Numbly he fumbled a handful of the herb out of the pouch and tossed it onto the torch flame, and a stinking gout of smoke boiled upward through the thickened air to impact against the vines and moss overhead.

He could feel the thing's sudden agony, but this time there was no scream and retreat. The jungle spirit was sustaining damage but was not going to back off.

The air and water - the whole jungle - began to change. "Keep ... moving!" came a choked cry from Hurwood. "Get ... out from under!"

"Oh, good luck," rasped Davies bitterly, nevertheless hauling desperately on the oars.

The water was shaking like a jelly now, and the air was steamy and full of wet bits of vegetation that were evidently being shaken out of the trees. The structure of the boat seemed to be changing under Shandy, becoming more flexible, and when he glanced down at the floorboards he saw that they were untrimmed branches, sprouting gleaming green leaves. They were moving, growing as he watched - he could feel them heaving under his boots. There was a clump of wet waterweed on his bared forearm; when he tried to brush it off it clung by one end, and, when he grabbed the free end and pulled, he saw that he was simply pulling more of it out of a hole in his arm, and he could feel the internal tug of it all the way up to his shoulder. He let go instantly, and then saw the tiny green shoots that were poking out painfully from under his fingernails. He looked back at Davies; the back of the pirate's head was a mass of flowers, and his hat was being pushed askew by new ones opening up as Shandy watched. In Davies' shadow he could see Beth heaving in the grip of the vegetative metamorphosis, but he shuddered and looked beyond her, toward the third boat.

"Throw him ... someone," howled Hurwood as green stalks began unrolling up out of his throat.

"Bonnett," croaked Friend. His fat hands were now just elbow-lumps in the tree trunks that extended from his shoulders, through the oarlocks, and out sideways into the water. "Give the thing Bonnett."

Blackbeard raised a face that was a huge, unfolding orchid. The stalks of the stamen spasmed and a voice whistled, "Yes. Bonnett."

Davies' bouquet-head nodded.

Shandy felt cold water flowing between his toes and realized that his feet had become roots and had penetrated the boat's hull. He found, though, that he couldn't bring himself to nod. "No," he whispered through a throatful of twisting reeds. "Can't. Did I ... throw you ... to the Navy?"

Davies' shoulders slumped. "Damn you," he fluted, "Jack."

Shandy glanced again at the third boat. Leo Friend was a fat wet trunk with branches like spider legs projecting in all directions. A thing like a fungus-overgrown cypress stump seemed to be Stede Bonnett, and Hurwood, no longer able to speak, was now just a thick cluster of ferns that heaved furiously about as if in a high wind.

Davies labored on at the oars, but their boat was coming apart faster than the other two, and had already sunk almost to the gunwales. Shandy thought there was probably still time for Davies to stop rowing, let Hurwood's boat drift up alongside, uproot Bonnett and pitch him into the water. With such a tribute the thing might let the rest of them go ... but Shandy had apparently talked Davies out of that course.

Then Davies hitched himself up, and let go of the oars.

He's going to do it, thought Shandy. It's wrong, Phil, I don't like it, but for God's sake hurry.

Davies lifted one booted foot and dragged across its muddy sole the palm frond that had recently been his right hand. The left one joined it, and, while Shandy wondered what the hell the man was doing, the two floppy green hands rolled the mud into a ball.

Goddamn it, Phil, thought Shandy, what good is a mud ball?

Shandy's horribly elongated toes had found the river bottom and begun to dig in, and he felt nutrients coursing up his legs. His hands were gone, with not even a seam in the fresh trunks to differentiate what had once been him from what had once been the boat.

Davies put one hand on the twitching gunwale, and instantly the hand took root; but the flowering pirate drew back his other hand, braced himself, and then flung the ball of mud straight up.

And a bomb seemed to go off. The air was compressed in a scream that deafened minds as much as ears, and sent the boats rocking violently away from one another. Then the pressure was gone and the air was suddenly very cold, and Shandy's teeth hurt when he drew a breath. He rolled over - and discovered that he could roll over, he was no longer rooted into the fabric of the boat, and the boat was a normal boat again and not a clump of writhing branches; it was even relatively dry inside. Beth was sprawled across the aft thwart - he couldn't tell if she was conscious, but at least she was breathing and had resumed her human shape. Davies was slumped over the oars, his eyes closed, laughing exhaustedly and cradling the hand he'd flung the mud ball with. The hand seemed to be burned. And somehow raindrops were pattering around them all, though the roof of the jungle was as solid as ever.

Shandy's ears were ringing, and he had to shout even to hear himself. "A ball of mud killed it?"

"Some of the mud on my boot was from the shore around the Fountain," Davies yelled back, just barely audible to Shandy, "well inside the area that's poison to all dead-but-animate things."

Shandy looked ahead. Blackbeard, apparently willing to get the explanation later, had picked up his oars and was rowing again. "May I presume to suggest," yelled Shandy giddily to Davies, "that we proceed the hell out of here with all due haste."

Davies pushed a stray lock of hair back from his forehead and sat down on the rower's thwart. "My dear fellow consider it done."

There was a sound like dogs barking or pigs grunting around them; with his ears still ringing it took Shandy a minute to realize that it was the fungus heads making the noise. "Vegetable boys noisy tonight!" he called over their racket.

"Drunk, I expect!" returned Davies with a slightly hysterical joviality. "Damned nuisance!"

Beth had pulled herself up and was sitting in the stern. She was staring ahead through half-shut eyes, and might have looked relaxed if it hadn't been for the white knuckles of her gunwale-clutching hands.

Fog began making faint halos around the torches. Some distance ahead of them Blackbeard's boat veered south, and, though Shandy directed Davies through what seemed to be the same channel, they could no longer see his boat; all the glints of reflected orange light seemed to be cast by their own boat's torch, and though they could hear Blackbeard's answering roar when they called, it was distant and they couldn't tell which direction it came from.

After he admitted to himself that they'd lost Blackbeard, Shandy looked back the way they had come. The boat with Hurwood, Friend and Bonnett in it was nowhere to be seen.

"We're on our own," he told Davies. "Do you think you can get us back to the sea?"

Tags: Tim Powers Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net