Would you eat a Half Creature?
Guest
post by Katherine Roberts
If you’re not a strict vegetarian, then
you’re probably fine with eating animal flesh and maybe a bit of fish. But how
far would you take that? Would you eat a horse? Would you eat your dog? Would
you eat a mermaid?
Although I’m not vegetarian myself, I think
I would find that last one difficult (I’d find the other two difficult, too –
though if I were starving and someone served up the meat in a shrink-wrapped
package, maybe I could do it!) On the other hand, mermaids don’t exist so
that’s okay.
But I write fantasy! And one of the tricks
of writing a realistic imaginary world is to ask this kind of question. So
let’s suppose for a moment that mermaids do exist…
In my Echorium trilogy, you’ll meet several
types of half creature: merlee (half fish, half human – our mermaids and also
mermen), centaurs (half pony, half human),
quetzal (half bird, half human) and naga
(half water snake, half human). Most people respect the Half Creature Treaty that
forbids exploitation of half creatures. But at the start of the first book Song
Quest, unscrupulous hunters are netting the merlee for their eggs and
gutting the females to extract this delicacy before casting their bodies back
into the sea. Think caviar, mermaid-style.
My imaginary world is policed by human
Singers, who live in the Echorium (a bluestone castle on the Isle of Echoes)
and use Songs of Power in the place of weapons. Alerted by the merlee’s cries
for help, they set out to investigate taking with them two young novices –
Rialle, who can communicate with half creatures, and Kherron who cannot. They
follow the hunters’ trail high into the mountains of the Karch, where they
discover the small green merlee eggs are destined for the young Karchlord
Javelly, who is chronically sick… the eggs are supposed to cure him. In the
Karch, the Singers discover another violation of the Treaty – quetzal are being
kept in cages, waiting to be plucked and boiled for the lord’s table. This
looks like a direct violation of the Treaty by the people of the Karch. But
things are not quite as they seem. When Lord Javelly’s priests are discovered
injecting the merlee eggs before delivering them to their young lord, the
Singers must use their Songs of Power not only to protect the half creatures
but also to save the life of the young Karchlord.
The half creatures in my Echorium books are
based on creatures from our own myths. I gave them limited intelligence along
with their animal instincts, and was fascinated by the question of whether they
should be treated as low-intelligence humans or highly-intelligent animals. If
human, then obviously eating them would be considered cannibalism and wrong. If
animal, then maybe it’s more acceptable… provided you’re not vegetarian, of
course! The equivalent squirm-factor in our world might be eating a chimpanzee
(that scene from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom when our hero and heroine
are served with a dessert of frozen monkey brains inside the original monkey
heads has always freaked me out!)
In the end, I decided the half creatures in
my fantasy world should be protected species and are not to be eaten under any
circumstance. Do you agree?
***
The Echorium trilogy was first published by
Chicken House/Scholastic. The first title Song Quest won the Branford
Boase Award for best debut novel for young readers in 2000, and all three books
are now re-available:
Song Quest - paperback (Catnip Publishing,
UK)
www.amazon.co.uk/Song-Quest-Katherine-Roberts/dp/1846471362
And ebook
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IOV9MZQ
And ebook
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IOV9MZQ
Crystal Mask - Kindle ebook (special offer
this weekend 99c / 99p)
Dark Quetzal - Kindle ebook (special offer
this weekend 99c / 99p)
Katherine Roberts writes fantasy and legend
for young readers. Her latest series is the Pendragon Legacy about King
Arthur’s daughter (which also contains a mermaid, although they don’t eat her!)
Meet Katherine here:
Thanks for stopping by to share your food for thought, Katherine!
Thanks for having me, Shelley. Funnily enough, there is a mermaid in this photo of me too... that's her tail I'm touching. (She's Sabrina, one of the wooden figures in the Circle of Legends on the Welsh border at Tintern - I don't think anybody ate her, either!)
ReplyDelete