Jodi Meadows - Infinite

Maybe it was only a herd of deer or bison. There were lots of large animals in and around Range. But as Sam and I approached the pond he’d spoken of, the rumbling grew louder, and a deep murmur filtered through the woods. Like voices.

Hundreds of voices.

Sam and I glanced at each other. “The pond is just ahead,” he murmured.

Lights danced through the trees, uneven and orange-red, like fire. Chills prickled up my spine as we crept forward.

Sam turned off the flashlight so the glow wouldn’t attract attention, and a few minutes later, we halted on a small ridge overlooking a valley where the pond waited. And there, we saw the source of the lights.

The roar of voices rolled across the water, where ripples glinted in the flickering illumination of hundreds of torches, revealing a thousand bodies. At first, I thought they were people on horseback. Then, as my eyes adjusted the dark figures resolved into more coherent shapes, I realized the people were too far in front of the horses to be riding them. And the “horses” had no heads.

“Centaurs.” The word came out a breath, but Sam nodded. Even in the dim light, he looked pale.

“Stef said she and Whit are there.” He pointed across the pond, toward a break in the trees where trolls had carved the path. “So we’ll have to go around the herd.”

This was what I’d felt in the ground earlier: a thousand centaurs heading toward the pond. They’d probably cut through the forest within sight of where I’d been sleeping. And I’d shouted Sam’s name. I was unbelievably lucky they hadn’t heard me.

“Do they really make clothes out of people’s skin?” I whispered.

Sam just shuddered and guided me back into the forest.

“Maybe Stef and Whit could come here instead of us going there.”

“We’re heading that way anyway.” Sam kept his voice low and consulted the map on his SED.

We were only heading that way because it was away from Heart, not because that way necessarily had answers, or clues about where to find the sylph.

“I really want to know why all those centaurs are this far from their territory. Perhaps they’ve broken away from the main herd or they’re picking a battle with trolls. . . .”

“Maybe they can sense the caldera is unstable.” My SED showed at least five new earthquakes since the last time I’d checked. None of them were as large as the first, but some were sizable enough that people would notice. Centaurs’ territory was south of Range, so they’d probably felt the big earthquake as the Year of Souls began.

“That seems likely.” Sam pointed at the map. “We’ll go down the hill this way, keeping to the woods. With luck, the wind won’t shift. Centaurs have a powerful sense of smell.” He glanced toward the herd and wrinkled his nose. “And powerful smells.”

I stifled a panicked giggle. “Yes.”

“Once we’re off this ridge, we’ll head toward the troll path here. We’ll be visible when we’re crossing, but if we keep far enough back, they shouldn’t notice us. It looks like they’re getting ready to stop for the night, and they can only see as well as humans in the dark.”

“So no flashlights.”

He nodded. “But once we’re across the path, we’ll be fine. The rest of the way seems to have enough foliage to cover us.”

“Okay, we’d better get going.”

We picked our way down the ridge as quietly as possible, cringing every time a branch cracked or evergreen needles rustled. But if the centaurs noticed movement in the woods, they must have assumed we were one of the many nocturnal creatures that lived here.

Our progress was slow, especially without light, but we had time to be cautious, so we took it. Two hours later, we reached the path.

It was wide enough for two vehicles to drive side by side. That hadn’t seemed so wide when we’d been walking on it yesterday, but now that we had to cross in full view of a herd of centaurs, we might as well have been crossing the Range caldera.

Sam tested the wind. It still carried the centaurs’ stink and fractured voices. I couldn’t make out their words, but it seemed unlikely they’d speak our language, anyway.

“We should crawl,” I whispered. “So they don’t see two tall creatures go walking by.”

“One tall and one unusually short.” He said it with a smile, but his humor was strained. “You’re right. We’ll crawl.” He sighed and flexed his injured hand.

We adjusted our belongings and lowered ourselves to the ground. Frosty grass reached up to my elbows, blocking too much of my view—and not blocking enough. Though we were far back on the trail, around a bend to keep out of view, by the time we reached the center of the path, I could see the centaurs’ fires and their silhouettes as they moved about the field. There were so many. They wouldn’t have to worry about rocs swooping down on them.

The ground trembled under my palms, vibrations from all the movement to the east. Faintly, I saw startlingly graceful movements as a group of centaurs chased one another. They called out and laughed, their hooves beating the ground in rhythm.

They’d seemed awkward at first, so forward-heavy with their human halves in the front, but firelight glistened off muscular horse halves and sturdy legs. A pair of centaurs embraced. One reared up and spread his arms to the stars and moon and sky.

None of them looked like they were wearing human skin as clothing.

We’d been wrong about the sylph. Sort of. They had attacked people for thousands of years. They’d attacked me on my birthday last year, too. But there was something about them. They loved music. And now Cris was one.

What if we’d been wrong about centaurs?

Hoofbeats pounded on the ground, coming closer. Sam twisted to look back at me, and in the darkness, his eyes were wide. “Go,” he mouthed. “Fast.”

I scrambled across the path as quickly as I could, aching to get up and use my legs. But if they were coming our way, I didn’t want to be seen.

The hoofbeats thumped and a high, thin voice shrieked.

I jerked my face up to find a young centaur staring down at me, wearing a shocked expression. Another stopped next to the first. They both screamed.

I screamed.

Sam reached back and grabbed my wrist, and together we lurched for the other side of the path, but the centaurs were following—

And then the ground shuddered. Not from the herd. No, this was from the opposite direction. One solid thud followed by another.

The young centaurs stared past Sam and me, and the herd went quiet.

A hush fell over the entire area as the thuds came louder, faster. Then Sam climbed all the way to his feet—making the young centaurs jump back—and dragged me into the woods.

“Troll!”

At once, the area turned loud with centaurs shouting and metal clashing. And when I glanced over my shoulder, the young centaurs were just standing in the middle of the path, staring up with their mouths wide open as a human-shaped beast three times my size came roaring toward the field. Ice and branches flew away from the troll’s destructive passage.

“Wait!” I shook myself away from Sam and darted back to the path. The young centaurs—colts? children?—both snapped their attention to me. “Come on!” I had no idea if they understood me, but when I reached for them, one of the boys clasped his hand around my damp mitten, and we raced into the woods just as the troll thundered into the place where they’d been standing.

Sam opened his mouth, but shook his head and began running through the forest as cacophony erupted by the pond. Screams and roars spurred us through the woods. The children surged ahead, shoving branches and bushes out of the way. Sam and I hurried to keep up, but the dark forest was only brokenly lit with torches on the battlefield.