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  Bernice backed away from the truck and looked wildly around. Where was the old lady? She had to be around. Had she beaten Bernice to the truck, then picked the stuff out of her hair and piled it onto the seat? Had she put it there before going into the swamp to scare the crap out of Bernice? That would require a lot more planning and effort than Bernice felt the lady was capable of. But what other answer was there? A bunch of twigs and leaves and flower petals didn’t just blow through her open window and settle in a tidy little pile on her seat. Or maybe they could? Maybe the wind had picked up some debris off the road and had blown just right and created one of those little swirls of wind like a tiny little tornado, and it had flown into her truck’s window, and it had lost energy and dissipated right in the middle of her seat and … yeah, sure …

  Or, the lady had upped the creepy for some reason. Whether she’d somehow beaten Bernice to her truck or she’d left the stuff ahead of time, it was super scary. For a drug-addled, old, homeless, swamp dweller, she was pretty clever and quick. Drugs. Yes. The old woman had to be on some sort of drugs. It would explain the fact that she thought she was the swamp, and the fact that she was super strong. Bernice was fairly sure some drug highs gave people temporarily heightened strength. Yes. She was going with that.

  Bernice opened the door, brushed the pile of plant matter off her seat, sat down, shut and locked the doors, and took a few deep breaths. Now that she was in the relative safety of her vehicle, she felt a lot better about things, and more able to think rationally. Everything was fine. With any luck, when Bernice came back the next day the old woman would be slumbering again in whatever den she’d go curl up in once she came down off her root or berry-induced high. It was actually kinda sad, that poor, insane woman living out in the swamp, her mind so utterly separated from reality. Where was her family? What string of events in her life could possibly have led her to these pathetic circumstances? Was Bernice a jerk for having snapped at her and called her crazy? It was, after all, only okay to call a person crazy if they weren’t. Was there some organization she could notify about the old lady? A shelter or something?

  Yes, she’d look into that once she got home. She’d be being a good person and getting the old woman out of her hair at the same time. Win-win.

  Okay. Enough of this. Shaking her head, Bernice placed her hands firmly on the steering wheel. Time to go home. She started up the truck and drove out of the swamp. When she passed the sign that said, Thank you for visiting Cleary Swamp. Take nothing but memories. Leave nothing but footprints, she couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief.

  She glanced in her rearview.

  Far back, she saw the old lady standing in the road, facing Bernice’s retreating truck.

  Bernice let out a snort of surprise and nearly drove off the road. She slammed on the brakes, breathed some fuming breaths through her nostrils, peeled her fingers loose from the steering wheel, and looked back in the mirror.

  The old lady was a lot closer to the truck. Standing right by the Cleary Swamp sign.

  Bernice felt a cold chill.

  How had the old woman moved that fast?

  Unnerving. Very unnerving.

  Well, at least that proved that she could, after all, run very fast. That explained the pile of plant matter on her seat.

  What Bernice really wanted to do was jump out of her truck and yell at the old lady, but no. No need to make things worse. She and the old lady had already made mutually horrible first impressions on each other. There was no need to purposely escalate things.

  Especially if the old lady’s second impression of Bernice was going to involve pepper spray.

  So, Bernice looked away from the motionless weirdo standing in the road behind her truck, and tore off toward civilization.

  #

  Back at her apartment, Bernice threw her backpack on the floor by the door, made an avocado smoothie, drank it even though her tummy was upset from being scared nearly to death by the old swamp freak, and threw herself onto her couch. The afghan her grandma had crocheted her was draped over the back of the couch; Bernice threw it over herself and sighed. For a while, she stared at the ceiling, taking deep breaths while she recited The Walrus and the Carpenter under her breath in a quest to break her mind out of its paranoia spiral. As much as she attempted to rationalize all the weirdness of the day, her brain just refused to accept the explanations it had dreamt up.

  After ten minutes or so, Bernice decided her deep breaths and poetry were not working.

  What Bernice really wanted to do was heed the sweet siren song of Space Mantis, but she knew first she needed to call her boss and give her an update. After that, she could catch up with Captain Joe and his ragtag crew of space rascals. She kicked the afghan off, dragged herself off the couch, and retrieved her phone from her backpack.

  While she waited for her boss to pick up, she moseyed over to her desk by her window with a sweeping, panoramic view of the parking lot. She sat down, opened up her laptop, and was just starting to type, “Who to notify about homeless person in need of help in metro Detroit” when her boss picked up.

  “Hey, Bernice,” she said. “How’d it go today?”

  “Hi, Professor. Uh, today went kinda … bad.”

  “How so?” Professor Zimmer asked in that distracted tone that told Bernice the professor’s attention was not really on her. Bernice felt a stab of irritation until she realized she herself was clicking through a list of homeless shelters.

  “Uh, when you were out in the swamp, did you ever run across an old lady?”

  Professor Zimmer answered, “Sure. There’s that birdwatching club and some hikers and—”

  “No. Like a crazy old lady. Really crazy. Like living in the swamp crazy.”

  “Um … no …” Professor Zimmer replied. “How do you know she’s crazy, Bernice?”

  “Well, gee. Matted hair, disgusting and muddy and ranting about how she’s the swamp. Like she is the swamp. Like it hurts her when I cut the plants. She scared the crap out of me so I left before I’d done much of anything at all.”

  Silence. Well, at least she’d gotten the professor’s full attention. “An old lady scared you out of the swamp? What, did she have a gun or something?”

  Bernice gritted her teeth. “No. She didn’t have a gun.”

  “What made her so scary then? I mean, this is an elderly woman we’re talking about, right?”

  Bernice should have known Professor Zimmer wouldn’t understand. All the professor was thinking about was the limited timeframe they had to work with, and how every day wasted was one less day to make progress and collect data. “She was scary. She just was,” Bernice muttered. “And she was really strong and fast.”

  “Did she threaten you or something? Like should we call the cops?”

  “Uh, she pushed me and screamed at me. She … uh,” Bernice sighed. If she called the police, what would she even say to them? Not even her professor seemed concerned, and her professor was a woman. If not even a fellow female was going to side with her regarding a threatening encounter in the middle of a swamp, would a tough police guy comprehend why she’d been scared? Doubtful. No one was scared of old ladies. “Look, I’m going back early tomorrow to make up for the lost time. Don’t worry. You’ll get your data.” She felt herself slipping into passive-aggressive mode, and was so annoyed at her professor that she didn’t even try to stop herself.

  Professor Zimmer sighed. “Bernice. If this is really a concern … if you’re really scared to go out into the swamp alone, I can send Kevin out with you.”

  Bernice gritted her teeth. Kevin was a super annoying fellow master’s student who was working for Professor Zimmer. Kevin would think it was hilarious if he found out Bernice was too scared of some random old woman to work alone. “No. No, I’ll be fine.”

  “If you’re feeling threatened, Bernice, then―”

 
“No. I probably just overreacted,” Bernice grumbled.

  “If you’re sure …”

  “Sure. Whatever. Sure. I’m sure.”

  “Okay …” Professor Zimmer said. All right then. “Report in tomorrow when you get back.”

  “Right. Later.” Bernice hung up. Wow, she was mad. What had just happened there? When that conversation had started, she’d been scared and Professor Zimmer had been skeptical, and by the end Bernice had felt obligated to convince Professor Zimmer that she was also skeptical, and that everything was okay. She was such a pushover. Why could she never stick to her guns in situations like that?

  She slammed her laptop shut much harder than was probably wise, but it was a just an ancient university computer, so who cared? Bernice got up from her desk and threw herself back on the couch. Grabbing the remote, she switched on the TV. Captain Joe and the crew of the Space Mantis would take her mind off things. Some alien parasite had just infected the brain of their pilot, Zed, and he was flying them into certain doom. Would they find out about his brain parasite in time?

  Well, yes, of course they would. But not until they’d had a heap of witty banter and a fight scene or two, and some significant, electric glances between Captain Joe and the pretty cyborg, Infiniti.

  CHAPTER THREE:

  THE POWER OF THE SWAMP

  Bernice parked her truck on the side of the dirt road and rolled up the windows. This time, the old lady would not be dropping any piles of plant matter onto her seat to freak her out. She got out and patted her pocket for the twentieth time to make sure her canister of pepper spray was there. She grabbed her backpack, locked up the truck, grabbed her backup hedge clippers (named Sting) out of the back, and set out for the research plot.

  The old lady was not going to scare her. The old lady was not going to scare her. The old lady was not going to scare her.

  No. The old lady was just a lunatic who had screamed at and shaken and pushed Bernice. She was nothing more. Not that Bernice really actually thought she was anything more, because there was nothing else for her to be, because there was no conceivable way she was the swamp. The old lady was clearly just a person. Obviously. The fact that she had a body and a voice and the capacity for thought and other such hallmarks of humanness was conclusive evidence. If the old lady had been a … well, a swamp, Bernice would have been heaps more convinced about her claim. Except if the old lady had been a swamp, she wouldn’t have been able to make the claim, because swamps don’t talk. Because they’re not people. Which the old lady was.

  Bernice had overreacted to the weirdness of the previous day simply because she had been shocked by that level of confrontation with another person. That was all it was. Bernice was not a fan of confrontations. Especially when they got physical.

  Probably the old lady wouldn’t even be there. Nope. The poor, crazy creature was probably exhausted after her superhuman strength drug high thingy she’d experienced the previous day. She’d be drained, fatigued, curled up in a hollow log or something, with her head resting upon a pillow of moss, sound asleep. Most likely dreaming of some golden future when plants would no longer be oppressed by humans. A day when plants would no longer feel the cold steel of hedge clipper, pruner, or saw. A new age, when plant and human would be equals, going through this life hand in leaf, in perfect harmony.

  Yes. The old woman would be asleep. Slumbering. For another few years or so, with any luck.

  Bernice found the research plot and looked around. So far, so good. No signs of anyone but her and a few red-winged blackbirds. Somewhere, Anduril was lying sad and alone, his Lord of the Rings stickers peeling in the damp of the swamp. She really should have lacquered those stickers on. Maybe once Anduril had been thrown by the horrible old lady, he’d gotten embedded in a tussock of grass, where, if Bernice didn’t find him, he’d remain for years. Over the years, hikers and birdwatchers would find him and try to pull him out, but to no avail, for Anduril could only be removed from the tussock of grass by the hand of the One True Ecologist. Yes.

  All the same, Bernice would keep her eyes peeled for him. He had, after all, been a trusty friend these past few months. They had fought many battles together.

  She spotted a Japanese barberry, made a note of it in her notebook, and began to chop. With her first cut, she muttered, “Take that, swamp lady.” So she was the swamp, was she? So it hurt her when Bernice chopped off branches, did it? Grinning, she chopped a second branch off.

  “Ahhhh!” a ragged scream came from off to Bernice’s right, “No! Stop!”

  Bernice turned, swallowed, and stared.

  Rising up from the ground, where she’d presumably been lying hidden up until Bernice had started cutting the barberry, was the old lady.

  Bernice scrambled backward a few paces.

  The old lady looked at her with bugged out eyes. Muddy water was dripping from her filthy clothing. She hissed, “I told you to go away.” She took a step toward Bernice.

  Bernice backed up another step, and swallowed again. Her mouth had gone dry. She parted her lips, with no idea whether her voice would even work, or what she would say in the unlikely event that her vocal cords would cooperate. From her mouth came the response, “But you never said I couldn’t come back.” Where had that come from? Well, at least it was true. There had been a lot of, “Get out,” talk, but no, “And don’t come back.”

  The old lady didn’t respond.

  Eek. She was so creepy. So crazy. Had she spent the night in the research plot, lying there in the swampy water, waiting for Bernice to return? Waiting so that she could do a pretend scream of pain when Bernice started cutting stuff again? This situation was fast becoming unsustainable. Bernice determined that the first thing she would do when she got home would be to contact as many homeless shelters and social workers as it took to find someone who could collect this lady and bring her somewhere that wasn’t where Bernice needed to work.

  The old woman cocked an eyebrow, with her eyes still bugged out in rage. “It was implied.”

  “Ahh,” Bernice said. “Implied. That’s your problem. You see, I’m a scientist. We science types don’t do well with subtext and implications.” She backed away a bit more.

  The old woman took a few steps forward. “You slaughter in the name of science?”

  Bernice rolled her eyes. “I told you, I’m only slaughtering the invasive species. Not the stuff that belongs in the swamp.”

  The old woman waved her hand with irritation as though Bernice’s words were mosquitos. “Once a plant has taken root in the swamp, it is a part of me. For I am―”

  “Yup. The swamp. You are the swamp,” Bernice said, gaining a bit of confidence since the old lady wasn’t swooping up to her with unnatural speed, or grabbing and shaking her with unnatural strength, or screaming in her face with unnatural wackoness.

  “Yes. I am the swamp. And now, scientist, I shall speak to you in no uncertain terms. Leave the swamp, and do not come back.”

  Bernice glowered at the old woman who was still dripping a bit; she must be soaked through, probably playing host to a herd of leeches and other little water critters. “Look, Swamp, I can’t leave and not come back. I’m working on my master’s degree. I’m doing this research here in Cleary Swamp for my professor, who I need to make a good impression on. I gotta get the data to understand better what’s going on. My future’s kinda at stake here―not to get too dramatic.”

  “The … data …” Swamp murmured, glaring at Bernice.

  “Yup. I’m telling you, I want the same thing you want. I want the swamp to be healthy and cared for.”

  “Hmm.”

  This was cool. The old lady wasn’t being overly scary. And she was listening. Time to blather on about how awesome the swamp was. “I love this swamp. I want to protect it. Just like you do, right? It’s a great place. Some rare plants and animals live here. It needs to be pro
tected.”

  “You do want to protect the swamp,” Swamp said with a critical squint.

  Bernice nodded energetically. Progress. Awesome. “I totally do.”

  Swamp shook her head. “But your understanding is limited. Very limited. You do not see.”

  “Hence the desire for more data.”

  Swamp narrowed her eyes at Bernice. “You insist on returning? To protect the swamp?”

  Bernice bit her lip. This sounded positive. Was the old woman showing signs of maybe relenting and not harassing her on future visits? Was she maybe going to be okay with coexisting with Bernice since they both were super into the swamp? Maybe Bernice was emanating more force of will than she had supposed she was. “Uh, yes?”

  “You insist on returning …” Swamp mused.

  Bernice gave an uncertain nod, feeling as though this conversation was going somewhere, but not sure where that might be.

  Swamp tilted her head to one side. “Perhaps, then, the swamp has chosen you. As the swamp chose me. After all, the time for me to find a successor is coming. I am aging. This body will not last forever.”

  “Uh, yeah. Yup. Your successor.” Whatever. Sure, Bernice would tell the old lady she’d take up the mantle of Protector of the Swamp if it meant the old lady would get off her back. Come on, old lady. Be cool. Don’t be scary. Go away.

  Swamp looked her up and down in silence for a few seconds, then said, “I will consent to allow you back within the borders of the swamp. There will be no retribution. But know this: if you come back, I will show you the power of the swamp. If it has indeed chosen you, you will emerge on the other side with true understanding.”

  “Uhh …” Well that sounded weird. “Uh, I’m not going to be eating any berries or roots or whatever it is you take that makes you all weird. I don’t do drugs. And even if I did, I’d never take your drugs. I did D.A.R.E. in middle school, dude. I was educated to resist drug abuse. So don’t even—”