Amanda Leduc - The Centaur's Wife

“Are they all dead?” Annie says after some time.

Tasha wants to weep, but she’s too tired. She also wants to be back inside—away from the living green that masses all around them, especially thick and lush where the bodies lie.

Annie touches Tasha’s shoulder, hesitantly, as though they are strangers. “You need to lie down,” she says.

“We both need to lie down,” Tasha says.

“Let’s go home,” Annie says. “Let’s go home and sleep and we’ll see what we can do after that.”

“What about Elyse?” Tasha whispers, shocked that she hasn’t even thought of her. Annie has no answer, just takes her hand. When they reach the townhouse, the door sticks, and Annie has to shove it open with her shoulder. Tasha grabs her arm. “What if she’s inside?”

They pause, horrified, but Elyse is not behind the door. They creep from room to room but there is nothing—no body, no voice, no shock of blonde hair. The house feels like a museum.

It is a museum , Tasha thinks. A museum of a world that is never coming back.

In the kitchen, everything has a faint greenish tint—the windows are almost obscured by vines. A handful of red amaryllis she brought back from her last trip to the greenhouse still bloom on the windowsill. Tasha checks the vase. It is bone dry but the flowers sit unchanged, deep and red.

She picks up the vase and smashes it against the tiles. Then she gathers up the flowers and throws them out the back door while Annie stands looking at her as if it’s Tasha, now, who has lost her mind.

Tasha takes a deep breath. “I don’t want them in the house anymore.”

They climb the stairs to the bedroom, crawl into bed, and curl close together. Annie is weeping silently now. Tasha raises her hand and wipes her tears away. She falls asleep to the rhythm of Annie’s heartbeat, firm and strong beneath her ear.

In the morning they go outside, armed with scalpels and scissors. They walk up and down and up and down the streets, screaming names until they lose their voices.

Elyse!

Kevin!

Alan!

ANYBODY!

They retreat to the clinic, pry open a can of baked beans, share it between them.

“What do we do now?” Annie says.

“We leave.” She closes her eyes and leans her head back against the wall. “Annie,” she says, “I’m so sorry.”

“We’re still alive because of you,” Annie says.

“Maybe that’s why I’m sorry,” Tasha says. “How long can we survive on our own?”

Annie clears her throat. “Well,” she says. “We have each other. At the end.”

Tasha reaches for Annie’s hand. “Yes,” she whispers, and she closes her eyes. “We do.”

When she opens her eyes again, vines are slithering over the woman’s body in the broken window and stretching out toward them. Tasha scrambles to her feet and pulls Annie with her.

“Out,” she breathes. “We need to get out of here.”

They lurch out of the clinic and into the stillness of the day. It is a stillness that feels different now—heavy, waiting.

“Let’s go back to the townhouse,” Tasha says, and they walk quickly. Everywhere they turn it feels like green things are moving, and yet everywhere they turn things are too silent, too still. Even the wind seems to be holding its breath.

“Run,” Tasha says, suffused with sudden terror. “Run, run, run .”

They take off down the street toward the townhouse—halfway there, Annie grabs Tasha and they both stop.

“Did you hear that?” she gasps.

“Hear what?”

But then Tasha hears it too. Tap. Tap tap. A faint rattle. Followed by a slow, almost imperceptible moan.

Annie turns her head. The vines and flowers—Tasha’s not imagining this—freeze around them. “Where is it coming from?”

Tasha listens again, and then points. The screen door on the front of the house next to theirs trembles, just a little bit.

Tasha takes the scissors out of her pocket and walks slowly toward the house.

Get inside! a voice screams inside her head. Get the fuck inside!

“Tasha,” Annie says. “Tasha, you don’t know—”

She doesn’t listen. She crosses the path to the house and climbs up the front steps. She takes a breath and puts her hand against the knob, then pulls.

Tasha drops to her knees, and Annie comes running.

It’s Elyse, crumpled on the floor. She slowly turns her head.

“I heard you,” she gasps. “I heard you call my name.”

They gather her up, weeping, and hold her close between them.

He doesn’t mean to go far. He doesn’t. But he finds he needs to run, only stopping for a moment at the mountain cave to tell his sister where Heather is. “She’s up with the willows. Go to her, Aura. I—can’t.”

And then he’s past her, through the meadow, then on the downward path, his hooves hitting the shale and sliding, going down.

Heather. As a child standing before him on the mountain. As a teenager in the garden, her eyes lost and huge. Heather at the greenhouse. Heather on the mountain.

Heather, before him at the willow trees.

Heather, telling him to leave.

He’d been a monster that day when her father had fallen from the cliff. He hadn’t meant to be.

She doesn’t need help! he had wanted to scream. The child there in front of them, so sweet and open. The struggle of their climb had been written all over her face. She’d looked tired, and also guilty to be tired, as though her fatigue had somehow betrayed her father’s dreams. He’d seen it all at once, had understood it instantly.

What monsters are these?

Get them away, get them away.

Help her, the father had said. The way their own father had asked for the mountain’s help so long ago. Make them like me.

She doesn’t need help! he’d wanted to yell at her father. She doesn’t need to be fixed!

And so he had hesitated. Not for long, but long enough.

He runs. To the base of the mountain, past the city, through the foothills. The stars shine far overhead and the ground tells him nothing. There are no people. Not even animals bar his way.

When he stops, a long while later, he can smell the faint tang of the sea. He walks for a while until he reaches an abandoned beach village—old clapboard houses falling down, the centre street overgrown with grass and weeds. Two rabbits leap across what used to be the road and then disappear.

At the edge of the sea, he pauses for a moment, then he wades into the water until it’s up past his knees, above his belly, until the ocean covers his back and he’s just a torso in the waves. If someone saw him now, they would think he was a man. Only a man.

The waves push hard against him. Other things still live here, beneath the surface. He can feel them swimming far away. The ocean keeps on going. The mountain endures in a different way.

The green of growing things—that endures too, in a way he is only beginning to understand.

He stands for a while in the sea, feeling the waves, soothed by their roar. He isn’t cold. The sky above him is shot with stars.

When daylight is still some time away, he turns around and heads for land. He stands dripping on the beach for one long moment and then begins the long run back home. He’ll bring Heather here, he decides. He’ll stay with her, he’ll find them food. Whatever it takes.

He runs on a tangled road that leads him through one empty town after another. The buildings on either side are like dark hills with hidden eyes. They watch, but let him pass.