Amanda Leduc - The Centaur's Wife

Can he see the woman? She can’t tell.

“It is too soon,” the woman agrees. “But it is going to happen anyway.” She takes Heather’s hand. “You’ll be all right,” she says. “Whatever happens.”

“Who are you?” she gasps out. The woman only smiles.

“Breathe with me,” she says. She touches Heather’s forehead again. “In and out.”

How long do they do this? Heather isn’t sure. Minutes, hours.

Something leaks from her, a warm gush out onto the ground.

“You’re all right,” the woman says again. “You’ll be all right.”

“ Who are you? ” Heather cries.

“I am the flowers,” the woman says. Her hand firm against Heather’s abdomen, her other hand twining through Heather’s fingers, squeezing hard. “I am the flowers, I am the trees.”

“Heather?” Estajfan calls. “Who are you talking to?”

“I don’t understand,” Heather presses. “Do you live here?”

The woman’s face swims before her eyes. “I didn’t live here,” she says, “but now I do. The mountain is my home; I will never leave it. Your father has already left—he has gone to prepare the way.” She nods to Heather’s belly. “He will come, your boy. We might have to pull him out.”

“I can’t do it,” Heather whispers. “He won’t survive.” I won’t survive , she thinks. The mountain will claim us all.

The woman shakes her head again, and smiles. “No. The mountain claimed me, but I survived. I came out of the ground with the flowers, and so will you.”

“I came out of the ground,” Heather repeats, dizzily. “I didn’t change at all.”

The woman leans in close. “Didn’t you?” Her hand against Heather’s cheek, her expression gentle and knowing. “Heather,” she says.

Heather. Heather. She hears the words as if from far away.

“Heather?” Tasha calls. “ Heather? ”

“ There! ” Petrolio cries, and he jumps down the path to a large overhang. Two bodies lie crumpled and bleeding.

“Tasha,” Heather answers, weakly. Tasha slides off the centaur and drops to her knees, then presses her hand against Heather’s abdomen. Heather whimpers.

“How long?” Tasha asks.

“I don’t know.” Heather turns her head—she’s looking around for something. “I don’t know—how long—we’ve been down here.”

Petrolio bends over Estajfan. Voices, another low moan.

Tasha leans in close. “He’s breech, Heather.”

“Yes.” She glances over at the centaurs. “Help Estajfan, please.”

Tasha nods. “His leg is broken,” she says. “I think yours might be too. But we can fix that. Heather, look at me.” Heather nods, meets her eyes. “He’s breech,” Tasha repeats. “I can’t deliver him that way.” She puts a hand against Heather’s cheek. “Do you understand?”

“It’s too early,” Heather says again.

“I know. But we have to try.” Tasha reaches into her medical bag and pulls out antiseptic swabs, then she dips into the bag that Aura gave her and pulls out a needle, small and sharp, a coil of translucent thread. The scalpel, smooth and cool beneath her fingertips. It sparkles in the setting sun, sharp and ready. The sun reflects off its surface and sends pinpoints of light over Heather’s face.

“You’ll take care of him?” Heather says.

“Yes.” The word is like starlight in her mouth—impossible, unmistakable. “But so will you.”

As they descend, Moira can’t stop thinking about the centaurs that stand far above them, covered in green. She can’t stop thinking about the way Estajfan jumped after the woman. Heather.

“Do you see them?” she calls to Aura and the others. They’ve been scrambling down for she doesn’t know how long. No one survives a fall like that.

Beside her, she can see Annie struggling with the same thing. And if they find the bodies—what happens then?

“We’re leaving,” Annie says, as if she hears that last thought. “We get down from here, and we take what food we have left and go. We’ll find other people somewhere. There must be others who’ve survived.”

Others , Moira thinks. Others who met their grief and faced it, or knew what to do with it. She thinks again of Heather. Maybe we’ve always been ready.

“Heather and Estajfan have survived,” Elyse says, with a conviction none of them feel. “We made our way up here. It means something. Nothing else would make sense.”

Moira wants to laugh— What about this makes any kind of sense?— but she can’t.

The sun crawls down the sky.

And then she hears a cry from Aura, and an answering shout—from Petrolio, Moira thinks. Petrolio, and Tasha.

They stumble down and reach the overhang. They are alive, impossibly. Aura kneels and Moira and Annie lift Elyse from her back, then rest her between them. She seems barely there and yet brighter, somehow, than any of them. Dazed and tired and still surprised to find herself there at all. And triumphant, somehow, in the knowing. Annie lowers her gently to the ground and settles beside her.

Moira crouches near Heather, then reaches for her hand and squeezes tight.

“Heather.”

Heather. Darby. Joseph. Brian and Annie, Tasha and Elyse.

Aura . She whispers the names to herself. Aura, Estajfan, Petrolio.

Heather looks at her, eyes wide with fear.

“Heather,” Moira says again. “It’s going to be okay.”

When Tasha cuts into her belly, Heather screams, but they are holding her down, Petrolio and Aura on either side of her, Moira at her head, Elyse and Annie behind her like blonde ghosts. Another shadow behind them—the other woman, brown-haired and gentle. Estajfan, reaching silently for her through the waves of pain and terror. And then there is a great wrench and something dark that blocks her view of the sky—her son, tiny and screaming as Tasha pulls him from her belly and holds him up. Heather sees four dark legs but then the light shifts and he is only a dark-haired baby boy, crying loud enough for the whole world to hear.

Tasha passes the baby to Annie and then begins to sew Heather up. It hurts, but not as much as she expected it would. After Tasha snips off the thread, she spreads the salve from Aura’s bag over the wound and covers it in cloth, then Annie passes her son to her. He is still crying loud enough to fill the sky, and as Heather gathers him into her good arm she sees flashes of his life the way she saw her own fall from the mountain, the way she brought them to Estajfan, the way she saw Tasha and the flames. The long climb down, the even longer climb they will make to find food, to find others. The family they will become. The sudden blossoming of fruit trees and plants down below, a presence deep within the soil that she recognizes.

Her father has left the mountain too. He is waiting for her, down below.

Estajfan , she thinks. Estajfan beside her, around her, everywhere.

I survived, she thinks. I came out of the ground with the flowers.

The baby roots for her nipple like her girls did. Tasha cups his head and guides him to it, and Heather feels him suck at her as though he’s been waiting for this, only this, all these months. It’s an ordinary magic, but it’s stronger than the mountain.

He is so small, but that is all right—he is here now. He is hers.