A trillion questions swirled in Melisma’s brain.  What happened to Doria?  Why had Cade grabbed her?  Or had it been one of the other figures with him?  Who were those guys, anyway?  Why were they burning the Man-Groves down?  And why did Cade’s skin look like he’d rubbed it against a cheese grater?

            Lyddie zeroed in on the last question.  “Your face looks like spaghetti sauce,” she told Cade.  “I mean, even more than usual.”

            Melisma gasped.  The Cade she knew would have punched Lyddie for a comment like that, and he hadn’t just been carrying a flamethrower.  Her hand tightened around the grip of her bow.

            Pox Head just chuckled.  In fact, he stepped closer, so they could get a better look at his face.  He flipped his hair back and puffed out his chest.  “Like it?” he grinned.  “It’s my new look.”

            Melisma shuddered.  Some of the sores on his cheeks were still bleeding.  Pox Head noticed her reaction, and his yellow grin widened.

            “I hate it.”  Lyddie said.  “What did you do to my sister?  And why are you burning all the trees?”

            “Wait.  Was that Doria in there?”  Pox Head’s eyes widened.  “I don’t know what happened back there.  That guy got to her first.”  He pointed at the first stuffed doll, still lying on its side in the mud.

            “Well, what did he do to her?”  Melisma pressed.

            “I don’t know.  I'll help you find her in a few minutes, once all of this is over.”

            “All of what?  We need to find her now!”  Melisma raised her bow, in what she hoped was a threatening manner.

            Pox Head eyed the weapon nervously.  “We will, just wait!  We're in the middle of were preparing an ambush.  We were burning the trees down as bait, to lure them out.”

            “To lure who?” Melisma squinted at him.  She still couldn’t tell if she was talking to her brother or a copy.

            “The guards.  We were going to trap them, but you destroyed my squad so it won’t work anymore.  Now, we’ve got to get out of here before they come, or we’re dead meat.”  Pox Head stood and placed the mask back on his face.

            “Before who comes?”  Lyddie asked.  “Why are there guards?  We thought you were the bad guys!”

            Pox Head darted his head around.  “Wait, what’s that sound?”

            “My voice!” Lyddie shouted.  “It’s me talking!  I’m asking you a –”

            “Shhh!” Pox Head hissed.  

            Melisma pricked her ears, trying to hear what Pox Head heard.  Mud squelched.  Burning trees crackled around them.  Then she heard something far in the distance: the faint clanging of metal against metal.

            Pox Head leapt into action.  “We’ve got to move.  Melisma, how many arrows do you have left?”

            Melisma glanced down.  She had one arrow nocked against her bow string.  Two more rattled weakly in the quiver.  “Three,” she said nervously.  “How many do we need?”

            “More,” Pox Head replied.  “Three arrows won’t hold off an army.  We’ll have to improvise.”  He loped off into the swamp, kicking trails of mud with each step.

            “An army?!  What army?”  Melisma struggled to catch up.  “Cade, who are we fighting?”

            “Hey, what about my shoulder ride?” Lyddie shouted.

            “What about your legs?” Melisma shouted back.

            Lyddie chose not to press her luck.  “Fine,” she grumped.  She shoved a stuffed doll under her armpit and plodded forward.

            Pox Head’s boots clomped excitedly.  “We’re going to need some serious reinforcements,” he shouted. “Melisma, Lyddie, head to that vine over there on the left!”

            The girls moved where he pointed, while Pox Head made a beeline to a larger Cadezu vine just ahead.  He pulled a penknife from his trench coat pocket and flicked open the blade.

            “Okay, get ready,” he called.  “And stand back!”

            “Ready for what?” Melisma yelled, glancing anxiously at the vine.

            “Here goes.”  Pox Head jammed his knife blade straight into the knobby vine, then twisted hard.  The vine spasmed, twitching and thrashing all down its length.  The plant next to Melisma reacted as well, flinging swamp guck in all directions.  The ground trembled as ropy, orange vines whipped free from the mud that covered them.  Soon, the entire area was a mass of writhing plant life.

            “This is my favorite part!” Pox Head grinned.

            Lyddie yelped as a vine in front of her lurched violently, shaking loose a cluster of black pods from its underside.  The cluster flew a few feet and landed in the mud.

            “There!” Pox Head shouted.  “Get those pods to the water!”

            Lyddie stood and gawked at the pods.  “GO!” Pox Head roared, jolting her into action.  She dropped her shape toy and dove into the mud.  Another clutch of pods shook loose just in front of Melisma.  She ran to pick them up.  The seeds were slick to the touch and surprisingly heavy.

            The vines twitched and roiled faster, sending black pods flying in all directions.  Lyddie squealed, half-terrified, half-exhilarated.  Melisma grabbed pods as fast as she could, but she couldn’t keep up with the deluge.  She flipped the bottom of her shirt up like a pouch so that she could hold more.  The pods wiggled as she ran, tickling her stomach.

            A cluster beaned Lyddie across the side of her cheek.  She stopped squealing.

            “Drop them in the water!” Pox Head commanded.  The large vine next to him spewed a hail of softball-sized pods.  Pox Head sprinted in haphazard zigzags, kicking them into a pool of water around a now-charred actuarial tree.  Melisma dumped her pods in the same pool.

            The water heaved and hissed as the black seeds split open.  A wall of milky-white smoke shot up wherever seed-flesh touched the water.  Melisma and Lyddie staggered backwards, overpowered by the flop-sweat stench of the bursting pods.

            “More!  We need more,” Pox Head shouted.  “Keep gathering pods!”

            They ran across the mud gathering slimy, black clusters.  A blob of amorphous shapes stretched and expanded in the mist-covered pond.

            A moon boot-covered foot climbed from the pond, followed by a second.  Eight-year-old Cade scowled at the world from a face at least as acne-riddled as Pox Head’s.  Eleven-year-old Cade stepped from the mist behind him, glaring the same angry glare.  Thirteen-year-old Cade came next.  He frowned at Lyddie and spat a thick glob of phlegm onto the ground.

            Melisma backed away as Cade after Cade emerged.  She was overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of their ugliness.  Soon, a hundred Cades faced them, each as hideous as Pox Head.  The vines’ thrashing subsided as the last, tiny seeds fizzed away in the pool.  Pox Head removed his mask and stepped forward to address his new legion.

            “Hey, everybody!” he called.  He wasn’t a large person, but he seemed to stand a little taller as he spoke.  “Welcome to the world!  I’m Pox Head, and I made you.  I guess I’m kind of like your dad.  When all of this is over, we should play catch or something.  But that’s not important right now.

            “In a few minutes, a brigade of guards from the center will come for us.  It won’t be pretty.  They’ve already driven us out and treated us like dogs.  And now they’re coming again, to chase us even from that little scrap of mud you’re standing on.  Are we going to let them?”

            A hundred Cades cried out at once.  Their shout sounded more like “Glaughhagh” than actual words, but Melisma supposed it could have been a ‘no,’ if you blurred your ears and squinted.

            Pox Head raised his mask high over his head.  

            “Will you let them expel us from our home?”

            “Glowaughoofah!”

            “When they come, they won’t show mercy.  Will we?”

            “Gwoahumfurbishee!” the crowd roared.

            “That’s right!” Pox Head crowed.  “Now go, kids!  Tear them to pieces!”  He pointed into the distance, in the general direction of the clanking metal.  The crowd of Cades roared and surged across the swamp.

            Pox Head grabbed Lyddie’s hand and moved in the opposite direction.  “There’s nothing like the joy of having a big family,” he smirked.

            Melisma trudged reluctantly after him, feeling anxious and more than a little nauseated.  She paused only to scoop Lyddie’s toy from the mud.  “So, what happens now?” she asked.

            “Now?” Pox Head laughed.  “Now, we get out of here as fast as we can, while my kids hold them off.  Hopefully they buy us a few minutes.”

            “Just a few minutes?”  Lyddie’s eyebrows rose.  “there’s millions of them!”

            “Yeah, but they’re mostly unripe, and they’re all unarmed.  When I started this ambush, we had flamethrowers.  Now we’re down to rocks and mud, thanks to you two.”

            “I’m not sorry,” Melisma said.

            “I wouldn’t expect you to be,” Pox Head responded.  “I’m just calling things as I see them.”

***

They slogged for several minutes, their steps punctuated by Lyddie’s heavy breathing.  The blind roar of the Cade mob echoed from the trees around them.  Melisma had no idea where they were going, but Pox Head seemed confident.  Once they got used to the smell, they found him downright amiable, in a gruff, prickly sort of way.  He moved the larger Cadezu vines aside so Lyddie could pass, and showed them where to step so they wouldn’t fall into mud pits.

            “Shoulder ride?”  Lyddie begged.

            Melisma felt sorry for her sister – almost sorry enough to give her one.  This was probably the hardest physical exercise Lyddie had done in her entire life.  But Melisma’s back and calves still ached from their first trek through the swamp, and she wanted to keep her arms and hands free until she knew they were safe.

            “I can carry you, Lyddie,” Pox Head offered.

            Lyddie eyed his greasy hair and filthy trench coat, then considered her own sore legs.  She nodded and flopped into his arms.

            “It’s too bad,” Pox Head commented as he slung her onto his back.  “If we’d let those pods ripen a little more and properly armed them when they were ready, I’ll bet we could have taken the center.”

            “Taken it from who?” Melisma asked.  “Cade, who are you fighting?”

            “Don’t worry about it,” he said.  “And don’t call me ‘Cade.’  I hate that stupid name.  I told you, I’m ‘Pox Head.’”

            Melisma frowned.  ‘Pox Head’ seemed a lot stupider than ‘Cade,’ but there was no point in arguing.

            “I’m gonna call you ‘Spaghetti Sauce Face,’ ‘kay?”  Lyddie muttered behind him.

            “‘Pox Head.’  That’s my name.”

            Lyddie ignored his protests.  “Maybe,” she mumbled.  “But your face’s name is ‘Spaghetti Sauce.’”

            They rounded the broad trunk of an actuarial tree.  Pox Head and Lyddie were too preoccupied with their name argument to notice four guards waiting on the other side, crisply uniformed in blue leather and silver plate.  The guards saw them, though.  They drew long, gleaming sabers from their scabbards and moved to confront the group.

            “By order of His Majesty,” the first guard’s voice boomed within a faceless disc of a helmet, “we hereby take into custody the criminal known as Pox Head, for arson, vandalism, and crimes against human decency and the natural order.  Pox Head, consider yourself under –”

            Before he could finish his speech, a horde of angry pod-Cades charged from the swamp, bellowing at the top of their lungs.

            The guard whirled to confront the new threat, then flew backward as three Cades collided with his midsection.  They pushed him deep into the mud and clawed at the leather portions of his armor.

            The other guards slashed at the air around them, as more Cades surged into view.  Lyddie cried out as a twelve-year-old pod-Cade took a saber swipe straight across the chest.  Milky-white smoke hissed from the wound, and the boy disintegrated completely before he hit the ground.  Melisma recoiled in horror.  She couldn’t help but wonder what a slash like that must feel like.  A ten-year-old Cade leapt in to take his place, while a mass of five-year-old Cades wrapped themselves around the guard’s legs and pulled him into the mud.

            Pox Head watched the violent scene unperturbed.  “Good hustle, guys!” he shouted at his pod children.  “Way to plant your weight!”  He turned and hissed to Melisma, “we should go.”

***