The Centaur's Wife

by Amanda Leduc

  “And then my father died, and in the years after I came down from the mountain I couldn’t think about that story without wanting to scream in rage. Was I a worm? I wanted to yell at him. Was that all I ever was to you?” She raises her hands and strokes the babies’ red curls. “I was angry about that for years,” she says, softly. “And then I had my own babies. And now I just—these things are complicated, Tasha. It takes time to realize that your child is going to have a different life. We don’t really have that time anymore.”

  “But we could,” Tasha says fiercely. “We have to make that time. You’re telling me if it had been you—you and Greta and Jilly—”

  “I wouldn’t have,” Heather says instantly. “I didn’t.” But something flickers over her face and Tasha is no longer so sure.

  “How do I show them?” Tasha whispers. “How do I show them that the only way we survive is by doing this together?”

  “I think you have to understand that some people won’t survive,” Heather says. “Or that their choices will be different, and their lives will be different too, as a result.”

  “I can’t accept that,” Tasha says flatly. “There are enough of us here who can help one another. There has to be a light at the end. There has to be.”

  Heather watches her. “There will be,” she says, finally. “But it’s not going to look like what you expect light to be. You have to get used to that, too.”

  Tasha says nothing for a moment, finally aware that she’s kneeling before Heather in nothing but her underwear. “You were right to be angry about that story. You’re worth so much more than a worm.”

  Heather only shrugs. “I was angry at him for dying,” she says. “For taking me up on the mountain when he probably shouldn’t have—when he knew it was unsafe. And I was angry at myself for wanting to be the daughter that he wanted me to be. But I was also right, all those years ago, when I was younger. I knew what he meant, even if it wasn’t perfect. Even if he didn’t really understand it—or believe in it, totally—himself. He was trying to tell me that worms are beautiful too—that they shape the world in ways we all need. Without worms, nothing else survives.”

  Tasha sits with this for a moment. Then she reaches for her clothes. “Will you walk back with me?”

  Heather shakes her head. “I like it here,” she says. “We’ll stay a while longer.”

  Tasha nods, then heads back to the city alone.

  * * *

  January becomes February, becomes almost March. The food gifts come less and less. Wizened apples, dented cans.

  Six families die over the winter. Flu, the cold, pneumonia. Tasha spends days and nights in the houses of the sick and dying and then, once death comes, she goes back to the greenhouse. She sheds her clothes and kneels in front of the jacaranda tree and lets the madness—grief, anger, despair, whatever it is—take her.

  Except that as the months go on, the madness takes her less often. She does not weep, she does not scream. Her mind remains her own. There is no jumbled madness—just a long stretch of grief, which is familiar. A small and steady knot beneath her ribs. She lets the knot propel her as the days slide forth to spring.

  They move the dead closer to the forest, away from the town. When the ground is warm enough to dig, those that are still able—Tasha, Annie, Joseph, others—bury the half-thawed bodies out by the trees and scatter quiet prayers over the soil.

  The worms will eat them, she thinks. And from their bodies, something else. From the death of one life, another.

  It wouldn’t be possible without the worms, she thinks. Just like Heather said.

  THE JEALOUS BIRD, AGAIN

  Once there was a bird who was jealous of the sun. No matter how high the bird flew, the sun was always higher, and it made the bird angry.

  “Why should the sun fly higher than we do?” he said to his fellow birds. “We work so hard to stay in the air but the sun sits up there and does nothing. It’s not fair.”

  “The sun has always flown above us.” The bird who said this was much older than the jealous bird, and had seen much more of the world. “This is how it has always been.”

  “Why should something stay the same just because it has always been that way?” said the jealous bird.

  The old bird said, severely, “The sun is higher. We are lower. The sun warms us when we’re cold and sends us light to see worms in the grass, and asks of us nothing in return. You should be grateful for this, not angry.”

  “I will be grateful when the sun sees how much higher I can fly!” cried the bird. He threw his head back and crowed, and many other birds, massed around him, threw back their heads and did the same.

  “You cannot fly higher than the sun,” the old bird warned. “It is foolish to even try.”

  But the jealous bird would not be swayed, for he knew a secret his mother had told him long ago: the birds themselves had come from the sun.

  When he was a fumbling chick in the nest, his mother had said, “You have sunlight in your wings. All that we are comes from the sun. We are the same. Before the world was born, when we all spun round in the sky together, the sun’s fire was also your own.”

  And so the bird gathered all those who were set on fire by his words and told them they would fly to the sun and reclaim their place in the sky. “We have the sun in our feathers,” he said. As one, they spread their wings and lifted from the trees.

  The birds flew high, and then higher still. They flew so high the air became thin; some birds gasped, but kept on struggling; other birds gave up and dropped back, far down to the ground. The jealous bird and a few close friends kept flying.

  They flew so high the air was hard to breathe; they flew so high the sun began to burn their wings. One by one, the birds burst into flame and fell, screaming. When they hit the ground, the earth went black with mourning.

  The jealous bird’s wings burned too, but he held his mother’s words deep inside and pushed on. He flew until the sky curved, until the great dark belly of the universe came into view.

  The sun, the bird saw to his surprise, was still so far away. But the sun saw him, and knew who he was instantly.

  “I have been waiting for you,” the sun said. “I have been waiting for so long.”

  “I’m here to take my rightful place!” the bird cried. He puffed out his chest and waited for the sun to come at him, full of anger.

  But the sun only smiled. “You know your rightful place,” it said. “And your rightful place is far from here.”

  The bird opened his mouth to reply, but all that came out was air; surprised, he stopped beating his wings, and in a moment, he began to tumble, head over tail over feathers, back to the ground.

  But I flew, he thought, dizzily, as he fell. I flew all the way up to the sun.

  You are not meant to fly as high as me, the sun said, the words ringing deep in the jealous bird’s chest. Even if you can. For some, the world must not extend beyond the trees. I have seen this desire burn and grow in you and others. I have waited all this time to show you that you are wrong.

  But can’t you help me? the bird said, still tumbling.

  Why would I help you? said the sun. You should have been content with how beautiful your trees are. That is your lesson, bird: your trees should have been enough.

  The bird heard this, and burned. And when the jealous bird hit the ground, all that was left of him were specks of soot.

  9

  “You shouldn’t come here anymore,” Estajfan tells Heather one day when the snow has almost overwhelmed her as she trudged to the greenhouse. “Let me bring you food in town.”

  He seems extra hard, somehow—all wiry dark-brown arms and body, blackened legs against the snow—but his eyes are the brightest thing in the forest.

  He is not the centaur she remembers. When they meet under cover of the trees around the greenhouse, he is all busine
ss. Handing her the food he has managed to find. Standing ever so slightly away.

  She is probably not the Heather he remembers either. She doesn’t bring him drawings anymore and the only story she has left to tell is this one: they will survive today. Maybe they’ll survive tomorrow.

  Please, let them survive tomorrow.

  “What happens when the food runs out?”

  “There are still things that grow on the mountain,” Estajfan says. He lets Greta pinch his arm, then makes a face. Her laughter flies higher than the trees.

  “The mountain won’t feed the whole city,” Heather says.

  Estajfan makes another face at Greta. “No,” he says. “It won’t.”

  “How many?”

  Now he looks at her, only her. “You,” he says. “I will try to save you.”

  She closes her eyes, takes a step back, a hand on each of their bright-red heads. “Greta,” she says. “And Jilly.” She swallows. “And B.”

  He doesn’t speak for a long time. When she looks up at him, he only nods. “We’ll go as far as we need to go to find you food,” he says again. “I can run for years.” Then he turns from her and goes back to the mountain.

  * * *

  At night, Heather dreams about killing the baby. She dreams about drinking poison tea, she dreams about climbing the mountain, about feeling the wind in her face as Estajfan lifts her into the air and throws her off the mountain’s edge. She imagines surviving the fall, she imagines the pain. Crawling back into the city with broken bones and a belly that’s bled empty.

  No more, she tells B in the dream. I won’t have any more children. I won’t. Don’t ever touch me again.

  Awake, she says nothing. They are rationing so carefully it is a surprise to see her belly grow, but grow it does; the rest of her is so thin that the curve, though small, seems almost grotesque. Only one, this time. A boy.

  (“How do you know it’s a boy?” B asks her, late one night as they lie on the bed.

  “I just do.”)

  In another dream she’s on the mountain, the baby in her arms. The wind blasts pellets of ice through her hair. Estajfan is there with her, shouting.

  What do you want?

  I don’t know what I want. She holds out the baby, whose dark eyes watch her, unafraid.

  Estajfan raises a hand and for an instant she thinks he’s going to hit her. The ground wobbles beneath her feet and Estajfan is reaching for her. His fingertips brush hers. He pauses. It’s only a fraction of a second, but long enough. She falls, the baby’s scream loud in her ear.

  She wakes up slick with sweat, curled over her belly. When she gets up, there is blood on the sheets.

  B wants her to go see Tasha, right away. “The girls and I can come with you,” he says. “We’ll go together.”

  “No,” Heather says. “I can go on my own. It’s all right.”

  He’s hurt. He’s always hurt now, and she is trying not to think about it. She is trying not to think about anything. She cleans herself up as best she can and then sits with the girls while they eat wizened apples for breakfast. When B comes into the kitchen, he smiles at the twins. “You look so pretty,” he says. It’s true. They are beautiful and tiny, like little ruffled sparrows. Then he looks at her. “You’re beautiful too,” he says. “I don’t say that enough.”

  Heather swallows the lump in her throat. “Thank you,” she says. She crosses to kiss him on the cheek. The baby kicks as she straightens, and she takes B’s hand and presses it hard against her abdomen. Another kick and a smile touches his face.

  She blinks and it’s Estajfan standing before her instead. His hand on her belly, his hand against her face. In his eyes she sees the mountain.

  “Heather, are you all right?” B is frowning at her now.

  She steps back and cups her abdomen, trying to quell the shaking of her hands. She manages to kiss him on the cheek again, and then turns on her heel and leaves without saying goodbye to the girls.

  * * *

  At the clinic, Annie is harried. Tasha, as usual, is unflappable and calm. Heather sits in the makeshift waiting room and listens to Tasha speak gently with a father and his children. Annie, at the front counter, takes inventory. She is always taking inventory now, watching their supplies dwindle day after day

  “How are you?” Heather asks, surprising herself.

  “I’m all right,” Annie says, as though she’s never asked herself the question. “Tired. Hungry. But aren’t we all.”

  “And Tasha?”

  “Tasha is Tasha.” Annie shrugs. “One day she’ll drop dead from a heart attack and all of this will be over, but until then, who knows.”

  After the family leaves, Heather follows Annie to where Tasha sits waiting on her chair. Annie pulls the curtain across and sits down beside her.

  “Heather,” she says. “What can we do for you?”

  She tells them about the bleeding. Tasha frowns and gets up to check her belly.

  “The placenta seems lower than it should be,” she says, “though it’s hard to tell exactly what’s going on without equipment. Did you bleed with the girls?”

  “A little,” Heather tells her.

  Worry settles into the lines around Tasha’s eyes. “We’ll just have to wait and see. But let me know if the bleeding continues,” she says.

  Heather looks at them both, then clears her throat. “What if…what if I don’t want it to stop?”

  Tasha blinks. “What?”

  “What if I don’t have this baby?” Heather whispers. “What if I can’t have this baby? Can you help me with that?”

  The women glance at each other. For a moment Heather sees strong emotion pass between them. Envy flickers in her heart. She’s never looked at B like that. She’s never even wanted to. She’s only ever looked like that at someone else—and that, an impossibility.

  “It’s too dangerous,” Tasha says, finally. “Heather—you’re malnourished. I can’t take a chance that something might happen.”

  She swallows, closes her eyes. “Isn’t it dangerous to keep going?”

  “Your body knows what to do,” Tasha says, softly. “Trust your own body before anything else.”

  Her body. Heather lets out a laugh, and wipes a tear from her eye. “My body has always betrayed me,” she says. Not strong enough, not normal enough. And yet still strong enough, somehow, to give her children, again and again.

  “I would do it,” Tasha says. “If this was any other time and we were in any other place. I would do it.”

  The sharp pull of the curtain. Heather turns.

  B stands there, backlit by the light from the windows. She can hear the girls laughing in the waiting room.

  “I wanted to make sure you were okay,” he says. Something like terror in his face, something like hatred.

  “Brendan—” Tasha begins, but he raises a hand.

  “Don’t talk,” he says. “Please.” He looks back at Heather. “Would you have told me? Or would you have just gone and done it?”

  She stares at the floor. The criss-cross of cracks over the tile. “I didn’t do it.”

  “But you want to.”

  “We’re starving,” she says. “You really want another child?”

  B comes to her and grips her arm. She feels the other women shift, stand up. “I need you to have faith,” he says. Angry, desperate. “We’ll get through this. We will. The winter will end and we’ll plant the gardens again—”

  “And if that doesn’t work? What happens then?”

  “You’re always so negative!” he cries, dropping her arm. “I’ve tried so hard and nothing is ever enough for you. Even before all of this.” She looks up at him and then can’t look away.

  “No one wanted to touch you,” he whispers. “No one wanted anything to do with you. I used to watch the way that people mi
micked you at school. They called you crazy, you know that? No one wanted to be near you. But I did. I do.”

  She thinks, hazily, of the smirks his friends had shot his way after B came over to her table at the pub. The whistles that had followed them out onto the street.

  “So what?” she hisses. “Am I supposed to be grateful you’re paying attention to me now? Is that it?”

  “Heather.” Annie comes to stand between them. “Brendan. Look—this is all terrible—everything is terrible.” She holds her arms out as if to push them away from one another. “But fighting helps nothing. Think about the girls.”

  At the thought of them, Heather feels her heart crack open. “I’m sorry,” she says, and covers her face with her hands. “I just—I can’t do this. It’s too hard.”

  “You’re not doing it alone,” B says. “That’s what I keep trying to tell you.”

  Heather lets her hands fall, then nods. “Yes,” she whispers. “I know.”

  They walk back to the house together, each of them carrying a twin, the gulf that yawns between them growing deeper as they go.

  * * *

  As the winter ends, the sky is blue—but never for very long, and not the blue that anyone remembers. The grass and trees are deep green, as though they’ve all kept on growing under the snow. The city is a daylight clock. The city is a shell. The mountains stand over them in shades of grey and green and blue.