heritage - one (part two)

Mam Ghieri was scary enough without a thunderbolt in the background, but the feyflood provided one close enough to rattle the inch-thick windows in their frames.

Haraan's throat balked. He had enough sense to not play innocent ("What do you mean?"), or Lady forbid, lie ("No."). Owning up was an equally terrible idea, but every second he spent thinking was a second spent silent, and that was bad, too.

He had to make her laugh. He couldn't remember anyone else trying that, ever, probably because they were too slow.

"Yes, Mam," he said, sitting upright. "Your lectures are so full of interesting information I thought it'd be faster to put my head down and let your words flow through my ears onto the paper. Y'know, like osmosis."

Silence. Even the rain let up, as if the sky itself wondered at his response. Those who hadn't turned around to look at him before did so then. More of them, thankfully, looked amazed at how he had turned such a hopeless situation around than those who looked livid enough to impersonate beets. There was that one girl in the corner especially, but her condition always made her look like that.

A second later, laughter erupted from the front of the room. All eyes turned to Mam Ghieri. She had thrown her head back at an exaggerated angle, and her laughter registered high, chilling, and completely genuine, which was much scarier than if she had faked it.

To say Haraan suddenly felt foolish wouldn't be enough. Wordsmiths would have to invent a new word for that kind of blunder when you are confronted with options, good and bad, and you pick the one that plunges so hard below the worst that the universe decides you are a threat to existence and ends you.

"I love it," Mam Ghieri raved, now looking straight at Haraan. "I love a good comedian. You may not think it, for I've earned my reputation here at Altina. No student of mine has ever tried what you have tried today, because they all realized I have a way of dealing with jokers before they opened their mouths." Smiling maliciously, she sauntered up the aisle to his desk, step by deliberately agonizing step.

"You may have realized that, too." Step.

"And yet, you dared." Step.

"You dared to try." Step.

"And I laughed." Step.

"But I didn't laugh because you made me." Step.

"I laughed because I can deal with you." Step.

"Oh, yes. You will be made an example of." Step.

Mam Ghieri towered above Haraan's desk. "On your feet," she commanded.

Haraan complied.

"What are you looking at? Eyes up here, funny man."

With a jolt, Haraan realized he'd been staring at her chest. He hadn't been paying attention, but that didn't matter to the rest of the class. More than a few of them let out suggestive _ooooohs_ and whistles. Haraan tilted his head up.

Mam Ghieri brushed aside a dislodged sprig of her hair, so nothing got between her eyes and his. "Come up front," she said.

The walk was both too long for him to ignore the grins coming in at him from all sides (wolves! Each and every one of them, expecting his hilarious demise at the alpha's bite!), and too short to postpone what came next. Mam Ghieri opened a drawer in her desk and reached in.

She pulled out a baby pink towel with a hood sewn on one corner. To Haraan's horror, the hood had whiskers, a nose, googly eyes, and long, floppy ears.

"Mr. Siarke, do you know who this is?" asked Mam Ghieri over the wild applause and cheers coming from the other students.

"That is Mama Pipsy Bun-Bun," he moaned, tragically certain where this was heading.

"He knows!" Mam Ghieri's arms flew into the air with celebration Haraan had no hope of being faked. She continued, "My girls love the Bun-Bun Family. We go to watch them when they visit Talery Bay every month."

Without blinking, she forced the Mama Pipsy Bun-Bun towel down on Haraan's head. Another cheer went up from the other students, Jasti being among the loudest.

"I think it fits him, don't you think?" Mam Ghieri's question received very enthusiatic and positive responses.

She reached into her drawer again and pulled out a large envelope. A picture of several well-dressed bunnies waved from their couch on the front. "I'll also have you know, Mr. Siarke, that I have a copy of their first record. I believe we've all heard this one before." More cheering. "Do you know the Bun-Bun Family theme, Mr. Siarke?" she asked him.

Haraan once loved the Bun-Bun Family, back when he had been two. And yet the words came crawling back to him like zombies, zombies with paws and fluffy fur, and with the words returned the hopping, hopping melody. "I do," he said.

"Are you beginning to understand what's going on here?"

"... Yes."

"I've been wanting to do this for a very long time." Mam Ghieri waltzed over to the phonograph, the song already playing in her mind from the look of it. She placed the vinyl disk on the turntable, placed the stylus, and started the machine. While the first scratching noises echoed out from the bell, the classroom door opened, revealing other students who were sent from adjacent rooms to investigate the riot in Mam Ghieri's class.

Haraan's gaze fixed on one girl in particular before averting his head, but not before it was too late. She pointed at him with an evil grin on her face, let out a single "Ha!" and sprinted off. Amina was his friend, but he would have to reconsider that after she came back with the rest of her class.

The opening bars of the Bun-Bun Family's theme song featured the familiar bouncing flute melody, underscored with warm guitar chords. Haraan couldn't suppress a loud groan.

"Sing like you mean it, Pipsy," exclaimed Mam Ghieri.

Papa Robsy Bun-Bun's husky voice warbled the first lines of the song.

Hey! (Hey!) What a wonderful day...

Mam Ghieri yanked the stylus off the record. "You have to sing the whole thing, not just Pipsy's part," she protested. "And why aren't you hopping? Hop to it!" She started the record again.

_Anything but that,_ Haraan thought, but as the music began anew, he had no choice. Arms drawn to his chest, he started hopping around the room. Oh no, they were pulling out their cameras.

He sang, with some of the others chiming in.

Hey! (Hey!) What a wonderful day
The sun's in the sky,
There's birds flyin' by
Let's listen to what they say

They say
Hey! (Hey!) The wind is goin' our way
Follow us where we fly
To the Bun-Buns, that's why
There we will learn and play...

Well, you get the picture.

After his second lap around the class, which kept filling with camera-wielding students, Haraan thought about stopping altogether, first by cutting the record, then removing the towel and stamping back to his seat. Show Mam Ghieri she wouldn't have the final say, not after exposing himself to the ridicule of his peers.

They studied the other. Mam Ghieri nodded her head in time with his singing, which was not slam star material, but held pitches well enough, and her fingers tapped the side of her desk disarmingly. She withheld her words, unusual.

He had her. He approached the phonograph, raising his hand as added theater to his stride —

And felt the lightning twitch of recognition freeze him in the moment.

Mam Ghieri would allow him to cut the record. She hid that well; not a line on her face gave away her intention. Haraan's mind had taken an intuitive leap as complex as one leaping off the Carillion onto a cirrus cloud. He followed that leap as it trailed consequences — he saw a violent scourging with black whips, a deluge of textbooks, the very far back desk in the corner, the only one not to face in front, with his name engraved on the backrest.

Metaphors, all of them, with one message: Rebel at your own peril.

The moment passed, the next line spilled from his lips. He understood the best course of action. The final verse began with the whole family chorusing in harmony, and his hops got hoppier, his voice rose higher, with more conviction, the Mama towel took over him until he _was_ Mama Bun-Bun herself, belting out a fierce falsetto few recording studios expected to find in a nursery song. The classroom was a forgotten thing; the students became trees in the Golden Forest; desks were stones for stomping on. From far away came a different sound from the one before. Cheers emerged from laughter emerged from taunts and catcalls.

It was told a hundred kids burst into applause before the Bun-Bun Family Theme ended. Haraan dropped out of his avatar trance on top of Mam Ghieri's desk, but the part of him that cared about the trouble he was in was buried under the rest of him that had never taken a bow in front of so many people.

That was still no reason to keep wearing Mama Bun-Bun around. He returned the towel to Mam Ghieri's proffered hand and stepped off of her desk. He wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or horrified because she wore an inscrutable smile. He motioned her to bring her ear close.

"Look, I'm sorry I slept in class today," he said. "It won't happen again."

"It had better not," she said, backing away. "Tonight, you can go home and write me a three-hundred word essay over the events of the Brenner expedition."

Haraan's euphoria dropped like an iron bar on a hard floor. No, do not open your mouth, do _not_ open it.

"We were all very much entertained by your performance just now," she continued, to another round of cheers and camera clicks, "but that was only a performance. This assignment will be your penance. Turn it into me tomorrow or it's your ass. Do a good job on it —"

"Or it's my ass," he finished.

"Watch your language. Now back to your seat. And back to your classes, all of you, show's over."

Haraan trudged back to his seat. On the way, however, he couldn't ignore the congratulatory looks on everyone's faces, even managing a nod from the beet-faced girl.

Why shouldn't they congratulate him? he thought once he got back at his desk. He tapped Jasti's fist with his own in a quiet gesture of acknowledgment. He had, after all, just made history.