Free Boys of Blur by N. D. Wilson Page B

real. Dead men? Life from the muck? But he had smelled that awful taint, and the sick memory of it was even in his bones. He looked at his cousin. Cotton’s eyebrows were as high as he could make them, and he’d sucked his chin in toward his neck.
    “You’re fighting Stanks over the muck?” Cotton asked. His lip twitched up at the corner.
    Lio raised his hands above his head, growing taller ashe did. “Long ago, when men believed such things, when they searched for powers to awaken and serve, they found this place. Beneath the stars, they built their mounds. Priests woke and named the rich death in the muck. They died and walked again. They laid down love and took up hate. They became Gren.”
    Not far away, hidden in the cane, the panther screamed.
    Charlie jumped and yelled before he even knew what he’d heard. Cotton spun around, knees bent, ready to run, but not sure in which direction. Lio drew his rusty sword and turned slowly, pointing the notched and bent blade at the cane on both sides. He glanced up at the sun—it was low enough to paint cloud crowns with flame, not low enough to reach their bellies.
    “Gren have left the trees,” Lio whispered. “Beneath the sun’s fire.”
    “I don’t smell anything,” Cotton said. “We’d smell him, right?”
    Lio turned his back to the breeze and pointed downwind. Cane swayed and rustled on both sides of them, bending in the same direction, pointing with their bent green blades.
    “Kouri,”
Lio said. “Go. Run.
Kraze
dike
e koule
.”
    “What?” Charlie began to back away, trying to see in every direction at once. Something could be invisible in the cane just five feet from him.
    Cotton was cocked and waiting to spring, like afrightened bird ready to fly. “No Creole,” Cotton said. “No Creole, no Creole, no Creole!”
    “Over the dike,” Lio said. “Down the dike, feet on the chalk stone. Straight out to the great tree—
straight out!
Through swamp and water. The great tree and no other. Go now. Run!”
    Off to the left, the panther screamed and cane clattered. Lio turned toward the noise. Behind him, the cane exploded. A huge shape with long human arms slammed into Lio’s back and rolled him to the ground.
    Cotton grabbed Charlie’s sleeve, jerking him away from the two snarling bodies and the horrible smell, dragging him into a run.
    Charlie’s legs should have been tired. He’d run much and eaten little. Smoke still scratched the insides of his throat and lungs. But something deeper was moving his legs now, something ancient and simple and stronger than stars. He was quick, not dead. Time was irrelevant as his legs chewed up the muck, as they strained and bit and spat, as the wind split around his face. He felt as fast as falling rain, his steps a spatter of heavy drops hitting almost at once.
    Cotton was beside and behind him—Charlie could hear his breathing, he could see the blur of his knees and feet. Together, they were flying between walls of swaying cane. They were alive.
    And then Charlie looked back. And in that moment, he didn’t feel fast at all.
    The dark shape racing behind them was faster. It wore a slashed panther’s head like a hood, and bloody panther skin flapped and snapped behind it like a cape as it ran.
    Charlie yelled. There were no words, but Cotton understood and surged forward. They reached an intersection between fields and Cotton turned hard. Charlie slipped, grabbed at the ground with both hands, and just barely kept his feet. Yelling, he put his head down and sprang forward, digging with frantic feet like he was trying to turn the whole world beneath him.
    Ahead, Cotton’s strides were short but furious.
    Charlie heard chuffing behind him. Heavy feet were punching the earth. He wanted to scream. He wanted to cover his head, fall to the ground, and vanish. His heart was beating against spikes of terror. He was the rabbit. And he knew he was caught.
    Pain.
    Something hard and sharp swiped Charlie’s right