Moonlight trickled through the trees, but there was no way to recognize the panther for sure. Except that it hadn’t attacked them.
“She’s mine,” Charlie said, and as he moved forward, he understood her frustration. The mound was blocked with a tangle of branches and trunks so tight that she couldn’t get through—so tight that it couldn’t be natural. It was like the wall of a stockade, but jumbled and jagged and leaning out over you when you got close to it.
Charlie held out his hand and let his fingers drag down the panther’s body as she passed. He shut his eyes and tried not to feel dizzy.
“We’re here,” he said. “But how do we get in?”
Charlie’s father stood beside him. “There’s a way. Over or under or through, they get in somehow.”
“No way they climb better than a panther,” Charlie said. “And she’s confused.” He thought about that Gren dragging Lio by the ankle, about that woman. They weren’t scrambling over walls like monkeys.
The Gren were connected to the muck. They were caked with it. Later on, if the Mother had her way, they would be dragging dozens of bodies back into this swamp. She would be birthing more sons. She had a front door somewhere. Charlie just needed to see one of the Gren use it. Then he would go in and pull his bone knife and … well, he didn’t want to think about that part.
Charlie dug into his bag and pulled out his air horn.
“Knock, knock,” he said. And he squeezed the trigger.
His father grabbed him from behind and tore the horn out of his hand. The enormous blast of sound died just as suddenly as it had begun. The panther was staring at him.
“Are you crazy?” his father hissed.
“Hopefully, a Stank will come from inside, not from behind us.” He pointed at the pool of mud. “I’m guessing right there. It looks just like they smell.”
His father handed back the air horn and raised his rifle. While they watched, it stirred.
Two huge hands reached up out of the goop and grabbed a log. Shadow raced toward them, clinging to the dripping arms. Head and shoulders followed, slick with muck, and blanketed with thickening darkness.
Charlie’s father fired, and the snarling panther leapt onto the Gren’s back before its ribs cleared the slop. Charlie sat down and closed his eyes. He didn’t want to watch, and he didn’t want to think about what came next. He was all the way up the high dive now, and there was no turning back.
“Charlie?” his father asked.
Charlie groaned, opened his eyes, and stood up.
“You don’t have to do this,” his father said. “I’ll take you back to your mother. Or you could just climb a tree with your panther and sleep.”
Charlie shook his head. “I do have to do this. If I don’t …”
“I have a gun. I’ll do it.”
Charlie limped over to the edge of the muck. The panther had dragged the Gren’s body to the other side of the mound and left it in a swamp puddle. It was only a few inches deep. Not enough to keep him dead, but it was better than nothing.
“Charlie?”
Charlie looked at his father. Really looked. This was it. This could be his last chance to say what needed saying. His memories were roaring and tumbling and confused. The man was like an illustration from painful stories in his mind. It was strange that he was real. That he still existed after that final awful night.
Charlie blinked slowly. Bobby Reynolds. His dad. Standing in the moonlight next to him, pretending like they were friends, like they had always been on the same team.
“You were the monster,” Charlie said. “You hurt Mom. You hurt me. You hurt Sugar. You hurt Sugar’s mom.”
His father frowned. “I did my time,” he said. “I paid.”
“No, Dad.” Charlie shook his head. His body felt fuzzy, but his mind was hot and clear. “You didn’t. You owed us you. All of you. And you owed Sugar and Sugar’s mom. You belonged to us, but all you did was hate us for it.”
Charlie could see his father’s cheeks twitch. He had forgotten that they did that. He mostly remembered the eyes and the hands.
He could see the anger coming.
“You think you understand?” his father asked.
“Stop it,” Charlie said. “It won’t help. I don’t hate you, okay? I used to. And I’m sorry about that. It made everything worse.”
Charlie looked down at the muck pool beside the low mound. “Think there are more in there? Should I blow my horn again?”
His father didn’t answer. Instead, he took one step toward the pool, hugged his rifle to his chest, and jumped in.
The splash sounded more like a slap. He was gone. The panther jumped forward and then back again. She danced around the pool.
“I like you, lady cat.” Charlie rubbed her head and scratched behind her ears. “Don’t let me come back out if I’m wearing rotten skin.”
Charlie took a deep breath, and then chickened out. He tried another, added a step, and then hopped away sideways instead of into the muck pool. The third time, he said his goodbyes to the world and jumped as high as he could over the slop. He squeezed his bag tight and kept his legs straight and together.
The muck swallowed him.
Charlie tried to kick. He tried to swim. It was like trying to swim through sand—too thick for his limbs to move easily, too thin for his hands to grab and pull. But he was moving, barely. Then his fingers found a root. He grabbed it and pulled himself forward and groped for another, then another. His chest wanted to collapse. He tried to exhale, but the muck wouldn’t let him.
He knew he was out when he could spit. He clawed mud off his eyes and blew it out his nose. His hands found a solid bank and he wriggled onto it. It was sharp everywhere, and when he’d blinked enough, he could see why. It was made entirely of crushed shells.
A hand grabbed him between the shoulder blades and pulled him to his feet. It was his father, looking chocolate-dipped.
Charlie looked around. The place was like an enormous cave, fifty yards long or even longer, but the walls and ceiling were wood—branches and trunks woven tight. Torches lined the walls, and there were no openings anywhere. The floor was shattered shells mounded into paths that wound between and around dozens of pools of muck like the one they had just climbed through.
Charlie limped forward. In the center of the room, there was a fountain. Like the floor, the fountain rim was made of shattered shells, but these shells were swirling slowly with the water they held, clicking and rasping against each other as they did. In the center, shell shards formed the shape of a tall woman. While Charlie watched, the shape clattered into a serpent, a dragon, a man, a dog. Swamp water burbled out of the constantly changing shard statue, and streamed down its sides into the pool below.
“Do not touch it.” The voice was wind, and the torches flickered with each word.
At the far end of the hall, thick shadow suddenly lifted, and Charlie was looking at the Mother seated on a shell throne, inside another fountain pool. She was clothed in white feathers and black furs, and water flowed around her. Lio’s body floated and drifted at her feet.
Weapons hung on the wooden walls that curved around the fountain throne. Ancient swords encrusted with jewels and rust, bows, muskets, spears, sabers, cutlasses, rifles. There were too many to count, all displayed on the walls like trophies.
Charlie started toward her, as stable as he could manage. His father followed.
“Life flows in,” the Mother said, and she pushed back her dark fur hood. Firelight seemed to drip from her silver hair. “Welcome. The fountain must feed. The more she feeds, the more she gives.”
Charlie wound his way between pools of muck and stopped twenty feet from her throne. Behind him, Bobby Reynolds cleared his throat.
“What does the fountain do?”
The Mother smiled, creasing the stain of freckles on her cheeks. “For you? It would give you strength and speed and hunger. It would make you run as you have never run. It would make you young enoug
h to play your game again.”
Charlie shot a look at his father, then turned back to the Mother.
“My cousin is dying because of your mounds and Stanks and probably your fountain, too.”
“As are you,” the Mother said.
“Yeah, well.” Charlie shrugged. “Not if I kill you first.”
The Mother laughed. “You would kill an old woman while her sons are away?”
Charlie nodded. “Seems like the best time.”
“Have you brought a weapon for my collection?” the Mother asked. “I am afraid I only hang the arms of heroes. Who told you to try this foolish thing?”
“Nobody. But Mrs. Wisdom didn’t think it was an awful idea.”
“Mrs. Wisdom.” The Mother sneered when she said it. “She was my granddaughter once, but she has always been a fool. Never more so than when she chose that man for herself. She took after her father’s line.”
Charlie’s father checked his muck-slathered rifle. Then he fished a bullet out of his jeans and slid it in.
“You think lifeless lead will reach me?” the Mother asked. “Do you think any metal could? Any soulless stone? Any curse? Fire if you like. Take up a weapon from the wall. Try to strike me down. If you are strong, I will make you one of my sons. If you are weak, I will feed you to them.”
Charlie pulled the bone knife out of his muddy bag. His father raised his rifle.
The Mother held up her wet hand, and her fingers were taloned like a vulture’s. The bone knife suddenly jumped toward her, dragging Charlie behind it. His father fired and the gun exploded in his hands, knocking him backward.
Charlie let go of the knife and fell on his face, clipping his chin on the shell floor.
The Mother laughed and the fountain behind Charlie geysered water almost to the ceiling; the swirling and rattling shells grew into a giant.
“This is my home!” she roared. “My womb, where I have birthed men mightier than Nimrod and Shamgar and Ishmael, where the earth feeds me the sparks of thousands and my fountain overflows with life.”
Charlie scrambled toward the wall of weapons. His father got there first, pulled down an ax and a sword, and then ran straight at the Mother, snarling through gritted teeth.
Charlie saw the Mother rise from her seat and catch the sword in her bare hand. The steel shattered. Her other hand closed around the ax blade, talons punching through thick metal and scattering the shards like pottery.
Bobby Reynolds tried to use his fists.
The Mother toyed with him, carving him with one talon at a time, inflicting pain like a malicious cat that leaves its prey alive.
Charlie stared at the wall of weapons while his father screamed behind him. No lifeless metal, no soulless stone. It meant something. Something he should already know. Something he already felt inside him.
And then he saw it—between a scimitar and a spear with a blade like a scythe. It was a sword almost as tall as he was, and it had been carved from a single piece of wood. Grain swirled on the wide blade. The hilt was thick and long enough for three hands. Charlie tugged it down and nearly dropped it, surprised by the weight. It wasn’t just wood. It was ironwood.
He turned as the Mother closed her taloned fist on his father’s chest. With one hand, she picked him up and threw him against the wall. Weapons rained down around him. Charlie ran at her back. He raised the sword to his shoulder. He swung. She turned, smiling, and reached for his arcing blade.
Her talons shattered when she caught it. Her arm broke. She tumbled backward. Charlie didn’t stop swinging. Not when she put the bone knife into his thigh. Not when needle talons gripped his calf. Not when his vision blurred and the world became sparks. He was swinging at white-hot flame, sparks stolen and hoarded like gold, and as he swung, they scattered.
Panting, Charlie felt his vision clear. He was facedown on wet shells. His limbs were lead. Every part of him was screaming in pain.
Not far from him, a battered pile of white feathers and fur was crawling toward the central fountain, now burbling quietly. Underneath the feathers, Charlie could see only vapor, a woman made of steam.
What had Mrs. Wisdom said? Burning is the only way for her. She’s died a dozen times and it never stuck. If you get her down, light her up like cane.
Charlie’s bag was under his body. He couldn’t let her get to the fountain. He bullied himself up onto his shoulder and groped inside his bag. He found the lighter. For what felt like years, he tried to get his thumb to flick it. Finally, the flame came to life. He tried to calm his pounding heart. He ignored his throbbing head. If he missed, if the Mother made it into the fountain that the mounds fed with muck life …
Charlie pulled in a long breath and held it. Leaning on one elbow, he lobbed the flaming lighter at the crawling pile of feathers. End over end the little fire spun.
And then it landed. Like a pink flare in a cane field.
Nothing. And then smoke. Stink. Crackle. A scream made of hissing wind. Blaze. Heat found Charlie’s face and he knew there was something else he was supposed to do. He pulled a bone knife out of his thigh and threw it on the fire. He couldn’t watch. His arm couldn’t hold him up. He fell onto his back, and as steam and smoke swirled above him, he shut his eyes and prayed that Cotton could still wake up. That the Gren would sleep in death without their Mother to feed them.
Charlie’s eyes almost didn’t open again. His world ended. His mind saw nothing and knew nothing. Not darkness. Not lightness. Nothing.
The shell fountain and the shell throne collapsed, splashing and clattering like sea glass. Cool water washed across the floor, swallowing Charlie and spinning him around like driftwood. His world returned, his mind woke, and when he opened his eyes, he found himself staring at his father.
Bobby Reynolds was slumped against the wall. He looked like he was sleeping but his skin was far more pale. He had never looked angry when he slept and he didn’t look angry now.
Charlie wormed his way to his father’s side and pulled a small glass bottle from his bag. It looked empty, but it was heavy. Charlie tugged the cork free and shoved the bottle between his father’s lips.
After a moment, Charlie’s eyes shut and his arm fell. He didn’t hear the glass bottle break.
Bobby Reynolds did.
It was Sugar who found them between two smoldering fields. Before he’d died, Bobby had carried his son all the way from the swamp to just past the burned-out church. The doctor who performed Bobby’s autopsy knew that wasn’t possible, not with a collapsed lung and a ruptured aorta—and that was just to start. But nobody cared what the doctor said. Everyone knew that none of the week’s events had been possible. Apparently, no one had informed the world.…
Bobby and Charlie had both reeked, and they had both been caked with dried swamp muck—all but Charlie’s face, where it had been licked clean by a panther.
Mrs. Wisdom had asked Mack and Natalie if she could spend some time alone with Charlie in the hospital, and they had both agreed. Things looked better and better after her visit until the doctor finally said Charlie could keep recovering at home. And that was when the Macks noticed that they didn’t really have a home, but the beach was close enough for now.
More than a dozen lost boys found their way back to Taper over the next couple days. They all told strange, confusing stories about tree forts and dreams, but the strangest belonged to Cotton Mack. People actually believed him.
Most people in Taper had trouble remembering the football riot accurately, although almost everyone said that they’d been there, and when they looked at the damage to the stadium, everyone agreed that more people should have been hurt than actually were.
Flags flew at half-mast for a week in honor of Sheriff Leroy Spitz, who died of a heart attack after trying to climb a fence out of the stadium during the riot.
Since the church had burned and needed rebuilding, folks who remembered things remembered the bell that had fallen down through the floor and into the muck. And the peop
le with memories told people with shovels, and they dug that bell up. And when the mound got itself a new white church to sit up on top, it came with a brand-new steeple. But the bell that rang inside it was older than Taper itself.
Charlie and Cotton and Sugar sat in white chairs by a pool, watching palm trees bend beside the sea. They were still wearing ties from a funeral, and bandages from before that.
Mack was at a barbecue, slicking sauce on chicken with a paintbrush. Sugar’s stepdad stood beside him—shorter and thicker and slower and balder and more mustached than Mack, but full of smiles and laughs that came out like gifts that he would never need back because he always had more.
He’d made the sauce.
“Wait till you taste it,” Sugar said. “Seriously. There’s nothing like it.”
Charlie’s mom and Sugar’s mom and Cotton’s mom were listening to Mrs. Wisdom and laughing just inside the glass doors of the beach house, and the boys all suspected that they were talking about them. But nobody said anything.
Cotton nodded at a stack of books that his mother had brought for Charlie’s recovery.
“Don’t worry, coz. I slipped a couple good ones in there. Don’t go near that book by Dickens. He has better. But you have to read that edition of Beowulf.”
“Why?” Sugar asked.
“Because I’ve read three and it’s the truest to the original Anglo-Saxon,” Cotton said. “Serious awesome sauce.”
Charlie smiled.
“No, I meant why read it at all?” Sugar asked. “It’s poetry, right?”
Cotton sat up straight. His eyebrows went up. “You kidding me, coz?”
“I’m not your coz.”
“You’re my cousin’s bro,” Cotton said. “And any bro to my coz is a coz of mine. It’s like relational math, coz. Simple.”
Charlie burst out laughing. Sugar smiled. Cotton rolled on.
“And yeah, Beowulf is poetry, but it’s poetry that’s all blood and dragons and monsters. Think Vikings, but tougher.” Cotton shook his head. “History of the world, coz, warriors and kings and conquerors, man, they ate poems up. I mean, ninjas even had haiku. You more manly than ninjas, Sugar Diaz?”