“It’s a long way from here to Tambluff,” said Massey. “In Tambluff, you can go for days and never have dirt underneath your boots, only cobblestones. You can tip your high-plumed hat at a lady on the street and neither of you think about how that plume got from a bird’s back to your head. You can watch the alligators lazying in the castle moat and pretend you’ve faced the beast. In Tambluff, you can believe we’ve got the whole creation under our control. Seems strange to me that the folks who make the decisions for this whole kingdom live in such a place as that.”
“But out here,” said Isom, “the nursery tales of feechiefolk and the Wilderking don’t seem all that fantastic-no stranger than the world that buzzes just across the river and in the forests all around us.”
Big Haze looked across the fire at Aidan. “You’re sitting at the edge of the world, Aidan. How does it feel?”
Aidan smiled. “I like it here. It feels more like home than Tambluff Castle.”
The hunters cheered and laughed, flattered by Aidan’s remark. Tambluffers were a rarity at Last Camp, and even rarer were Tambluffers who accepted the hunters on their own terms.
“Well, if you don’t mind my asking,” said Burl, “what brings you to Last Camp?”
Aidan measured his words. “I’m out here to fetch something for King Darrow.”
“You ain’t the tax man, are you?” asked Cooky.
“No,” Aidan assured him and laughed.
“So what have you come to fetch?” pressed Chaney.
“Ain’t no use asking,” Floyd interrupted. “Me and Massey had him surrounded three days on a raft, and we never got it out of him.”
Before anyone had a chance to ask another question, the forest erupted in a series of blood-curdling cries: “Haaa-wwwweeeeee! Haaa-wwwweeeeee! Haaa-wwwweeeeee!” The hunters dove to the ground and tucked themselves into tight balls in order to make smaller targets for the arrows that came whistling into the camp. Half a dozen arrows embedded themselves with a thwack in the logs where the hunters had been sitting. Another arrow glanced off Cooky’s stew pot, ringing it like a bell and careening into the forest on the other side of the camp. A spear stuck in the ground less than two feet from Aidan’s boots.
“Aidan! Get down!” shouted Massey. “It ain’t over yet!”
But Aidan didn’t get down. Among all the people at Last Camp, only he understood exactly what the forest hollers were: feechie battle cries. And he felt he could do something to stop the attack. He grabbed a small log that was half in the fire and brandished it for a torch, trying to catch the gleam of feechie eyes in the forest. Then, even as arrows continued to sail into the camp, he belted out a blood-curdling yell of his own: “Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff- wooooooooo… Ha-ha-ha-hrawffff-wooooooooo.”
The woods grew still as the echoes of Aidan’s watch-out bark subsided. Aidan thought he heard the slightest rustle in the treetops-a rustle that grew more distant as the attackers receded into the forest. Still bearing the torch, Aidan ventured a few steps beyond the camp into the trees, as if in pursuit of the attackers. But they were gone.
“What just happened?” asked Floyd. He was looking at Aidan with undisguised awe.
“What was that holler you just did?” asked Isom, equally amazed.
“It sounded,” gasped Chaney, “like the bark of the bog owl.”
But Aidan didn’t hear them. He was inspecting one of the short, white-feathered arrows the feechies had shot into the camp. “Who fletches an arrow with egret feathers?” he asked aloud. And the arrowhead was equally perplexing. It was made of burnished steel.
Chapter Eleven
Bedroll, hardtack, water bladder, alligator jerky, tinder box…” Rocking with the flow of the River Tam and the push and pull of Massey’s oar strokes, Aidan took one last inventory of his backpack’s contents. He felt for the hunting knife at his belt and counted the arrows in his quiver.
“I don’t like this one bit, Aidan,” said Massey as he leaned back on the oars, propelling the little skiff across the water. “Not one bit.”
“I know you don’t,” answered Aidan, “but if you don’t row me over, I’ll just swim across.”
“And get et up by gators,” Massey grumbled. “Which, for all I know, ain’t no worse’n what’s going to happen to you once I’ve handed you over to the swamp critters on the south bank.” He nodded back toward Last Camp. “There’s a reason we call it Last Camp. It’s because you can’t go no further. Because when folks go past it, it’s the last time you ever hear from ’em.” He was hurt that Aidan had waited until this morning-the very morning of his departure-to mention he was crossing the river. Three days on the raft together-three days Massey could have had to talk the boy out of this foolishness-but he had waited until this morning to spring it on him. And Aidan still hadn’t revealed the real nature of his mission.
“King Darrow sent me across the river,” said Aidan matter-of-factly. “And I’m going across the river.”
Massey grunted but said no more. Neither of them spoke for the remainder of the crossing. The river was broader here than it was at Longleaf, and deeper, too, swelled by the waters of countless creeks and smaller rivers that joined the Tam along its twisting course.
When the little boat nosed into the high bank on the other side, Massey tied up to a root tangle, clambered to level ground, and reached a hand down to pull up Aidan and his gear. The old alligator hunter looked at the moss- hung trees and shuddered. “I ain’t never been on this side of the river,” he remarked.
“Looks a lot like the other side, don’t you think?” answered Aidan, shrugging into his backpack.
“Aidan,” said Massey suddenly, “Darrow ain’t king of Feechiefen.”
Aidan smiled at Massey. “Darrow may not be king of Feechiefen, but he’s king of Aidan Errolson, whether I’m at his table or out here past the edge of civilization.”
Massey nodded. He wouldn’t try again to talk Aidan out of his foolish mission, whatever it was. “You better get going then,” he said. He embraced Aidan awkwardly, patting his backpack with a hamlike hand. Then, not really knowing what else to say, he added, “We sure showed them plume hunters, didn’t we, Aidan?”
“We sure did, Massey.”
Massey turned and strode quickly toward the river. But before the old alligator hunter disappeared down the steep bank, Aidan thought he saw him swipe at his eyes with a hairy hand. “Thanks, Massey!” he called after him, but Massey made no answer.
Aidan was alone now. Very alone. He stood on the far side of the River Tam, where even the rough customers of Last Camp never dared come. He told himself what he had told Massey: Things looked the same on the south side of the river as they did on the north side. The same birds thirrruped in the same gum trees and sweet bays. The same lizards skittered across the same palmetto fans. The same thick-bodied cottonmouth snakes left the same meandering tracks in the sticky mud beside the wet places.
But every step took him away from the familiarity of the river, from the comforts of the hunters’ comradeship. Every step made it harder to convince himself that things weren’t so very different on this side of the river. Every treetop rustle became ominous, a prelude to another attack like the previous night’s barrage on Last Camp. Every movement in the bushes made him think of a feechie ambush.
“No,” he said aloud in an effort to calm his own fears. Real feechies wouldn’t make any noise in the treetops, and they surely wouldn’t let themselves be seen if they were setting an ambush. But that realization did little to comfort Aidan, for now he was spooked by trees that didn’t rustle, by bushes that didn’t move. And every step took him closer to Feechiefen Swamp, from which no one had ever returned.
It took Aidan nearly an hour to push through the dense, vine-tangled forest of the bottomlands. But when he reached the edge of the floodplain, a gain of just a few feet in elevation produced a whole new landscape. The density of the swamp scrub gave way to the shaggy openness of a vast pine savanna. The land was as flat as the open plains. And, as on the open plains, the high grasses rippled and shimmered with every shifting breeze. But there was no mistaking this place for open plain. This was a forest, populated by massive, high-canopied pine trees with long, drooping needles that sighed softly when the breeze played through them. These were the longleaf pines
