The Drift by Lloyd Kropp

Author:Lloyd Kropp [Kropp, Lloyd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9780307814968
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 2013-03-13T06:00:00+00:00

Twelve

THE DANCE OF THE NINE ISLANDS

Tabor led him westward to a place midway between The Cliff and The Outland that Peter had seen before. It was the meeting place called Twoboats that Pao had showed him during his third day on The Drift. A platform nearly a hundred feet square had been made from the decks of two ships joined together by carpenters. The masts had been removed, a large area painted blue, and as he watched, some men arranged two layers of netting in a large circle across the painted space.

At the stern of one ship he saw again the long slide that led down somewhere toward The Southern Edge.

Within the blue circle of paint and netting were nine black tarpaulins which hid queer, lumpy forms that Peter could not identify. They were arranged in a kind of star shape that stretched about seventy feet from one side to the other. The netting was carefully laid around the edges of the tarpaulins. Once, for the briefest instant, he thought he saw one of the dark shapes move under its canvas covering.

“What’s under the tarpaulins?” he asked.

“You’ll find out when the dance begins,” said Tabor. “I don’t want to spoil it for you.”

“When does it start?”

“In a half hour or so. As soon as all the clans get here.” And then he shouted something in Spanish to a group of young men who had just arrived at the other end of the boat. They laughed and shouted something back to him. “It won’t be long now,” he said to Peter. “Here come The Bluewaters.”

Many people had already arrived. They sat in a large circle now around the edges of the blue space on an arrangement of kegs and boxes, dividing themselves into five groups, corresponding to their clans. Peter and Tabor sat near Bright, Tabor’s children, and the other Mary Strattfords. Across from them was The Vague Noire clan of French Canadians and Germans. The Bluewater and Conquistador Blanco clans sat to his left. To his right were The Madrids, by far the largest group. In this clan the people were all dark-skinned and black-haired. Some of them, Tabor believed, were descendants of Spanish explorers that had come to The Drift hundreds of years ago. Others were Brazilians, Portuguese, and Cubans. The Madrid children were especially noisy. They climbed all over each other and over their parents, played elaborate shadowgames, and chattered in shrill, staccato voices.

Each clan, Tabor explained, had certain customs that were peculiar to it, and each had a section of The Drift that it marked off for its own: The Mary Strattfords and The Madrids formed two sides of a large wedge whose broad side included all of The Northside Cliff and whose point came almost exactly to the center of The Drift. The Vague Noires lived in the southeast quadrant along the east or Mary Strattford side of the wedge, while the Conquistador Blancos lived along The Seafields below The Madrids. The Bluewaters, famous for their

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