It had rained the night before. The rolling veil of fog rising off the swamp parted before the bow of their canoe without reaching them. The boy shivered as he passed through it. Normally, he liked getting away from the village to enjoy the peaceful morning, but that day, the swamp was haunted by the fog and the diffused light the clouds had grudgingly allowed through.
The boy shook his head, regripped his paddle, and dug deeper into the water with his next stroke. The end of the boat drifted out. His friend dug deeper with his own paddle so their strokes would match.
There was nothing wrong with the morning. He’d brought his restless, apprehensive mood with him—but whatever else was happening, he had chores. They were real, important, and immediate. People were counting on him. He could worry when his work was done.
But there was so much to worry about. It didn’t seem like there’d be enough free time.
His stomach tightened.
A week and a half ago, his mother’s brother had come to talk to him. A new group of white men had moved into the area. The boy was going to observe them.
“I’ve already talked to the head of the village. It’s been arranged.”
At first the boy had been too stunned to answer. When the surprise had passed, he dropped his head and stared at the ground between his feet, trying to sort through his feelings.
The village head was a stubborn man. Even considering the respect his uncle had in the village, it couldn’t have been easy to get him to change his mind.
“Why me?” the boy asked, his head still lowered.
“You don’t want to go?”
The boy looked up. “I’m not a scout. I’ve never gone out to fight—”
“This isn’t a war,” his uncle said. “Not yet. With luck it may never become one. The village is already sending a warrior, but I need someone to be my eyes, and I’m not looking for a fight. That’s why I’m sending you. You’re different.”
The boy frowned. Others had said that. They hadn’t meant it so kindly.
His uncle went on, “You can slip past fireflies without them noticing, and sit in the water with alligators, watching the same sunrise. That’s the kind of person I want to tell me what he sees—and understand, you will be sitting beside another kind of alligator. But if anyone could see them as friends, it would be you.”
A heavy silence fell between them. His uncle often talked as if the animals were people—much to the annoyance of some of the hunters—but this was the first time he’d ever heard his uncle talk about people as if they were animals.
Maybe they aren’t people.
“Are they dangerous?” the boy asked.
His uncle would know better than anyone. His unique duties kept him in the village, so he was there to talk with every trader.
His uncle looked in the boy’s eyes, weighing his nephew carefully. He’d been doing that more and more as the boy got older. Sometimes he’d look away and change the subject, and the boy understood his uncle’s choice had been, not yet. Other times, like this time, he didn’t look away.
“We’ve heard from others along the river, and word came to them from further away,” his uncle said. “They’re like us. The different groups have different ways. But all of them are dangerous. We need to know if they’ll be dangerous to our village.”
The boy’s friend had to call his name twice before the boy realized he’d been lost in his thoughts.
They’d arrived at the place where the seine was kept. When they moved the canoe into the shadows of the cypress trees, the temperature dropped. It was only the hint of a difference, but it was enough to make the boy shiver. They pulled the canoe out of the water and walked along the edge of the swamp until they found the top of the net, tied to a tree. The boy lost the short argument about which of them would walk out to the other end. The discussion was more of a tradition than a real argument, and despite his protests, the boy was fairly sure it was his turn, so it was with minimal annoyance that he stripped naked and waded into the swamp.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
He stepped off the sloped bank into water that came up to the bottom of his ribs. The sudden plunge and chill stole his breath. He slowly made his way through the water, feeling the silky mud shift beneath his feet.
The fog made it difficult to see anything more than two-arm's length in front of him, but it would be gone soon. It was being stirred by the same light breeze that made the surface of the water ripple. If the clouds didn't break, the wind would steal the fog before the sun had a chance to burn it away, but until he could see clearly, he had to listen for any sounds of danger.
The swamp was oddly quiet that morning. The bird calls were all coming from a distance. To his side, he felt the movement of the water caused by the thrashing of the fish caught in the net, but their struggles were silent.
He reached the other end of the net and started untying the knots. As he did, he thought about the white men.
He remembered his shock when he’d first seen them. How eerie it was. They were shaped like people, but they were hairier, like an animal. The way they dressed was bizarre, and clothing covered most of their bodies. Their pale skin with reddish tinges reminded him of catfish meat. It was hours before he could shake off the impression that they were fakes. A mockery of man. Walking dolls. And there were more of them than he thought there would be. Many, many more.
He and the warrior had watched them for an entire day, trying to see something in their faces other than strangeness. They watched them work, observed their body language and expressions, and listened to them talk to each other. Around sunset, the traders had shown up. The boy didn’t know them, but judging by their tattoos and flattened foreheads, they were fellow Chitimacha from another village. They walked up to the edge of the settlement, put down their large tightly woven baskets of goods, and waited. Several of the white men came out to them.
The boy held his breath and leaned forward as far as he could without revealing his hiding place.
The Chitimacha were used to trading with people who didn’t speak their language—there were ways to get around it—but as the boy had observed the exchange, a seed of awe had grown until it could barely be contained by his body.
When he and the warrior left for home the next morning, the boy was in a thoughtful mood.
How different did a people have to be before you couldn’t understand one another?
He’d asked his uncle that. His uncle had said he didn’t know.
“But I wouldn’t try to trade with a snake,” he’d said.
“What about an alligator?”
His uncle had smiled. “That depends on the alligator.”
As the days passed, the boy’s awe had faded, but his misgivings had stayed. He remembered how the white men had kept their eyes fixed on the backs of the traders as they left, never looking away until the traders had disappeared into the oaks. Something about their expressions had bothered him.
The net jerked in his hands, pulling him back to the present. They must have caught something large. That was unusual for a night haul. Since no one was corralling the fish, most of them were able to swim away. Only a few managed to tangle themselves too deep in the net to escape. He’d have to be careful. Whatever was in there was strong enough to yank the net out of his hands if he wasn’t paying attention.
He held his breath and dove under the water to move the anchor knot from where it was wedged between the tree roots. When the net was free, he gathered up the top and bottom, warned his friend to hold tight, then waded back to the bank where his friend was waiting. Together they hauled the catch onto dry land. With the hardest and heaviest part of the work done, the boy went to get dressed, leaving his friend to sort through the catch.
The boy had finished putting on his breechcloth and was reaching for his first deer-skin shoe when his friend let out an abrupt cry. The boy rushed over, barefoot, to see what had caused it.
His friend was standing back from their catch. It looked as if he’d dropped the net the moment he’d cried out. The serpentine edge of it lay over the heaped fish.
As the boy stumbled to a halt beside him, his friend babbled in a loud, ragged voice, “What is it?”
Warily, the boy crept toward the net, trying to see what left his friend wide-eyed and shaking.
There was something large in there. It wasn’t a fish.
It was almost the size of the boy’s young brother. Most of its skin was a mottled green and brown. It had fins on the sides and top of its head, but it had arms and legs—it had hands. Parts of the net around it were tattered, as if it had torn at the thing with its teeth, trying to escape. The two large, all-black eyes, set high on its head, stared up through the fading fog to the sky, but the boy couldn't tell if it was seeing anything—or if it would ever see anything again. The thing was motionless, like something dead.
His friend came up to his side. This time, when he spoke, it came out as a whisper. “Do you know what it is?”
“No,” the boy whispered back, breathless.
He’d lived every day of his life in the swamp. He’d never seen anything like it.
Its pale chest started to rise and fall.
The boy’s hands clenched, and he drew in a quick breath. “It’s alive.”
His friend froze, then suddenly took a step forward while drawing his knife. He didn’t get another step before the boy latched onto his raised wrist, stalling the knife where it was.
“Don’t,” the boy commanded.
His friend glanced over his shoulder. The boy was staring out at the swamp.
His friend turned to gaze at the water. The clouds had finally broken. The lines of sunlight that had made it through the trees set the last of the fog glowing. They could see, across the surface of the water, a dozen pairs of all-black eyes, watching them.