Amanda Leduc - The Centaur's Wife

She stares at Heather, then clears her throat. “Did you hear me scream?” Her voice is hoarse and scratchy.

Heather cocks her head. “You weren’t screaming,” she says. “But I could hear you weeping as I got closer.”

Tasha nods, wipes a hand across her face. “I’m so tired,” she says.

Heather steps all the way into the greenhouse and pushes the door shut behind her. The cold air vanishes. She leans back against the greenhouse door and watches Tasha, not saying anything.

“Candice,” Tasha says, finally. “And Seth.”

Heather nods. “What about them?”

“I think they killed their little boy.”

Heather doesn’t blink. “Do you know that? For sure?”

Tasha wipes angrily at another tear. “No. But before they left, Candice talked about mothers leaving their children on the mountain.”

Heather nods as though it’s the most normal thing in the world. “Yes. I remember that story.”

“I told them to go as far as they could. To try as hard as they could. I should have told them to stay here.”

Heather hasn’t moved from the door. “Sometimes people have to make hard choices, Tasha.”

“What if that had been you?” Tasha cries. Then she stops, horrified. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I meant—”

“You meant, what if my parents had decided to leave me on the mountain when I was born,” Heather says. Her voice is so gentle. “But they didn’t, and now I’m here. I understand.”

“I didn’t—”

“My parents had a hospital that functioned. They had help.”

“I know, but I could have helped them—and Annie—for as long as we needed to—”

“My father used to tell me a story,” Heather continues—looking at Tasha, but also not looking at her—“about a fox that wants children more than anything else in the world. The mountain tells her to go to the flatlands and turn over a rock and the rock will grant her children. But when she does this, the fox sees only worms, and she doesn’t understand at first that the worms are meant to be her children. So she goes to another rock and turns that one over too, and the same thing happens, and it’s only when she returns to the first rock that she realizes what’s supposed to happen. So she welcomes the worms, and they go home with her at the end of the story. And she is very happy.” She shifts her weight from one hip to the other, wincing a little. “I thought it was a beautiful story when I was small. I knew that my father was trying to tell me what it felt like to be the fox, surprised to find herself the mother of children who weren’t what she thought they’d be. She was happy to have them, in the end. And the worms were happy to have her. They built a life together.”

“And then my father died, and in the years after I came down from the mountain I couldn’t think about that story without wanting to scream in rage. Was I a worm? I wanted to yell at him. Was that all I ever was to you? ” She raises her hands and strokes the babies’ red curls. “I was angry about that for years,” she says, softly. “And then I had my own babies. And now I just—these things are complicated, Tasha. It takes time to realize that your child is going to have a different life. We don’t really have that time anymore.”

“But we could,” Tasha says fiercely. “We have to make that time. You’re telling me if it had been you—you and Greta and Jilly—”

“I wouldn’t have,” Heather says instantly. “I didn’t.” But something flickers over her face and Tasha is no longer so sure.

“How do I show them?” Tasha whispers. “How do I show them that the only way we survive is by doing this together?”

“I think you have to understand that some people won’t survive,” Heather says. “Or that their choices will be different, and their lives will be different too, as a result.”

“I can’t accept that,” Tasha says flatly. “There are enough of us here who can help one another. There has to be a light at the end. There has to be.”

Heather watches her. “There will be,” she says, finally. “But it’s not going to look like what you expect light to be. You have to get used to that, too.”

Tasha says nothing for a moment, finally aware that she’s kneeling before Heather in nothing but her underwear. “You were right to be angry about that story. You’re worth so much more than a worm.”

Heather only shrugs. “I was angry at him for dying,” she says. “For taking me up on the mountain when he probably shouldn’t have—when he knew it was unsafe. And I was angry at myself for wanting to be the daughter that he wanted me to be. But I was also right, all those years ago, when I was younger. I knew what he meant, even if it wasn’t perfect. Even if he didn’t really understand it—or believe in it, totally—himself. He was trying to tell me that worms are beautiful too—that they shape the world in ways we all need. Without worms, nothing else survives.”

Tasha sits with this for a moment. Then she reaches for her clothes. “Will you walk back with me?”

Heather shakes her head. “I like it here,” she says. “We’ll stay a while longer.”

Tasha nods, then heads back to the city alone.

January becomes February, becomes almost March. The food gifts come less and less. Wizened apples, dented cans.

Six families die over the winter. Flu, the cold, pneumonia. Tasha spends days and nights in the houses of the sick and dying and then, once death comes, she goes back to the greenhouse. She sheds her clothes and kneels in front of the jacaranda tree and lets the madness—grief, anger, despair, whatever it is—take her.

Except that as the months go on, the madness takes her less often. She does not weep, she does not scream. Her mind remains her own. There is no jumbled madness—just a long stretch of grief, which is familiar. A small and steady knot beneath her ribs. She lets the knot propel her as the days slide forth to spring.

They move the dead closer to the forest, away from the town. When the ground is warm enough to dig, those that are still able—Tasha, Annie, Joseph, others—bury the half-thawed bodies out by the trees and scatter quiet prayers over the soil.

The worms will eat them , she thinks. And from their bodies, something else. From the death of one life, another.

It wouldn’t be possible without the worms , she thinks. Just like Heather said.

Once there was a bird who was jealous of the sun. No matter how high the bird flew, the sun was always higher, and it made the bird angry.

“Why should the sun fly higher than we do?” he said to his fellow birds. “We work so hard to stay in the air but the sun sits up there and does nothing. It’s not fair.”

“The sun has always flown above us.” The bird who said this was much older than the jealous bird, and had seen much more of the world. “This is how it has always been.”

“Why should something stay the same just because it has always been that way?” said the jealous bird.

The old bird said, severely, “The sun is higher. We are lower. The sun warms us when we’re cold and sends us light to see worms in the grass, and asks of us nothing in return. You should be grateful for this, not angry.”

“I will be grateful when the sun sees how much higher I can fly!” cried the bird. He threw his head back and crowed, and many other birds, massed around him, threw back their heads and did the same.

“You cannot fly higher than the sun,” the old bird warned. “It is foolish to even try.”