Amanda Leduc - The Centaur's Wife

When she opens her eyes again, a long time later, she is alone beneath the sky.

The stars hang heavy and bright overhead, brighter than they’ve been in a year. Three billion, one hundred and twenty-six million, four hundred and twenty-five thousand and one.

Who could possibly count the stars? Her father had been wrong to count them with her—wrong to take her up the mountain, wrong to fill her head with stories. But he had done it, and now here she is. The ground presses, rough, against her knees.

I want to be something else, she thinks.

No more sloping shoulders, no more awkward gait. No more dead girls or dead husband or dead parents. A new life here on the mountain. Four legs instead of two, family that will mirror her when she looks at them. She drops to her knees and digs her fingers into the soil, and it gives way beneath her hands, inviting her in.

“ I want to be something else. ” This time she says it out loud. She pushes her hands deeper into the earth and now she can feel it—the electric something that Estajfan called ground magic, thrumming and joyous, ancient, alive.

She digs and breathes and digs and breathes. The deeper she goes, the more the longing overtakes her, until it’s a constant hum in her throat, in her chest, in her heart. Estajfan, Estajfan. She won’t live in two worlds anymore. She won’t do it.

She can’t.

When the hole she has dug is deep enough, she scrambles into it and thinks of the horse that did the same all those years ago—what he wanted, what the mountain eventually made him be. Does she need a whole night? She looks up at the stars and pulls the dirt in close. She buries her feet and her legs—her human legs, the last time she’ll see them—then the rest of the dirt falls in on top of her. She can’t move. She can’t move.

The ground whispers in her ear, incantatory and triumphant. She will become other, she will become more.

She cries out as the earth tumbles over her face and blocks the sky. When she screams, she gags on dirt.

Tasha doesn’t know how long she’s been locked inside. It feels like hours.

The mother’s wild wave of grief, her plunge into laughter, the twisting of her hands, her boy’s neck snapped. Annie’s crazed voice.

What does it mean? What has happened?

“Tasha,” Annie moans. She doesn’t sound mad now, only heartbroken—but then she bangs on the door again and Tasha jumps. “Come out. I know you’re in there. You can’t hide from me forever.”

Tasha gets up off the floor, silently, and feels along the shelves and through the boxes—gauze, bandages. Sanitary napkins, toothbrushes. On the highest shelf she finds what she’s looking for, but loses her grip on the box, which topples to the floor.

“Tasha,” Annie moans again. “You come out now .” She starts banging on the door again.

Tasha scrabbles on the floor through clamps, scissors. She picks up a pair of scissors and unwraps them with shaking hands, then feels along the shelves again until she finds a small, heavy box.

Then she goes to the door and turns the lock slowly, hoping Annie doesn’t notice.

One, two. Three.

She shoves the door open, pushing Annie back, brings the box up and smashes it against Annie’s head. Her wife drops the scalpel she’d been clutching and as her hands go up to her head, Tasha kicks Annie in the stomach, then brings her elbow down hard against her neck. Annie falls and Tasha lunges for the scalpel, her fingers closing around it just in time. She climbs over her wife and straddles Annie’s torso, holds the scalpel flat against Annie’s throat while the other hand points the scissors at the soft knob of Annie’s trachea. “Don’t move,” she hisses.

“Tasha,” Annie whispers. “Tasha, I can’t do it. Not anymore.”

“They’re only thoughts,” Tasha says, her voice hard. “They’ll go away.” Her mad thoughts went away in the greenhouse. Despair faded, and became smaller. She has to believe the same will happen for Annie.

“They’ll go away,” she says again. Over and over. “They’ll go away.”

This time, the terror comes for both of them. She sees it sprout from Annie’s ribcage first—an ivory creature with blood-red teeth, its wings all knuckled bone and raw, sinewy flesh. It moans at her, flapping its wings so that darkness brushes her face.

Look at what you did to me, it says.

Tasha whimpers. The creature slithers closer until it’s nose to nose with her, Annie’s fear and sadness staring her straight in the face. How selfish she has been. How selfish she has always been—desperate and arrogant, terrified and yet determined not to show fear. Telling stories. Telling nonsense.

“It’s just a thought,” Tasha whispers. She closes her eyes. “It’s just a thought. It will go away.”

But it’s not enough, and her own creature crawls out of her ribcage—dark and silent, sticky with blood and lumpy bits of brain matter. It stretches its wings and makes for Annie.

“No,” Tasha says. “ You’re not real. ” But the creature doesn’t stop. Annie sobs in terror and now Tasha is sobbing too, shaking as she says the same useless thing over and over.

It’s just a thought. It will go away. It’s just a thought. It will go away.

The creature opens its mouth wide, showing its long, rotting black teeth. Annie screams and screams.

The creature bends, and Annie’s face disappears.

Tasha screams, and faints.

She opens her eyes. There are no creatures.

Beside her Annie sits up slowly, a hand pressed to her head. “Did I fall?”

Tasha shakes her head, sits up on her own. “Something happened,” she whispers. “Do you remember what you did?”

Annie frowns. “I remember—the fire,” she says. “I remember how you stayed in bed for days.”

“Yes.”

“I was in our house,” Annie continues. “And you were there, in every room, and in every room you turned away from me. In the hospital, too—at work, at home. And then—and then we were here, and you were doing the same thing. Over and over.”

She watches Tasha’s face for a moment, then swallows. “Something came out of your ribs.”

Tasha nods, swallows hard.

It’s dark outside, maybe one or two in the morning. A gust of chilly wind blows on them through the broken window. Annie turns to look out the window and sees the dark shape of the body slumped over the broken glass. Her face alive with horror, she turns back to Tasha. “Who is that? What did I do?”

Tasha takes Annie’s hands and squeezes them tight. “No. She did it to herself. But first—” and she watches Annie’s eyes find the crumpled body of the little boy—“first she did that.”

Annie covers her mouth with her hand. When she turns back to Tasha, they’re both wondering the same thing. “The city?” is all she says.

Tasha closes her eyes. The screams, the long silence. “I think so,” she says.

In the morning they make their way out of the clinic, armed with scalpels and scissors.

The dead are everywhere, and already vines are growing over the bodies. The only sound a faint swoop as vultures circle overhead.

They don’t go in the houses, just walk up and down the streets, finding no one.