Creeping Beauty by Andrea Portes

Author:Andrea Portes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-06-03T00:00:00+00:00

13

THE MOON IS high in the sky now, congregating with the stars. Here, in the Cliffs of Grey, the stars shine brighter, a canopy of candles, a kind of blessing, so bright you feel you could reach out and touch them. There, Orion’s Belt. There the seven sisters of the Pleiades. There Ursa Major, pointing to Polaris and Ursa Minor. These stars, these constellations, one of the few things my father taught me. It was clear, his love of the heavens. How he wanted to pass it on to his daughter. Staring at them now, it’s a wonder that they are the same stars. Curious, yes? That in this terrifying dark world, the stars are just the same.

“They will be buried at morning. It shall be hallowed ground.” Keela interrupts my train of thought. “Or will you run out in the night again so you do not have to witness our pain?”

Ashamed, I can only answer, “No, I will stay to see them ushered on to heaven. I would never absent myself from such eulogy.”

“Do you see behind me?” she asks.

“I’m not sure—”

“Behind me. Look closer.” She lifts her chin in a kind of dare.

And then I do see it: one by one, the trees and branches come to life, and I realize that there must be a hundred men and women, camouflaged in the trees and rocks, in shades of rust and brown and gray, just as the foliage and the mud and the cliffs. I remember now the nearly invisible painted barbarians in the swamps.

“How long have they been there?” I ask.

“Since you’ve been counting stars,” she replies. “A little trick we learned from the swamp people.”

The men and women stand now, in our midst, warriors each. Painted to look like the forest but equipped with bows and arrows strapped to their backs. A menacing yet astounding sight. They move so quietly; you cannot even hear one footstep.

“They are ever so stealthy,” I marvel.

“They are trained. They are fighters. If you choose to stay, you also will be a fighter. If you choose to, you will avenge these deaths by our side.” She gestures to the destruction all around us.

An owl trills in the forest, adding his counsel to the discussion.

“But I—” I start. Keela raises a hand to cut me off.

“You do not believe you could be a warrior,” she continues. “You think of yourself as weak. That is not your fault. It is what you have been taught. To be silent. To ease the path of those above you.”

Stunned, I feel the eyes of the warriors on me.

“But look around you. Look at these faces.” She nods toward the warriors, who stand upright, imposing, as if ready to spring at any moment. “They, too, had been taught lies. Different lies, but lies nonetheless. Every one of them. The men, taught they are born to be worked to death in the mines, or used as pawns in someone else’s war. Cannon fodder. The women, taught to be used and discarded.

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