skeptical, “there’s plenty of feechiefolks don’t believe civilizers is real either.”
“So, Dobro, why aren’t you at Feechiefen?” asked Aidan.
“Feechiefen’s a nice place,” said Dobro, “but I get itchy to see other things. I used to go to that meadow where you and me kilt that panther, but I given up on you.”
Steren was growing more astonished by the minute. He had heard that Aidan killed a panther with a stone sling, but he had no idea a feechie had been involved.
“I don’t live there anymore,” said Aidan. “I live at the castle with King Darrow and Prince Steren here. I never knew how to get back in touch with you.”
Dobro shrugged at this explanation. “Anyway, I was collecting eggs at the buzzard rookery, upriver from here. And I got so lonesome for my mama that I headed down the river right that minute. I was passing through this neighborhood when I heard a ‘haaweee’ over in the canebrake. I moseyed over to join the fun, and a big old boar hog come crashing out of the cane. But it weren’t a feechie hot after him. It was Aidan of the Tam. So I thought I’d say howdy.”
“Which reminds me,” said Aidan. “Your howdy cost me the biggest boar I’ve ever seen in these woods. We’ll never catch him now.”
“Aw, that hog ain’t gone far,” said Dobro.
Steren’s astonishment was giving way again to peevishness, even jealousy at Aidan’s friendship with this wild boy. “How do you know where the hog went?” he said.
“Boy,” Dobro retorted, “I’ve forgotten more about swamp hogs than a civilizer will ever know. I know most of the hogs in this forest by first and last name.”
Steren looked dubiously at the feechie, not sure whether to take that literally or not.
“If you was running that boar hog,” Dobro continued, “I guarantee he’s in the swamp cooling off. And I guarantee I know where.” He pointed upstream. “There’s a hog wallow not a quarter league up this way. He’s laying under a gum tree in the greenbog just as sure as I’m standing here.”
Dobro thought for a moment, and then his eyes took on an adventurous twinkle. “You know, I ain’t been hog hunting in a good long while. What do you say we go catch that rascal?”
Aidan and Steren exchanged a look. “This hog wallow,” said Aidan, “if it’s in a swampy place, how can our horses get through?”
“They can’t get through!” answered Dobro. “We’ll leave them smelly things here. Besides,” he added, “one old hog against three boys and two horses… That ain’t a fair fight, is it?”
Steren shot a wry grin at Aidan and held out his spear. “If a fair fight’s what we’re after, we probably shouldn’t take our spears either, eh, Aidan?”
Dobro shook his head and fixed a pitying look on the prince, as if he wondered how such a thick-headed person could possibly make it in the world. “Of course we’re leaving your cold-shiny spears behind. It ain’t right to go after critters that way. Critters can’t make sharp things out of cold-shiny same as folks can.”
“Did you get a look at that boar’s white-shinies?” exclaimed Steren. He thrust his thumbs out from his jaws in imitation of the boar’s razor-sharp tusks. “Do you expect he’ll put them away to make sure it’s a fair fight?”
Dobro reached over and tapped Steren’s forehead with a gray-green finger. “Which would you rather have in a free fight? A pair of long tuskies or that brain of yours?” He gestured at the civilizers’ spears. “I ain’t gonna hunt the civilizer way.”
“And without Dobro,” Aidan said to Steren, “you and I don’t have any chance of getting that hog.”
Steren was still hesitant, but Dobro turned on his funny, swampy charm. “Come on, Sturn,” he said. “Quit your mullygrubbing. Me and Aidan can’t catch that hog without you.”
“Come on, Steren,” Aidan urged. “Who knows when we’ll have another chance at a hog like that?”
Chapter Two
Dobro led the way up the River Trail, following the boar’s tracks toward the hog wallow. He walked as silently as an owl in flight. But Dobro wasn’t merely walking. He was hopping, or prancing, on his tiptoes-a quick, short step, followed by a long step; a quick, short step; a long step. Steren looked quizzically at Aidan, who merely shrugged. There was plenty he didn’t know about the ways of feechiefolk.
Aidan and Steren considered themselves skilled trackers and experts at traveling stealthily through the forest. But the impossibly light fall of Dobro’s bare feet-however strange his gait-made them seem lumbering flat-foots by comparison. Aidan looked down at the heavy boot prints he and Steren left in the sand. They seemed thick and clumsy, out of place among the sharp, crisp tracks left by the forest animals that passed that way-raccoon tracks like neat, tiny hands; delicate twin crescents of deer tracks; turkey tracks, sticklike and spindly. Even the massive boar left neat tracks in the sand-paired triangles a little broader than the deer tracks.
Looking down at the tracks, Aidan realized that Dobro wasn’t leaving any. There were animal tracks and boot tracks, but there were no barefoot human tracks! Aidan caught up with Dobro and looked closely at his feet as he skipped along. He wasn’t just walking on the tips of his long toes; he was walking on two toes per foot. With each step he dragged his toes, leaving a paired track that looked remarkably similar to a hog track.
“Dobro!” Aidan marveled. He was breaking the trackers’ silence, but he couldn’t help himself. “You’re making hog tracks!”
