Centauriad 1 - Daughter of the Centaurs (24 page)

Orion comes forward. “Welcome, Malora, to my distillery!”

“What goes on in this place?” Malora asks.

“Let me show you,” he says eagerly, leading her over to the pot on the fire. He lifts the lid with care. Inside she sees weeds and twigs and flowers bouncing around in boiling water.

“This is where I cook up the flowers or bark or what have you,” he says, replacing the lid. “The pure essence of these items evaporates out of the pot, then travels through this pipe, which is especially made for me by Brion, the blacksmith,
out of copper. As the essence travels through the pipe, these wet cloths cool it, causing it to further condense. The cooled essence drips down out of the pipe into this other pot over here.” He draws her over. “Are you ready?”

Malora nods. He carefully removes the lid from the smaller pot. Inside she sees a small amount of liquid with an oily scum on top. Considering his enthusiasm, she is somewhat disappointed.

“The oil floating on top is the strongest essence,” he tells her. “The water below is less strong, but is nevertheless imbued with scent. I bottle them separately. Take a good whiff and tell me what you think.”

Malora inhales. Instantly, she smells the bush just before a rainstorm, when every rock and bush and tree and plant and flower smells as if it were freshly made. Then she sees, galloping over a red rocky hill across a ravine, her one and only Sky. He skids to a halt and turns around, tossing his mane, beckoning her to cross over the ravine and join him.

Orion claps the lid on the pot and looks at her expectantly. “Well?” he asks, his blue eyes nearly incandescent in the dim light of the distillery.

Malora blinks as Sky’s image, then the bush itself, evaporates, like the essence from the pot into the pipe. “It smells … like home,” she says, mystified.

“Does it really?” Orion beams and hugs her. “I knew it! I call it Breath of the Bush. Are you quite all right, Malora?” His look turns from triumph to worry.

Malora does feel slightly faint and goes to lean against the one spot along the wall where there are no cases of vials. The coolness of the stone seeps into her body, and gradually
she begins to revive. This must be what Orion means by scents controlling emotions and setting moods.

“The poor darling girl!” Zephele wails. “First Honus makes her slave all morning, then I drag her all over the mountaintop on errands. Surely, the final insult is bringing her down here to this gloomy old pit.”

“I am fine,” Malora says, and she is now, although she cannot quite get over what she has just seen.
Sky!

“You really do like it?” Orion asks.

“Very much,” Malora says.

“I made it from a selection of the plants and bark and flowers I collected on our expedition,” he tells her proudly. “I made it especially for you. I know you say that scents aren’t for you because they keep you from detecting predators. But since we are no longer in predator territory, won’t you consent to using this scent of mine? Please say you’ll accept a small vial of Breath of the Bush as a token of my great affection and admiration.”

The vision of Sky has faded from her mind and she longs to call it back. “Yes,” she says, “I think I would like that.”

“You honor me,” he says.

“You are a very good alchemist,” she says.

“And you are a very good friend,” he says.

“And you are both very good at boring me with all this talk,” Zephele says. “Can we leave? My nose feels quite abused.”

“As you wish, little sister,” he says, going to rouse West.

“Oh, hello, miss,” West says to Malora after he has shaken himself awake.

“Feed the fire, West, and keep adding water, one scoop
at a time, as the level goes down. If the plants start to fade, add what’s in this basket here. You know what to do, good fellow.”

“That I do, Your Excellence,” West says.

Orion unties the black leather wrap, revealing a pure white one beneath it. He hands the black wrap to West.

Zephele, who is already on her way up the stairs, calls back to Orion, “So tell me, Brother, how did the Apex rule when you had your audience with him earlier?”

“In our favor, happily,” Orion says.

“Oh, excellent!”

Since no further discussion takes place, Malora can’t resist asking, “What does that mean?” as she follows Zephele’s braided tail up the stairs.

“It means you will, in however belated a fashion,” Zephele explains over her shoulder, “be able to declare a Hand. We may now give you a tour of the studios and ateliers so that you can begin to decide what you will choose, subject to the Apex’s approval, of course. But I’ve never known him to veto anyone’s choice of Hand, have you, Brother?” She pauses on the stairs and looks down at Orion behind Malora.

“No, I haven’t,” says Orion. As Malora looks back at Orion, she sees the effect of the white wrap against the deep black of his flanks is dramatic. “We can start by touring the upper floors of this very building.”

“Oh, don’t bother,” Zephele tells him from the top of the stairs. “I don’t believe Malora has any affinity for painting and drawing. Isn’t that true, Malora?”

Malora wonders how Zephele can know this, but it is, in fact, the case. “It feels too much like making letters … only
less useful,” she says in a whisper, because they are back in the room where the centaurs are sketching the ancient centaur. Zephele finds Sunshine and gently shakes her awake. Sunshine shaking the sleep from her body actually makes a noise in the quiet atelier. She immediately starts licking her paw and washing herself, as if sleep has soiled the yellow scruff of her neck.

“Useful!” Zephele whispers to Orion. “Do you hear what your pet said?”

Orion doesn’t answer. They are passing through the room of the fruit painters. When they are back out on the street, Orion responds in a normal tone, “I heard her very clearly, Sister. You see, Malora is accustomed to a life of hardship that is beyond anything either of us has ever experienced. It is precisely this capacity for usefulness that has helped her to survive. I’m sure most of the Hands on our list might strike her as quite frivolous.” Then Orion smiles sweetly at his sister and says, “Zephie, I am most grateful to you for accompanying Malora here. But now I wonder whether you wouldn’t mind running along.”

Zephele looks a little hurt. Then she lifts her chin. “I quite understand, Brother,” she says in a determined voice. “You wish to be alone with your pet.”

“Perhaps we will see you for dinner in Honus’s room tonight?” Orion says by way of compensation.

“No, Orrie, you won’t,” she says sulkily. “When I returned to my room last night, you see, I was both too excited and too tired to do my nightly reading assignment, and while Honus was very understanding this morning, he might not be quite so accommodating tomorrow morning.” Zephele
goes on, her high spirits gradually gaining momentum. “Herself says that the less the human disrupts the course of our normal lives, the more kindly the Apex will look upon her remaining with us. So! That is the way of it. You should know that she fared quite well today with her lessons. She did you proud. She practiced her letters and she scrivened, like a small child, of course, but she is as uncannily good at her numbers as I am uncannily bad. I’m trying to think what nature of Hand calls for numbers. Perhaps architecture, although it is doubtful they will ever trust an Otherian to design a building for centaurs. Maybe weaving, wherein one counts threads and warps and woofs? Perhaps Theon will enlighten us further as to warps and woofs when he gives us a tour of the Weavery.”

“What are warps and woofs?” Malora asks.

“Terms pertaining to weaving, which is Theon’s Hand. What peculiar words these are, really,
warp and woof
,” Zephele ponders. “They sound like animal noises, don’t they? I wonder who invented them, and why they chose those particular words. Oh, well! I shall run along now, as you say, and leave you two to the business of choosing a Hand for Malora. Come along, Sunshine dear, let’s find you a really
ambitious
project to while away the afternoon. Let’s see, what needs doing? Untangling my necklaces, perhaps? Blocking my caps? Airing out my wraps and rearranging them according to hue? I wonder if that rascal Neal Featherhoof can still be found beneath our roof. If we hurry now …” With Sunshine at her heels, Zephele trots off down the street, chattering all the way.

Orion takes a deep breath. “She is quite the monologist!”

“I like her very much,” Malora says, staring after her in admiration. “She has a good heart.”

“She does, doesn’t she? And she’s a good deal cleverer than she sounds. Let’s go find you a Hand, shall we?” Orion holds out his arm, and they set out.

They visit the Stitchery first. “Embroidery is Zephele’s hand,” Orion says. “The workmanship on her caps, and my mother’s as well, is all hers. Although she professes a certain indifference to her Hand, she is very good at it.”

The Stitchery is smaller and more intimate than the atelier. It is a cozy round room with a hole in the ceiling, through which the afternoon sun slants, illuminating a long table covered with flowers. Over in a corner, a Twan plucks at a stringed instrument. Malora recognizes the scent Orion calls lavender. The atmosphere here is, indeed, one of serenity. Young centaurs, both male and female, kneel on cushioned benches set around the table, their heads bent intently over hoops mounted on stands across which cloth has been stretched tightly. Skeins of brightly colored thread are piled in baskets all about. As Orion leads Malora around the outside of the circle, she peers over the centaurs’ shoulders and sees that they are stitching the likenesses of the flowers on the tables.

Out in the bush—as even she has begun to think of it—Malora often gazed into the hearts of flowers and marveled at their intricacy. What skill it must take to render this, Malora thinks. Could she work with needle and thread? Needles of bone and strings of rawhide, perhaps. But this kind of delicate handiwork seems beyond her.

One of the centaurs, a young male, looks up from his hoop and meets Malora’s gaze, the familiar mixture of fear and wonder in his eyes. Malora smiles tentatively at him, places a hand over her heart, and then raises it in salute. The young centaur starts to cover his heart, but then checks himself. He lets his hand drop and lowers his head to his work.

“I have seen enough,” Malora says.

Orion and Malora make their way downhill to the Pottery. This place bustles, smelling of damp earth. Here centaurs stand at wheels, which they turn by pumping a pedal with their front hooves. On the wheels they work wet blobs of clay into shapes with their dampened hands. Long tables along the walls bear finished work: pots and bowls and goblets and small, graceful statuary. A centaur scoops up damp pots on a flat wooden tray and sets them near a fiery furnace.

“He’s drying the pots before firing them to set the glaze and harden the clay,” Orion explains.

One centaur looks up from her wheel and stares so intently at Malora that her hoof slips off the pedal, the wheel falters, and the pot in her hands collapses into a formless mess.

Orion says, “I once considered taking pottery as my Hand.”

“What made you decide against it?” Malora asks.

“I disliked the feel of the clay on my fingers, much the way I also disliked the sound of charcoal on paper. One has to like nearly everything about one’s Hand. We spend far too much time at it between the ages of twelve and sixteen, and then afterward, of course. That’s why we try out various
Hands before we make our final choice. I urge you to spend a day in each studio to get a better idea of the rudiments of each.”

“We made pottery in the Settlement,” Malora says.

“Ironbound red pots, I wager,” Orion says.

Malora nods. “But we didn’t use a wheel. We fashioned the pots with our hands. One hand inside the pot and the other outside, working our away around from the bottom to the top. Then we would set them in the sun to bake,” she says. Unbidden, a picture comes into her head of red pots lying in shards everywhere, and her mother’s bones. She turns away and says thickly, “No pottery for me.”

Next door in the Woodworks, young centaurs wield tools to whittle and chisel wood. Malora likes the bright green smell of the wood and the way the floor is heaped with curly shavings that bring to her mind a lion’s mane. She admires the sharpness and shininess of the tools, which call up a vivid image of her lost knife.

“I might like this Hand,” Malora says as they leave the shop. “It seems useful. What were they making?”

“Staffs and walking sticks and decorative pieces.”

“Do they also make chairs and shelves?” she asks.

“As a rule, Flatlanders pursue the practical. Highlanders pursue the decorative.”

“Aren’t you running out of places to decorate in Mount Kheiron?” Malora asks. “Are there any other Hands this useful?”

Orion’s brow creases in thought. As they walk, Malora’s ears pick up a rhythmic ringing sound. “What’s that?” she asks.

“That sound? I believe it’s coming from Brion’s shop,” Orion says. “It is just around the next bend. It was he who supplied my copper pipe.”

“Let’s go see.” She grabs his hand and runs toward the increasingly loud clanging. As soon as she sees the building, she knows that it is old, ancient, built by the Grandparents. It is so simple: a big squat stone box with wooden doors and a crude chimney coming out the top. Soon she is standing before the wooden doors, which are open. She drops Orion’s hand and enters. A blast of hot air hits her full on, as if the heat of the sun itself is trapped inside the shop. A smell of sweat, hot iron, and burning wood permeates her nostrils. The fine sand beneath her bare feet is as hot as the top of a mesa at midday. She digs her bare toes in and feels herself taking root here.

In the back of the shop stands a black furnace whose chimney rises up through the ceiling. To one side, a sooty-faced
Twan stands in a stiff, oversized smock, his foot working a pleated leather contraption that sends air whooshing into a bed of coals. The coals flare into flame and the smoke rises from the fire and is sucked up the chimney.