Centauriad 1 - Daughter of the Centaurs (8 page)

Delicious smells waft from a plain brown tent pitched a ways off from the others. The pussemboos set up a long table, drape it with a crisp white cloth, and arrange beautiful embroidered cushions around it. The horse-men come to the table and recline on the cushions, sitting on their haunches with their front legs neatly folded beneath them. Soon afterward, the cat-men bring platter after platter piled high with colorful mounds of cooked food. Malora’s mouth waters at the sights and smells. The horse-men bend over the table and eat with care, using shining implements and drinking from goblets. They are making merry!

Malora feels strangely left out. The sound of their voices, so human in spite of their bodies, and the longing for things she didn’t even know she wanted make her feel like crying. But tears, she tells herself in Thora’s voice, are an indulgence she cannot afford. They will only addle her.

“To the Apex and Herself!” the horse-men call out in one voice. They lift their goblets and drink.

“To the Golden Horse!” Theon adds, and they all chime in.

Pussemboos go around the table refilling goblets.

“The finest, fleetest, most handsome horses in the world,”
another horse-man calls out. Once again, the goblets are hoisted and clinked. “To the Ironbound Furies!” they shout.

Ironbound Furies
. Is this their name for her horses? Malora wonders. It is a strong name, a good name. Malora feels a powerful surge of pride. Over in the pen, the boys and girls have settled down and are munching on their feed and slurping up water. They are being fed and watered and protected from predators without any help from her. Isn’t this a good thing? she asks herself. The horse-men’s way of capturing the band was cruel and even murderous, but perhaps now the kindness and respect of the pussemboos will prevail.
The finest, fleetest, most handsome horses in the world
.

Malora’s defender rises from the table. He takes a spot only a short distance away and stares openly at her, a blue cloth that matches his eyes covering his mouth and nose. He approaches her and appears to be studying her from all angles, the way her mother studied a new botanical specimen.

He speaks at last, to himself. “The feet are so exotic! How delicate and how unlike our hooves—much more like fingers, only shorter and plumper. I wonder if they are as dexterous as hands. Kheiron, in his wisdom, says that it is our hands, and our ability with those hands to fashion objects of use and of beauty, that set the centaurs above the wild beasts. But here we have a creature in possession of two such sets of appendages. What does this mean when compared to us centaurs?”

Centaurs!
Malora seizes upon the word. So
that
is what they call themselves. And now this centaur draws closer. She peers warily at him through her hair. A sweet scent engulfs her, of flowers and fruit and fragrant wood smoke. The smell
seems to emanate from the blue cloth he holds beneath his nose. Lurking not far beneath the sweet aroma, she detects the far more earthy and familiar scent of horse. She wonders if the centaurs hide from their horse halves behind these scent-laden pieces of cloth. How strange! She likes the sweet scent well enough, but she much prefers the honest smell of horse.

Malora flinches as he reaches out and touches the malachite stone around her neck. “Humble yet strangely beautiful.” Her arms are still bound; otherwise, instinct would have prompted her to strike out at him for touching her. He doesn’t even know her! He has no right to touch her. A horse would have bitten him for less. “Is this object of religious significance, I wonder?”

Then his hands move to her hair. He brushes a few strands away from her eyes. “I’m sorry!” he says in a low voice. “You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve never seen so much hair. Centaurean maidens, when they reach a certain age, stuff their hair up into caps. The Seventh Edict. Your hair’s all matted with mud, of course, but I can imagine how lovely it will be when it’s clean and combed.”

He parts her hair with a finger and peers at her face. Emboldened, he gathers up more of her hair and rearranges it with care over her shoulders, then says, “I can see your whole face now. And I’m sure it must be more pleasant for you, as well!” He stands back, cloth to nose, head tilted to one side. “That’s better,” he says softly. Lowering the cloth, he smiles. His teeth are white and straight, with no pointed ones like those she has in her own mouth for tearing meat. His teeth are more horselike. She wonders if centaurs graze. Lifting her
chin, she looks right back at him, meeting his unsettling blue gaze.

He nods and appears to reach a private conclusion. “It’s a very good face,” he declares. “An honest face. It’s moments like these when I regret I did not take on drawing as my Hand. You’d make a fine subject.” He frowns, rocking ever so slightly on his hooves, which are sheathed in heavy cloth boots that lace up the backs of his legs. “What are these white marks, I wonder?” He points to the faint tracings of scars on her arms and legs, where horses have nipped her in friendly, and sometimes not so friendly, fashion; where insects and snakes and small mammals have bitten her; where sparks from the fire have burned her.

“Except for these odd white marks and your extraordinary eyes, you’re all the same tone—a sort of warm Ironbound red. An artist would have to sketch with chalk mined from these mountains to get it right. But I’m not an artist, so all I can do is perhaps attempt to concoct a scent in honor of you. Let’s see. What shall I call it? Ironbound? Or perhaps Fury.” He stops, and suspicion darkens his eyes. “There is such a look of intelligence on your face, I could swear that you can understand every word I’m saying.” His eyes narrow. “Can you?”

Malora, tempted to reply, remains silent. She knows much more useful information will be forthcoming from the centaurs and their feline underlings if they go on thinking she doesn’t understand a word they are saying.

Plains and mountains both are cloaked in silence, as if every living wild thing lies stunned in the wake of the storm and flood. A half-moon, like a shard from a shattered pot, has swung to the top of the rain-scoured sky. Malora wriggles free from the second set of knots. Three pussemboos sleep in a pile near the tree, the ones who, she supposes, are meant to guard her. She skirts them and heads toward the scullery tent, making her way past the blue-and-white-striped tents where the centaurs slumber. She stops at the entrance to one tent.

A lantern hangs from a hook on the tent pole, burning dimly. Malora peers further into the tent, curious to see how the centaurs sleep, and sees that this one, at least, sleeps on a low, wide bed, stretched out on his side, much the way she has seen horses sometimes sleep in the safety of their stalls. The centaur clutches a light woven coverlet to his bearded chin. A table near his bed holds the copper bangles he wore at dinner. She eyes with envy the assortment of silver-backed
brushes of different shapes and sizes. Wouldn’t they be useful, she thinks, to curry the hides of horses, especially after the winter when their hair comes off in tufts big enough to line the nests of a hundred buffalo weaver birds.

Next to the brushes sits a green glass bottle. Perhaps it contains water, she thinks, her mouth dry enough to choke her. She takes another step into the tent and waits. The centaur sleeps on. She sees no weapons. Had she been in his place, Malora reflects, she would have been up on her feet and holding a knife to the throat of the trespasser. But then again, she means no real harm, and perhaps the centaur, even in his sleep, senses this.

Malora steals over to the table and uncorks the green bottle. Lifting it to her nose, she inhales a rich floral aroma. In her mind, she sees the centaur who sleeps nearby. He is standing in a field of flowers kissing a female centaur wearing an odd-looking hat. Malora shrugs and shakes her head, then replugs the bottle of scent and sets it down. She picks up a silver-backed looking glass and stares at herself in the dim light. The looking glass shows all too clearly how matted and wild she has become. No wonder Theon fears her! Compared to these elegant centaurs, she is a fright, more baboon than person—and at least baboons groom themselves. Hastily, she sets the mirror facedown and makes her way out of the tent.

Malora enters the cooking tent and finds sacks hanging on hooks from the tent frame. She sniffs around until she finds something redolent of mint and wild onion. She brings the bag down and eats everything inside so quickly that she gets a violent case of the hiccups. She wipes her mouth, looks
around for water, and finds none. Smothering the hiccups in her fist, she heads out of the camp.

The receding floodwater has gathered in a gully near the mouth of the canyon, making a pool that is bigger than a puddle but smaller than a pond. Malora drops to her knees at its edge and drinks deeply. By noon tomorrow, Malora knows the pool will be shrunk to half its current size, surrounded by the tracks and scat of a dozen animals, and bugs and tadpoles will already be hatching in it. But right now, it is pristine, cool and fresh from the sky, as good as water gets on the plains. When Malora has drunk her fill, she slides all the way into the pool and immerses her body. She shivers, but her hiccups eventually subside. Sitting in water that comes up to her chin, she grabs handfuls of sand to rub into her skin and scalp.

When her hair is rinsed and her skin is raw and tingling, Malora lies on her back and floats, listening to her breath, moving in and out of her body as she gazes up at the stars. Now that she is fed and watered, perhaps she can come up with a plan. It would be so easy to go to the pen and simply free the horses while the centaurs and the pussemboos sleep. But without Sky, she isn’t eager to return to what she already thinks of as her life before the centaurs. Without Sky, she has no interest in leading a herd. She is happy that Sky is free, but she realizes suddenly that she doesn’t want to leave the centaurs. Freedom on the plains has been such hard work and so lonely. Her mother’s death has left her feeling ungrounded. It is as if she has been surviving all this time only because she might one day go home to her mother. Without her mother, Malora’s life has lost its purpose. She knows she
needs something different, and the centaurs and the pussemboos are certainly that.

Then, through the water, the nearby yelp of a jackal brings her surging to her feet. Splashing out of the gully, she dashes onto the plains. She pulls up short and gasps. There they are, lying everywhere, like great dark boulders stranded in the moonlight.

“Oh, my boys and girls! What have they done to you?” she whispers.

The bodies of Blacky and Mist and Streak lie in a matted mound where the cat-men have dragged them. She walks past them and sees that there are other bodies as well, strewn about, belonging to horses she believed to have escaped. She sees Oil. And then she sees, off by herself as she often was in life, the moody and solitary mare, Silky.

“Oh, my sweet, shy Silky! Look at you!” Malora falls to her knees and throws herself over the body. “I’m so sorry, my dear,” she whispers to the mare’s lifeless head. “Your girls, Fancy and Stormy, are in the pen. They’re safe and sound.” And then, like the afternoon’s cloudburst, something inside of her breaks loose and comes pouring out in a torrent of tears, her loneliness and her grief. Just knowing that her mother was somewhere, going about her life, had made Malora eager and willing to go on with her own life. Now that willingness is drained from her, replaced by a great weariness.

Malora doesn’t know how long she lies there with her head buried in Silky’s side. When she finally looks up, she is too spent to do anything but stare at the centaur who stands over her holding a lantern. She wipes her face on Silky’s mane, smooths back her hair, and stands up.

She thinks she sees tears pooling in the centaur’s startlingly blue eyes, but perhaps this is just the moon’s reflection.

“Theon is wrong,” Orion says to her softly. “He said you were vicious and wild. But if you are capable of feeling grief, then it stands to reason that you must possess other civilized traits.” He ventures a tentative smile.

Malora returns his smile, realizing with a slight uneasiness that her tears have weakened her resolve not to speak. The sound of his voice is a balm to her sadness. He goes on talking as he stares out over the plain of dead horses. “I realized this afternoon, after I fished you out of those floodwaters, that I had dreamed once, years ago, that I met a human girl by a river. In the dream, we walked along the riverbank and we spoke and it was the most enjoyable conversation. I wonder if you dream.” He turns to scrutinize her. “But that’s just as absurd, I realize, as my having the feeling that you understand every word I say, when how could that possibly be?”

“It’s true!” she says before her sense gets the better of her. “I do talk … and I do dream.”

His jaw drops and he backs away from her, as if she has just burst into flames.

“But I couldn’t speak, don’t you see? We’re ancient enemies,” she says, moving toward him slowly so as not to spook him. “Theon said so. I needed to learn as much about you as I could. If I had spoken up, you wouldn’t have carried on so openly in my presence. You wouldn’t have said certain things. I wouldn’t have learned nearly as much about you.”

His eyes dart about, as he seeks to recall what was said.
Hesitantly, he asks, “What was it exactly that you learned about us?”

She hides a smile. “I learned that centaurs are a princely race who like to lounge around in the grass plucking wildflowers while the poor pussemboos do all the work.”

He stares at her in puzzlement. “The poor
what
?” he asks.

Malora says, “Pussemboos. You know … those little catlike men you travel with. The slaves who do your bidding.”

He tosses his head back and howls with laughter.

Malora feels her face heating up. She does not like being the butt of a joke she doesn’t understand.

Recovering at last, he wipes the tears of mirth from his eyes and says, “Pussemboos! Is it
Puss in Boots
that you mean to say?”