Centauriad 1 - Daughter of the Centaurs (31 page)

Neal takes the arrow from Pel and wipes the impala blood off on a handful of leaves. “Good girl,” he says.

“Thank you,” Malora says.

Neal flashes a grin at her. “Not you, Pet. I was talking to Pel. She hasn’t broken an arrow yet.” He fits the arrow back into her quiver. Then he places the impala in a coarse net, which he slings over his shoulder. They recross a little farther upriver, where a township huddles on the opposite bank, surrounded by a fence messily woven from sticks and reeds.

“This is the farthest outlying township in the east,” Neal explains. “We put up the fence last year after lions dragged off a newborn.”

Once they have crossed the river, Neal unlatches a gate in the crude fence and admits her inside. He tells Malora it is one of the poorest townships on the flats. Instead of stone huts, families live in one-room hovels made of sticks and mud. Unlike the township she passed through yesterday, there is not a single statue or painted roof. Three centaur children, grubby-faced and naked, roll across the hard-packed dirt, wrestling. They stop and trot over. Malora is surprised when they ignore her in favor of Neal. They clench their hands together in a gesture of pleading. They hold up their skinny arms. They stick out their tongues hungrily. Laughing at their pantomime, Neal hands over the impala to them, and the three of them bear off their bloody prize.

“I hope you don’t mind that I gave away your kill. That little impala will feed this entire township for two days,” Neal says. He leads the way into a small yard bordered by bleached animal skulls, horns, and vertebrae.

“The villagers can’t hunt for themselves?” Malora asks.

“Only Peacekeepers, and Twani while in the bush, are authorized to carry weapons. Why do you think I joined the Peacekeepers in the first place?” he asks, his eyes grave.

“To feed the Flatlanders?” she asks.

“And to feed myself. I sell the pelts to the cobblers for a decent nub. I’d be as rich as Anders if I hoarded my nubs, but I give them away, along with most of the meat from the kills.”

Just when Malora thinks she understands Neal Featherhoof, he says something to surprise her anew.

Neal’s house is a small block of stone in the center of the yard. It has a zebra skin covering the front door, which reminds her of the doors in the Settlement: skin stretched over frames hung on rope hinges. Various wild-animal hides hang on tree limbs, drying in the sun.

Malora thinks of Longshanks and his elegant rainbow of skins, and wonders if she has Neal to thank, indirectly, for her wardrobe.

There is a big fire pit in front of his house, with a large iron cauldron resting on the rocks. “This is where I cure the skins and cook most of my meals,” he says, adding, “not in the same pot, you’ll be glad to know.”

In the bed of the fire pit, there are bones mixed with charred wood and live coals. The ostrich meat has already
been plucked and gutted and spitted. Neal stirs up the coals, feeds a few scraps of wood into the fire, and lowers the meat on the spit.

Malora sits on a rock. “Explain to me why Flatlanders can defy Edicts that Highlanders would be turned out for.”

“You mean eating meat?” he asks. “We simply aren’t held to the same standards,” Neal says. “In many ways, Flatlanders have a great deal more freedom than the Highlanders. In other ways, we are disadvantaged. In addition to being malnourished and ill-clad, most of us are undereducated.”

Malora rests her eyes thoughtfully on him. “But not you,” she says. “You are different.”

“Just so. That’s because I was educated by Honus, the cloven-hoofed polymath, side by side with Orion. My father runs the Silvermane Vineyard, you see, and Orion and I grew up together.”

“Are you still friends?” Malora asks.

“Not the way we once were. It’s a long story,” Neal says, pausing. “Do you really want to hear it?”

Malora nods, curious.

Neal sighs and pokes unnecessarily at the coals. “It happened shortly after Athen disappeared. We were thirteen, and I persuaded Orion to sneak out one midsummer’s night and come to a carousing down on the flats. Flatlanders may not have all the privileges and luxuries the Highlanders enjoy, but we do know how to make the best of what we have and carouse in style. This incident took place in the Apex’s vineyard. I had stolen the key to the cellar from my father. A few of the other bucks and I rolled out a cask of wine and cracked it open. The finest Silvermane wine flowed that night. I don’t
remember much of what happened. There were torches blazing and flutes playing and bucks and maidens dancing on the grass beneath the moon. Yes, we dance. We do not jubilate. The next thing poor Orrie knew, he woke up in a haystack with the twenty-one-year-old daughter of a farmhand, a crooked crown of grape leaves, and a ferocious headache.

“When the Apex got wind, he was furious but also frightened. He had just lost one son, and now there was pressure on him to turn out another for violating both the drinking and the decency Edicts.”

“What happened?” Malora asks.

“The farmhand whose daughter was compromised was given a herd of cows and a tract of land about as far away from the mountain as you can go and not be in the bush. The Apex also provided a willing Flatlander husband for the daughter.”

“And what about you? Did the Apex punish you?”

“By then, I was already in training to be a Peacekeeper. The captain of the Force told the Apex that I was the most promising cadet ever to come along and that it would be a loss to the state to banish me.”

“So no one was punished?” Malora says.

“No one was punished,” Neal says. “Scandal was averted, but my friendship with Orion suffered.”

“Does Orion blame you for what happened?” Malora asks.

“Let me put it this way,” Neal says. “I think Orion enjoyed himself rather
too
much that night, and ever since, he lives in fear of enjoying himself too much again. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but locked away behind that smooth
Highlander chest is the heart of a Flatlander. As a result, he is a very unhappy centaur. Unlike his sister, whose capacity for happiness and for enjoying the privileges of her class is seemingly boundless. And speaking of Miss Silvermane’s happiness …”

Neal flips aside the zebra-skin flap and disappears into the house. He returns momentarily, toting a basket overflowing with big, lush ostrich feathers of black and pink and white. “Won’t my lady be pleased?” he says.

“Letter perfect!” Honus declares, kicking his hooves in delight. “And a perfect little gem of a poem Lord Alfred composed for us all those many eons ago, isn’t it?”

Every afternoon, Malora goes hunting with Neal Featherhoof. Every evening, when she returns she recites a short poem she has memorized the night before. She finds the recitations distract Honus from inquiring about whatever studio she claims to have visited that afternoon while she is off with Neal Featherhoof, either hunting game or roasting it over the
fire in his yard. Seeking to further distract Honus, but also curious, Malora asks, “What is a
wrinkled sea
?”

Honus’s head tilts back, and his eyes take on a faraway look. “The first thing you notice as you approach the sea is the air. One taste of it and you will wonder how you could have lived your entire life without its briny tonic. In the presence of the sea, one is compelled to breathe more deeply. The moisture in the air makes the light soft and hazy, as in a dream. The sound of it is like the wind sifting through the boughs of trees, deeply stirring and quickening to the heart. As for the sea itself … imagine the flattest of the Flatlands, extending out to the horizon in all directions. Imagine it now covered in a great watery vastness that is constantly shifting and sloshing, never at rest, for like a great pale cook with her cauldron, the moon is constantly stirring it.”

“Malora,
darling!
” Zephele bursts in the door, followed by Theon and Mather and their Twani. “What do you think?”

Zephele has used the pink ostrich feathers Neal gave her to make a mask for her jubilation costume. Even more impressive, she has made a wrap with the rest, black feathers bordered by white. Malora is speechless with envy.

“Theon helped me with the cape and Mather with the mask. Is this not the most splendid jubilation costume you have ever laid eyes on?” Zephele asks. “Oh, I forget, you have never attended a jubilation, but you must take my word for it.”

“You will look far more beautiful than any ostrich I have ever met,” Malora says.

“I will, won’t I?” she says, fluffing the feathers of the
wrap. “Mather, dearest, show Malora the brilliant mask you have made for our feisty little lioness.”

Mather holds up a mask, which he has made from what looks like real lion skin. Lining the mask’s upturned eyeholes are two rows of tiny sparkling onyx. “Try it on!” he says eagerly.

Malora has never worn a mask before. She fits it on over her face and peers out of the eyeholes at her friends. “Well …?” she asks. It is a bit like peering out from a bush. She growls like a lioness, and the centaurs pretend to cower.

“Perfection!” says Zephele. “Theon, show her the tail. It is not authentic lion skin, but it is very lifelike.”

Theon whips out a long tawny tail. “I made it from memory from velvet and stuffed it with down,” he says. “Does it seem true to life, Malora the Lion Tamer?”

Malora takes the tail and examines it. It is made from the same soft tan velvet as the wrap Theon made for her. It has a dark tuft at the end made from the feathers of a guinea hen. “Perfection,” she says, echoing Zephele.

Theon preens. “I opted for the more subdued black-and-white motif.” He holds a striped zebra’s mask before his face. “What noise do zebras make?”

“They wheeze,” Malora tells him.

Theon’s shoulders sag. “Well, I’ll
look
handsome, even if I don’t sound it. Honus the faun, where is your disguise?”

Honus cocks an eyebrow. “I will come as I am—as the cloven-hoofed polymath—or not come at all!”

“Honus, how very dreary of you!” Zephele says, lowering her mask and pouting. “The whole point of this year’s jubilation is to come disguised as a wild animal of the bush.”

“Nothing good ever comes of wearing disguises,” Honus says.

“Honus, darling,” Zephele says, “you are hopeless!”

Malora spends the following afternoon with Zephele. While she would much rather be out hunting with Neal, Zephele has begged her to stay and get ready with her.

“Wait until Neal sees me,” Zephele says as she stands before the mirror in Honus’s marble convenience in all her fledged splendor.

“But Flatlanders aren’t invited,” Malora says.

“Oh, but
he’ll
be there, guarding the Apex and the Salient, who always attend the Midsummer Jubilation, even though none of them ever sets a hoof onto the floor to jubilate.”

“Who or what do the Apex and the Salient need guarding against?” Malora asks.

“Against hooligans, my dear,” Zephele says with a careless flip of her feathers.

“What are hooligans?” Malora asks.

“Shamefaced and thoroughly inebriated Flatlanders who sneak in. Poor things, they can’t help themselves! They blunder into our midst hoping to snatch at a little of our happiness. You can’t really blame them, although they will be turned out for their trouble every time. Neal himself will see to it.”

“Neal turns the centaurs out?”

“He doesn’t make the rule, but he does enforce it. The Apex rules, the Salient backs him up, and the Peacekeepers—like Neal Featherhoof—carry it out. That’s his job,” Zephele says, “and I don’t imagine it is a very enjoyable job at such
times, when he has to turn against his own kind and lead them out into the bush to perish, for surely that’s what happens to them. Only the Peacekeepers have the skills to survive. The rest of us, Flatlander and Highlander, are as helpless as … as—name me the most helpless creatures in the bush.”

Malora thinks for a moment. “Baby rabbits, I guess.”

“There you go! We are as helpless as poor baby bush rabbits,” Zephele says, adding dramatically, “with the breath of predators hot on our necks.”

Orion soon arrives to escort them to the jubilation floor in the upper gallery. He is costumed as a black panther: black velveteen wrap and black velvet mask. He carries a staff that is topped with black ostrich feathers filched from his sister.

“Is the staff part of the costume?” Malora asks.

“Ah! That’s right, you have never been to a jubilation before,” Orion says. “We perform a traditional jubilation with staffs.”

“If you have never seen a centaur jubilate,” Honus says, “you have a treat in store.”

Malora has been curious all along what jubilating really is, and tonight she will finally find out. It is the first time Malora has ever set foot in the upper gallery of the House of Silvermane. It is open to the air but sheltered beneath a flat roof held up by forty sleek pillars. Zephele assures her that it is quite a plain space, but with its marble fountain of Kheiron in the center and its mosaic of vine leaves running up the forty pillars, it looks anything but plain to Malora. Tonight, new elements have been introduced: boulders and potted plants and what look like entire tree trunks, rolled in from the bush and up the many flights of stairs by teams of
Beltanian draft horses, a sight Malora is sorry to have missed. The tree trunks are long dead, and Malora wonders whether she should reveal to the centaurs that there are big white grubs lurking beneath the bark.

The Twani, draped in white togas in the likeness of putti, walk among the guests carrying trays loaded with delectable treats, both sweet and savory—walnut pood and chocolate tarts, cheese and nut balls, and sweet dates stuffed with salted nuts. Malora is tempted to strip away the bark from the tree trunks, show the centaurs grubs as big as the Apex’s finger, and tell them that when game was in short supply in the bush, she was reduced to eating such things. But why would she do that? To shock the centaurs? To play a prank? To make them more thankful for what they have? She concludes that she has been spending too much time with Neal Featherhoof and has begun to think dangerous Flatlander thoughts. She also thinks the Highlanders have spent too much time on the mountain, bottled up like bugs. It has not served them well.