Amanda Leduc - The Centaur's Wife

“I counted too,” Moira says. “When the scream came. I was in a bathroom, and I counted the tiles.”

“And you?” Tasha asks Darby.

“I was buried when the meteors came,” he says. A shudder goes through them all. “It took three days for people to dig me out. I spent most of the time thinking about going on vacation somewhere tropical and imagining the drinks I would buy, the things I would see when I went scuba diving. I’ve never been scuba diving.” He shrugs, then laughs a little. “Happy place, right? That’s what my therapist told me, years ago.”

Tasha tells them about the greenhouse—the long walks she took to its warmth in the winter, the madness and grief she experienced there that left her shaking on the ground.

“It got bearable,” she says, “eventually. As though the flowers… prepared me, somehow.” She looks at them all. “The same way that your lives—the things your lives forced you to know—prepared you.”

“So—what?” Darby laughs again, tiredly. “Only the broken survive? Is that it?”

“Nobody here is broken.” Elyse’s voice is fierce.

Moira only shrugs. “It’s not that complicated. Grief is boring. You get used to anything in time—even that.”

“But some people don’t,” Tasha says, glancing at Annie, who has come to stand in the doorway. “Lots of people didn’t—look at how few of us are left. Annie and Elyse and I are the only ones left in the whole city.”

At this, JJ— Joseph, Moira tells herself—stirs. “Everyone?” he says.

Tasha spreads her hands. “As far as we can tell. We’ve gone walking a lot. We haven’t found anyone else.”

“Anyway,” Annie says, abruptly, “we’re leaving. We should have left months ago.”

“But what about the centaur?” Moira says. Everyone freezes, and she watches them all register this fact again—they’ve been so wrapped up in Brian they forgot. Her too. “You’ve seen him?”

“I saw him,” Elyse says. “With Heather, by the greenhouse near the mountain. Just before the scream came.”

“Heather?” Joseph gets up from his chair. “She was there? With the creature—the centaur—whatever it is?”

“Who’s Heather?” Moira snaps.

But Joseph is looking at Tasha. “I told you that mountain was strange,” he says. “It brought me back again. Twice.”

“Who’s Heather?” Moira says. “What the fuck is going on?”

Tasha hasn’t taken her eyes from Joseph. “She died weeks ago, with the others.”

“Tasha, I think she’s alive.”

None of them can take in any more. Exhausted, they curl up in the chairs and try to sleep. Tasha and Annie sleep in the back room, near Brian, who is fitful. In the early morning Tasha checks him and finds that his fever has gone down a little.

“He’ll need something to eat,” she says, looking to Annie. “Let’s get him something warm.” The other woman nods.

They go outside and make their way to the townhouse, where they grab some rice and beans. They come back and light a fire in the alley pit behind the clinic, then take turns stirring the rice and beans over the fire. Annie is the one who brings it up again.

“Heather knew,” she says. “She knew this whole time.”

Tasha stares into the pot. “Looks that way.”

“Did you—suspect her?”

Tasha stirs for a while before she answers. “I don’t know what I suspected,” she says at last. “There was something about her that drew me in. Like—oh, Annie, I don’t know. Like she was family? Somehow? Or maybe I just thought she knew more about the mountain than she was letting on. But everyone else—there were so many stories. Foxes and murdered babies and people who disappeared. I didn’t know what to believe.”

Annie lets out a grim laugh. “I thought you were in love with her,” she says. “I thought—I don’t know what I thought.”

Tasha shakes her head. “It wasn’t that, ever. I—recognized her, somehow. She recognized me. That’s what it felt like. Even though I know she didn’t trust me. That’s what I was trying to figure out.”

They watch the pot for a few more minutes in silence.

“What happens now?” Annie asks.

“We’re leaving. Same as before.”

“Even if Heather’s up there on the mountain?”

“Yes,” Tasha says. She pours a bucket of dirty water over the fire and straightens. “We have the truck now—that’s as good a sign as any we’re meant to go.”

As they carry the pot to the clinic, they both hear it—footfalls. Horses, galloping closer.

Annie’s hands tremble; Tasha takes the pot from her.

Inside the clinic, everyone else is already crowded at the front window. Tasha sets the pot on a towel on the counter and checks on Brian, then follows everyone outside. They stand together and listen. Silence. Not even the birds.

Then, the sound of weeping. They shouldn’t be able to hear it, but the rest of the world is so silent it isn’t hard to make out. Hard sobs, thick and anguished. A voice she remembers, a voice she knows. She closes her eyes and feels the sudden rush of falling.

“Let’s go,” Tasha says, and she leads them all to Heather’s house.

Heather slides from Aura’s back onto the ground. There is no walkway to the front door anymore. She takes a few steps through the foliage and then drops to her knees. The vines and soft green things on the ground slide around her legs, but she pays no attention.

She doesn’t want to go in. This is far enough. She bends down and places her forehead against the grass. Her sobs come hard and angry.

Greta and Jilly, snuggled against her in their sling.

Greta and Jilly, crawling on the grass.

B’s hesitant smile.

All gone.

The centaurs stand guard around her and say nothing.

Then there’s another cry—a human voice. The centaurs stiffen around her. She stands up, slowly, and turns.

She sees pale hair first, and the relief is so strong she’s surprised.

“Elyse,” she breathes. Beside Elyse, Tasha. And Annie. And Joseph.

And then she hears the unmistakable click of a gun. On the other side of Joseph stands a stranger, her gun pointed at Estajfan’s face.

Heather is still pregnant, but even so she is thinner than Tasha remembers. She tries hard not to look at the centaurs, but this proves impossible. They are so large, so strange and beautiful—the brown-skinned one closest to Heather huge and tall, the other two pale and blond. Each centaur wears a golden cuff. Against the world’s vivid green they’re exquisite—a dream come to life that will fade if she blinks.

The darker one, she sees, has a bandage wrapped around its flank.

This is the one that Moira is staring at, her eyes glinting with fury, the pistol in her hands raised and pointing at its head.

“Moira,” Tasha says. She wants to fall on her knees and weep, touch her forehead to the ground, pray. Something. She keeps her voice low, a hand outstretched. “Moira, put the gun away.”

“I told you not to move!” Moira shouts at the centaur. “I fucking told you not to move!”

“ Moira! ” Tasha shouts, trying to snap her out of it.

“Brian is back there with a broken leg because of them!”

“Brian will be all right,” Tasha says. She forces a steadiness into her voice that she doesn’t feel, and takes a step closer to Heather. “No one else needs to get hurt today.” She nods to Heather. “The baby?”