Gird looked at him. This sounded less and less like the knowledge gained on one clandestine visit as a child. Triga reddened.
“No one could find me here,” he said. “I used to come here a lot, before I left home.”
“And not after?”
“The others didn’t want to see a swamp, they said.”
“Well, we’re seeing it now. What else do you know about it?”
Triga began to lead them across the little island to the bog on the far side. “There aren’t many fish, for all this water. Lots of frogs, though, and little slick things like lizards, but wet. Birds—different kinds you don’t see anywhere else. Some of them swim in the bits of open water, and dive. Most of them wade, and eat frogs and flies. Flowers. One island has a wild apple grove, and one has the best brambleberries I’ve ever eaten. Wild animals: something like a levet that swims, long and sleek, and levets, of course. Rabbits sometimes—I’ve surprised them grazing the grass on the islands. Deer come to the edge to drink and once I saw one where the apples grow. They jump very fast and carefully.”
They began to cross to the next island, this time picking individual ways, with much lurching and staggering. But no one fell in the mud, and they all arrived safely and somewhat drier, but for the rain. This island had fewer trees, and starry blue flowers as well as the tall purple ones.
“In midwinter,” Triga said, as if someone had asked, “the bog may freeze on top, but you still can’t trust the moss. If the ice is thick enough to walk on, then it’s safe, but not otherwise. Most years it freezes that hard after Midwinter. But the thaw comes early—I don’t know why—and I’ve put a leg through the ice more than once.”
This time they did not pause, but went on across the island and back onto the bog. Gird lurched and barely kept himself from falling into the muck.
“I’m thinking this might make a better farm than a castle,” he said.
“Farm?” Triga glanced back at him, teetered, and regained his balance.
“Plums, apples, brambleberries, all guarded by this muck. I’d wager that in full summer the flies are fierce.”
“So they are. The worst of them aren’t out yet, the big deerflies.”
“Onions would grow on the edges; redroots on the islands.”
“Some of these grasses have edible seeds,” Triga said. “My mother’s father, he showed me some of ’em. As much grain as wheat, almost. That’s what the birds come for, the swimmers.”
Gird was about to ask how the swimmers could find space to swim, when they came to a stretch of open water. Under the dark sky, with the drizzle falling, it was impossible to tell how deep it was. “Now what?”
“We’ve gone too far down. Turn up this way, upstream.”
Gird could not see any movement in the water; it lay blank and still, dimpled like hammered pewter by the falling rain. Grunting, he followed Triga to the right, trying to pick his way. Eventually that space of water narrowed, and narrowed again, until he could leap across to a tussock that lurched under him. He grabbed the tallest stalks, and managed not to fall. Something hit the water with a loud plop behind him; he broke into a sweat again.
“Frog,” said Triga. “Big one—he’d be a good dinner.”
“You eat frogs?”
“What’s wrong with that? They’re good.”
Gird shuddered, and tried to hide it. That was the explanation for Triga’s attitude, he was sure. Anyone who would eat frogs would naturally be quarrelsome and difficult. “They’re . . . cold. Slimy.” He remembered very well the little well-frog he’d caught as a boy: the slickness, the smell, the great gold eyes that looked so impossible. His father had shown him frogspawn down in the creek, and he’d prodded it with a curious finger. It had felt disgusting.
Triga shrugged, looking sulky again. “It’s better than going hungry. Food’s food.” He gave Gird a challenging look. “I ate snakes, too.” Gird’s belly turned. What could you say to someone who ate snakes and frogs?
“You eat fish, don’t you?” asked Triga, pursuing this subject with vigor.
“I had a fish once.” Gird remembered the bite or two of fish that he had eaten on his one trip to the trade fair as a youth. They had bought a fish, all of them together, and tried to cook it over their open fire. He could barely remember how it had tasted, though the smell was clear enough. It hadn’t been as filling as mutton. He met Triga’s expression with a grin. “The fish in our creek were about a finger long—the little boys caught them, but no one ate them.”
From the looks on the others’ faces, Triga’s revelations about fish, frogs, and snakes were explaining his behavior to them as well. As if he’d realized that, he led them on faster, landing with juicy splashes on his chosen tussocks. Gird followed at his own pace, carefully. Snakes, too. There might be snakes out here, worse snakes than the striped snakes that wove through the stems of the grain, or the speckled snakes by the creek. He wanted to ask Triga how big the snakes in the bog could be, but he didn’t want to admit he didn’t know. Did they swim?
A sweet perfume broke through his concern about snakes, and he realized they were almost to an island whose scrubby gnarled trees were covered with palepink blossoms. Apples. Gird drank in the delicious scent, so different from the rank sourness of the bog itself, or the faintly bitter scent of the purple flowers. He climbed onto the rounded hump of solid ground with relief. Triga had thrown himself flat on dripping grass, and seemed back in a good humor; he smiled as Gird and the others crawled under low, snagging limbs to join him.
“This was always my favorite,” he said. “Wild apples here, and crabs at the far end, two of them.”
Gird crouched beside him. “What I don’t understand is what made the islands. Why isn’t the bog all bog?”
Triga shrugged. “I don’t know. The way each island has its own trees and flowers, it’s almost like a garden—as if someone planted them that way. But who or why I have no idea.”
“Are any of the islands large enough for a camp?”
“No—probably not. I thought so, but now I see just six of us on one of them, I realize they’re too small. The biggest has nut trees—not as tall as most nut trees—that would give good cover around the edge. But I think even twenty of us would crowd it. Certainly if you’re going to be finicky about the jacks. Out here I always perched over open water.”
The drizzle had stopped, but the apple limbs still dripped cold water on them. Gird looked out between the twisted trunks and caught a gleam of brighter light glinting from water and wet grass. It reminded him of something. He sat quiet, letting the memory come . . . he’d been crouched under another thicket, another time . . . dawn, it was . . . and the shadow had come, the thing that claimed kinship with the elder singers, but claimed also to be different. Kuaknom, it had been. Gird looked across the wet and dripping bog, now slicked with silver as the sun broke through for a moment. There across the uneven wet mat of moss and grass was an island, its trees like miniatures of the forest, bright flowers shining along its shore.
“I know who planted this,” he said. It had come to him, with the beauty of the moment, the glittering, brilliant colors outlined in silver light.
“Who?” asked Triga.
“The singers. The old ones.” He shivered as he said it. Was it bad luck to name them? Would it bring the ill-wishers here?
“You know them?” asked Triga, sitting bolt upright.
“No . . . no, but I know the tales. And I met one of their—the ones that went wrong, the kuaknomi.”
“Gods take the bane!” Triga flicked his fingers twice, throwing the name away. “Don’t speak of them!”
“But the others. I know they did. A garden, you said, each island like its own bed of flowers or fruit. I don’t really like it, Triga, but it’s very beautiful.”