Charlie shook his head.
“Well, I’m glad it did,” Mrs. Wisdom said. She led Charlie around the base of another large tree. A floating dock bobbed at its base. A strange canoe was tied to it. The boat had been hollowed out from a single log. It was long and sleek, and waxy smooth even where blade tracks textured its sides.
“Lionel carved that canoe for Willie,” Mrs. Wisdom said. “It isn’t the easiest thing to pull two drowning boys into, but that boat and an old woman did the trick. And it’s quicker and quieter in here among the great trees than anything with a motor.”
Mrs. Wisdom steered Charlie up another curling flight of stairs that wrapped around the trunk of a massive cypress tree. At the top, she stepped aside and gestured for Charlie to go first. He limped into a room bigger than his old school’s cafeteria. The walls were railed instead of completely open. Three long tables formed a U in the center of the room around a large fire pit full of ash-seething embers. On the other side of the tables, more than a dozen cots were arranged in rows.
Above the fire pit, hanging from two hooks, was a severed arm. It was large—crudely torn off at the shoulder—gray, and muscled. The fingers were contorted. A hooked bone spike, sharp and pointed like a giant talon, was strapped to the back of the wrist.
“Welcome to my heriot,” Mrs. Wisdom said. “Complete with a Grendel’s arm, as distasteful as it is. Once, when I was your little Molly’s age, courageous men and women laughed and feasted here. Now …” She sighed. “You ever read Beowulf, love?”
Charlie stared at the arm’s painfully bent fingers, at the naked sinews jutting out of the shoulder. He shook his head.
“Cotton probably has,” Charlie said. “Why do you have that arm?”
“Charlie, honey, that is the weapon and the arm of the Gren that struck you three days ago. Without it, I could not begin to stem the poison it planted in your flesh. The darkness that lashed your ankle would even now be swallowing up the last sparks of your fire.”
Charlie shivered. The gash in his right ankle felt suddenly very … open.
“But how?” He looked at Mrs. Wisdom. “Who?”
She smiled slightly. “Bless Lio for his courage and his blade.” She walked between the tables and stopped at the edge of the fire pit, sniffed in the arm’s direction, and then turned back around. “The stench of every Gren is a little different, just as their soul rot is a little different. The Gren feel only hate and envy and rage—every other part of their human souls has been devoured. They are their own poison, and they are woven into everything they might care to make—most usually crude and cruel weapons. Their touch, even their stench with enough time, plants their particular curse in the soul—where no doctor could ever see it. A wound from their hands is much, much worse. When they draw blood, the victim has very little time.”
Charlie moved between the tables beside the old woman until heat rippled up against his face from the fire. Up close, the arm wasn’t really gray, it was just coated with dirt, dried to dust above the fire.
“You still had the Gren’s stink on you when I pulled you from the water. Lio’s panther got the scent and tracked him. Poor soul. I’m glad I didn’t see his face before Lio gave his body to the water. I prefer not to recognize them.”
She nodded her white head at the arm. “Take it down for me, doll. It’s not a trophy, and its usefulness has passed.”
Mrs. Wisdom picked up a long bent cane off the table behind her and handed it to Charlie. When Charlie hesitated, she said, “It can’t hurt you now, love. Every bit of danger has been washed and burned away.”
Charlie took the bent cane, leaned out over the heat of the fire pit, and hooked the arm around the wrist, pulling it toward him. When it was close enough, he grabbed the hot forearm and handed the cane back to Mrs. Wisdom. He lifted.
The chains swung free above the fire pit. The hot, dry limb dropped into his arms. He swallowed hard and looked at the old woman.
“Hold no bitterness,” Mrs. Wisdom said. “Forgive as you would like to be forgiven.” Her clear eyes were full of pity, and she stared hard at Charlie, waiting for an answer.
He nodded.
“Good,” Mrs. Wisdom said. “Now throw it in the fire.”
A cloud of sparks swirled all the way up to the live beams in the ceiling when the arm hit the embers. Charlie was suddenly dizzy as he staggered back. Waves of dream memory pushed forward in his mind and for a moment the whole world seemed to be made of sparks. He slammed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, the sparks were gone.
Charlie turned, a little dizzy, and hurried after Mrs. Wisdom, supporting himself with the tables as he did. Cotton was at the end of a row of eight cots. An empty cot was beside him and then six boys Charlie didn’t know, some big, some small, were stretched out sleeping on the others.
Cotton didn’t look like he was sleeping. He looked dead and posed. His hands were crossed on his stomach. His legs were straight and tight together. His lips and eyelids were slightly parted. He was shirtless, and his skin, dark and bright and alive when Charlie had first met him, was now dull and dry and bloodless. He looked like he had been sculpted from clay. A gauze patch stuck to his chest above his heart.
“Is he breathing? Is he alive?” Charlie asked, his tongue as dry and stiff as an old shoe. “Why is he so much worse than me?”
“Breath enters him,” Mrs. Wisdom said. “He is alive. How long he might remain so is in Lio’s hands now, and I fear even for him. He has been gone too long.”
“Can’t you stop the poison?” Charlie asked.
Mrs. Wisdom pointed to a wooden tray at the foot of the cot. A long bone knife lay in its center. The handle was heavy, but delicately carved with scales down to the butt, which had been shaped into a gaping, fanged mouth. The yellowing bone blade was long and sharp and viciously slender.
“No Gren carved that,” Mrs. Wisdom said sadly. “They are raging brutes, all clubs and claws and teeth. Yours may have thrown it, but the poison was not his own.”
“Then who?” Charlie asked.
“Their mother,” said Mrs. Wisdom. “The one Lionel calls the Belly. The woman who births the muck-born.”
“But Lio will get her?” Charlie asked. Panic skittered his heart. Fear was trying to melt his legs.
“Lionel is a selfless heart, a strong man without envy, but he was already twice wounded when he brought the arm of your Gren and set back out again to hunt the Mother.” Mrs. Wisdom ran both of her hands across her freckled face and pressed back her white hair. “Even great men fall, love. And Lio has been gone two days.”
Charlie wobbled on his feet. Breathing was becoming hard, and his eyes were blurring. This was more than fear, more than grief. This was … this was …
“Tea,” he said. “What did I drink?”
The hall spun around him, and Mrs. Wisdom grabbed his hands.
“Sit,” she said, lowering him into the empty cot beside Cotton. “This bed is for you. Sleep. Greet your cousin in his dreams before he passes.”
Charlie fought to stand back up. “No!” He shook his head. “I have to go. Cotton needs help.”
“Hush, love,” Mrs. Wisdom said. “You need days more before you leave.”
“Cotton,” Charlie said. “Cotton …”
“… is dying, honey,” Mrs. Wisdom said. “Short of a miracle, he will be gone by midnight. But he is ready. His dreams are of peace. He is in the sun. He smells the sea. You will see him again when your own time comes, and the two of you will run together without fear, you will run on legs like wings made of joy and you will never grow weary.”
Charlie’s eyes closed. Gentle hands pushed him flat on his cot. His legs were straightened. His own hands were crossed. Sleep, warm and thick and wonderful, came to swallow him whole.
No.
No, no, no. He couldn’t wake up with Cotton gone.
Charlie’s eyelids felt like they had been sewn shut with rubber bands. He forced them open, straining to keep them from
snapping closed again. Above him, tree branch beams blurred and fluttered like bats. Stupid. Tea.
He heard an engine. Voices. Someone somewhere was shouting.
Charlie tried to roll, and his own body was the heaviest thing that he had ever moved. Slowly, one shoulder rose off the cot. His legs crossed. He forced one leg farther and farther off the bed. He was on his side, on the very edge.
And then the cot flipped and Charlie hit the floor facedown. He lugged his arm out from underneath him and folded his limp fingers into his mouth, scraping his knuckles against his teeth. He had to get that tea out.
Charlie gagged. His stomach heaved. And then the rubber bands overpowered his eyelids and he was still.
Two hands grabbed his ankles. Pain, sharp and loud, screamed up his right leg. The hands dragged him out from between the beds and rolled him onto his back.
Fingers popped his eyelids back open.
Below the swimming ceiling, Charlie could see a smudgy Mrs. Wisdom. She looked upset. Crouching below her, holding Charlie’s eyes open, was an older boy with hollow cheeks and very black hair.
“Sugar?” Charlie tried to say the name, but he only managed a gargle.
Blurry Sugar looked up at Smudgy Mrs. Wisdom.
“Wake him back up,” he said. “Please! I need to talk to him.”
Charlie’s eyes slipped shut.
When Charlie woke, he was slouched forward on a bench with his arms limp at his sides and his face dangling over a large wooden bowl full of thick, steaming green paste. A cloth was tented over his head, capturing all the steam along with an intensely fishy smell and pooling it into his lungs.
Charlie jerked upright, flipping the bowl across the table and into the still-smoldering fire pit. The soggy cloth clung to his head and cheeks, and the contents of his steam-cleaned sinuses clung to his chin. Sputtering, sneezing, he tore the cloth off his head, dragged it across his face, and threw it on the floor.
Whatever had been steaming in that bowl, he was now very, very awake. His feet were already bouncing under the table, and his eyes were so wide they hurt. Blinking, twitching, he scanned the room.
Sugar was sitting on the bench next to him.
Cotton was still on his cot. The empty cot next to him was up on its side.
Mrs. Wisdom was on the other side of the room with her back to the rail and both hands up on her freckled cheeks. Her sharp blue eyes were wide and worried.
Charlie pointed at her. “You! You shouldn’t have done that!” He was shouting. He didn’t mean to be shouting, but every cell in him was hot and full to exploding. His lungs felt like they could exhale for a week.
“Charlie …” Sugar slid down the bench toward him. “It’s not that simple.”
Charlie was still pointing. He pulled his finger in, but his fist was still out there. And it was shaking. He could feel his fingernails digging into his palm.
Sugar forced Charlie’s hand down to the table. “Breathe, Charlie. Just sit for a minute. Let it settle.”
“Why are you here?” Charlie shouted.
“Looking for you,” said Sugar. “It wasn’t easy. Mack and your mom are going crazy.”
Charlie’s body shivered long and slow, like a cold snake was climbing his back. His right leg kicked forward without asking permission. His fingers splayed. His mouth flew open and he began to yell.
And then it was gone. His body was his own again. His yell died. He was just Charlie, but with a complaining ankle and an open mouth.
Mrs. Wisdom dropped her hands from her face and breathed relief.
Charlie closed his mouth. After a moment, he pulled himself free of the bench and stood. His eyes went straight to Cotton, his cousin, the dying sleeper made of gray clay. Charlie had to do something. Anything.
“Things are crazy in Taper right now,” Sugar was saying, “and the cops are useless, blaming everything on you and Cotton and anyone else they can think of.”
“You have a boat?” Charlie asked.
“Yeah,” Sugar said.
“Let’s go,” Charlie said.
Mrs. Wisdom stepped forward. “Honey, it’s a brave thing to want, but it won’t do any good, and it will do a whole lot of bad.”
Charlie met Mrs. Wisdom’s eyes. He wasn’t angry at her. She’d saved his life. And Cotton’s, too, even if only for a little while.
“How long do I have after I leave?” Charlie asked. “Before the poison takes over?”
“It all depends, love.” Mrs. Wisdom looked years older as she answered. “The farther you go, the worse you’ll feel, the less time you’ll have.”
“How long?” Charlie asked again.
Mrs. Wisdom shook her head. “I can’t exactly say. If you leave, you’ll find out for yourself the bad way.”
“Tell me how to find the Mother,” Charlie said. “And what to do. How do I save Cotton?”
“The Mother?” Sugar asked. He looked at Charlie, and then back at Mrs. Wisdom. “What are we talking about?”
“Charlie Reynolds,” Mrs. Wisdom said. “Are you willing to die to save your friend?”
“He’s my cousin,” Charlie said, looking at Cotton. His throat was tightening. He raised his chin and exhaled slowly. “I’d rather die than not try.”
Mrs. Wisdom nodded, sighing. “All right, love. It’s your life to live and your life to give. But you’ll be needing a few things.”
Charlie held a green waxed canvas bag on his lap. The bag had two shoulder straps and closed with a single flap and a loop that slipped over a wooden toggle. Two initials were embroidered on the flap in fraying thread.
Charlie was sitting in the prow of a small square-nosed aluminum boat. Sugar was in the back, controlling a rusty outboard motor as he eased the boat past roots and trees.
Rain found them in sparse, heavy drops that slipped through the canopy above.
“Not too much farther,” Sugar said. “Then it’s open lake and we loop around.”
Charlie didn’t answer. He hunched forward over the bag, shut his eyes, and tried not to notice if he was already feeling worse. He was replaying Mrs. Wisdom’s final words in his head.
Two little glass bottles.
“Two breaths of the quebracho—the ax-breaker. Ironwood. Don’t waste them, doll. Only when you’re empty to the dregs and too dead to take another step. Those trees don’t breathe but once or twice a century, and when they do, the puffs are strong enough to burst a man at the seams.”
The bone knife that had wounded Cotton, wrapped in a cloth sleeve.
“Don’t touch it till you have to, love. And pray it works on Gren flesh.”
A green felt-tipped pen and Cotton’s partial map of the mounds torn out of a library book. More mounds had been drawn onto it, copied off the church.
“Honey, the mounds are a true tangle, but they all lead to her grove in the end. She gathers her power through them. Just don’t be getting yourself turned around.”
A worn silver lighter.
“Deep water deals with Gren—washes the muck-birth right off of them. But burning is the only way for her. She’s died a dozen times and it never stuck. Always the muck mounds refill her with life. If you get her down, light her up like cane. And throw that knife in her flames.”
A tarnished wide-mouthed brass air horn, attached to a dented old can of air.
“Honey, those Gren’ve got no speech left of their own, so they hate noise like nothing else. That hate draws them.”
Charlie inflated his cheeks and sat up. What on earth was he thinking?
I’d rather die than not try.
Seriously? Was that true? He had meant it when he said it. But only because Cotton had been lying right there looking dead. Because Cotton had saved him. If Charlie could be somewhere else and not know about any of this, if he’d never met Cotton …
But he did know. He had met Cotton, and Cotton had met him. When Mack had come, Charlie Reynolds had suddenly become more of a son than he had ever been before. When Molly had co
me, she had turned Charlie into a brother, adding deep loves and loyalties to who he was without asking his permission first.
Cotton had made Charlie a cousin. That could never be undone. And by tomorrow, Cotton would be alive or dead. And Charlie would have risked his own life for his cousin, or he wouldn’t have. Which was just … nuts. It shouldn’t be that way. He was only a kid.
“These creatures are made of envy, raw and ruthless,” Mother Wisdom had told him. “Still, their greatest strength lies in our envy—their poison can grow that envy until it swallows you whole from the inside. But you’re going as a giver, willing to give your life for another, and, honey, that brings its own protection. Picture Cotton with the gift you want to give him—a happy life—and even in the thickest stench, your mind might stay clear.”
The rain had slowed and almost stopped. Accumulated drizzle dribbled down Charlie’s neck and he shivered. Sugar was staring at him, but he looked quickly away from Charlie’s eyes.
“How did you find that place?” Charlie asked.
Sugar swiveled the motor and slid the boat between a cluster of young trees.
“I got lost once,” Sugar said. “I was only eleven. Jumped a cane train and couldn’t find my way back. When it got dark, I went a little crazy. Saw things. Nightmare stuff. I don’t remember much. I woke up a week and a half later in a hospital two towns away.” He turned the boat slowly, winding through trees, and then grimaced when the rail thumped against a ragged stump. “From then on, I had all these tree house dreams. Mother Wisdom was in all of them, taking care of me and singing.”
“And kissing your head,” Charlie said.
Sugar laughed. “Yeah, well, two years later, I asked her about it. I told her what I’d dreamed.”
“And she told you?” Charlie asked. “Just like that?”
“Mother Wisdom doesn’t lie,” Sugar said. “Not when she’s asked straight up. I had a pretty good idea of where it was after that.”
The trees around them were finally thinning. Charlie turned and got his first glimpse of Lake Okeechobee—water, water, and more water. The lake had no edges but the sky itself, bending its back with the planet’s curve, hiding its banks behind horizons.