Chapter Eleven: The Marshlands
Bohdan Dune and the Perilum Tales
Warmest greetings and salutations!
What awaits young Bohdan today, I wonder? If you would like to catch up on Bohdan Dune and the Perilum Tales, you can do so here. (I highly recommend reading The Kingdom of Gallimaufria first!)
Happy Reading!
Bohdan slept so deeply and dreamlessly that it took three great shrieks from Patrona before he pried his eyes open. The midday sun poured in through the open window as the curtains flapped lazily in the wind. Bohdan admired it for a moment before leaping out of bed.
“What time is it?” He ran to the window and stuck his head out into the salty air. Sure enough, the sun shone bright and brilliant in the cloudless sky as the Lost Sea glistened like glass below.
He faced Patrona. “Did Aunt Irenie leave?”
But the bird simply cocked her head and pecked at something beneath her wing.
Bohdan shoved his feet into his boots, grabbed his satchel, and rushed out into the corridor. After an eternity of spiraling staircases and confusing passages, Bohdan finally found his way back into the Hall.
The table was empty and there wasn’t a soul in sight. The patter of his boots echoed off the walls of the enormous room, in perfect sync with the beating of his heart. Aunt Irenie couldn’t have left without him! For starters, she was absolutely ancient. She would need help, especially if another waspwind came. Secondly, and perhaps the most important, why would she leave him here when Ma needed him?
He ran through a door at the far end of the Hall and nearly slammed into the bald man from last night, who was chopping away at a fire-cabbage in a large kitchen.
“Goodest of mornings to you, Master Bohdan.” He bowed slightly and wiped his hands on his apron. “My name is Otto. I trust you slept well?”
“Aunt Irenie,” Bohdan gasped, trying to catch his breath. “Where is she?”
The man scooped up the chopped fire-cabbage and dropped it into a large clay bowl. “Not to worry! We saw her safely off to the caravan, and she informed us of the change of plans.”
Bohdan gulped. “Change of plans?”
The man chuckled as he turned his attention to a small mountain of dangerous looking peppers. “Oona, why don’t you show Master Bohdan the overlook?”
The green-eyed girl who sat beside Bohdan at dinner seemed to appear out of thin air. She too was wearing an apron and smelled strongly of beggars. “Yes, Otto,” Oona smiled brightly as she pulled off her apron and waved at Bohdan. “Follow me.”
“But,” Bohdan protested. “I don’t understand. What’s going on?”
“Aunt Irenie always says if we look at the Lost, then we’ll be found.”
Even more confused, Bohdan followed Oona out of the fortress, under the rusted gates and toward the Lost Sea. They sat side by side on a stone bench made from the same crumbly stones as Teller’s Point. The turquoise water surged against the amber hued rocks of the cliffs, filling the air with a hymnal sound so steady it could have lulled him back to sleep. The cliffs stretched on for miles and miles, gradually dipping down into the shoreline the further north it went. The salty air mixed with the desert wind, and he felt a sharp pang of homesickness.
“Oona, why did Aunt Irenie leave without me?”
The girl glanced up at him, her green eyes crinkled in confusion. “She said you were to fetch your brother.”
Bohdan stared at her, gob-smacked. Obviously, there had been a huge mistake. “No, I don’t —”
“Have you ever been through the Marshlands before?” Oona interrupted.
“No.” Bohdan tried to sift through the sucker punch of fear threatening to swallow him whole.
“I was born there.”
“You?” Bohdan asked, bewildered. Oona was so small and bright. Anyone who’s anyone knew that Marshlanders were gritty, wild folk. More animal than human.
“I ran away two years ago.” Oona’s smile drooped a little. “My parents never wanted children. Aunt Irenie found me at the edge of the marsh. I got caught in a fog and passed out from fright. I was lucky.”
“I’m sorry,” Bohdan muttered. He didn’t know what else to say. His mind was having trouble concentrating on anything other than Aunt Irenie saying he was to fetch Cobran.
Oona peered up at him, “Where exactly is your brother?”
Bohdan cleared his throat. “In the Peaklands.”
“That’s far.”
Bohdan nodded and glanced over his shoulder. In the distance the tree line of the Marshlands loomed like a strip of dark cloud hovering along the ground. Fear sank into his gut like teeth.
“Far, but not impossible! I can help you.” Oona placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Come on.”
As they walked, Oona listed off everything she could remember about her time in the Marshlands. “… by the time you’ve seen a Shredder, it has already decided to kill you,” she continued without taking a breath, “And it’s a terribly painful way to die. Probably the most painful way in the Marshlands. Well, except, perhaps, by the Vody Laiths. But you only have to worry about those in the fog… Turtles will always help those in need, and muskrats aren’t to be trusted…And the only water safe to drink is in the treecups, but only for the first hour after it rains.”
Bohdan was grateful for the help, but it was almost too much information. He worried he’d get plants confused and accidentally eat a lethal Bog Bean instead of its edible lookalike.
“Well, this is the end of the road for me,” Oona said as they came to the first tufts of the marsh.
The grass grew steadily taller as it reached the trees, which were still a long ways off. But even now Bohdan gaped in awe. Marshland trees were nothing like cactrees of the Wastelands. They reminded Bohdan of ancient green men, hunched and gnarled with long wisps of hair. He felt as jittery as a frightened Devil’s Hen. One more step, and he would be out of the Wastelands.
“You can do it, Bohdan,” Oona beamed. “I know you can. Now, don’t forget, try to stay up in the trees, and if you get caught in fog, lay down and be quiet.”
“Stick to the trees. Avoid the fog,” he repeated more confidently than he felt. It was a moot point, he decided, to tell Oona that as a born and bred Wastelander, he couldn’t swim. He’d have no choice but to stick to the trees, unless the marsh was like the river in the gorge.
“Yes,” Oona nodded solemnly before wrapping her arms around Bohdan in a hug. “Good luck.”
And without another word, sweet Oona turned and left, both of them completely unaware she’d forgotten to mention the greatest danger of all.
The ground grew softer with each step. A muggy thickness in the air settled on his face and clothes. Dozens of minuscule bugs buzzed around his face and ankles, grating on his nerves. Bohdan hadn’t even reached the tree line yet, and he was already eager to leave and never come back.
He watched his feet. A sprawling maze of grasses as tall as he was, and muddy puddles created a labyrinth between himself and the densely packed trees, which were now hidden from sight. Every few paces an aggressive croaking came from somewhere within the pockets of puddles. A mudfrog or swamp-toad, he hoped, and nothing more.
An especially large puddle stretched out before him. He stepped forward gingerly as his foot anchored into the muddy bottom. But as he went to take another step, a fat, round creature with bulging eyes leapt out in front of him with a loud RIBBET! throwing Bohdan off balance. He cried out and tumbled forward into the water.
Bohdan thrashed wildly, terrified by the creatures possibly lurking just below the surface. But before his imagination could run away with him completely, his hands sank into the squishy bottom of the marsh floor. He pushed himself up. The puddle was no more than a few inches deep.
“I wouldn’t linger in the puddles, Wastey.”
Bohdan wiped the mud and water from his eyes, certain he was hallucinating. “Fedir?”
“Luckily for you, you’re about as agile as a wasterbeast,” Fedir laughed as he held out a hand and helped Bohdan to his feet. “It was easy to find you.”
“But…” Bohdan tried to find the words. “What are you doing here?”
Fedir handed Bohdan a full canteen of water. “I stopped by your house to check on you and bring some medicine for your ma. The old lady looking after her told me you were headed to Teller’s Point. Once I got here, I ran into a chatty girl who told me you’d just gone into the marsh. I may not be a fully-fledged Huntsman yet but you leave an easy trail to follow. And I have to say, leaping into the gorge takes a lot of guts for a kid who can’t swim.”
Bohdan took a small sip of water and swished it around. His mouth tasted like marsh. He spit it out onto the ground before taking a large gulp to drink. “But why are you here?”
Fedir stood on his tiptoes to see over the swaying grass and made a scan of the area. “Because I know you’re going to find your brother, and I want to find Wren. It can’t be a coincidence, the way they both disappeared.” Fedir paused. “My ma’s sister, Aunt Pinifred, is visiting for a while. They won’t notice I’m gone, and Da has a million things on his plate. I made a pact with my two oldest brothers. They’re going back home to get the last of our things. They told Da I’m going with them.”
A low, sad sound came from deep in the marsh, drawing both of the boys' attention. Bohdan bristled, but the thought of venturing into the most dangerous territory in Gallimaufria didn’t feel quite as impossible now that Fedir was with him.
“Don’t even bother with the puddles,” said Fedir as he parted the stalks of grass and stepped forward. “Just stick to the grass.”
Before his journey to Teller’s Point, Bohdan hadn’t given much thought to the majesty of trees. But now, as he and Fedir stared up into the dark forest of the swamp, he was at a loss for words. The towering beings had an ancientness about them, as if they could see and hear what was going on around them. Some of the trunks were as wide as the houses in the Pig Sty, and as tall as the towers of Teller’s Point.
“Are you ready, Wastey?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Bohdan gazed up into the colossal trees with their gnarled, moss-covered bark and spindly branches. As a gentle wind blew, deep moans echoed all around. Bohdan peered around at the darkened swamp. Everything was overlapping and packed together. Vines, plants, fallen branches and logs. Small, reptilian creatures zipped along the ground and up the numerous trees before he could get a good look. The heavy air smelled of wet earth and something rotten.
For hours the boys walked, hardly saying a word. Bohdan gave Fedir a wide enough berth, should he need to reach for his bow and arrows. The young Lushlander would twitch his head this way and that or come to an abrupt halt and hold up his hand for Bohdan to wait. Now, more than ever, Bohdan wished he knew how to use a bow and arrow or whistler.
All too soon, the little sunlight within the swamp began to fade. Bohdan glanced up into the canopy, which darkened before his very eyes. “We should find a tree to sleep in, Fed.”
“Rule number one of the Marshlands,” Fedir whispered. “We travel by day and sleep by night. Everything in here hunts at night and sleeps during the day. We need to cover as much ground as possible before finding somewhere safe to hide and sleep.”
“That reminds me,” Bohdan whispered back as he stared at the now watery ground. “Oona said we should stick to the trees.”
“Who is Oona?”
“The girl you talked to by Teller’s Point. She’s from here.”
“That little fairy girl?” Fedir asked, wide-eyed “From the Marshlands?”
“She said not even the Marshlanders know everything that lurks in the swamp. Even shallow water’s got things in it that can kill you.”
Fedir stopped dead in his tracks. “Trees it is then,” Fedir said a little too enthusiastically as he began testing the bark of the nearest tree. “Truth be told, we hardly spent any time in the Marshlands on our way to the wastes. We traveled through the Nothing instead. We were only in the Marshlands for two days or so.”
“The Nothing?” Bohdan asked, impressed. So little was known about the territory in between the Deadwood and the rest of Gallimaufria. “What was it like?”
“How it sounds,” Fedir shrugged. “The ground isn’t sand but it isn’t dirt or grass either. It’s like snow but it isn’t cold or wet. The sky is greige. No clouds. No sun. No moon. It’s just…nothing. For days Da quizzed us and made us play games so we wouldn’t lose our minds traveling through. Why can’t Sisters sit on the royal court? What’s the difference between a Pig and Saber-toothed Beaver droppings? Things like that.”
“What is the difference between a Pig and Saber-toothed Beaver droppings?”
“Nothing.” Fedir winked.
Bohdan laughed despite the nervous energy coursing through his veins as he searched for a climbable tree. The sun continued to set at an alarming pace, as if it went down faster in the Marshlands than the wastes. The trees were so closely packed together it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. Long, gray tendrils like curling strands of hair hung from the branches. A great splash sent a wave of bumps along Bohdan’s spine just before a shrill shriek echoed throughout the swamp.
But there wasn’t a tree in sight with branches anywhere near the ground. The boys tried to climb tree after tree but it was no use. The bark was too slick and mossy to grab ahold.
“How did you get through the Marshlands before?” Bohdan asked as he treaded forward carefully. The water was now up to his kneecaps and black as night.
“We traveled through the northeastern corner. I thought that was bad enough and it was nothing but soggy ground and overgrown toads. Cries in the night. Child’s play, Wastey, compared to this nightmare. We hung hammocks in the few spindly trees that were around, to sleep.”
The water grew steadily higher and higher, until Bohdan’s waist was fully submerged. The splashes grew louder and closer. Something long and slimy brushed against his hip in the inky, black water, and he froze. Fedir must have felt it too because he stopped moving.
“Whatever that was, Wastey,” Fedir whispered shakily, “it’s a little too awake and a little too comfortable with us in the water.”
Bohdan agreed. The light was nearly nonexistent. Soon, he and Fedir would be in total darkness and at the mercy of the marsh. His heart pounded, but then he saw it. “There!”
A gigantic tree stretched out of the watery ground like a forearm with a wide, open hand. The palm could easily hold them both and rested a good thirty feet above the water. It’s finger-like branches stretched up and out at odd angles, with a series of branches, like a ladder, extending from the water’s surface all the way up the trunk.
Bohdan moved forward cautiously. The mud along the bottom of the marsh pulled at his boots, making it difficult to walk. He forced images of twofaced salamanders and flesh-eating bog-trout from his mind and focused on the task at hand.
The bark was rough and grooved with hardly any moss at all. Bohdan grabbed a hold of the nearest branch and with a sigh of relief, felt the rough grip of the bark stay firm beneath his fingers.
“Up you go, Wastey.”
Slowly, Bohdan shimmied his way up the trunk. Somewhere above him, a low hooting followed by the flapping of wings made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. One by one he climbed the branches until he was safely in the palm of the tree.
Fedir took a seat beside him and laughed mirthlessly. “We might just survive the night.” He pulled off his boots and held them upside-down over the side of the tree, shaking out the excess water. He slipped off his socks and wrung them out before hanging them across a branch.
Bohdan frowned. “What if we need to leave in a hurry?”
“We’re safely cocooned in here,” Fedir sighed happily as he wriggled his toes. “Unless we are in something’s home and we don’t know it, we should be alright. You’ve never had to deal with wet boots before. Walking for days on end in wet shoes will be the death of your feet. Just ask my Uncle Vendren. He was hunting in a wet part of the Lushlands for months but never took off his boots. When he finally did, his boots took his toes with them.”
Bohdan winced, then promptly took off his socks and boots to dry.
“Though I don’t know how dry they can get in this place. Even the air is wet.” Fedir leaned his back against the tree. “Get some sleep. I’ll take the first watch. See what we’re up against.”
Bohdan curled on his side and closed his eyes. The sounds of the swamp echoed all around. He thought of Oona, surviving alone in here when she was younger and shuddered. A loud splash came from directly below. Bohdan opened his eyes and peered over the edge of their little haven. It was too dark to see anything, but he could hear the water surging, as if something was gliding through it, followed by a terrible silence.
Ravo suddenly felt a thousand miles away. He wondered if Ma was awake and asking where he was. He thought of Aunt Irenie. She’d be there sometime tomorrow, and he knew Ma would be in the best of hands. He could only imagine what she would say when she learned where he’d gone.
And then he thought of Cobran. It was hard to give a name to the feelings he felt about his brother. He loved him, of course, but even that was hard to explain.
“Thanks for coming, Fed. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have made it past the puddles.”
“If it wasn’t for you, we wouldn’t be on our way to get our siblings back. Sleep tight, Wastey.”
Touched, and grateful not to be alone, Bohdan shut his eyes and nearly succumbed to sleep when music, faint but clear, sang out through the darkness. Bohdan sat up. The music grew louder. A large branch snapped nearby. Bohdan could feel Fedir stand to his feet.
“You could fall!” Bohdan whispered. “We can’t see a thing in here, Fed. Sit down!”
“Something’s coming toward us.”
Bohdan held his breath. The music stopped, but a branch to his left shook, as if something had leapt onto it. It sounded big, whatever it was. Images of the horrifying creatures Oona had mentioned like shredders and mole crickets flashed through his mind. The creature was almost to them, but then it stopped.
The silence grew in Bohdan’s ears until he thought his heart might explode out of his chest. He sat next to Fedir who stood impossibly still. Whatever it was moved on to another branch. Bohdan listened as it moved further and further away until, mercifully, it blended in with the sounds of the night.
The rest of the night passed slowly. Try as he might, Bohdan only managed to sleep in fits. A thick layer of grime covered his clothes and skin. But at long last, gentle morning light trickled down the wispy green leaves, tendrils, and mossy vines of the canopy. He lifted his head and saw Fedir fast asleep, mouth wide open as a small insect buzzed in and out of his mouth. Bohdan leaned over and swatted it away.
In the light he could see just how wild the swamp truly was. Floating logs and half submerged trees. Climbing vines and protruding stalks covered in deadly looking flowers of purple and green. Bits of earth skirted around the base of the larger trees, though most of the ground was covered in black water.
Bohdan wrung out his socks and slipped them back onto his feet. The cold, wetness made his skin crawl, but he wasn’t about to travel through the marsh barefoot. He laced up his boots and, stomach rumbling, opened his satchel to eat the last of his cactree jerky.
To his great surprise, his satchel had been packed with an array of goodies from Teller’s Point. In the chaos of leaving, he hadn’t even noticed how much bulkier his satchel was.
Helping himself to a thick piece of cactree jerky and a handful of waterberries. The sweet, watery goodness boosted his spirits. Back aching, Bohdan stood to stretch. As he did, he found himself looking straight into a pair of vibrant silver eyes.
Thanks for reading along! Tune in next week for the next installment of Bohdan Dune and the Perilum Tales.
“We Wait on the Winds.”
-Periwinkle Twist
Always exciting!