“My mama says there ain’t no good civilizers.”
“My mama says civilizers don’t like nothing but cutting down trees.”
“My daddy says they like sheep and horses better than they like the wild critters what belong on this island.”
Though Aidan had defeated a panther, five plume hunters, and even a seven-foot Pyrthen, the wee-feechies of Scoggin Mound were too much for him. He didn’t know how to answer their accusations against him. So he did something that, at the time, seemed an appropriately feechie thing to do. He hooked his fingers in his lips and pulled them wide to show all his teeth, crossed his eyes, stuck out his tongue, and roared like a bear. The weefeechies scattered and ran screaming toward the middle of the island, their long hair streaming behind them.
“Civilizer!” one of then shrieked.
“He tried to eat me!”
“A civilizer’s on the island!”
“He’s going to civilize us all!”
Tombro and Aidan roared with laughter and followed the little ones toward the island’s center where the village fire burned, the center of feechie life on Scoggin Mound.
They had just come into sight of the main hut circle when the pffffffft of a flying arrow burned through the air just inches from Aidan’s left ear. In the middle distance, a white-haired she-feechie was notching a second arrow to her bow. Tombro threw Aidan on the ground and stood in front of him, blocking him from the old woman’s arrow.
“Aunt Seku!” he yelled. “Don’t shoot!”
“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.