The Inferior by Peadar Ó Guilín Read Free Book Online

small piece came away but remained attached to the rest by a few delicate, silver hairs. Wallbreaker pushed the fragment back into its original position. ‘Look now!’ he said. They did. Stopmouth stared and stared, but saw no difference.
    ‘Nothing happened,’ said Mother, though she smiled fondly as she spoke.
    ‘Nothing?’ asked Wallbreaker. He turned the piece of metal upside down and shook it for all he was worth. ‘Where is it then? Where’s the piece I broke off?’
    Sure enough, the fragment had moulded itself back into its original position with no sign of a break. ‘I-it h-healed itself,’ said Stopmouth. ‘Just like a broken bone did sometimes, but quick and clean!’ The whole family laughed together as they hadn’t done in tens of days. They all scrabbled around for pieces of metal of their own, stopping only when Speareye’s youngest wife, Housear, stood up to perform the funeral ceremony.
    She was pregnant, of course: pregnant women carried out all the Tribe’s sacred rituals. When other women pounded moss for clothing, they were the ones to lead the time-keeping chants. When a man needed luck, a gift to a pregnant woman might persuade her to draw charcoal pictures of Armourbacks or Flims with his spear in their bellies, or, in extreme cases, she might call on one of the great ancestors to possess the hunter in his hour of need. Mossheart would be able to do the same when she started to show. She would also be one of those who confirmed the names of children old enough to have acquired them. The child’s mother would then have to keep track of its age on a new Tally stick.
    Housear cleared her throat and opened her mouth to speak. But no words emerged. Instead, her eyes widened. Everybody turned to see a large group of Hairbeasts shuffling into Centre Square. Stopmouth counted fifteen adults walking upright and as many pups on all fours. The adults carried clubs and sacks of what must have been flesh. Some of them limped or had arms in slings.
    Muttering arose among the humans. Fearful talk. Speareye stood and approached the creatures. ‘Flesh!’ he said. ‘Flesh?’
    They ignored him. He shrugged and turned back to the mourners. ‘I think, friends, the Hairbeasts are all but extinct. Why these last ones have come here, I don’t know. Surely they realize we cannot keep treaty with them now. We’ll wait until they sleep and fall upon them then.’
    ‘No,’ said Wallbreaker. Stopmouth blinked in surprise.
    ‘No?’ Speareye’s voice had turned cold. ‘Do you challenge my authority?’
    ‘I do not,’ said Wallbreaker. He stood to match height with the chief. Gone was the haunted look he’d worn since his wedding, to be replaced by another that Stopmouth knew well: obsession with a mad idea. Even the ancestors, looking down from their grid of campfires above, must have wondered what he’d come out with this time.
    ‘I will bow to whatever decision you make, Chief. I will be the first to leap when you give orders. But, please, as the most loyal member of your people, let me point out some things you might not have thought of in your haste to do the right thing for your Tribe.’
    Many in the crowd grinned and Speareye laughed out loud. ‘Don’t think I can’t see you working your spell on me, Wallbreaker! But I will hear you out.’
    ‘We all know the world is not as it should be,’ said Wallbreaker. ‘Almost every night the Roof lights up with Globes hunting one another. And now this: the terrible destruction of the Hairbeasts.’
    ‘What’s so terrible?’ shouted Rockface from nearby. ‘Peoples disappear all the time, hey? They get wiped out and a new species takes their place. Good eating, I say!’
    A murmur of approval greeted his words, but Chief Speareye neither nodded nor spoke.
    ‘This is different,’ Wallbreaker continued, ‘as you should know, Rockface, with that new tattoo of yours! The Hairbeasts are no weaklings like the Flims. The Hairbeasts have been our