for which Errol’s estate was named, and being among them made Aidan feel as if he were home again.
The trees offered a dappled, shifting shade to the traveler while leaving plenty of space in the understory for the breezes not found in the swamp. Though not as dense as the river-bottom forest, these woods were no less alive. Great black-masked fox squirrels, the size of small dogs, dashed along the lower limbs as Aidan made his way through the forest. Enormous red-plumed woodpeckers, as big as crows, sailed high over Aidan’s head to hammer away at dead branches where bugs were most abundant. The claw marks by which bears marked their territory marred the trunks of many trees.
The ground in the pine flats was pocked with the holes of gopher tortoises, big, lumbering, high-shelled tortoises that burrowed underground to live. The burrows would have been a hazard to a horse, had Aidan been riding one. A foot or so across, these black holes leading to a subterranean coolness stood in stark contrast to the bright, hot sand from which they were dug.
Here, out of the humid greenness of the floodplain, the light was different-clear, bright, intense where it stabbed between the needles of the pine trees. Aidan decided to make himself a sun hat. He cut two palmetto fans and wove their fronds together to make a peaked cap. He left the stem on one of the palm fans and let it trail along behind-a stiff and prickly plume, a nod to the Tambluffer fashion in hats.
Aidan whistled a merry tune as he trekked through the forest. He felt better able to think now that he was out of the ominous tangle of Tamside Forest. He couldn’t explain the irrational fear of feechies that had overtaken him before. His whole mission depended on his connecting with feechies. He couldn’t find King Darrow’s frog orchid without guidance from the feechies who lived in the swamp. Besides, he knew many feechies and liked them. And all the feechies he had ever met liked him too. At least, they liked him eventually, after he had broken through their natural suspicion of civilizers. He glanced down at the alligator-shaped scar Chief Gergo had seared into his right forearm. He bore the feechiemark. Any feechie he met was bound by the Feechie Code to be a friend to him.
But still, he was in the feechies’ world now, and he didn’t know whether the rules might be different here. Before, the feechies he had met were just passing through. They were at the edge of his world. But he was beyond Last Camp now, where feechies were in charge of things, where civilizers weren’t welcome. Even if Chief Gergo’s band was glad to see him-and even that wasn’t a given-what about the other bands of feechies who populated the vast Feechiefen? Would they all honor Chief Gergo’s feechiemark?
Aidan couldn’t stop thinking about the previous night’s attack on Last Camp. It was the work of feechies; it had to be. They shot from the treetops and escaped through the treetops. What civilizer could do that? And the feechie battle cries sounded authentic to him. But on the other hand, those weren’t feechie arrows that were shot into the camp. They were steel-tipped. Aidan knew from Dobro that feechies didn’t work with metal; not that they couldn’t, but that they wouldn’t. They thought it was cheating to use cold-shiny weapons, to use any materials they couldn’t find in the swamp or in the river-bottom forests where they traveled.
Then there was the matter of the egret feathers. Arrow fletchers used whatever feathers were most readily available to them. Every arrow Aidan had ever seen was fletched with the wing feathers from ducks or geese, sometimes chickens-barnyard birds, not forest birds. What civilizer-for Aidan was convinced the arrows were made by civilizers, even if they were shot by feechies-would find it easier to get egret feathers than duck or goose feathers?
The question had just begun to form in Aidan’s mind when a sudden dry buzzing near his feet drove out all conscious thought and replaced it with unthinking fear. It was a rattlesnake coiled on the sandy apron of a tortoise hole. Aidan stopped in his tracks, afraid even to step backward for fear the movement would incite the great snake to strike. The grinning snake wagged its head a foot above its heaping coils and fixed Aidan with its black eyes. It meant to strike.
Moving slowly but as smoothly as he could, never breaking eye contact with the snake, Aidan reached behind him and slipped his palmetto hat off the back of his head. Gripping the stem that he had left on the palm fan, he slowly, fluidly extended his right arm to its full length, the hat a foot or so beyond that. The snake had thought to mesmerize Aidan with its slitted, unblinking eyes. But now it was Aidan who held the snake enthralled. The snake flicked its tongue and continued waving back and forth, tenser and tauter with every touchy second.
Then, with the least twitch of his wrist, Aidan rattled the palmetto hat. Jarred out of its spell, the snake lunged for the big, bristling target. The force of the flying snake knocked the palm fans out of Aidan’s hand as violently as a blow from a club.
Laid out to its full length, the snake was at its most vulnerable. Aidan’s boot plunged down on the snake’s head before it could recoil for another strike. Aidan felt the snake’s head crack beneath his boot. Its tail whipped up and the writhing body twisted around his legs. But the rattlesnake was dead.
When Aidan held the snake’s crushed head at shoulder height, its rattles-nine of them-dragged the ground. Aidan was amazed at how heavy it was. But then again, it was as big around as Aidan’s calf and five feet long; it ought to be heavy.
When his heartbeat finally subsided to something like its normal rate, it occurred to Aidan that he was hungry. It was well past noon. Aidan looked at the huge snake. Father had always frowned on killing an animal one didn’t plan to eat. He didn’t see how he could eat that much snake meat, but he might as well eat what he could and save what little smoked alligator jerky he had in his backpack.
Using deadfall branches and the previous year’s dry pine straw, Aidan got a fire started in a patch of thick sand where no grass grew. While the fire grew to cooking heat, he skinned the rattlesnake and cut it into chunks that could be skewered on small branches and roasted over the fire.
It wasn’t long before the smells of roasting snake meat began to waft up from the fire. Aidan closed his eyes, savoring the smell, growing hungrier by the moment.
But Aidan wasn’t the only one in the forest who was tantalized by the sizzling snake meat. When Aidan opened his eyes, he saw three red wolves, attracted by the smoky aroma, stalking a tightening spiral around him, one slow step at a time. They slunk with heads lowered, reddish fur bristling on their high-jutting shoulder blades. Foaming slobber dripped from their teeth and curling lips, and their yellow eyes were locked intently on Aidan. They appeared to be under the impression that Aidan was giving off the mouth-watering, irresistible smells that had attracted them.
Aidan fumbled for his bow and arrow leaning on the backpack beside him. He notched an arrow to the string, knowing he couldn’t drop more than one of the approaching wolves, but praying that the other two would run away if he did. He pointed his arrow at the closest wolf, a mere twenty strides away. But even as he did, he could feel the wolf behind him come on a little more quickly. He wheeled around to face that wolf, exposing his back to the first wolf. He wheeled again. Three wolves, one arrow; he was bewildered. Aidan’s indecision made matters worse. All three wolves were coming faster now. He could see the pink of their tongues.
Aidan was about to let fly with his arrow when the forest around him exploded in shouts.
“You stay away from my snake meat, you red-fur varmints!”
“That’s my supper, you mangy pine-dogs!”
“Haaa-wwwweeeeee!”
Distracted from Aidan, the wolves looked over their shoulders, but before they could react, they were set upon by three he-feechies who appeared from behind trees. Each grabbed a wolf by its bushy tail and slung it into the woods. The wolves ran yelping into the forest.
Aidan stood with his hand over his heart. “Hallelujah!” he gasped. “You saved me! And just in the nick of time.”
“Saved you?” snorted the biggest of the feechies, the one wearing a bear-claw necklace. “Hek, hek, hek, you ain’t saved, civilizer.”
“Naw,” said the short one. “Your troubles is just getting started good.”
Chapter Twelve
You think we’d risk life and liver to save a civilizer from a pack of wolves?” chuckled the biggest feechie. He seemed genuinely amused at the idea. “But roasted snake meat, that’s something worth saving.”
