Amanda Leduc - The Centaur's Wife

“Where do the fairies take them?” Tasha calls out, softly.

Heather whips around, then relaxes a little when she sees it’s only Tasha. “Somewhere better,” she says. Shadows play over her face. To her girls, she says, “But don’t worry. You’re safe with me and Daddy. Everything will be okay.”

Tasha takes a step forward.

Heather takes a step back, then holds her ground. “Is something wrong?”

“No.” Tasha comes to stand in front of her. “Sorry. I just—I found I like to go for walks out here too.”

The babies crane their heads to look at Tasha. “They still don’t sleep,” Heather says. “I have to walk them all the time.”

Tasha nods. She has heard this from Brendan. “They’re what—five months old now?” she says. “If it’s colic, they should grow out of it soon.”

“I guess,” Heather says. Up close, she is a shadow of a shadow, her eyes frantic and bright. “I feel like that day will never come.”

“I can imagine.”

Heather laughs. “Can you?”

Tasha shrugs.

Heather turns and starts walking again—not an invitation, not quite a dismissal—and Tasha falls in step behind her. They walk for a long time in silence, stepping carefully over the forest floor. They’re not on a path—not exactly—but as Tasha follows Heather’s lead, she begins to see a faint impression that tells her someone has been this way before. They come to a break in the trees and set out across a small field matted with tall weeds and grasses, tangled wildflowers. Milkweed with seed pods the size of her hand. Queen Anne’s lace that reaches her shoulders. Sunflowers that are taller than she is. The greens are so deep they’re hard to look at, too strong for the eyes. It’s intoxicating, but it makes Tasha uneasy.

The babies watch Tasha with bright, interested eyes. One of them—Greta?—smiles at Tasha, then stretches her hand out to the milkweed. Without looking, Heather gently intercepts her baby.

“Why won’t you talk to me?” Tasha asks, at last.

“I don’t talk to most people,” Heather says, some amusement in her voice. “Surely everyone has told you that by now.”

“But—I heard you scream,” Tasha says. She feels ridiculous, but presses on. “I heard you scream, and you saw me after the fire.”

“Why do you want that to matter so much?”

“Shouldn’t it matter? What does it mean?”

“You tell me. You’re the doctor.”

“Oh, stop with that!” Tasha shouts. “I just want to know. I want to understand.” She takes a couple of steps ahead of Heather and throws an arm out to the vegetation around them. “Why are plants growing like this out here when we can’t grow things in our gardens or the greenhouses?”

“How am I supposed to know the answer to that?”

“I don’t know!” She’s embarrassed by the loudness of her voice. “No one else comes out here except for you. And me. No one else goes to the mountain. Instead all I hear are stories about the mountain from people who struggle to believe that coming together as a community will help us get through the winter. And yet everyone’s perfectly happy to believe that the mountain is home to monsters, or whatever. None of it makes any sense.”

Heather keeps walking.

“People do tell me that you’re crazy,” Tasha says, baldly. She watches Heather’s shoulders stiffen. “They say that you went up the mountain and when you came down you were never the same.” She wants to take the words back instantly.

“By people,” Heather says, “do you mean my husband?”

Tasha feels shame creep up her neck and stain her face. “No.”

Heather glances at her. “You’re lying,” she says. “Or maybe he’s not the only one who says that. That’s all right. What else did he tell you?”

“He didn’t say you were crazy,” Tasha says. That was other people. “He just said that something happened to you when you were young.”

“What else do people tell you about the mountain?”

“More stories,” Tasha says. “A friend of a friend who disappeared on the mountain years ago. Monsters who live in the forest trees. Shadows people see when they’re drunk. That kind of thing.”

“Stories are never just stories, Tasha. You of all people should know that.”

She blinks. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You don’t know?” Heather says. She sounds amused and also exhausted—a touch manic, a sliver hysterical. “You tell stories to the people every day.”

She thinks of Joseph, and looks down at the ground. “What? I do not.”

Heather sighs. “Tasha. Of course you do. ‘Everything will be okay if we stick together and help each other out—’ ”

“Everything will be okay,” Tasha says, fiercely. “That’s not a story—it’s the truth. We just have to be there for each other.”

Heather snorts. “This city is not good at that kind of thing. I could have told you that when you got here.”

“But you didn’t,” Tasha presses. “You barely talk to me at all.”

“It’s all I can do to hang on,” Heather says, her hands going to her babies’ heads.

“Were they there for you? The people in the city?” Tasha asks, softly. Even though she knows the answer.

Heather casts her a sidelong glance, but keeps on walking. “Who wants to be there for the village idiot?” she says. “Especially when they can make the village idiot into a story herself?”

Tasha thinks again, oddly, of fiery birds burning holes in the ground. Octopuses who gather treasure. A prince gone to find a woman locked in a tower. “My parents told me stories when I was young to help me overcome something,” she says. “To give me hope, to help me hang on. And then I got older, and I didn’t need the stories anymore. But the stories that people tell in this town feel different. These aren’t stories that help. They don’t inspire hope—they inspire fear. I can’t let that happen. Everything that we’re dealing with is bad enough, and stories that scare people are only going to make it worse. Why are people afraid of the mountain, for real?”

Heather cocks her head slightly to the side. “You know why,” she says. “My father died there, a long time ago. Mothers tell their kids that people disappear on the mountain. That way they avoid it, and no one gets hurt.”

“Are there trails up it?”

Heather shrugs. “There used to be. They’re overgrown now. The city made them off-limits.”

The forest suddenly feels still and heavy. The light has changed—the sky clouding over. “What about the monster stories, though,” Tasha asks. “Creatures that hide in the trees? Ghosts who lure children away?”

Heather doesn’t answer.

“None of it makes any sense,” Tasha continues, frustrated.

“Why does it need to make sense?”

Tasha trips on a whorl of green and almost falls. When she straightens, she says, “Because people are already on edge! And when they tell each other these stories, they feed their paranoia. People talk about monsters and they talk about how we’re all going to starve. People have no hope.”

Heather nods. “You’ve been talking to Joseph,” she says. “Look, Tasha”—and her tone is almost kind now—“everything is unfamiliar. Even the city that some of these people have known their whole lives. They’re telling stories to make sense of it—to try and understand it. That’s all.”

“But what good will stories about monsters do?” Tasha presses. “That doesn’t help people gather food or ration supplies or believe that we’ll be able to take care of one another. If anything, it makes it worse.”

They step out of the trees into another tangled meadow. There’s a greenhouse here, half swallowed by wildflowers and grass.