Yesterday a truck pulled up at Rabbit Room Press and disgorged boxes and boxes of The Secret of the Swamp King and The Way of the Wilderking—Books 2 and 3 of my Wilderking Trilogy. These are the 20th Anniversary Deluxe Hardcover Editions, with new covers by Stephen Crotts and new interior illustrations by Joe Hox.
Riddles! Love Sonnets!
Besides the new covers and illustrations, each of the new Wilderking books has bonus material consisting of newly discovered poems, songs and riddles by feechiefolks, the tribe of swamp-dwellers who populate the Wilderking books. Here’s a riddle from Book 2:
I smile at peril.
I die of fright.
When danger passes
I’m back to life.
Who do you reckon I am?
Here’s a harder one, so newly-discovered that it isn’t even in the book:
A spear on the end of a snake.
A snake poking out of a feather pillow.
A feather pillow perched on two sticks.
Who do you reckon I am?
If you want to answer these riddles, feel free to send me an email, and I’ll tell you if you got them right.
And here’s one of six love sonnets by Dobro Turtlebane that you can find at the end of Book 3. I edited out the name of Dobro’s beloved, since it would be a bit of a spoiler.
When I consider all I ain’t accomplished,
When I feel lonesome, overlooked, and snubbed,
I get to feeling lower than a mudfish.
Then I start to get the mullygrubs.
I wish I had some other feller’s hairdo.
I wish I had some other feller’s skills.
My poems don’t turn out as good as theirs do.
They got more friends than Dobro ever will.
Then [that gal] looks on me with loving eyes,
And just like that, I cannot feel so gloomy.
My heart leaps up like a bullfrog catching flies.
I’m [that gal’s] man: there must be something to me.
So why compare? Life aint a competition.
I wouldn’t swap my place with feechie chieftains.
You may have noticed parallels between this sonnet and Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29, “When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes.” The date on this one is vague, so scholars are still working out whether Dobro was influenced by Shakespeare or whether it was the other way around. Since I’ve never heard of feechies reading Shakespeare, I figure Shakespeare must have been influenced by Dobro.
