“They’re planting gardens,” he concedes. He doesn’t want to fight with her. He thinks of the magic in the ground around the city—how much louder it is now, how gleeful its rage. “But I don’t think that’s going to help them.”
Aura doesn’t meet his eyes. “We don’t belong there,” she says.
The mountain centaurs sang when fire rained down from the sky. They raised their arms and cheered.
Why not? he wants to say. Why can’t we belong anywhere we want to go? “We don’t belong on the mountain either,” he says instead, and walks on past her.
Aura had been with him that day, years ago, when the girl and her father had come up the mountain. The two of them had been alone and basking in the sun, and suddenly there were human voices coming closer, carried to them on the wind. They shrank into the trees and watched the father and the girl climb up and stop in a small clearing on the path. Watched them sit down and open their packs and begin to eat.
Aura moved toward the humans first. That is what happened.
He still doesn’t know what alerted the father to their presence, whether it was Aura passing through a shaft of sunlight, a sound. But he looked up from his meal and straight at her, no longer quite as hidden in the trees. Then the girl looked up too, and gasped.
He can close his eyes and see the scene in detail all these years later. The shock on their faces. The joy and the terror. Aura was close enough to touch, and the moment the father realized this, he stood and reached out, likely expecting something magical to happen.
“Hello,” the father had breathed as he took hold of Aura’s wrist. She jumped back, startled, but he tightened his grip, turning to the girl. Estajfan couldn’t hear what he said to his daughter, but he watched betrayal bloom over her small face. As the father turned back to Aura, she yanked her hand away with such force the man pitched forward and wobbled, unsteady on the mountain rocks. And then he lost his balance and tumbled over the side of the mountain.
Estajfan was almost in time, lunging for the man’s outstretched arms, his fingers brushing the father’s fingers, but he was gone, no time for screaming. They heard the impact in the trees so far below, then nothing.
The girl stood frozen. He felt as if she could reach into his chest and know everything there was to know about him—the longing, the fear. Her shoulders began to heave and she opened her mouth. He was terrified that she would scream, that the mountain centaurs would hear her and come running and toss her off the mountain too. He scooped her into his arms before she had a chance. Then he was running down the path, the girl’s tears hot against his shoulder.
He ran until they were at the base of the mountain, until they were in the forest, until they were outside the girl’s house. It took a long time. It took no time at all. He bent and put her on the ground; he expected her to collapse, but she stood firm.
“How did you know where my house was?” she whispered. It was dark now, and her face was a collection of shadows.
“I didn’t,” Estajfan said, because it was true. The house had called to him, alive with the girl and her memories. He’d never forget where it was.
“What’s your name?” she said.
“Estajfan.” A light came on in the dark house. “Don’t ever come up the mountain again,” he said. “You, or anyone else.”
The girl nodded. He could see that she was still shivering—still waiting to scream. Somehow he knew that she wouldn’t tell anyone about it—Aura, how her father had died. He thought of Aura, whom he’d left alone on the mountainside.
“Forgive me,” he said, finally. And then, “Forgive him.”
He saw the girl’s fists tighten and he turned around and ran for the forest.
The scream, when it came, reached him anyway.
Before the man fell, Estajfan had never dreamed. The first time it happened he woke up screaming, to find the mountain centaurs massed around him, silent and suspicious. Aura had come running too. “It’s all right, Estajfan,” she said. “It’s just a dream. It will go away.”
She was wrong—the dream came back. It was always the same: the mountain, the father, the fall. The look of hurt on the child’s face. That tiny slice of time when the father’s fingers brushed his and then were gone. That tinier sliver when Estajfan had hesitated. These humans, climbing up into his home without asking. Touching Aura like she was something they owned.
Expecting magic from them, like it was something they were owed.
He didn’t dream of the girl. He didn’t need to. After her scream followed him back up the mountain, he felt her every day—a presence down below, a shadow that moved through the halls of her home. He knew that she was hurting. Though her pain dulled in time, every now and then her grief would spike, the swell of it so huge that Estajfan would have to stop and close his eyes.
She had gone silent, lost her words. He could feel the worry of everyone around her. No one knew what to say, what to do.
He did not know what to say, or do. As the anniversary of the father’s death approached, her silence grew loud and desperate. He felt her mind whirling up here, looking for him, as she trudged from school to home and back again.
He woke on the morning of that first anniversary with a pain in his chest that wouldn’t go away and the remnants of a dream—this time of the girl, standing at the edge of a cliff. He paced the mountain path alone, wandering lower and lower, until he reached the spot where they’d picnicked a year ago.
The flowers were as bright and red as ever. Beneath them, he saw the father’s knapsack, toppled on its side and crusted over with dirt. Animals had long ago eaten whatever food had been inside.
He picked flowers until his arms were full, then slung the knapsack over his shoulder and made his way down the mountain.
Before he reaches their home on the mountain, another centaur stops him. Mossy green-brown eyes like his father’s. Hard like the mountain in everything else. A female palomino with white-blonde hair, like Aura’s.
“The humans are ending,” she tells him. “You should not be going down the mountain anymore.”
“I can’t leave them alone,” he says.
The mountain centaur shrugs. “The more you try to stop what is happening, the more it will hurt.”
He’s so tired of hearing them say this. They could all go down. They could help the humans find food. They could—he thinks of the way Heather’s father’s face erupted in joy at the sight of them so long ago—carry flowers right into the houses. The humans might be frightened at first, but beauty could bring them happiness too.
Don’t they deserve that, at least?
Doesn’t Heather?
“You should stop thinking about what the humans deserve,” the centaur says, “and focus on what you deserve.”
“No one deserves what’s going to happen next,” he says. He’s unsure what that is, exactly, but the rage deep in the ground makes him uneasy.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen either,” the centaur says. “And I don’t need to know. The mountain has given us what we need. Stay here, and let that be enough for you, too.”
She isn’t being unkind—none of the mountain centaurs are unkind to him and his siblings, exactly, but they don’t understand him, and they don’t care to.
That night he climbs to the top of the mountain and sees the palomino standing with another centaur. Watching for what, he doesn’t know. The stars pinwheel over their heads in a slow, constant circle. Estajfan goes to the three old willows and lets his heart reach deep into the ground.