But the leap seemed to stretch out, and time itself appeared to slow down. Everything happened ponderously, as if the whole scene were taking place underwater. The juvenile shoveler swung its head around to look at Afsan and its prow opened wide to let out a thunderous yell.
And then the impossible happened. As the call spewed forth, both the upper and the lower halves of the shoveler’s prow split apart and grew longer and longer, great fleshy globs pulling away from them. The globs, light green and yellow, like the rest of the beast’s skin, soon resolved themselves into four tiny Quintaglio heads, black eyes round with terror. Meanwhile, the triple points of the head crest flared out into tiny greenish spheres that sprouted saw-toothed muzzles and obsidian eyes.
The shoveler’s thunderous cry split into a choir of seven Quintaglio screams as Afsan continued to sail through the air, now on the downward part of his parabolic leap. As the distance between himself and the shoveler closed, Afsan thought for an instant that he recognized the tiny faces, but then he hit, the impact knocking the wind from his lungs. With a single darting movement of his neck, Afsan scooped out a tract of flesh from the shoveler’s shoulders and throat. The beast fell to the ground, dead. Afsan scrambled to his feet and rolled the creature’s head over so that he could clearly see it.
The tiny Quintaglio faces were gone. The prow was back to normal, and the crest had re-formed into its original triple-pointed configuration.
Afsan stood stupefied for a moment. A shadow passed over him. Above, a giant wingfinger was circling, its purple wings vast and amorphous, billowing up around its body, waiting for its chance at the carcass.
Afsan rolled the shoveler onto its side so that he could get at the belly. With a great bite, he opened the abdomen wide, blood spilling out like water from a sluice. He pushed his arms into the warm flesh, spreading open the chest to expose the tasty organs within.
Suddenly a second pair of arms appeared. He couldn’t see whom they belonged to; indeed, they seemed to be coming from his own chest, although for some reason his muzzle refused to tip down so that he could see the precise source. These intruding hands pulled at the shoveler’s flesh, too, their claws raking into the outer layer of yellow fat and the red meat beneath.
Afsan tried to pull the mysterious hands out of the body cavity, but soon another pair appeared, and then another and another, all trying to grasp a piece of the kill, greedily tearing out chunks of flesh. Afsan tried to slap them away, but they began to tear at his own arms, the claws scratching his skin, long blood trails running along his forearms all the way from wrist to elbow.
More arms appeared. They seized Afsan’s own upper arms, their sharp clawpoints digging into his skin. Afsan fought to free himself, but stringy tendons and bones—his own radius and ulna—were now glistening gray-white beneath his torn flesh.
Afsan brought his muzzle down and chomped through one of the foreign arms, then shook his head, flinging the thing aside. He heard a scream coming from somewhere, and the shadow of the purple wingfinger moved again and again across the scene. Afsan’s neck darted once more and another arm snapped off. Meanwhile, he fought with all his strength to twist free of the arms holding his own. Finally, after chomping through five, ten, twelve, fourteen phantom limbs, Afsan, his own arms reduced to articulated skeletons, dug into his meal, getting every last bit of meat for himself.
*10*
“Your name is Sal-Afsan, correct?” asked Mokleb.
“Of course,” said Afsan, irritated.
“Tell me about that,” Mokleb said.
“Tell you about what?”
“Your name. Tell me about your name.”
Afsan shrugged. “It means ‘meaty thighbone.’ ”
“Unusual name for a skinny person.”
He sighed. “You’re not the first to have observed that. But what choice did I have? The name was given to me by the creche masters in Pack Carno. I had no say in the matter.”
“Of course not. But what about your praenomen syllable?”
“Sal? Ah, now, that I did get to choose, of course. It’s in honor of my mentor, Tak-Saleed.”
“Tell me about your relationship with Saleed.”
“Well, I didn’t meet him until I was—what?—twelve kilodays old. I was summoned to Capital City to be his apprentice.”
“How did that make you feel, to be summoned clear across the continent?”
“It was, and still is, an honor to serve at the imperial court.”
Mokleb waved her hand. “Doubtless so. But you were torn from your friends, your creche-mates. Creche-mates are as one.”
Afsan nodded. “I rarely think of my creche-mates. There was Dandor and Keebark. And Jostor, who became a famous musician.”
“Yet you were torn away from them—ordered to leave your home and undertake the long and arduous journey to the Capital.”
“I’ve made much more arduous journeys since.”
“Granted,” said Mokleb. “But this was your first time traveling.”
“Pack Carno traveled all the time. We moved along the shore of the Kreeb river, following the herds of shovelmouths.”
“But on those journeys you moved with your Pack and your creche-mates. I’m asking what it was like to have to leave all that and set out on your own. You’re avoiding the question.”
Afsan’s tone carried a slight edge. “I never shy away from questions.”
Mokleb clicked her teeth. “Oh, no, not from questions about the stars or the planets or the other moons. But you do shy away from personal questions. Why?”
Afsan was quiet for a time. Then: “I value my privacy.”
“As do we all. But for this process to work, you must be forthcoming.”
He nodded. “Very well. I was frightened and disoriented by the move. But when a rider brings an imperial summons, one has no choice.”
“And what about leaving your creche-mates? Your friends?”
A scrunching of the muzzle. “Creche-mates I had, yes, but friends? No, I had few of those.”
“Why?”
“Why?” Afsan sighed again. A single question that brought back all the pain of his youth. “Why?” he repeated. “Because…” He turned his head, facing vaguely in Mokleb’s direction. “Because I wasn’t very good at athletics. Because I was very good at mathematics. Whatever problem the teaching master gave us, I had no trouble solving it.”
“And this irritated your classmates?”
“I guess so. That certainly wasn’t my intention.”
Mokleb dipped her muzzle. “The sad truth, Afsan, is that often what we intend has little to do with what we achieve.”
Afsan was silent.
“So it would be fair to characterize your childhood as unhappy?”
“If one had to characterize it, yes, I suppose that word would be as good as any.”
“What word would you use?” asked Mokleb.
“Alone.”
“That’s an unusual word. One rarely hears it applied to people.” Mokleb was silent. “I mean, as a race, we like being separate. We like the distance that keeps us apart, the territorial buffers we maintain.”
“Indeed,” said Afsan. “But we also do like some interaction. Not for long periods, of course, but we do like spending time with others, and we take comfort in knowing that those others enjoy the time they spend with us.”
“And?” said Mokleb.
“And, of those my age back in Carno, none of them wanted to spend time with me. It…”
“Yes?”
“It didn’t seem fair, that’s all. It seemed that somewhere there should have been people more like me, people who shared my interests, people to whom my mathematical skill was nothing special.”
“But there was no one like that in Carno.”
“No. Except perhaps…”