Beware the Wild (29 page)

T
HE SWAMP REVEALS NOTHING.

The water is as dull as the clouds above. Wasting Shine hangs motionless in the air. And Phin doesn't surface again. I don't understand how this could have gone so very wrong. The peach was meant to release Phin, not kill him. I search the water desperately for him, but the swamp reveals nothing.

“Sterling.” Candy's voice is soft and taut.

I find her standing exactly where she was a minute ago, several feet from the cherry tree with the bag of peaches slung over her shoulder. She's gone so pale she's nothing but a shock of white and blonde against the swamp. And she's staring at me with her mouth open wide enough to catch flies.

“Sterling,” she says again, this time with wonder. “I—I remember. Him. Phineas. I remember.”

Laughter swells in my chest and emerges in one loud bark. “It worked! I can't believe it, that peach worked!”

Candy's laughter is baffled and more enthusiastic. Her uncertainty is plain on her face, but she gives me a faint smile.

“Craziest shit I've ever . . .” She trails off, looking over my shoulder. “Well, where is he anyway?”

There's no time to dwell on the fact that I have no answer. The swamp begins to rumble and hiss. All the Shine begins to glow more brightly. Eagerly, it coils and uncoils, rolling through the earth and climbing through trees with such speed that more bits than usual break off into the air. And from the tall, scrubby plants at the edge of the clearing, a gatorgirl slides on her belly.

Only one at first. She noses around the trunk of a fat cypress, crushing its straw-like knees flat beneath her, and stops with claws pressed into mud. More follow. Easily a dozen. Gatorboys and gatorgirls, all of them with jaws parted and bellies to the ground. They look primed for attack, but instead of moving, they release a discordant hiss.

Candy's eyes are wide as saucers. I try to scramble up the bank, but my injured knee gives out and my shins crash against the mud wall. My nails dig into muck and my arms shake as I pull myself to my feet.

By the time I've worked my way into a perilous crouch, the rumbling, snapping, and popping have stopped.

“Sterling, what are we going to do?” Candy asks, her voice fearful.

“Yes, Sterling,” another voice says, and my backbone goes stiff straight. “What
are
we going to do?”

When I look up, Candy stands with her bag clutched to her chest. Her body's as rigid as my own and her eyes keep moving over the row of gatorbeasts. Standing right
behind her, with a grave smile carved into his face, his eyes alight with malice, and all the Shine of the swamp worshipping at his feet, is Fisher.

Shine curls around Candy, reaching for her, then shying away. Fisher, however, doesn't shy away. He considers her like he might a piece of meat.

“Sterling,” she hisses, oblivious to Fisher's presence. “What do we do?”

“Don't move,” I say, knowing anything else might get her killed. Just because she can't see Fisher doesn't mean he can't hurt her.

“She's a good friend to you. And I must say she is intriguing,” Fisher muses. He begins to run a finger through her hair, but withdraws sharply before touching her. Exactly like Shine. Exactly as I'd hoped. “I don't know that I've ever met another like her. But do you want to know what I find even more intriguing than a sightless girl, Sterling?”

My eyes slide to the pond, which is flat as ever. There's no hint of Phin anywhere.

“Ah, I see that you do.” Fisher takes three steps toward the pond. “There I was, trying to make a deal with that obstinate boy for my sister, and here you were trying to slip your brother from beneath my very nose. Do you know what that makes me?” A storm darkens in his eyes. “Upset.”

He extends a hand over the water. His palm begins to glow as he bends to reach beneath the surface. When he stands again, Phin's body rises with him. The full length of him hangs in the air, tense and alert and helpless. Just like Nathan. And fully human.

Phin struggles, kicks at the air and his captor. It's all useless and Fisher knows it.
Have I really gotten this far only to lose him?

“No.” I want to move, but fear holds me tight.

“What have you done?” The question's for me, but Fisher studies Phin's human face. “You stupid girl, do you know what you've done?”

Phin's dark blue eyes catch mine. He's not angry or scared, but I know that look. I know it from a hundred midnights when he stood in front of me to catch Dad's fists with his own small body. It's his way of telling me not to worry, he'll take care of it. He'll take care of me.

But that's what got us here in the first place. It's time for
me
to take care of me.

Frustration gets my blood going. I can feel my feet and my legs and my arms, and they desperately want to move. In my mind, there's only one thought:
I will save Phineas, I will save Phineas
.

“Yes,” I say, shifting my feet. “I've freed him.”

Fisher snarls and Shine races to him, distorting his form. His hands turn dark as rotting wood and long, gray claws curl around Phin's neck. The transformation spreads: in from his hands and up from his feet until his entire body is encased in dark scales
except for his face, which is the same pale gray as his claws. He blinks and when he opens his eyes again they are wide, yellow things with dark slit-pupils. He grows until he's several feet taller with legs like tree trunks.

With a start, I realize that I've seen this creature before—on the night I first went into the swamp and found Nathan. This creature—Fisher—is the beast who chased me. I think I should scream, but my insides quiver.

“You haven't freed him.” Fisher's voice is beastly. An echo of it rattles in my chest. “You've killed him.”

His claws tighten at Phin's neck.

“Please, don't hurt him!” I cry. “Let him go.”

But Fisher is unmoved.

Phin goes limp in the air. His hands fall away from Fisher's and his feet stop kicking, but that's not what drives terror through my chest like a stake.

The glow of magic, of Shine, is leaving his body. As it leaves, he grows more and more motionless, and I know with all the certainty I've ever felt that if it leaves his body completely, my brother will be dead.

I run two steps and leap at Fisher. My shoulder slams into his and we tumble to the ground. I hear the splash of Phin's body hitting the water. My eyes won't focus. I struggle to get my feet under me again, but there are hands tugging me down.

I kick and kick and kick, fighting to put space between myself and Fisher, but the force of his body doesn't budge. He's too strong, too big, and I'm too, too small.

Sticky fingers of Shine wrap themselves around my neck and my wrists, they snatch at my ankles until I'm bound firmly to the ground. Fisher's pale face peers into mine. A low growl rumbles through his teeth.

“This didn't have to end this way.” His voice is a sluggish hiss. “I would have helped you.”

“You're the one who needs help,” I spit, wishing I could do more than state the obvious.

I feel his claws pressing into my sides. I feel the magic of the swamp wrapping around me, and I wonder if he'll trap me here forever or simply kill me.

He presses one hand to my chest and with his other, rips the bracelet from my wrist. I hear my first name in Candy's voice and have time to marvel. Must be serious for her to use my given name. Then my body floods with pain, and all I see is a wave of Shine lashing at my eyes.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

T
HE PAIN IS UNENDING. A
hundred razors skidding through my veins. A thousand needles pressing into every inch of skin. My bones twist, fracturing slowly. I feel the roots of my teeth shatter. My fingers and toes spread so far apart the skin between them tears. Through the pain, I hear Lenora May's voice describing how Fisher transformed her into a gator and I wish it would happen fast.

And then it stops.

I feel nothing but the cold shiver of a pain just passed.

The world around me returns in static. Opening my eyes leaves me nauseated and disoriented. Everywhere I look, Shine swirls in furious eddies. It's impossible to focus. I squint and blink, looking for anything that makes sense in this vibrant anguish. Something inside me spins and spins and spins, and the world screams.

“Saucier!”

Candy. I yell for her. At least, I think I do. I can't feel my own voice.

“Saucier!”

Again, I try to yell. The light is overwhelming. It's impossible to know if I'm turning around, or if my eyes are open when I can't feel my feet or my hands. All I feel is the chaos of the swamp, the wild swirling of a magic so bright I'm lost in darkness.

Fisher. Where is Fisher? And why did he stop? He could be standing over me, enjoying the sight of my torture, waiting for me to gain my feet before filling me with new pain. But I hear sounds of a fight. A shout that sounds like Heath. A plea that sounds like Lenora May. They've distracted him. Pulled him away to save me, and now he'll kill them both.

I won't let Fisher win.

Closing my eyes, I try to focus. I think of my body, huddled against the wet earth, my shoulder aching from impact with Fisher's monstrous body. I think of the smell of the swamp, the rot and sulfur and rain. I think of the sounds I know so well: the small chirp of frogs, the sad, slow call of a black bear. But I can't isolate any one sensation from the din.

Except a pulsing pain in my knee. My knee! The bruise from falling into the pond!

Focusing on that, on the pain radiating down my shin to my toes, I slowly, slowly find my body. Twigs poke into my side and there's a pain thrumming in my head, but now it's a welcome sort of pain. I open my eyes.

A small, dark spot sits in the midst of all this light. It shifts, swings its arms at me and in that movement becomes Candy. She alone is as she should be, repelling the chaos of Fisher's magic as naturally as she does anyone who gets in her way. She's my point of reference. She's shouting my name, gesturing madly, and all the world falls into order at her insistence.

I see the tree first. The cherry tree with millions of pink blossoms winking at the sky, and a skirt of earth-dark Shine spinning in and out of its trunk like roots. Not far from its base, however, Shine draws together and funnels away from the tree. Every vein leads to the same place: Fisher. He may draw Shine to him with magnetic force, but the tree is the bright, beating heart of the swamp. And it's been diverted into him as Lenora May described.

Beneath its branches, Fisher's gnarled form hunches like a wild secret. A figure is collapsed at his feet. Blood seeps through the fabric of a yellow T-shirt. Honey-gold hair, traced pink by the glow of the blossoms above, soaks black in the muddy earth.

Heath.

The realization knocks the wind from me. He looks dead. Did he distract Fisher from killing me only to get killed himself?

Farther away, Lenora May's got her back to a tree at the edge of the clearing, while all around her, gatorgirls and gatorboys snap their jaws.

I think we've already lost.

My mind is reluctant, my heart anxious—beating so quickly it's as if I'm already running away. I desperately want to grab my friends and get out of here. The only good thing I see is Candy, leaping into the swamp and holding Phin's body tight to her. In her arms, he's alive. Just as she repels all the magic of the swamp, she's trapped what little Shine remains in Phin's body inside of him. But for how long? And to what purpose?

“Candy,” I call. “Don't let him go, okay? You hold on tight and do not let go.”

She nods vigorously and moves a little deeper in the dark water, dragging Phin with
her.

With a look of distaste, Fisher steps forward to cast a golden web over Heath's body. Heath mumbles or groans, and begins to push himself up. I choke on my relief. Alive. He's alive and still fighting.

It takes little more than a flick of Fisher's wrist to send Heath flying into the air. Thick vines tighten around his wrists and ankles, each pulling in different directions until he's strung up like a marionette.

“Stop it!” I shout, pulling Shine into my hands.

Fisher is unconcerned. “I wouldn't,” he says, eliciting a small scream from Heath with a twist of his clawed hand. Then his voice softens. “Lenora May, please come here.”

She's surrounded by his small army of gators—the people of Sticks who Fisher has trapped and transformed. Who knows how many he captured over the years? Nathan couldn't have been the first, and I know for sure Abigail wasn't the last. How many more creatures under Fisher's control wait for us in this swamp?

Lenora May doesn't move. She makes a small but definite shake of her head
no
.