Amanda Leduc - The Centaur's Wife

Sometimes Heather finds apples or other fruits in their backyard. B is too beaten down to ask about such gifts now; he just accepts them, and eats his share.

He still goes to the strip mall to help Tasha and Annie when he can. But sometimes he sleeps away the day. Sometimes they all sleep, as the vines grow over Joseph’s old house, choke it into memory.

On the days that B leaves, Heather musters the strength to take the girls to the greenhouse. One foot in front of the other.

Then, at last, one day Estajfan comes out from the trees when she grows close.

“Heather, please don’t come to the greenhouse anymore,” he says. “Save your strength.”

“I can do it,” she says. It is still possible—even with her belly, even with the girls. Delirium keeps her going now. These terrible, hysterical gifts.

“Heather.” Estajfan comes to her and puts his hands on her shoulders. “Heather, stop coming here. Please rest.”

“I rest here or I rest at home.” She shrugs. “I’d rather be here with you.”

He watches her face. “And your… B?”

She looks away. “All you have to share now is what grows on the mountain, right?”

“We still look,” he whispers. “We go farther and farther, but things are harder and harder to find.”

She closes her eyes. It is not hard to see. This abandoned city, that abandoned town. Large humps of green that used to be houses, smaller humps that might have been cars on the roads.

There are smaller humps even than those, almost imperceptible in the green. This one big enough, perhaps, to have once been a person. A child. The flowers that bend around them are bright and terrible—orange and purple and a brighter yellow than she’s ever seen, giant half-moon traps that hang off the vines on other houses. Bushes with dark, juicy berries, soft white oleander plants that choke the hydro poles that stand still and useless, lining the streets.

She takes a breath, then opens her eyes. “You need to take us up the mountain.”

He looks at her. “You should have left a year ago.”

She laughs at this. “Well, I didn’t. You really think I could leave?” Then she says it again. “Estajfan. You need to bring us up the mountain. Me. The girls. And B.”

He shakes his head.

“Estajfan. Please.”

Silence. She watches him clench and unclench his fists. Then he says, “I can bring you.”

“Yes,” she says. “And the girls. And B.”

“Just you. The mountain is the centaurs’ home.”

She steps back from him, one arm around each of the girls, a hand half covering their ears as though they understand. She opens her mouth. “N—”

“ Heather. ”

She turns as Estajfan jumps back into the trees and disappears. The ground rumbles beneath her feet.

Elyse is coming toward her, from the field. She stops in front of Heather, breathing hard. “Heather?”

Heather digs her fingernails into her palms. The girls whimper, weak, against her collarbone. “What, the horse?” she says.

“That wasn’t a hor—”

“You’re tired, Elyse.” Heather starts to walk back in the direction of the city.

“That—that thing—it was more than a horse!” Elyse lunges forward, grabs Heather’s arm. When she tries to shake her off, Elyse holds on even tighter.

For a moment, everything around them stops. There is no birdsong, there is no rustle of the leaves. There is no wind.

“In the beginning,” Elyse says, and she lets Heather’s arm fall, “a horse fell in love with a woman.”

“That’s just a story.” Heather resumes walking, her heart beating loud in her ears. She fights to keep from screaming. Estajfan . Estajfan.

“It’s up there, isn’t it?” Elyse says, stumbling after Heather. “On the mountain. My grandmother—she used to tell us stories. It’s up there, and—” she coughs, ugly and painful, but keeps coming— “oh my God, Heather. Did he say—I heard ‘ centaurs. ’ Are there more of them?”

She doesn’t turn around. One foot in front of the other. Forward. Forward. Never back.

“What’s on the mountain, Heather? Do they…” Elyse falls silent for a moment, and Heather can almost hear the gears working in her mind, pieces falling into place with terrifying precision. “Was it them who brought the food? Is there food up there?”

Heather keeps walking, willing herself not to cry. Elyse struggles relentlessly behind her. “No one has been up the mountain in years,” she says. “There is no food. We all know that, Elyse. We’ve told stories about the mountain forever.”

“You were there! You—” And then Elyse stops. “You knew,” she says. “You’ve known this whole time.”

“You’re making no sense, Elyse.”

“I’m making perfect sense!” Elyse cries. “You kept this from all of us while the whole city was starving?”

“ Is starving,” Heather mutters. She feels Elyse watching her. “We are starving, Elyse. We will continue to starve until it ends.” The footsteps stop, and finally Heather turns to see Elyse half hunched over in the middle of the overgrown road. She and the girls are almost home; she has to shut this girl down. “You didn’t see anything,” Heather says. “I walk the forest all the time, Elyse—I know how the shadows and the light can trick you. Stop grasping for hope that isn’t there.”

“I know what I saw,” Elyse insists. “And it wasn’t a horse.”

“What did you see?” It’s B, on their doorstep, coming out to meet them.

Heather shrugs. She lifts Greta out of the sling and passes her over so that B’s attention shifts to the baby. “Nothing,” she says. “A trick of the light in the forest. That’s all.”

Elyse laughs. “The only one with tricks around here is you.” She looks at B. “Did you see it too? Do you know about the creature in the forest?”

B pauses only for an instant, but it’s enough. “What creature?” he says.

“Half man, half horse,” Elyse gasps. “It was—Brendan, it was like something from a dream. Like the stories we used to hear when we were kids! But it was real. I swear.”

“If there are magical creatures in the mountains,” Heather says, trying to sound weary, not panicked, “don’t you think someone would have talked about them before?”

“You did,” B says. Low and unmistakable.

She glances at him. “What? I did not.”

“Right after you came down, when your father died. You told the doctors there were creatures on the mountain. And no one believed you, so you stopped talking.”

Heather swallows. “How would you know?”

“I went to school with you, remember? People talked. Everyone knew about your time in the hospital. Everyone said you were crazy. I said it too, once.”

She looks away from him. The sting is so old it doesn’t even hurt, but the panic building in her chest is something altogether different. “I barely remember you from school.”

“Why would you?” he says, still in that strange voice. “You didn’t talk to anybody.”

She laughs. “And everyone remembered me anyway—because they said I was crazy? Because I walked funny?”

He doesn’t deny it.

“They’re up on the mountain,” Elyse interjects. She has B now—soon she’ll have the whole city. “Brendan—they have food up on the mountain. We have to go up.”

He hasn’t stopped looking at Heather. “Is that where the fruit came from? And the flowers?”

She doesn’t meet his eyes. “There is nothing on the mountain,” she says, again. “If we go up there, people will die.”

“People have already died!” Elyse shouts. She takes one more step closer to Heather. “If you aren’t going to do what needs to be done, then I will.” She turns and starts to walk to the town.