Amanda Leduc - The Centaur's Wife

She draws a mountain on the wall, and winged things that fly close to its summit. Fairies, Tasha sees, as she comes closer. Unicorns run down the side of the mountain, and still other beasts lie shadowed in the trees.

“What kind of mountain is that?” a child asks.

“This is a wishing mountain.” Heather’s hand doesn’t stop. “It’s filled with magic.” She glances up and sees that Tasha’s watching. She looks back at the mountain. “Magic that will make our world better.”

“Is it like our mountain?” Another child—brown-haired, dark-eyed Sasha. She reaches up and touches a fairy’s wing.

Heather smiles. “It can be like ours,” she says. “It can also be different. It can be whatever we want it to be.”

Tasha’s breath catches in her throat. The twin on her shoulder coos softly in her sleep. Despite how delicate they are, the twins’ heartbeats are strong. They don’t know any different. This is their only world.

It might not be so bad, she thinks. Next spring they will plant again. In the meantime, they have the community centre, they have each other. Others might have much less.

Heather draws a bright thing, falling from the mountain. Then another, then another.

“What are those?” Tasha asks.

“These are fire-birds,” Heather says. “They fall from the sky.”

Tasha’s heart thuds hard in her chest. “What did you say?”

Heather doesn’t look at her. “Fire-birds,” she repeats. She draws another one hitting the ground, a great gaping hole opening beneath it. “They burn holes in the ground, the way the meteors did.”

Tasha tries to swallow. “Once there was a bird who was jealous of the sun,” she says.

Heather looks at her, sharply. “ What? ”

“Once there was a bird who was jealous of the sun,” she repeats. “No matter how high the bird flew, the sun was always higher.”

Heather watches her for a moment, and then whispers, “Why should the sun fly higher than we do?” She holds her pencil crayon in mid-air.

“We work so hard to stay in the air but the sun sits up there and does nothing. It’s not fair.”

Tasha swallows. “How do you know that story?”

“My father made it up for me.”

“My mother made it up for me, ” Tasha says. “When I was a kid, I had dreams about birds that burned holes in the ground. She made that story up so I wouldn’t be afraid. How—how did your father know it?”

Heather puts her pencil crayon down, then shrugs. “My father once said that stories don’t belong to anybody,” she says. “He said they belong to the world.”

“Yes,” Tasha says, a little louder now. People turn to look at them. “But that exact story? Don’t you think that’s a little strange? Did our parents know each other?”

“I don’t think so,” Heather says. “My father never left these mountains. Did your parents travel here?”

Tasha shakes her head. “They wanted to. They always talked about coming. But they never did.” She looks at the children, who have stopped listening to them and are back on the floor drawing their own pictures. “Why did your father tell you a story about birds who fly higher than the sun?” she says. “What were you afraid of?”

“ I wasn’t afraid of anything.” There’s a strange smile on Heather’s face now. “My father, on the other hand…” She shrugs again. “He was afraid of a lot, as it turns out. I should have clued in when the birds in the story flew higher and kept burning.”

Tasha frowns. “But that’s not how the story ends.”

“Isn’t it?” Heather stands and reaches for Jilly. Again there’s that flash when they touch—clouds and air, the high-pitched sound of screaming. Heather blinks and Tasha wonders what she sees—The smoke again? The fire?—but then Brendan appears by their side and takes Greta from Elyse.

“You can stay here if you don’t want to walk home,” Tasha says. Stay. Stay and finish the story. “You can have the mattress in the clinic, if you want. Or stay here with the others—lots of people will be sleeping here tonight.”

“We’re fine,” Heather says.

Stay, Tasha wants to beg. Rest. Let me help you. Please tell me what all of this means. Instead she only nods. “All right,” she says. “Just—hold on a minute.” She moves to the doorway, then steps outside into the snow and makes her way to the clinic. She lets herself in and rummages through the shelves that Annie has organized so neatly in the back. She finds the bottle she is looking for and closes her hand around it, then walks back to the community centre. After Tasha stamps the snow off her boots, she holds the bottle of prenatal vitamins out to Heather. “For you.”

Heather looks at the vitamins in Tasha’s outstretched hand. “What good do you think those will do?”

“Who knows, at this point,” Tasha says. When Heather takes the bottle, Tasha feels a small thrill at being able to help her, even a little, and watches as she and the girls and Brendan head out into the swirling white.

“You spend more time worrying about Heather than you do about Annie,” Elyse says, beside her.

“What?” Tasha says, confused.

“Annie would do anything for you. And you keep pushing her away. Don’t you know how lucky you are?”

“Elyse, I’m not pushing—”

“Yes, you are. You don’t deserve her.”

Tasha sighs. “Elyse, we’re all tired. We’re all working too hard.”

“Heather doesn’t even look at you. She doesn’t care!”

“I just want her to survive,” Tasha says, backing away from Elyse’s anger. “I want everyone to survive.”

“So does Annie,” Elyse says. “But she wants you—the both of you—to survive most of all.”

Tasha turns from her and goes back to draw with the children.

Improbably, the old greenhouse thrives in the winter. As the snows blow, the amaryllis flush a deeper red. One day in early January, Tasha snowshoes to the greenhouse and discovers that the vines have made their way out the door and are reaching to the dusty clouded sun.

She wrenches the door open and goes inside, and it is like stepping through a portal into the tropics. She has to peel off all her layers, sliding out of her coat and boots and shirt and pants until she’s standing in her underwear, so awash in scents and vivid greenery, she’s overcome.

It shouldn’t be hot in here, but it is.

The greenhouse shouldn’t be here at all, but it is.

Each time she stands in front of the flowers, her vision blurs and her mind is overwhelmed with despair—her mother in the fire, her father trying so hard to get her out, her father in the fire too. The people they left behind by the sea. Climbing the mountain that rises above them even though she’s never climbed a mountain before. Climbing the mountain in the midst of a fire that burns down all the trees, the ambulance rumbling hard behind her. Water rushing over them, swallowing her air. Children that she’s helped to birth and then, inadvertently, to kill. The people in the city who continue to starve. Poison plants that grow thick by the side of the road. She was not enough to stand between her parents and the fire. Her parents saved her, again and again, when she was a child, and in return she let them burn, she let them explode into nothing.

Her screams go on forever.

When she comes back to herself, she’s curled on the ground, her forehead pressed to the dirt. There’s a draft of cold air behind her—she turns, blinking slowly, and sees Heather outlined in the doorway. The twins watch Tasha with eager, interested eyes.