Beware the Wild (16 page)

Suddenly, there's a tug at my waist. I'm pulled backward, crushed against a body that's warm as the swamp air.

“Sterling?” Fisher's voice is in my ear, his hands biting into my waist. “Are you all right?”

“
That's
his cage?” I struggle in his arms. “
That's
what she did to him? Phin!”

I slip again before my feet find solid ground. I twist against Fisher's grip, scanning the pond for the creature with my brother's face. He's several feet away, submerged in brine, watching me with shallow eyes.

Fisher catches my chin in his hands, dipping his head to look into my eyes with such intensity that I freeze.

“Are you all right?” he repeats.

I shouldn't wish that the answer was no, but there's something about his unwavering concern that makes me want to fall into him.

“Yes,” I say, pulling away before my cheeks give away my secrets. “I'm fine.”

“No,” Fisher says quietly with a stern shake of his head. His eyes have fallen from my face and he lifts my right arm gently. “You're bleeding.”

Two gashes streak my forearm. One deep, one not. Both bright with blood dripping to the ground. Phin's claws must be every bit as sharp as they look. Now that I've seen the wounds, I feel them. A stinging pain crackles through my arm and sends a vicious tremor down my spine.

“That's going to need stitches,” I say, beginning to feel fuzzy. “Big ones.”

The more I study the cuts, the less I feel like that arm belongs to me. It looks like a painting. Something isolated and disconnected from the rest of me. I think of Doc Payola's office and how there's no chance I'll be able to hide this from Mama and Darold.
What will I say? Freak accident in the bleachers? I fell against an angry box cutter?
As ridiculous as they sound, anything will be easier to swallow than “attacked by a gatorboy in the swamp.” I can imagine Mama's bug-eyed expression when I tell her, and I begin to laugh.

“Hmm.” Fisher's frown becomes disapproving.

For some reason, that tickles me even more. Each laugh leads to another, carried forward with its own delightful momentum. “I'm sorry,” I say. “It's just, I'm gonna be in so much trouble.”

“Perhaps not,” he says.

Holding my arm steady in one hand, Fisher extends the other. As if called, a single frond of Shine drapes itself over his palm. He pinches the light between his fingers, detaching it as easily as if it were made of Play-Doh or clay. His fingers skim over the top of my bracelet. Blood has fallen into the hollow spaces, leaving the silver bouquet looking like ghastly red roses. He dwells on the band as if he can't decide if he's going to remove it. Then he presses the bit of Shine against my deepest cut, does the same with the second wound, and lays his hand over both for a brief second.

A growing warmth seeps through my arm, sinking into my bones. It's followed by a wave of nausea that crests in my belly. I'm dizzy. The air is thick and suffocating with the hot scent of mud. My palms and feet tingle for a moment. When it passes, Fisher has one hand against my neck, the other around my waist, supporting me.

He says, “Forgive me, I've forgotten that the sensation can be disorienting. It should pass quickly.”

My belly feels full as the Mississippi after a storm. Gradually, my head clears enough that I can stand on my own. The skin on my arm has knitted itself together, leaving two pale pink lines behind. The stinging pain is entirely gone. In fact, even the soreness in my ribs has vanished. When I look up, the Shine is bright and crisp. Fisher's hands fall away and I move from beneath the everblooming cherry tree.

“What was that? I feel so awake,” I say, staring at the trunk of a large cypress tree growing in the pond. Dozens of its strange skinny knees push up through the water like wooden straws and between each is woven an intricate web of Shine in pale grays and greens. I never would've seen it before.

“That was the magic of the swamp. And you are more awake now than you have ever
been.”

With Shine still thrumming against my skin, pieces of understanding click into place.

I reach for the ground, and Shine rises to my fingers as it did to Fisher's. Effortlessly. Instinctively. The small tendril shimmers with energy. This Shine—this magic—can do so much more than steal my brother and implant a false sister. It can heal and transform.

Lenora May said she knew the things Phineas did, that Shine worked by using what was already there. It hadn't created her history, it had given her Phin's. People didn't forget Phin so much as they remembered someone else. And just now, it hadn't erased my wound, it had bridged a gap, leaving a scar behind.

It all makes sense except for one thing.

“Why do most people forget?” I turn again to Fisher, who stands near. Watching. It's startling to find his attention so squarely on me, but I won't be deterred so close to the truth. “When people go missing why do we forget them? And how?”

“I'm afraid that is more than I can answer; however, I assume it is a matter of self-preservation. When the swamp pulls someone inside, it pulls in all of them, even the pieces others carry. Like memories. That way, no one starts looking at it sideways.”

It seems to me that's the only way people look at the swamp, but I get what he means. If anyone suspected the swamp had a mind of its own, they'd try to fill it or drain it or otherwise destroy it. As much as I hate that my brother is trapped here, I somehow can't wish the swamp away.

“Likewise,” he continues, “when Lenora May broke away from the swamp, she did it with great force. In a sense, she exploded through a barrier and sent her life flying into the town.”

“Like a dirty bomb,” I say. “Like shrapnel.”

“Precisely. And just as damaging.”

“Has it always been like this?” I study the way Shine courses through the ground, a chaotic, dense system of roots. If my grandpa knew about it, then it's been here at least as long as I've been alive: a secret wrapped inside a secret.

“Since before Lenora May and I were born.” Fisher caresses a low branch of the everblooming cherry tree. “And that was a long time ago.”

The implications are staggering. The Wasting Shine might have been here for hundreds of years, quietly growing in the center of the swamp. It's been here since before Grandpa Harlan built his fence, before the Clary women started telling stories, before Lenora May and Fisher became a part of it. How many lives might this swamp have touched and changed? How many others might be trapped inside it?

“Is it evil?” I ask, remembering the pale-faced beast.

It takes a moment for Fisher to answer. “No, it's not in its nature to be good or evil. It is a living thing. A plant capable of taking on the shape, the qualities, that you give it.”

“What do you mean ‘the qualities you give it'? How can anyone give a plant its qualities? It's either poisonous or it's not.”

I can't tell if his hesitation is reluctance or frustration. There's a little of both in the way he presses his palms together. Finally, he says, “In the same way some plants seek the sunlight, this magic will bend itself to your words so long as your intention is clear.”

I consider how the Shine moved away from Candy, unwilling to be touched, and how it always seems to reach for me, for the bracelet I wear. Bending like flowers, but the metaphor doesn't work beyond that. “How about magnets? Shine is like any old piece of iron. It has potential, but it's not a magnet until you force all the electrons to move in the same direction. We're the ones aligning those electrons by telling it what to do?”

He smiles. “You're a surprising creature, Sterling. Electrons are beyond me, but it sounds correct. Every time we speak, we influence the world around us. The magic of the everblooming cherry is more susceptible to your will.”

Rolling the little ball of Shine between my fingers, I think of clear water, running my hands beneath a faucet. “Clean,” I say, and the little ball melts over my skin, clearing all the blood and muck away.

“I—” Fisher stops, his face goes blank. “That was quick.”

“I've always been a fast learner,” I say, feeling all over pleased with Fisher's shock. “Especially when something makes sense.”

“Indeed,” he answers.

It feels so easy. Pluck a piece of Shine like a berry and give it purpose. Easy and dangerous. And right in the center of Sticks. Maybe it's a good thing folks pretend not to notice. Maybe they're right to keep up the fence. Surely, if people knew there was power here, they'd come for it.

Phineas is only a distant bump in the water now. His blue eyes float on top, dull and wet as a gator's. From this distance, he could be anybody or anything, but I know what I saw in his face. I don't doubt that creature is Phineas.

I say, “He's not human anymore.”

“He is and he isn't,” Fisher answers, standing at the edge of the pond, eyes trained on Phin's shape. Cherry blossoms are dazzling behind his dark hair, glowing in a pink-and-ochre halo. Somehow, the pink is a perfect highlight to his restrained and defiant beauty. “I've seen it happen to many lost souls. So desperate to escape their human lives, they transform.”

I ignore how closely that resembles Lenora May's claim that Phin was running away. “But everyone doesn't change. I saw Nathan Payola the night I met you. He went missing more than a year ago, and he looked like always.”

“That is true. She didn't change all of her victims. Only when it suited her. If it amused her to leave someone locked in the moment they became lost in the swamp, she'd let them roam. If she wanted to keep them close, to tie them to her will, she changed them into something more primal.”

I try to make this vicious image of Lenora May match the one I know, try to imagine her laughing at poor lost Nathan or gleefully transforming my brother into the twisted creature I just saw. It's a rough fit. The closest I come is this: a memory of the Lenora May wearing the grimmest smile I've ever seen as Deputy Darold cuffed our dad and hauled him away. That's as evil as my mind lets her be.

Phin's not visible anymore. Only a ghost of a trail remains through sticky duckweed. “Can it be reversed?”

“Without Lenora May to take his place the way he took hers, there is only one way.” His tone keeps my hopes in check. “We would have to physically break his connection to the swamp, and that would kill him. I wish it weren't the case, but without Lenora May, I'm—I'm helpless.”

Even with all that's happened, he loves her.

“The cherry didn't work,” I admit. “And she knows I tried.”

The change in him is subtle, but something falls through his face and shoulders, down to his toes. For a moment, I can't distinguish his feet from the muddy ground. It lasts only a second, here and gone so fast that I'm not sure if it was real.

“That is unfortunate,” he says, each word precise.

“There must be another way. Maybe a way to free you both and Phineas and Nathan and anyone else trapped here.”

His response is immediate, vicious in its passion. “No. There's no other way, Sterling, believe me. It's a waste of your time to even consider it. Lenora May and I belong here. It's the fate we chose together. Anything else is unacceptable.”

“Okay, I get it.” I take an involuntary step back.

“I didn't mean to frighten you. I'm just—I'm worried for you and your brother, and for anyone else Lenora May might harm. I'm afraid she's become a monster.”

The trails Phin left in the algae have closed over themselves, erasing the evidence of his passing. Once again, the pond is a dish of sunlight and scum. Nothing moves here. Nothing changes.

“You think she's dangerous?”

“I think she's capable of anything,” Fisher says, stooping to pull a coil of Shine into his hands. “We'll try it again, but this time, I'll show you how to make certain she eats the cherry.”

Fisher picks another blossom, cups it between his palms, and speaks softly over it. A small flash of light escapes his fingers, and when he opens his hands, a new, perfect cherry rests on his palm.

“I won't be able to fool her again. She'll be expecting this.” I try not to sound as hopeless as I feel, but I doubt Lenora May will take anything from me she didn't watch me harvest. We've lost the element of surprise, and that was all we had in the first place.

Worst of all, I'm not sure I
want
to trick her into doing something she very clearly doesn't want to do.

“Then you'll have to make her.” It's his tone that gets my guts to grumbling. It's the sort of tone Candy might use when she's about to ask me to do something I probably shouldn't, like break curfew or bleach my hair.

“What do you want me to do?” I ask.

Fisher pulls Shine into his hands and begins to shape it. “Magic cannot be removed from the swamp unless it has been bound to a physical object. Anything from a cherry to a piece of clothing. Her comb perhaps. Or a bracelet like yours. It's tricky, but I suspect not for you.”

His attempt at flattery does nothing to dislodge this sense of dread. Whatever he's about to tell me to do, I'm sure I won't like it.

Oblivious or indifferent, he continues, “When you infuse the object, simply give it a command as you did to clean your hands. And when Lenora May touches whatever it is, she will be compelled to follow that command: listen, eat,
obey
.”

I flinch. There are words that have power. This is something every Southerner knows: words used carelessly can get you run out of town or worse. Harmful, threatening, historically loaded words we all know and precious few of us say.
Obey
isn't one of the top five, but it scores high with families like mine, and if my hackles hadn't already been halfway to heaven before, they are now.