Centauriad 1 - Daughter of the Centaurs (11 page)

“He is the Otherian who taught me and my brothers and who now teaches my little sister.”

“What is an
Otherian
?”

Orion pauses in his stride to pick a pebble from the boot on his right foreleg. “An Otherian,” he explains, “is someone who is not of us; therefore, an
other
and hence, an Otherian.”

Malora’s mind races. “You mean Honus is one of the People?”

“No, no,” he says hastily. “I mean that he isn’t a centaur.”

“What is he, then, if not of the People and not a centaur?” she asks.

“He calls himself a cloven-hoofed polymath, but, technically, he is of the faun hibe,” Orion says.

“What is a polymath?” Malora asks. She finds the complexity of Orion’s vocabulary both frustrating and fascinating.

“Someone who knows something of everything. He is very wise. This faun is wiser than all the centaurs in Mount Kheiron.”

Faun
sounds to Malora like some sort of animal, an impala, perhaps. Do the animals where they are going speak? she wonders. What will an entire city of centaurs be like? In
this brief time, she has seen enough of the centaurs to know that while they might be part horse, they are much closer to humans. They have four hoofed feet and fur-covered flanks and tails. But, unlike horses, they don’t relieve themselves where they stand. They go off into the bushes and modestly attend to their needs. They eat with tools and drape their private parts and have complex thoughts and ideas, which they express in words rather than snorts and nickers and neighs.

Malora has lived with horses for so long that, in some ways, she had begun to think like them. In order to live among the centaurs, will she have to start thinking like a centaur? Then a new thought occurs to her. “Are Twani considered Otherians?” she asks.

“No. They are considered … Twani.”

Malora nods, oddly satisfied with Orion’s cryptic reply. “Tell me more about Mount Kheiron,” she requests.

“It is the Home of Beauty and Enlightenment,” says Orion.

Malora finds this description unhelpful, more of Orion’s fancy words for which she has no context. “Does this mean you all dress in finery? I, too, would very much like to be draped in finery.”

He glances at her leopard-skin tunic and then quickly looks away. “I imagine my mother and father will insist on your dressing appropriately.”

“What does this mean?” she asks.

He looks flustered and confused. “Like a centaur maiden, of course.”

Malora snorts. “Not unless I grow another set of legs.”

He laughs, enjoying her joke. “Honus is a two-legger, and our tailors and cobblers have managed to keep him sartorially satisfied. I imagine they can cut and stitch clothing to the contours of your body. And, of course, you’ll have to wear your hair in a cap, although I do hope you won’t have to cut it.”

“Why would I have to do that?”

“It’s an Edict. The Seventh Edict, guarding against inflammatory public displays. Females over twelve baring their heads in public amounts to what is known as an inflammatory display. This is solved by pinning the hair under a cap or covering of some sort. Among the Highlander maidens and ladies, the caps can be quite stylish, with feathers and beads and whatnot.”

In the brief silence that follows, Malora cocks her head at the sky; she tries to picture herself wearing a cap and fails. When they pause to watch a family of giraffes lope across the path, Malora asks, “And what of the horses? What will happen to them? Will they have to wear caps, too?”

Orion laughs, even though she has posed her question in all seriousness. “Only bridles and carriage harnesses. They will be treated exceedingly well, I should think. My father has the finest stable in all of Mount Kheiron.”

“Will they have water to drink and grass to eat?” Malora asks.

“The freshest water and the finest oats,” Orion answers. “And jobs to do as well. Everyone in Mount Kheiron has a job to do, including the horses.”

“And your job is …?”

“I am an alchemist,” he explains.

Malora repeats the word silently. “What does an alchemist do?”

Orion smiles. “It’s complicated. But basically, I create scents in my distillery,” he says.

“So it was you who concocted Homeward Bound?”

“And Theon’s Serenity and Mather’s Bower and all the scents my cousins use. I mix essences together to create scents to inhale or burn or sprinkle. I distill the essences from fruits and seeds and plants and flowers and bits of wood and bark. I studied under Kheiron’s master alchemist, who has, unfortunately, passed away.”

Compared to hunting or healing or even basket weaving, Orion’s seems like a frivolous job to Malora. And yet there was nothing frivolous about the vivid picture the scent spawned in her mind. “Is being an alchemist an important job?”

“Anything centaurs do with our hands is considered important. Properly mixed and prepared, scents establish the very tone of society. They control emotions and set moods. I’ve seen them bring about radical transformations. They can make a drowsy soul feel lively and an overly excited one find peace. They can attract mates and repel enemies and bring forth dormant emotions and suppress unwanted ones. They can make for happy, lively, gracious households. A home without scents is a cold cell. I’m proud to have chosen alchemy as my Hand.”

“What is this hand you speak of?” Malora asks. “Apart from these things sticking out at the end of our arms?”

Each new question of Malora’s seems to make Orion happier.
“The Hand,” he explains, “according to our Patron and Founder, Kheiron the Wise, is what sets us apart from the beasts. A Hand entails the making of things, like jubilation or paintings or tapestry or sculpture. Or it can be that which you can’t see, like law or religion or philosophy.”

“Or scents!” she says.

“Indeed.” He nods. “Boys and girls at age twelve choose a Hand and study it until age sixteen, when we begin to practice.”

This doesn’t sound all that different from the way life went in the Settlement, Malora thinks, except that jobs there were far more dull and practical. Entertainment and beauty were extras, fit in around more important things like survival. Women in the Settlement took pride in the pots they molded, the fabrics and baskets they wove—and some of these objects were even beautiful—but function was more important than form. Had she told her mother she wanted to study jubilation—whatever that was—Thora would have thought she had gotten into the monkey weed. A job was practical, and most children had no choice but to follow their parents. Life in Mount Kheiron sounded altogether freer and easier.

“Will I, when I come to stay among the centaurs, be able to choose a Hand?” Malora asks.

Orion’s brow creases. “That’s a very interesting question. At fifteen, you’re coming to it rather late in life.”

“Then I will simply choose horse training for my Hand,” she says airily.

“Oh, horse training is not a Hand,” Orion says.

“Then how do your horses get trained?”

“The Twani—like our fine friend Gift—train our horses
for us. The Flatlanders train horses, too, in their own stables, but Flatlanders don’t choose a Hand.”

“What are Flatlanders?” she asks. “Another hibe?”

“No. They are centaurs, like me and my cousins, except that they are born down on the floodplains surrounding Mount Kheiron. The centaurs born up on Mount Kheiron are called Highlanders. Flatlanders are—in many ways, as you will see—a breed apart from Highlanders. They don’t have Twani, and they don’t have Hands, and they don’t have representatives who sit in our Salient, which is the ruling body headed by my father. Flatlanders serve Highlanders by doing practical tasks, like farming and carpentry and, like my old friend Neal, serving on the Peacekeeping Force.”

“Flatlanders sound like the People,” Malora murmurs.

Human and centaur lapse into silence. She enjoys their silences almost as much as their talk. This morning, the talk feels bubbly and light, fortifying and refreshing, as if she has been riding down a stream, tripping and dashing and splashing and sparkling in the sunlight.

Orion strides along jauntily in his khaki boots. His wrap, flapping in the hot wind, has begun to turn blotchy with sweat. He looks around and, taking a deep breath, says, “The bush is beautiful today, is it not?”

Malora looks where he looked. “Where is this bush you keep speaking of?” There are thousands of bushes and thousands of trees and boulders and scrub stretching out for as far as the eye can see in all directions.

Orion shakes his head and laughs softly. “Oh, Malora, you have no idea what delightful company you make. The bush is what we call the lands extending from Mount Kheiron
to the Ironbound Mountains in the south and, to the north of us, all the way to the coast where Kahiro—capitol of the Kingdom of the Ka—lies. We refer to all wild, uncivilized areas as the bush.”

Malora smiles and wonders, Does this now make me the Daughter of the Bush? But no, that makes her sound like some wild thing that crouches in a thicket and skulks out at night to gobble up stray goats and little children.

They are, as it happens, traveling through a particularly lush and densely populated area of the “bush.” Shade trees and clumps of bushes—actual bushes, she thinks—dot the landscape. Herds of wildebeests gambol in their comical way, while impalas leap above the downy cloud grass. Rhinoceroses graze placidly in the middle distance, as still as gray boulders. Flocks of tiny yellow butterflies flit and skim back and forth across the tasseled tops of the high grass. The bush
is
beautiful today, Malora sees, but, as always, it holds the potential for violence. Any moment now, a predator could slink from behind some tree and send all of these creatures, including them, running for their lives. It occurs to her again that she is unarmed. “Where do you keep your weapons?”

“The centaurs have no weapons. The Twani keep theirs in the wagons,” Orion says.

Malora laughs shortly. “I hope you don’t expect the Twani to defend us. They are so small and, from what I have seen, not at all fierce. Why do centaurs have no weapons?”

Orion dips his chin. “As a rule, we travel with an escort of Peacekeepers—Flatlanders authorized by the Apex to carry arms—but they have all gone off to Kahiro on a special mission. Father was impatient to have his horses now, so we
braved the bush with only our stalwart band of Twani to protect us.”

“Isn’t self-defense considered a Hand?” she asks.

Orion wags his head. “Highlanders are forbidden to own or use weapons of any kind. No weapons are permitted in Mount Kheiron. The Third Edict.”

Malora is shocked. She cannot imagine living without weapons. “So I, too, will have to follow the Third Edict?” Malora asks.

“Naturally, as you must follow all fourteen,” he says. “If you are to live among us, you must be bound by the same Edicts that bind us. That is the way of it.”

“What happens if someone refuses to follow the Edicts?”

“They are turned out,” Orion says bluntly, as if the subject were unpleasant to him.

Turned out
is an expression her father used when he set the horses loose from the stable to run in the paddock. The horses were always happy to be turned out. “That doesn’t sound so bad to me,” she says.

“Oh, but it is very dire, indeed. To be turned out is to be banished from Mount Kheiron,” Orion says. “Sent into the wild with nothing, not even the wrap on your back.”

Malora reflects that her mother had turned her out of the Settlement, even if it had been for her own good. Except that Malora had been sent off fully clothed on Sky, with saddlebags bulging and with weapons and tools. Would she have survived naked and unarmed? “Are many centaurs turned out?” she asks.

“Very few,” Orion says. “It is the fear of being turned
out that makes most Highlanders hew quite closely to the Edicts.”

“The Edicts are the cue, and fear of being turned out is the motivator,” she says, using terms she understands.

Orion regards her narrowly. “That sounds interesting. Tell me what you mean.”

“When you are training a horse to go faster, you might urge him with a kissing sound. That is a cue,” Malora explains. “If the horse doesn’t listen, you add a more insistent cue—a kick in the ribs, perhaps. If he still doesn’t go, you might whack his rump with a stick. The horse goes faster because the stick has motivated him, but after a while, you can take away the stick—and even the kick—because the horse will speed up with the kissing sound alone. That’s because the horse would just as soon not be kicked or swatted. The kiss is the cue; the memory—or you might say the fear—of the kick and the stick are the motivators.”

“Yes,” Orion agrees, “the threat of being turned out is a very sharp whack with the stick.”

Malora grins. “Then I will make a point of following the Edicts.” She makes a kissing sound, and Lightning instantly picks up a trot.

Orion, a little breathlessly, trots to catch up. “You certainly don’t have to use a stick to get
me
going,” he says.

“Have I described to you yet the Founders’ Day fest?” Orion asks.

Two days on, they are progressing northward, talking nearly every step of the way. When Malora doesn’t answer the third time Orion puts the question to her, he glances over and sees that, in the heat of the midday sun, she has dropped off to sleep on Lightning’s back. Her eyes are shut, her back relaxed, the black-and-white rope looped over one shoulder like some sort of bush-inspired fashion accessory. The movements of the horse beneath her ripple up through her body. Her hand is entwined in the horse’s mane, her legs are draped around the creature’s ebony barrel, her hips rock, right-left-right, just as the horse’s hips move, her shoulders moving in time with its front legs. They are two separate creatures moving as one. Orion sees how like the most graceful centaur the combination of Malora and Lightning are, as natural together as he is in his own skin—perhaps even more so.

Orion feels oddly abandoned by his new friend, but then thinks guiltily that she probably needs her sleep. How restful can her night’s slumber really have been, he muses, curled up on a mound of cloud grass in the horse pen? He wishes he could sleep while he walks, but that’s impossible. Unlike the combination of Malora and Lightning, Orion is a single creature who can do only one thing at a time.