“Move out the way, Tombro,” she squawked. “That feller’s tricked you. He ain’t a feechie. He’s a civilizer spy!” Her teeth were missing, and her collapsing gums made her chin jut out with an extra measure of determination.
“No, Aunt Seku,” pleaded Tombro. “This is Pantherbane. He’s a feechiefriend.”
Aunt Seku kept her bowstring pulled taut and kept her left eye closed. She was drawing down on her target, waiting for Tombro to move just an inch to give her a shot. “If he’s a feechiefriend, how come he’s trying to eat my grandbabies?”
“Those young’uns was just skeered and addle-headed,” called Tombro. “Pantherbane ain’t gonna eat nobody. He’s got the feechiemark, Aunt Seku. Come over here and look.”
Seku lowered her bow and arrow and walked cautiously toward the civilizer. Aidan rose to his feet, and the old she-feechie grabbed him by the forearm to inspect it. “I don’t see no feechiemark,” she growled.
“Look again, Auntie,” Tombro reassured her. “It’s there.”
Seku spat on Aidan’s arm and rubbed the foamy glob with two wizened fingers. The gray mud dissolved away, and the feechiemark appeared-the curling alligator, red and fierce, Aidan’s passport into the world of the feechies.
Seku’s manner softened in an instant. “Bless your goozlum! Bless your innards! You are Pantherbane!” She hugged his neck and stood on her tiptoes to pat his head. “Such a fine-looking boy,” she cooed. “For a civilizer.”
Aunt Seku insisted that the travelers come to her hut for a snack before they saw another soul. “I found these grub worms this morning,” she announced proudly as she placed a clay bowl between Aidan and Tombro. “They’re still alive.” Aidan could see that for himself. The grubs writhed in a white, tangled mass that made the civilizer’s stomach turn. Tombro dug greedily into the bowl, but Aunt Seku slapped his hand with a switch she kept for such occasions. “Get your hand out them grubs till Pantherbane gets some, you owdacious villain!”
All eyes were on Aidan as he pulled a fat white grub from the top of the pile. He tried not to think about the stubby legs that grew from each of its bulging segments or about the black pinchers that served for its mouth. He thought it best just to swallow without chewing, to get it over faster. But on the way down, the grub grabbed Aidan’s tonsil with its pinchers and held on for dear life. It refused to go down.
Aunt Seku watched eagerly for Aidan’s pleased reaction. When his eyes watered from the pain of having a live grub attached to his tonsil, Seku mistook his tears for tears of joy. The grub went down at last, and to Aidan’s relief and gratitude, Tombro took more than his share of the grubs. Aidan was able to make it through the rest of the interview with Aunt Seku without further incident.
“Sorry I was jubulous of you when you first come up, Pantherbane,” said Seku. “It’s just that I been seeing some peculiar things around here.” She pushed the grub bowl toward Aidan, who patted his stomach to signal that he couldn’t eat another bite. “The other day, little Berdo come in here telling about a man in the trees, wearing a shirt made outta cold-shiny circles. I figured it was just a wee-feechie tale. But then Hendo come into my hut yesterday with a cold-shiny arrowhead he found in the woods.
“When the young’uns set up such a calaberment today about a civilizer on Scoggin Mound, it made me feel a little tetchy.” She pointed at Aidan’s gleaming hunting knife. “I seen that shiny thing, and I figured the civilizers was here to get us sure.”
“I’m sorry I scared you, Aunt Seku, and the weefeechies too,” said Aidan. “I’m just glad you fired a warning shot.”
“That weren’t a warning shot,” answered Seku. “That was a shaky shot from an old she-feechie what’s about wore out.” She laughed a jolly, cackling laugh. “I was aiming to shoot you dead.”
As he had promised, Tombro provided Aidan with a tortoiseshell helmet, a short feechie bow and stone- tipped arrows, and a stone knife. They couldn’t do anything about Aidan’s unfortunate haircut, and Tombro let him keep his civilizer boots. They left his cold-shiny knife with Aunt Seku for safekeeping.
Throughout the rest of the day, feechies from all over the northern end of the Feechiefen arrived at Scoggin Mound for the next night’s swamp council. They came throughout the night, too, and all the next day. Most of them bore stories similar to the ones Aunt Seku had told. A dying deer, escaped from the hunter who shot it, was found to have been wounded with a steel-tipped arrow. A scout had seen what he believed to be the glint of cold-shiny armor in the treetops at Bug Neck. A hunter had heard the unfamiliar clank of metal in the bay forest of Long Strand.
Feechies from the bands that roamed the deepest interior of the swamp reported seeing a near-constant billow of smoke rising from Bearhouse Island-not the smoke of cooking fires but the thicker, blacker smoke of a more intense fire. And feechies from every band told stories of their meanest, most difficult bandmates switching over to Chief Larbo’s band.
Throughout the day, Aidan kept hoping Dobro would show up. Feechies came by the dozen, but none of Chief Gergo’s band appeared. The little island buzzed with talk of cold-shiny spears, cold-shiny knives, slaughtered plume birds, and falling trees on Bearhouse Island. Aidan wondered what they would have left to talk about at that night’s swamp council.
Fifty feechies or more came up to butt heads and introduce themselves to the great Pantherbane who, they had heard, had skinned a panther alive, eaten an alligator whole, and grabbled three catfish on one dive at Bayberry Creek. They all wanted to tell the great Pantherbane where they were and what they were doing the day the feechies and the civilizers together routed the Pyrthens in the Eechihoolee Forest. Fifty times Aidan explained how it was his quest for the frog orchid, and not a desire to fight Chief Larbo, that had brought him to the swamp. But no one seemed to know anything about the frog orchid.
With every introduction, every friendly head-butt, Aidan kept one eye out for Dobro. Then, around midafternoon, Dobro, Doyno, Branko, Odo, and Rabbo-the delegation from Chief Gergo’s band-arrived at last from Bug Neck. “I heard old Pantherbane was here,” Dobro whooped, slapping Aidan on the back. “Come to fetch him a flower!”
After a warm reunion with Aidan, Doyno, Branko, Odo, and Rabbo melted into the crowd to repeat their own stories about the day Pantherbane first fell in with Chief Gergo’s band. Meanwhile, Dobro and Aidan sought out a quiet slough away from the hubbub of the settlement, where they would have privacy to catch up on events. Along the way, Aidan told how he came to be in the Feechiefen. He told of King Darrow’s jealous rage and his sending Aidan on a quest for the frog orchid, the only cure for his melancholy.
Dobro shook his head at the underhanded, convoluted dealings of the civilizers. “That ain’t the feechie way,” he said. “If I want your nose busted, I ball up my fist and I bust it; then I take whatever might be coming to me. I don’t tell you to walk into a tree and hope you bust it yourself.”
“That makes for a lot of nose busting, doesn’t it?” asked Aidan.
“Maybe so,” answered Dobro. “But you bust a feller’s nose, he busts yours, and the whole thing’s over. Things don’t boil and bubble till you decide you want to kill a feller instead of just busting his nose.” He swished a stick in the water, watching the trail of tan bubbles swirl on the black surface. “I’ve got my nose busted many times, but I ain’t never had nobody try to kill me.” A joree bird trilled in the bushes: “Tow-heeeeee! Tow-heeeee!” Aidan pondered whether Dobro was exceptionally wise or just a regular feechie scrapper.
“Pantherbane,” said Dobro slowly, as if trying the name out. “If it’s all right with you, I’m just going to call you Aidan of the Tam. That’s who you were when I met you.”
“That’s who I still am,” protested Aidan.
“‘Aidan of the Tam I am,’” began Dobro, repeating the song Aidan sang in the bottom pasture the first day they met. “‘A liege man true of Darrow.’”
Aidan finished the stanza: The kingdom’s foes I will oppose With sword and spear and arrow.
“You a liege man true, all right,” said Dobro. “Ain’t no doubt about that. But I got a question. What if the kingdom’s foe turns out to be the king hisself? Who you gonna oppose then?”
Aidan didn’t answer. “I’m just saying,” continued Dobro, “a king sends the kingdom’s best men out to die for no good reason, maybe he ain’t much a friend to his own kingdom.”
“I’ll never oppose my king,” Aidan said firmly, in a tone that made it clear he wasn’t going to discuss the matter any further.
“That’s fine,” answered Dobro. “But it looks to me like your king is opposing you. Ain’t no cause to get angrified at me.”
Aidan’s anger subsided. It had been his choice to come to Feechiefen. He had no illusions about King Darrow.
