(Ross' POV)
The swamp was a slow, green hell. Time lost all meaning, measured not in hours but in the gnawing emptiness of our bellies and the deepening exhaustion in our bones. Three days? Four? The sun was a blurred coin behind a perpetual veil of mist and moss, the nights a chorus of unseen things that slithered and screamed.
CeeCee was our anchor. She knew which mushrooms wouldn’t kill us, how to find crawfish in the muddy banks, how to read the subtle signs of the land that were as foreign to me as Latin. I, Ross, was her clumsy shadow. I learned to walk without stumbling over submerged roots, to suppress my gasps at the sudden, sinuous movement of a water moccasin, to swagger when I felt like collapsing.
The act was a constant, exhausting performance. Every lowered pitch of my voice, every wide-legged stance when we rested, every coarse remark I forced out was a brick in the wall hiding Rose. But at night, in the terrifying silence between the swamp’s noises, the wall felt thin, and I could feel her crying on the other side.
We were following a rumor, a whisper on the water. CeeCee had heard tales from the older hands on the plantation of a place, a hidden community of Maroons—escaped slaves who had carved out a life in the bayou’s impenetrable heart. It was a legend, a fairy tale for the desperate. But it was the only compass point we had.
The air changed on the fourth day. The oppressive silence gave way to a distant, rhythmic sound. A steady thump… thump… thump that was too regular to be natural.
“A loom,” CeeCee whispered, her eyes alight with a fragile hope. “Or a mortar and pestle.”
We moved with renewed caution, slinking through the water like otters, using the massive, fluted trunks of cypress trees as cover. The scent of woodsmoke and cooking fish guided us. And then, we saw it.
The Maroon camp wasn’t a village. It was a secret. A collection of raised palmetto-thatched huts nestled amongst the knees of a giant cypress grove, connected by a network of rope bridges and narrow, well-trodden paths on the higher ground. Chickens scratched in the dirt. A small, well-tended garden grew in a rare patch of sunlight. Children, quiet and watchful, played with a tied bundle of feathers. It was a miracle of resilience, a tiny, defiant pocket of order in the chaos.
My heart hammered against the constricting linen around my chest. This was safety. This was sanctuary.
And then I saw him.
He was sitting alone on a fallen log at the edge of the clearing, his back to us, a figure of such profound dejection that it seemed to create a sphere of silence around him. Even from behind, I knew the slope of those shoulders, the shape of his head, the way his dark hair curled against his neck.
Landy.
He was alive. The relief was so violent it buckled my knees. I grabbed a tree to steady myself, my vision swimming. CeeCee’s hand shot out, gripping my arm, a silent warning. Remember who you are.
I was Ross. Not Rose. Ross.
We were spotted almost immediately. A tall, broad-shouldered woman with graying hair and a face etched with fierce intelligence stepped out from a hut, a long knife held loosely at her side. She didn’t speak, just looked us over, her gaze lingering on our tattered clothes, our hollow cheeks.
“Lost?” she asked, her voice low and resonant.
CeeCee stepped forward, the diplomat. “Seeking. We fled the Iron Castle. We heard… we heard there was a place here.”
The woman’s eyes softened a fraction. “This is a place. But it is not a charity. What can you do? Can you hunt? Heal? Fight?”
“I can cook,” CeeCee said without hesitation. “I know herbs. I can work.”
The woman nodded, then her gaze fell on me. “And you, boy? You look half-starved. Can you lift a hammer?”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
I opened my mouth, but my voice, my new, rough-hewn voice, had deserted me. My entire being was focused on the man on the log. He hadn’t moved. He was utterly unaware of our presence.
I forced a nod, trying to look capable. “Yes. Ross. My name is Ross.”
The woman—who we would later know as Maman Brigitte, the leader of this community—seemed to accept this. “You can stay. For now. Work for your food. Cause no trouble.” Her eyes flickered towards Landy. “He’s one of yours. From the plantation. Doesn’t say much. Just… carves.”
She walked away, leaving us standing there. CeeCee immediately began helping an older man sort through a basket of herbs, seamlessly integrating herself. But I was rooted to the spot, drawn to the solitary figure like a moth to a flame.
I walked towards him, my Ross-swagger feeling like a pathetic, clattering costume. As I got closer, I saw what he was doing. He held a small, sharp flint in his hand, and he was slowly, meticulously carving words into the soft, red bark of a young cypress tree.
I moved closer, my breath catching in my throat. The carving was fresh, the sap still weeping from the wounds he was inflicting on the tree.
Her hair was the last light I remember,
Before the world turned to timber and ember.
My heart stopped. He was writing a poem. For me. For Rose.
He didn’t look up. His entire world was contained in that square foot of tree bark. His focus was absolute, his grief a tangible force. I could see the fresh scar on his temple from the fight, the fading yellow of a bruise on his jaw. He was thinner, the lines of his face sharper, but he was alive. He was here.
And he was heartbroken.
“You new?” he asked, his voice a low, rusty grate. He still didn’t turn. It wasn’t a real question, just an acknowledgment of a presence.
I couldn’t speak. I just nodded, then, realizing he couldn’t see me, managed a strangled, “Yeah.”
“Don’t get too comfortable,” he muttered, moving the flint to start a new line. “Nowhere is safe for long.”
I took another step, my shadow falling over his work. I saw other carvings on the trees around him. A small, sad army of poems standing vigil in the swamp.
I would trade this breath, this hollow beat,
For the dust from her wings, beneath my feet.
They say the butterfly dies if you hold it too tight,
I never got to hold her at all, and I die every night.
Each word was a knife twisting in my gut. He was building a memorial to me in the one way he knew how. With his hands. With his pain. This was the “Sad Cowboy” the camp must have named him. A man so consumed by loss he was literally etching it into the landscape.
He finally finished the line he was working on and sat back, his shoulders slumping. He stared at the words as if willing them to change, to bring her back.
“Who was she?” I asked, the question slipping out in a voice that was too soft, too much like Rose’s. I flinched and quickly roughened it. “The one you’re writing about.”
Landy was quiet for a long time. The sounds of the camp—the chatter, the work, the life—seemed to fade away.
“She was… the reason,” he said finally, his voice thick. “The reason to get up. To fight. To breathe.” He picked up a small, discarded piece of cypress wood from the ground and began idly whittling it. It was taking the shape of a bird in flight. “She was light in a world of shadows. And I failed her.”
“How?” I whispered, the word barely audible.
“I left her,” he said, and the raw agony in those two words was unbearable. “I let the fire separate us. I thought I was drawing them away. I thought… I thought I’d find her. But the swamp… it swallowed her. She’s gone. And it’s my fault.”
Tears burned my eyes, and I blinked them back furiously. Ross doesn’t cry. Ross is tough. I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw my arms around him and tell him I was here, that I was alive, that his poems were the most beautiful, heartbreaking things I had ever seen.
But I couldn’t. Maman Brigitte’s warning echoed in my head. This place was safety, but it was conditional. Our survival depended on the lie. To reveal myself was to risk everything, for both of us. Fred’s men would never stop looking for the mixed-race girl and the enslaved fighter. But two anonymous refugees? We might just be overlooked.
So I stood there, a ghost watching her own wake, my heart shattering with every ragged breath he took.
He looked up then, for the first time, turning his head to glance at me. His eyes, those deep, soulful eyes I loved, were hollowed out, haunted. They looked through me, at a boy named Ross, seeing nothing of the girl he mourned.
“You got someone you left behind?” he asked, a flicker of camaraderie in his bleakness.
I looked at him, at the poet-warrior carving his love into trees, and I felt the wooden butterfly, still safe in the hidden pocket of my trousers, press against my leg. A solid, secret promise.
“Yeah,” I lied, my voice cracking with the weight of it. “I did.”
He nodded, as if this confirmed some dark truth about the world. “Then you understand.”
He turned back to his tree, his flint poised to continue his elegy. I stood there a moment longer, trapped in the devastating irony of it all. He was so close I could touch him, and yet the distance between us had never been greater.
I was the words he was carving. I was the memory he was cherishing. I was the love he thought was lost.
And I had to walk away and let him grieve.