The Bark of the Bog Owl by Jonathan Rogers Read Free Book Online Page A

understanding as he could be, but his understanding was limited by his unswerving loyalty to King Darrow. Bayard was no help. He and his goats were nowhere to be found.
    He couldn’t explain why, but the person Aidan most wanted to talk to was Dobro, the feechie boy. He had a peculiar sense that Dobro understood him in a way that nobody else did. He thought often of the last words Dobro had said to him: “You got what it takes, that’s easy to see. Even if you are a civilizer.”
    Most of his spare moments Aidan spent in the forest along the River Tam, searching for any sign of Dobro. Hewandered among the meandering live oaks and spiky saw palmettos, scanning the canopy above to catch a glimpse of a lizard boy swinging from tree to tree. But he never saw anything out of the ordinary. He strained to hear the bark of the bog owl, but all he ever heard was the constant thrum of insect wings and the squawks, twirps, and chitters of the forest birds.
    However, Aidan’s walks in the forest served a purpose that he little realized. Every hour he spent in the Tamside Forest perfected his skills in woodsmanship. He had always known every bend in the river, every fallen log, every sandbar a half-morning’s hike upstream and downstream from the bottom pasture. Now he knew every tree, every bush, every fold in the earth. He honed his climbing skills; he could clamber up all but the largest trees in the river bottom, like a natural-born feechie. He learned to tell at a glance which vines were best for swinging and which vines made the best ropes. He learned the ways of the wild boar and the bobcat.
    He learned the habits of one animal in particular. An enormous bull alligator had taken possession of a little spit of sand at the river’s edge near the indigo field. Every midmorning for a week, before the hottest part of the day, Aidan had seen the great reptile napping in a little sunning nest it had wallowed out in the sand. It looked to be about sixteen feet long, though Aidan had never gotten close enough to be sure.
    At supper one night, he mentioned this huge alligator to his father and brothers. Father’s enthusiasm was evident. “What I wouldn’t give to have such a beast!” he exclaimed, rubbing his hands together.
    Brennus laughed. “What on earth would you want with an old bull alligator?”
    “To give it to King Darrow,” Father answered, “what else?” The king kept a large game preserve on the far side of the Tam, and Errol often sent wildlife captured on Longleaf to the Royal Game Preserve, including several wild boars, a mating pair of turkeys, even an albino deer. But the alligators in the moat of Tambluff Castle were Darrow’s most prized collection, and an alligator was the one animal Errol had never been able to give him. Darrow’s alligators came from the southern reaches of Corenwald, near the Feechiefen Swamp. They were mostly fifteen to sixteen feet long. Alligators of that size were rare this far upriver. Errol had never found one on his estate that he considered worthy of Darrow’s moat. But this one sounded like it could be just the thing.
    “Next time one of those alligator hunters comes through,” said Father, “we’ll get him to catch that big boy for us.” Longleaf Manor was the last outpost of civilization on the eastern frontier. Hunting parties heading downriver to the southern wilderness often stopped by to visit and swap news. “I don’t think a sixteen-foot alligator is something I want to tangle with.”
    Aidan had an idea. It wasn’t a very good idea. It may have been one of the worst ideas he had ever dreamed up, but he decided on the spot to carry it into execution. He would catch the alligator himself. What better way to show his loyalty to King Darrow than to single-handedly capture a bull alligator three times longer than he was tall? If he made such a gift to the king, Father couldn’tpossibly question his loyalty. And maybe even his own doubts on that score would be put