“So, what’s your name, kid?”

            Doria’s ‘stranger danger’ alarm began chirping faintly.  You weren’t supposed to tell a stranger your personal information, and names were very personal.  But was there an exception to the rule if the stranger was already giving you a piggyback ride?

            “Why?” Doria asked suspiciously.

            The girl shrugged, joggling Doria on her back.  “Just making conversation,” she said.  “My name is Kaitlyn Gilbert.”

            Doria frowned.  She decided that ‘stranger danger’ rules only partially applied in mid-piggyback situations, especially if the stranger was coming with you to help rescue your sisters.  She figured she could provide at least a littleinformation.

            “You can call me the Blob,” Doria said.

            Kaitlyn laughed.  “The Blob, huh?”  She clasped Doria’s dangling hand and shook it.  “Pleased to meetcha.”

            Doria giggled.  “I like the name ‘Kaitlyn,’” she said.  “It’s nice and normal.  My mom gave us all weird, music names.  What are you doing in the Man-Groves, Kaitlyn?”

            Kaitlyn probed the mud in front of her with a pole, then slid a disc-covered shoe forward.  “The Man-Groves?” she asked.  “Never heard that name before, but it fits this place.  There used to be tons of people here.  They grew from all the trees.”

            “There were more people?” Doria said.  “What happened?  Did you know them all?  Did you ever meet a quiet, grumpy boy named Cade?  My sisters and me are trying to find him.”

            Kaitlyn’s face darkened.  “That guy?  What do you want with him?”

            “We’re trying to rescue him,” Doria explained.  “We’ve gotta get him out, before they burn him up.”

            Kaitlyn snorted.  “Sounds like a waste of time,” she said.  “It’d be better if you left him to rot.  Besides, last I checked, Cade’s the one doing the burning.”

            “What does that mean?” Doria asked, confused.

            Kaitlyn waved a pole expansively at the swamp around them.  After an eternity of walking, they had finally reached the area where Doria and her sisters first met the gas-masked arsonists.  Most of the trees here were gone.  All Doria could see were charred stumps, ugly orange vines, and an endless expanse of mud.  The fire was gone, but the air still smelled like soot.

            “You asked what happened to all the people,” Kaitlyn continued grumpily.  “Cade happened.  Actually, Cades happened.  A group of them sprouted from one of those vines, and they immediately started fighting each other.”

            “Why?” Doria asked.  The idea didn’t make any sense.  If she had another Doria to play with, she thought, they’d quickly become best friends.  It would be awesome.

            “Why?” Kaitlyn spat.  “Because they were different from each other.  Because they were boys, maybe, and a boy’s solution to everything is to throw a fist in its face.  Maybe that’s just how Cades are.”

            Doria didn’t know what to say.  Cade was moody, sure, but that didn’t mean all boys were, did it? 

            “Anyway,” Kaitlyn continued, “the Cades started destroying each other.  As they fought, they began to destroy everything else around them.  One Cade built a big, stupid city in the middle of everything, right where the other people used to live.  He captured anyone he didn’t think belonged there.  One Cade filled the swamp with his big, stupid vines, strangling everything.  The trees that survived that, he lit on fire.  With the city walled off and the swamp on fire, there was nowhere left for anybody but Cade to go.  I’ve tried to help as many people as I can, but it’s a losing battle.”

            “Why?” Doria asked again.  This time the question was directed more at herself.  If Kaitlyn was telling the truth, then the masked figure who lunged at her had been her brother.  Was Cade really mean enough to attack her, or to kill all those people?

            Kaitlyn clicked her tongue.  “You can ask him yourself, if you ever find him.  If you do come up with a way to get the Cades out of everybody’s hair, we’ll all be grateful.  Whoever’s left, at least.”  She stopped walking.  “We’re almost to the end of the trail.  Do you see any sign of your sisters?”

            Doria slid from Kaitlin’s back and examined the scene.  This was definitely the spot where she’d inked.  The tree she’d stood next to was now a blackened stump.  A charred branch lay in the nearby mud, right where the furrow they’d been following ended in a girl-sized pit.  The ink cloud had long dispersed, but the water in the pit was black and murky.

            “So, what now?” Kaitlyn asked.

            Doria looked around for clues.  She didn’t see any burned-up bodies – that was good, at least – but she didn’t see anything else useful, either.  No footprints, no telltale trail of breadcrumbs, no large banner declaring, “MELISMA AND LYDDIE WENT THIS WAY!”

            Kaitlyn poked at something half-buried in the mud.  “Did either of your sisters happen to secretly be a stuffed toy?”  She tossed a damp, mud-covered doll in Doria’s direction.

            Doria felt a shiver as she examined the doll’s muddy coat and gas mask.  “It looks like one of the guys who attacked us,” she said.  “But those guys weren’t dolls.”

            “Hmm,” Kaitlyn said.  “It’s kinda cute, in a psycho-murderer sort of way.  Maybe it’s a voodoo doll?  You could try poking it in the eye, just to check.”

            Doria stared at her blankly.

            “Never mind, just a joke.”  Kaitlyn prodded at a tree stump with her pole.  “Which way do you think they went?”

            Doria looked around the clearing, feeling more lost with each glance.  Everything had seemed so easy when she and Kaitlyn bravely set forth, but now it seemed like the whole world was sinking with her into the swamp.  “They could be anywhere,” she said.  “I thought they’d wait for me to come back.”

            Kaitlyn leaned against her pole.  “So, how do we find them?” she asked.

            Doria’s chest heaved.  “I don’t KNOW,” she wailed.  She did the only thing she could think of: she drew a deep breath and shouted as loudly as she could.  “Lydd-eeeeeee!  Mel-iiiiiiiiz-muh!  Where aaaaaaaaare you?”

            Kaitlyn jumped up and rushed forward.  In the process, she tripped over her rubber disc shoe and almost fell into the mud.  “Quiet, kid!” she hissed.  “Do you want to bring every Cade in the swamp rushing down on us?”

            Doria flinched at Kaitlyn’s sudden vehemence, and also at the thought of even more pyromaniac Cades.  She sat down in the mud, buried her face in her hands, and released a series of loud, muddy sobs.  “I don’t know!” she bawled.  “I miss Lyddie.  And Melisma.”

            Kaitlyn stood awkwardly for several seconds while she cried, then squatted next to her.  She wrapped an arm around Doria’s shoulder.

            “I know you do,” she said.  “We’ll find her.  We’ve just got to be smart about it.”

            Doria wiped her nose against her blanket.  It came away even muddier, but the gesture consoled her.  “Thanks for helping me,” she said.

"Don't mention it, my Blob friend," Kaitlyn said.  "We're all in this together.  It's us against the Cades.  Now, before we continue rescuing your sisters, what do you say I rescue you for a few minutes?  You look like you cold use a bath and a change of clothes."