Amanda Leduc - The Centaur's Wife

“Here,” Tasha says, and hands a bar to Heather. “How are you feeling?”

How is she feeling? At once stretched and lost—as though she is both a ghost and something more than herself.

“Any problems?” Tasha prods. “More spotting?”

She can feel B watching. “No,” she says.

Tasha nods. “I’m glad to hear it. You know where I am if you need me.”

“Yes.” Heather says. “I know.”

“Tasha,” B says, and she turns to him. “How much food have you got hidden away?”

Her voice is still light, unconcerned. “It’s mostly just the chocolate.”

“And all these—gifts?” B moves his arm in a wide circle. “Just waiting for better weather while people died in the cold?”

Tasha flushes. “We had to make some har—”

“I know,” he interrupts and looks away from her. He seems so disappointed that Heather almost feels sorry for him. “We’ve all had to make hard choices. I get it. But—people died, Tasha, while you sat on all of this.”

She won’t meet B’s eyes now. “I know the names of everyone who died,” she says. “Believe me, Brendan. I know. But I also knew that if we survived the winter we would need something… celebratory.”

“And if we plant the gardens again and nothing grows?” Heather asks. “What kind of celebration will we have then?”

Tasha looks at her, but doesn’t reply. Instead she walks back to the trailer and climbs up on it, then holds up her hands for silence.

“I am so glad to see you,” she calls out when even the children are quiet. “To see each and every one of you.”

The tired lines in the faces of everyone around them seem to lift a little.

“We’ve been through so much,” Tasha calls out. “But we survived because we did it together. And we will continue to survive because we’re doing this together.”

There is a smattering of applause.

“We’ll plant the gardens soon, and more—we’ll create a proper farm,” Tasha says. “We’re clearing the vines from the roads and soon we’ll send out scouting parties. If we’ve survived, other people must have too.”

She continues to speak, and the applause grows louder. The faces around Heather and B begin to shine with something other than fatigue.

You can do it, Tasha says. Her eyes burn with hope and love. We can do it. The clapping becomes a cheer, becomes a chant. Tasha. Tasha. Tasha.

Heather feels the words lift around them and become something else. A legend, a story.

There once was a city in the shadow of the mountains. Then winter brought the cold, and many of them died. But with the spring came warmth and hope, and the strongest among them held hands out to the weaker and lifted them up to the sun.

We will be whole again, they said.

We will find others, they said.

We must believe in something larger. We must believe we’re not alone.

She thinks of Tasha, weeping on the greenhouse floor.

“Where will the animals come from?” she hears herself call. The clapping dies down. “For the farm. A proper farm needs cows and chickens, at least. Where will they come from?”

“We’ll find them,” Tasha says. “The scouting parties will be looking for animals, too.”

“And if you don’t?” Heather says. “What then? What if there are no animals and the gardens don’t grow again and we have to survive another winter—what then?”

“Maybe the Food Angel will come back,” someone yells, in a voice that’s only half joking.

“We can’t rely on the Food Angel,” Tasha says. “We have to rely on each other.” She looks straight at Heather, her eyes so bright they look feverish. “The gardens will grow this year. They have to.”

“You don’t know that!” Heather cries. B puts a hand on her arm; she shrugs him off, steps forward.

Tasha opens her mouth to speak, but an outraged yell drowns her out. They turn, as one, to see Elyse walking toward them, half dragging what looks like a bundle of rags. As she gets closer, Heather sees that it is a bird, brown and mottled. A chicken. One of Joseph’s chickens.

The yell comes again and now they see Joseph, striding up the road behind Elyse.

“Tasha!” he yells. “ Tasha! ” He begins to run, passing Elyse, making for the trailer. He is weeping, incandescent with fury. “You fucking hypocrite. You goddamn murdering piece of shit .”

“Joseph,” Tasha says. “I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

“ She killed one of my chickens!” he shouts, thrusting a finger at Elyse. Elyse lays the dead bird gently on the ground. There is blood splotched over her face, splashed up her arms. In her other hand she holds a knife; she sets that down on the ground too. She pays no attention to Joseph, staring at Tasha and Annie. “I did what had to be done,” she says. “He won’t let us take the hens for eggs, but we can eat them, at least.”

Tasha looks troubled, and suddenly so tired. “Elyse,” she says. “You can’t do that.”

“ He can’t do that!” Elyse cries. “We barely survived the winter. And he had chickens in the house that whole time!”

“Four chickens are not going to feed a whole fucking city!” Joseph yells. “ Three chickens even less. What’s wrong with you?”

“The rest of us are starving!” Elyse shouts. There’s a grumble around them after she says this, a whisper of unease through the crowd.

“Elyse. Just stop,” Annie says. “You’re only going to make things worse.”

“Why am I the only one who sees what we need to do?” Elyse cries. “We’re going to starve if we don’t make even harder decisions. You can’t celebrate any of this aw—” She bends over and coughs heavily, her shoulders heaving. She stumbles forward, then rests her hands against her thighs and heaves again. Her cough is thick and wet, insistent. All-consuming. When she is finally able, she straightens, her face resolute. “It was just one chicken.”

“She’s not just a chicken, ” Joseph says. His voice breaks. “She and the others are all the family I have left.”

“Joseph,” Tasha says. “I’m so sorry.”

“This is all your fault!” he shouts at her. “I should have left months ago. We all should have left months ago.” He gestures wildly to the dead bird at Elyse’s feet. “You want that chicken? Fine. Take it. I am leaving this place. Fuck all of you.” He turns and begins to stalk back to his house.

A man breaks away from the edge of the crowd and follows him.

Then another person, a woman this time.

Another.

Another.

“Joseph,” Tasha calls. “ Joseph. ”

None of them turn around.

At last, Tasha turns back to the crowd still standing in front of the wagon. “We’ll be all right,” she says. “Don’t worry. We have a plan.”

But the spell is broken now. People begin to drift away from the square to their homes, leaving whatever else Tasha might have said to them unspoken.

“Maybe they should go,” Elyse says, after most of them are gone. “That’s more food for us, anyway.”

Tasha’s eyes rest on Heather, who has stayed with B in the square. “They’ll come around,” Tasha says. “You’ll see.”

The next morning, Joseph’s house is empty. He and his chickens are gone.

The weather gets hotter. They eat a bowl of rice a day, topped with one can of beans, split between the two of them and the girls. They plant the gardens, and hope, as their stash runs out.