Shadows wreathed Jester, within and without, his body and soul, and they told him how the destructive hand of his hellish enemy had murdered a strange and unique being out in the greenery.
Its death throes continued to send harrowing Shockwaves through the mystical currents that Jester was privy to. Its dying petitions assailed and besieged him. Ivory as his skin was, it paled further.
He had not felt such a strong sense of sorrow and faithlessness since his own death.
His archangel shadows offered bits of knowledge about the great mother, now dead, and the swamp was more desolate for it. He was mournful that they had not been faster today. The murder might have been averted, the mother saved, the lonely men attended and set free upon the backs of seraphim.
"You all right, Preacher?" Duffy ventured. "What was all that caterwaulin' about?"
"Row us out of here."
Deeter sat and took the oars again. "Iffun you say." He kept to the same course, which would lead to the tussocks and the mired shore where all the smoke seemed to come from.
"No," Jester said."Not that way Take the other inlet." Pointing with a claw-like finger. "There, you see."
"Why that one?" Duffy said. "It ain't nothin' much but a creek."
Jester looked at him. "It is where we wish to go."
"Well, that'll learn me for ponderin' on a foolish question."
Deeter rowed them over the shallows and into a new channel that brought the skiff to thinner tracks of tattered pine. Timber wolves prowled in the lightwood, their eyes anxious in the underbrush. Duffy took to stobbing again and Deeter angrily picked up the double-barrel shotgun. They might run aground on a sandbar and the wolves, though fearing man, might still take a run at them.
The emerald thickness around them fell away as they passed more hummocks. Bull gators in the distance roared and tore up the stillness of the late afternoon.
"It brings us to the women," Jester said, grinning. "To my Sarah. And her child."
Duffy worked the stobpole, easing it free from jetsam and occasional logjam. "And what we gonna do when we get there, Preacher, if you don't mind me askin'?"
"You'll do as you're intended to do."
Deeter spit some chaw. "And for me and my brother, those intentions in this case might be what…?"
"Well… murder, Deeter,"Jester the walking darkness said, his teeth burning. "Whatever else are you good for except murder?"
Chapter 18
The ill children led Hellboy and Lament through the scrub, hopefully toward the swamp village. The pumpkin-headed kid, the kid with eyes like an insect, the beautiful girl without bones in her legs who rode on Lament's shoulders, the dwarf with the big feet, the really weird conjoined twins who had two legs, two arms, and two heads, and Fishboy Lenny.
It made for a heck of a troupe, all of them moving through the marshy woodland together like some bizarre grade-school field trip. The oddest part of the whole situation was perhaps how familiar and natural this course felt to Hellboy, as if it had always been meant for him to be here.
Despite their appearance the children acted like you'd expect any happy children to behave. They chased each other through the cabbage palms and slough, their laughter echoing across the green. They bumped their heads and scuffed their knees and cried, then shake it off and forget about it.
They were so used to the semi-solid, soft ground that they hardly threw any mud as they went by. They moved with ease through the runty bay bushes and matted catclaw thickets. They slithered and hopped, bounded and rollicked, and kept up a steady stream of patter in what sounded like a half-dozen different languages. Granny Lewt's ears weren't helping him at all with understanding any of them, and he was wondering if the magic might be wearing off a little by now.
Luckily Fishboy Lenny didn't happen to look like a catfish. Hellboy was thankful for small graces, thinking, Jesus, no more catfish for the time being, all right? The kid just looked like your average fish, with flippers instead of hands, two slashes of nostrils where a nose ought to be, and a mouth that was hardly more than a small hole through which he made lots of happy noises. The boy also had vestigial gills just under his shrunken ears.
Fishboy Lenny's name was the only one he'd managed to catch, although all the kids had introduced themselves. But Lenny, he just swept up through the mud and said,"Fweep mwah fsshhh. Lenny." So there it was.
Every now and again one of the kids would turn back to Hell-boy and playfully grab his hand, trying to get him to move along a little faster.
But he didn't feel all that hot to trot at the moment and Lament looked even worse. The hillbilly's hair was singed, his wounds still bled a bit, and he had welts across his face and burns on his arms and hands. None of it slowed him up much though, and he pulled out his mouth-harp and started to play a tune.
The girl on Lament's shoulders knew the song and began to sing, keeping time by tapping at his chest with her soft unformed feet. Soon the rest of the children joined in on the liking melody. Hellboy didn't understand the words at all.
When Lament finished and put his mouth-harp back in his pocket, the girl gestured to be let down. Hellboy lifted her off Lament's back and put her on the ground, where she swung herself along wriggling and using her arms as crutches. Soon the pumpkin-headed kid and the kid with insectoid eyes each gripped one of her hands and carried her between them.
Lament stopped and threw a shoulder against a hurrah bush, breathing sharply. Hellboy asked him, "You need a rest?"
"I could use hot meal," Lament said, "a bubblebath, a lengthy foot massage, a long drink of moon, some dry long Johns, and a warm downy bed, but even without them kind privileges I s'pect I'll survive." He turned and smiled. "How you holdin' up, son? Wishin' you'd never had no truck with us southern folk?"
"I've had a lot of truck with southern folk before," Hellboy told him,"but none of that trucking ever turned out quite like this."
"Make your memoirs interesting though."
They trudged on. They'd already walked at least a couple of miles, and Hellboy kept wondering about the kids' parents, if they'd be worried. They had to be, right? If all the noise and fire and smoke hadn't drawn them out to the Mother Tree, there still would've been a chance they'd wound up on gator ground or in some other kind of trouble. Lost in the woods, attacked by wolves, bitten by snakes. He mulled and started to brood a touch.
Lament picked up on it right away. "What's the matter with you?"
"What are they doing out so far from home?"
"What do you mean? This is home. They were just playin'."
"What were they doing out there by the flats?"
"They heard tell that some swamp men got drawn away from their homes and decided to take a looksee for themselves. No child can resist a good mystery."
"They could've been hurt."
Nodding, Lament said, "Coulda been killed. No different than a city child walkin' home from school, I reckon."
"I'm not so sure about that."
But of course he was. He'd been in the Syrian desert with kids only a little older than these who'd been his contacts and guides. He'd seen children playing in bombed out cars in Beirut. He'd once visited a monastery in China and met with a ten-year-old Buddhist abbot whose only purpose in life, along with his brotherhood, was to recite one hundred million prayers to hold back the undoing of all creation. He'd met a lot of kids who had been put into the thick of things.
"What's really on your mind, son?" Lament asked.
Good question. Hellboy glanced at the kids and could almost see how it would be if they ever decided to leave their swamp village. The prejudices they'd face. The pain of not fitting in. Even if you didn't want to fit in, even if nobody else needed you to fit in with them. The kids were oblivious now, but they wouldn't always be. It struck him deep, knowing what it would be like for them eventually.