Chapter 4: Chapter 4.

Stew bubbled in the cauldron hanging over the campfire. Large chunks of fish, mushrooms and wild onions floated at the top. Most froggies preferred their fish fresh, still wriggling in their clawed hands.

They loved their fish and had plenty of it. Dried fish, fresh fish, fish stew, fish meatballs, fish caviar, fish everything. I had a taste of it all and was left bursting at the seams. Full as a pig at a buffet.

Strangely, I didn’t see a single old froggie in sight. Unless their elderly looked no different from the young? It didn’t make any sense. Where were they?

With a big ole grin on his face, Dandee kept cutting various things with the spear-head. It was like he couldn’t believe something could be that sharp. Most everyone left to their shacks to sleep, leaving me and Dandee at the campfire. While looking young, he had an abundance of scars across his olive green skin.

“What’s with the sun?” I asked him. “It hasn’t moved an inch since I-” I almost said since I arrived, but caught myself in time. Sharing that information was probably not the wisest thing to do.

Dandee looked up from his fiddling with the spear-head. “What mate? The sun?” He turned and squinted in the direction of the sun, held up his hand to it. “Another six moons,” he said.

“Six moons?” I asked.

“Sure, sure, give or take.”

I sighed. I didn’t understand what these moons meant. “How much time is that about?”

He looked confused, shrugged. “Six moons is … six moons. Almost a week, ya know?”

“Oh, I see,” I said.

But I didn’t understand. What were these moons? Each moon sounded to be about a length of a day. Maybe? Which presented me with a serious problem. If it took the sun a whole week to move that sliver of a distance to the horizon, then … how long was the night in this world? I feared to ask.

“The night’s pretty long, isn’t it?”

He grinned. “Not for us, mate. It goes by like so.” He snapped his fingers. “A nap.”

“A nap?”

“Yeah, man. We hibernate. That’s how I lost this eye, you see.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Oh, the night comes, we freeze. Summer arrives we unfreeze – most anyways. Sometimes you lose a hand, sometimes a foot. I lost an eye.”

A chill ran down my spine. No sun for a few months would very quickly turn this place into an ice block. I was no froggie, I’d die. I felt a bit of panic set in.

“Uhm, there any cities around here? Or towns?”

Dandee nodded, pointed north to the mountain past the hills. “Hillmoor is just over the hill there mate.”

“Have you been there before?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “Yeah I tried, but they wouldn’t let me in.” He raised his hand, tapped the number on the back of his right hand.

12,156,238

It was similar to mine, but inked in green. Was it because he was a froggie, or did it mean something more? His skin was green, but then again, I wasn’t orange despite the orange colored numbers.

I was still without a clue as to what the number meant. I tried to get more information without coming across as clueless. I didn’t want to give away that I might be an alien. Which – crazy thought – I technically was.

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.

He sighed. “It ain’t no amber, that’s for sure. While it don’t mean much around here, but to them Hillmoor folk, it sure means a lot.”

“What uhm, what do they think of it?”

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“Is the order of their society, mate. The smaller the number, the more they respect for ya.”

I glanced at the number of my hand again, and it did look like it was an amber color. 9,397,162. Nine million and then some. His was twelve million plus. A difference of about three million?

“Mine … is lower?”

He sighed again. “Well yeah, look at ya mate. We don’t grow so tall and wide as you. Not here in the swamp. Not us.”

The smaller the number, the stronger the person? Did it mean that someone out there had a ‘1’? Would that make them the most powerful being on this planet?

“What’s the biggest numbers have you seen so far?”

“The spawn start at about twenty or so.”

I assumed he meant twenty-million, and not twenty billion? I left the question for later because I had a more pressing problem to deal with.

“So, how far is this Hillmoor place from here?” I asked.

“A moon’s walk I’d say?”

“Oh, that’s great.” It meant I still had time to get to the city and figure out how to survive through the coming winter. Maybe they had some sort of underground system going on? Some magical way to keep warm through the long night?

Dandee took out a thin pipe and lit it with a twig from the campfire. Took a few puffs. It let out a wispy smoke that barely drifted in the still swamp air. I used the time to fashion a steel canteen to hold water, and even managed to create a screw-on cap. I filled it with boiled water.

“What’cha doing out here anyways?” he asked. “Shouldn’t you hurry back before it gets dark, eh?”

“Like I told you. I got lost.”

Dandee nodded. “The swamps can sure do that to ya. But I tell ya what. I’ll guide ya back to Hillmoor, and in return, ya help me get inside, eh?”

“Get inside?”

“Yeah mate, it’s me dream,” Dandee said. “Always wanted to.”

“I’m not entirely sure how I can help you with that.”

“It’s simple mate. You’re an amber, they respect ‘em. I’ll just pretend to be your servant or something, y’know? And they’d just let us both in, eh?”

I liked the idea of having some company. Best of all, he’d know the dangers of this place much better than me. It was perfect.

“Sure, that would be great actually.”

“Really?”

I nodded.

He jumped to his feet, excited. “Let’s go. Autumn ain’t getting any longer.”

I stood up, dusted off my pants. Dandee ran off to one of the shacks and returned with a big sack over his shoulder. Fish tails pocked out the top. In his other hand he carried a spear.

“Shouldn’t you say goodbye?” I asked.

He laughed. “What for? I ain’t dying yet.” He simply turned north and started walking, waved for me to follow.

I grabbed my items and ran up to catch him. I loved his care-free attitude.

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