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30 - A Victim Of The Far Wild

* * *

Suni

“It’s... beautiful,” I said, coming to a stop and taking in the view before me. “Professor Symeos told me about it, but that didn’t do it justice.”

The Evergrass. I’d never seen anything like it. We’d just emerged from the sun-striped shade of the palm forest onto a riverbank of sorts. Beneath our feet, the thin soil of the Far Wild had been replaced with pure white sugar sand. But that wasn’t what was holding my attention.

A few paces ahead the earth sloped gently down into muddy, brown water, and from that water rose a seemingly endless forest. Not of trees, though, but of grass. Or, more specifically, a type of sedge. Cladium symeocense. I’d seen illustrations of the plant in Professor Symeos’ report on the Evergrass, but that’d just been of individual stalks. Each was tall as a man and thin as a duelist’s blade. If I looked closer, I knew I’d find miniscule sawtooth ridges running along the edges and underside midrib of the long, thin leaves. That was, after all, where the plant got its more common name: sawgrass.

Professor Symeos’ report had done a faithful job illustrating the anatomy of an individual stalk, but it had fallen far short of presenting the sheer majesty of the scene before us now. A million, million stalks covering everything from here to the horizon. For as far as I could see, the sawgrass swayed and danced in the wind, rippling in almost coordinated waves as the midday breeze played across their surface.

“The Evergrass,” Oz said, stepping beside me. “A sea of grass with the world’s slowest flowing river beneath it. Or maybe the world’s fastest draining marsh. Hard to say.” He took a deep breath, then gestured, waving his hand in a slow arc. “A great soaked savannah, seeping on a hundred-mile journey to the coast where it slips into the brackish waters of the tidal lagoons and mangrove keys of the Ten Thousand Islands. There’s no other place in the world like it,” he said, with a contented sigh.

I’d heard less impressed guides describe the place as the world’s grassiest puddle. Or maybe, its wettest meadow. But all of those descriptions failed in one area. They failed to convey how undeniably alive the Evergrass was.

Buzzing insects meandered in slow swarms just above the sawgrass, while small, agile birds darted and swooped, beaks open to snap them up. Energetic frogs climbed stalks of grass, then jumped from one to the other, leaving a swaying path behind them. Mud-caked turtles lounged in the sun, so still they might have been statues, or one of the numerous logs, gathered like the sunken, rotting masts of the world’s shallowest shipwreck.

Stretching to the horizon, the sea of grass was divided by a haphazard grid pattern of waterways. Little sloughs, no more than three paces across and dotted with the distinct three-pointed heads of alligators. Unseen, for the most part, but certainly not unseeing. Every so often, one would drift too close to another and they’d both let out gurgling, hissing growls that resonated like water trickling through a drum.

“So, Clearwater Outpost is on the other side of this?” Theo asked. “And we’re... what? Swimming there?”

It was easy to see how she could think that. The landscape ahead appeared to be only grass and water, water and weeds, then more water and more grass. The only exception was the few places where thin strips of tree-tangled islands full of dense fronds and scruffy shrubs dared to break the horizon line.

“The outpost isn’t on the other side, it’s right in the middle of it,” Elpida said as she passed. Without breaking stride she nodded toward a distant island, clearly larger than the others, but too distant to discern much detail. “And the water’s shallow enough that we can walk the whole way. Oz, you’re up front with me. Let’s try not to surprise a gator or piss off a moccasin, yeah?” she said, then lowered a boot into the water.

“Anything else in here we should be on the watch for?” Theo asked, frowning at the water.

“We’re near terror bird territory,” Elpida said, rubbing her chin. “But they mostly stay out of the water.”

The sawgrass on the horizon started dancing, waving this way and that as a breeze worked its way toward us. It swept over me with all the chill of a blast from an oven.

Can’t get much wetter, I figured, then eased down into the water. It flooded into my boots, then flowed around my knees and, finally, up to my thighs as I dropped all the way. My feet sank into the soft, silty mud beneath the water.

“Really you need a flat bottom canoe in here,” Oz said, slipping in beside me. “You can go right over the grass with one of those. But, seeing as all of them are at the outpost, we’ll have to do this the muddy way.”

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“Oh, mud never hurt anything,” Senesio said. “What’s an adventure without a little mud, anyway?”

He took one giant step off the bank and splashed down into the river.

“Just keep your injuries dry,” Elpida said, nodding to Senesio and the sergeant. With Theo and Gabar’s help the latter of the two was making his way down to the water’s edge. “There’s more than a few leeches in this marsh what would love a go at an open wound.”

It was a small mercy that the wendiguar had bit the sergeant in the shoulder, far above the thigh-deep water. Nonetheless, his bandages were soaked through with blood, and he’d continued to grow paler as the day had gone on. The tourniquet that’d been applied had slowed the bleeding, but whatever anticoagulant was in the wendiguar’s venom was proving potent.

“We can tighten that by a few cranks,” Theo said, nodding to the stick and bandages. “Likely you’ll lose the arm, but it’s that or bleed out.”

“All things considered, that is my least favorite arm,” Sergeant Kyriakos said, his voice weak, but sense of humor apparently still intact. And, with some shade, rest, and a proper physician at the outpost, there was a good chance he’d survive. All we had to do was get him there.

“It’s gonna be a long, wet slog,” Elpida said, turning to face the endless glades ahead of us. “Fix his bandages, then let’s get moving.”

* * *

“Long, wet slog” proved to be all too true. There was little shade and less shelter. Wading through the water was like jogging through quicksand, and pushing through the sawgrass thickets like bathing in blades. As it happened, the plant lived up to its name. Each stalk’s edge was lined with the slightest of serrated teeth, just big and sharp enough to leave burning, itching nicks up and down my forearms. Nature truly was incredible, even if I didn’t exactly appreciate it in that moment.

The Evergrass wasn’t entirely without mercy, though. The abundance of water meant our waterskins were always full, if tinged with the smell of eggs. As well, the lack of solid land kept us away from most of the Far Wild’s large predators. Not all, though.

“There’s another one!” I said, pointing to the right. Every so often we’d emerge from the forest of sawgrass and into a watery slough. We’d just stepped out into one and, as had consistently been the case, a gator was watching us. Most of the animal was below the surface, but you could get a good read on their size from their heads alone.

“Why do you say that with so much enthusiasm?” Gabar grumbled. “How long before one of them has a go at us?” He and Theo each had one of Sergeant Kyriakos’ arms thrown over their shoulders, mostly carrying him between them.

“Oh, there’s nothing to worry about with that little guy,” I said, smiling at the gator. “Look, see the size of his head? Based on that he’s not much longer than a pace. Still young. Now, if we had a proper bull in here he could be up to three, four paces long.”

“Oh, good. That’s reassuring, Suni. Thanks.” Gabar rolled his eyes, then splashed onward.

Alright, so maybe I was enjoying myself a bit more than I’d expected. The Evergrass was far from a pleasant place to stroll through. The distinct lack of shade meant there was no escape from the sun. In the Thick I’d longed to see it again, but now it was safe to say we’d all had our fill. Sweat poured from every part of me. My hair was soaked with it, my face coated, and my eyes blurry and stinging from the salt. I was sweating in places I didn’t even know it was possible to sweat. And anything that wasn’t covered in sweat was underwater. And yet, I didn’t entirely hate it. Not the feeling of being soaked and exhausted, but the feeling of just being here. Of living in the moment.

For the first time since the Stormcrow had come crashing down, I didn’t feel like a victim of the Far Wild. Instead I was... well, something else. Still prey, undoubtedly. But prey with a fair shake at survival. Maybe my newfound confidence was deserved, or maybe the heat was just boiling my brain. Whatever it was, though, I wasn’t complaining. It felt good. For once, I felt, if only slightly, like I belonged out here.

“Outpost is just ahead,” Elpida barked from the front of our ragtag line. “Keep the pace up.”

How she knew we were close was a mystery to me. Even if I felt, for the moment, like I belonged, it couldn’t have been anything compared to Elpida and Oz. They looked every bit like this was their natural habitat. And seemed to have a supernatural sense of where they were and where they were going. Looking around, all I could see was the sky above, sawgrass ahead and behind, and a bit of open water along the slough we were crossing. Elpida, though, blazed ahead and toward the outpost as if the route were apparent.

“Do you smell that?” Senesio asked all at once, stopping abruptly and creating a small wave that rolled off down the slough.

“It’s sulfur in the water—makes the whole place stink like eggs,” I explained.

“Not that.” Senesio tilted his head back to raise his nose higher, then took several short sniffs. “Smoke.”

Smoke?

I sniffed as well. Was there a tinge of it on the wind? I couldn’t be sure.

“I don’t smell anything—” Elpida said, but stopped short.

A breeze from the north slipped through our group, making the grass dance with a chorus of sighs and hisses, and then, sure enough, there was the smell. Acrid, thick.

Smoke on the wind.

“What could even burn here? It’s all water,” Gabar asked, shifting the weight of the sergeant’s arm across his back.

“Oh hell,” Elpida said, then rushed forward, splashing across the canal and pushing into the wall of sawgrass on the far side.

“What’s she on about?” Senesio asked, frowning.

“The outpost,” Oz shouted, rushing forward himself. “It’s on an island. What else could be burning?”

“Well, they’ve a cooking fire, surely?” I asked. “That’s not so unusual.”

Neither Elpida nor Oz stopped to respond. Instead, they waded through the water as fast as they could. A gator, startled by the movement, took off with a splash, then disappeared beneath the surface. They paid it no mind as they reached the thicket ahead and plunged in.

I stood for a moment, watching them go. I turned to look at Senesio, who shrugged.

“After them, I guess?”