The Centaur's Wife

by Amanda Leduc

  Tasha raises a hand and holds Annie’s palm to her chest. “We just have to be patient. We’ll figure it out.”

  * * *

  In September, one of the city residents suggests that they plant clover in the gardens to enrich the soil.

  “Next spring, we can till it in, and it’ll release nutrients as it decomposes,” he tells them. His name is Joseph. He doesn’t trust Tasha. He doesn’t trust anybody.

  Joseph often goes out of town on his bicycle, searching for news. Sometimes others join him and sometimes he goes alone. On bikes they are still able to weave their way along roads choked with grass and vines.

  They bring back supplies—bags of rice and lentils, dented cans of tomatoes and beans. More often than not they bring only stories: death in that city, death in that town. Looting and fire and terror and fear.

  One night when Joseph returns, he half staggers into the clinic, his shirt spotted with blood.

  “Jesus,” Annie says. She loops his arm around her shoulders and brings him to the back room, then settles him down on the mattress. As she strips him of the shirt, Tasha pulls on a pair of gloves. A four-inch slit gapes down Joseph’s side.

  “What happened?” she asks.

  The front bell sounds and they all look up—it is only Elyse, coming in carrying a bag of chips.

  “I—I didn’t know if anyone had eaten,” she falters when she sees them.

  Tasha waves her in. She looks back to Joseph. “Tell me what went wrong.”

  “Ambush,” he says, hissing as Tasha swabs his skin with disinfectant. “Pushed me off the bike and took all of the supplies. Swiped at me when I got up and ran after them. I didn’t have a lot—I guess that was a good thing.”

  “They didn’t take the bike?” Annie says.

  “No.” Joseph manages to laugh. “There’s so much green shit on the roads, even the bike is practically useless.”

  Tasha shines the beam of a mini flashlight on the wound. It isn’t as deep as she’d feared. There is bruising and swelling around it, but the edges are clean and no ribs appear to be broken.

  “No more going out alone,” Tasha says. “That’s an order.”

  Annie snorts, softly. Tasha half expects Joseph to snap at her, but he only says, “I don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to go out anyway. The roads are impassable.”

  Tasha wipes the cut with disinfectant on a small sponge, working as gently as she can. “When was your last tetanus shot?”

  “Tetanus shot?” he says. “I think the kids got theirs—two years ago?” His face clouds over. “My oldest hated needles. I got a booster of some kind at the same time so he could see it wasn’t the end of the world.” A sharp intake of breath—at his own words or the action of her hand, she isn’t sure. “It might have been tetanus. I don’t know.”

  Elyse opens her bag of chips and passes it to Joseph. He reaches in, silently, and grabs a handful, crunching as Tasha cleans the wound. When she’s done, Annie hands her a small tube from a satchel that sits on the counter. Tasha’s own personal medical kit. It’s one of the first things she put together when they arrived.

  “Surgical glue,” Tasha says when she sees Joseph stare at it. “It’s safe, I swear. If the cut was deeper, I would stitch you.” She closes the wound, then covers it with a bandage. “No biking for at least a week,” she says. “Also, keep it dry for at least two days. No showers, no long, luxurious soaks in the tub.”

  He doesn’t laugh. “What are you going to do when the winter comes? When no one can leave the city?”

  “Anyone can leave,” Tasha says. “I’m not stopping them.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” he says. “What if something happens in the city? What if you aren’t enough? I see the way people look at you now. Half of them hate you and half of them look like they think you can fucking cure cancer. What are you going to do if the food runs out?”

  She sits back on her heels. “I’ve always tried to be truthful. I never said—”

  “Help will come,” he mocks. “You’ve been saying that for months. I’m not an idiot! You’re making it so that people don’t want to leave.”

  “I’m trying to give everyone hope,” Tasha says around a sinking feeling in her gut. “I’m trying to give everyone something to do. Is that bad?”

  “Is having something to do going to save them in the winter when we run out of food? What happens when we run out of the water-purifying tablets that you stole from the store?”

  “I didn’t steal them, I collect—”

  “You know what I mean! What happens when the sun sets at four in the afternoon and doesn’t rise till ten and people scare themselves by telling ghost stories about the mountain? You think everyone’s going to be calm and happy and satisfied when we’re in the dark all the time?”

  “No one’s going to tell ghost stories,” Tasha says, trying to keep her voice light. “We’re just going to survive.”

  He snorts. “You really have no fucking clue, do you. You’re already telling them a fairy tale. Stay here, work together, everything will be okay. When in the end we’re all going to become ghosts.”

  We’re all going to starve. We’re all going to starve.

  “We’ll find a way,” Elyse insists, her voice surprisingly loud. “Annie and Tasha will help us find a way.”

  Joseph rolls his eyes. “Sure, kid, sure.”

  She bristles. “I’m not a kid. If you hate it here so much, why did you come back?”

  Something dark washes over Joseph’s face. “The mountain called me back. I had nowhere else to go.” He laughs a little. “Whatever. You know what? You let Tasha and Annie find a way for you, Elyse, and tell me how that goes. As for me—I’ll do just fine without you, thanks very much.”

  Tasha stands up, brushes her pant legs off, and tries not to sound hurt. “Just be careful with that cut and you won’t need any saving. If you do, you know where we are.”

  Joseph, looking not a little ashamed of himself, puts on his bloody shirt and heads out the door.

  “We could go,” Annie says after he leaves. “You and me and Elyse. We could take one of the fire trucks and drive away from here right now. A fire truck would make it through.”

  Tasha sighs. “Where would we go? What’s better than here?”

  “I don’t know,” Annie says, “but it’s better than starving to death surrounded by madmen.”

  “No one’s mad,” Tasha says. “They’re just afraid. That’s all.”

  “So then what did Joseph mean by the mountain calling him back?” Elyse says.

  No one has an answer.

  * * *

  The next day, Tasha slips out of the clinic alone and makes her way to the forest. She has come often since that day weeks ago when she saw Heather and the twins. She’s found that the trees calm her down too. And there is something oddly addictive about the mountain—how small she feels in its shadow, how insignificant. The world has changed so much as to be almost unrecognizable, but the mountains endure.

  For the first time since she started walking in the woods, she spots Heather, up ahead of her, telling stories to the babies. A genie and three wishes. Fairies who come to steal babies from their cribs.

  “Come with us,” said the fairies, “and we’ll give you halls of golden toys and warm fires to sleep near, and so many good things to eat.” The babies were cold and defeated by the rumbling of their stomachs, so they held out their hands and the fairies scooped them away.

  “Where do the fairies take them?” Tasha calls out, softly.

  Heather whips around, then relaxes a little when she sees it’s only Tasha. “Somewhere better,” she says. Shadows play over her face. To her girls, she says, “But don’t worry. You’re safe with me and Daddy. Everything will be okay.”

  Tasha takes a step forward.

  H
eather takes a step back, then holds her ground. “Is something wrong?”

  “No.” Tasha comes to stand in front of her. “Sorry. I just—I found I like to go for walks out here too.”

  The babies crane their heads to look at Tasha. “They still don’t sleep,” Heather says. “I have to walk them all the time.”

  Tasha nods. She has heard this from Brendan. “They’re what—five months old now?” she says. “If it’s colic, they should grow out of it soon.”

  “I guess,” Heather says. Up close, she is a shadow of a shadow, her eyes frantic and bright. “I feel like that day will never come.”

  “I can imagine.”

  Heather laughs. “Can you?”

  Tasha shrugs.

  Heather turns and starts walking again—not an invitation, not quite a dismissal—and Tasha falls in step behind her. They walk for a long time in silence, stepping carefully over the forest floor. They’re not on a path—not exactly—but as Tasha follows Heather’s lead, she begins to see a faint impression that tells her someone has been this way before. They come to a break in the trees and set out across a small field matted with tall weeds and grasses, tangled wildflowers. Milkweed with seed pods the size of her hand. Queen Anne’s lace that reaches her shoulders. Sunflowers that are taller than she is. The greens are so deep they’re hard to look at, too strong for the eyes. It’s intoxicating, but it makes Tasha uneasy.

  The babies watch Tasha with bright, interested eyes. One of them—Greta?—smiles at Tasha, then stretches her hand out to the milkweed. Without looking, Heather gently intercepts her baby.

  “Why won’t you talk to me?” Tasha asks, at last.

  “I don’t talk to most people,” Heather says, some amusement in her voice. “Surely everyone has told you that by now.”

  “But—I heard you scream,” Tasha says. She feels ridiculous, but presses on. “I heard you scream, and you saw me after the fire.”

  “Why do you want that to matter so much?”

  “Shouldn’t it matter? What does it mean?”

  “You tell me. You’re the doctor.”

  “Oh, stop with that!” Tasha shouts. “I just want to know. I want to understand.” She takes a couple of steps ahead of Heather and throws an arm out to the vegetation around them. “Why are plants growing like this out here when we can’t grow things in our gardens or the greenhouses?”

  “How am I supposed to know the answer to that?”

  “I don’t know!” She’s embarrassed by the loudness of her voice. “No one else comes out here except for you. And me. No one else goes to the mountain. Instead all I hear are stories about the mountain from people who struggle to believe that coming together as a community will help us get through the winter. And yet everyone’s perfectly happy to believe that the mountain is home to monsters, or whatever. None of it makes any sense.”

  Heather keeps walking.

  “People do tell me that you’re crazy,” Tasha says, baldly. She watches Heather’s shoulders stiffen. “They say that you went up the mountain and when you came down you were never the same.” She wants to take the words back instantly.

  “By people,” Heather says, “do you mean my husband?”

  Tasha feels shame creep up her neck and stain her face. “No.”

  Heather glances at her. “You’re lying,” she says. “Or maybe he’s not the only one who says that. That’s all right. What else did he tell you?”

  “He didn’t say you were crazy,” Tasha says. That was other people. “He just said that something happened to you when you were young.”

  “What else do people tell you about the mountain?”

  “More stories,” Tasha says. “A friend of a friend who disappeared on the mountain years ago. Monsters who live in the forest trees. Shadows people see when they’re drunk. That kind of thing.”

  “Stories are never just stories, Tasha. You of all people should know that.”

  She blinks. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You don’t know?” Heather says. She sounds amused and also exhausted—a touch manic, a sliver hysterical. “You tell stories to the people every day.”

  She thinks of Joseph, and looks down at the ground. “What? I do not.”

  Heather sighs. “Tasha. Of course you do. ‘Everything will be okay if we stick together and help each other out—’ ”

  “Everything will be okay,” Tasha says, fiercely. “That’s not a story—it’s the truth. We just have to be there for each other.”

  Heather snorts. “This city is not good at that kind of thing. I could have told you that when you got here.”

  “But you didn’t,” Tasha presses. “You barely talk to me at all.”

  “It’s all I can do to hang on,” Heather says, her hands going to her babies’ heads.

  “Were they there for you? The people in the city?” Tasha asks, softly. Even though she knows the answer.

  Heather casts her a sidelong glance, but keeps on walking. “Who wants to be there for the village idiot?” she says. “Especially when they can make the village idiot into a story herself?”

  Tasha thinks again, oddly, of fiery birds burning holes in the ground. Octopuses who gather treasure. A prince gone to find a woman locked in a tower. “My parents told me stories when I was young to help me overcome something,” she says. “To give me hope, to help me hang on. And then I got older, and I didn’t need the stories anymore. But the stories that people tell in this town feel different. These aren’t stories that help. They don’t inspire hope—they inspire fear. I can’t let that happen. Everything that we’re dealing with is bad enough, and stories that scare people are only going to make it worse. Why are people afraid of the mountain, for real?”

  Heather cocks her head slightly to the side. “You know why,” she says. “My father died there, a long time ago. Mothers tell their kids that people disappear on the mountain. That way they avoid it, and no one gets hurt.”

  “Are there trails up it?”

  Heather shrugs. “There used to be. They’re overgrown now. The city made them off-limits.”

  The forest suddenly feels still and heavy. The light has changed—the sky clouding over. “What about the monster stories, though,” Tasha asks. “Creatures that hide in the trees? Ghosts who lure children away?”

  Heather doesn’t answer.

  “None of it makes any sense,” Tasha continues, frustrated.

  “Why does it need to make sense?”

  Tasha trips on a whorl of green and almost falls. When she straightens, she says, “Because people are already on edge! And when they tell each other these stories, they feed their paranoia. People talk about monsters and they talk about how we’re all going to starve. People have no hope.”

  Heather nods. “You’ve been talking to Joseph,” she says. “Look, Tasha”—and her tone is almost kind now—“everything is unfamiliar. Even the city that some of these people have known their whole lives. They’re telling stories to make sense of it—to try and understand it. That’s all.”

  “But what good will stories about monsters do?” Tasha presses. “That doesn’t help people gather food or ration supplies or believe that we’ll be able to take care of one another. If anything, it makes it worse.”

  They step out of the trees into another tangled meadow. There’s a greenhouse here, half swallowed by wildflowers and grass.

  They both stop to stare. Tasha is confused. She turns to look at Heather. “Did we build one all the way out here?”

  Heather walks to the greenhouse, puts her hand against the clouded door.

  It’s old, Tasha realizes. It’s not one of theirs.

  Heather grasps the door and pulls it open. The babies coo and stir.

  Tasha can smell the flowers before she sees them. When she steps up beside Heather, her eyes fill with colour—
the blue rustle of a jacaranda tree growing tall in the middle of the greenhouse. Pink and orange and red lilies that burst at their feet, the twining shocks of white and purple orchids that reach up through the tangles of green. The deep, dark red of amaryllis.

  “Where did this come from?” Tasha says. “Why is everything—why is everything growing?”

  “I don’t know,” Heather whispers.

  “Did you build this? Is this where those flowers came from, the ones in your house?”

  “I—no. Not me.” Heather shakes her head. “My father built this greenhouse. A long time ago.”

  “Did he plant all of this?”

  “Yes. But I thought everything died after he did. I haven’t been back here in years.”

  Tasha stares into the greenhouse, tries to focus. The colours swim together. “Well, it isn’t dead now,” she says. “You’re sure this isn’t where your flowers are from?”

  “I have no idea,” Heather says. She is staring at the amaryllis.

  “Why are things growing here when they aren’t growing in the other greenhouses?”

  It’s Heather’s turn to snap. “I don’t know, Tasha! Why are there vines growing over the houses when nothing grows in the gardens? Why are the goddamned sunflowers six feet high and the tomato plants turning yellow?” She falls silent and they both stand for a moment, breathing in. It smells sweet in here, and fresh. Everything feels new and also secret, as though it hasn’t been disturbed in years.

  “Jilly,” Heather hisses suddenly and Tasha snaps back to herself. The baby looks at them, her hand caught in a plant hanging down by her face. Two green half moons are clamped around her fist. Tasha reaches for the plant and pulls it open. Jilly’s hand is unharmed, though covered with a sticky, greenish-white residue.

  Tasha wipes the baby’s fist clean with her sleeve. She pulls a bandage from her side bag and wraps it around Jilly’s hand just in case. “Don’t let her put her fingers in her mouth until you’ve washed them.”

  Heather nods. Then she puts her hand around Tasha’s. “Thank you,” she says. “I know I don’t say that enough.” She swallows. “We’d best get back.” She turns toward the city, not waiting for Tasha to follow.