Da, he says. Show me what to do.
His father has been dead for more years than he can count. And the mountain, if it has any wisdom, refuses to give it.
On that first anniversary the girl had found him in her backyard, half hidden in the trees. He’d dropped the knapsack at her feet and held the bouquet out to her.
“What are those for?” she said. The first time he’d heard her voice since her father died.
“They’re… for you,” he said.
“Flowers aren’t going to bring him back.” But still she took them from him. She was thinner than she’d been a year ago. And taller, as though grief had stretched her out. She sniffed the flowers. “Why are you really here?”
“You’ve been silent,” he said. “I was… worried.”
The girl cleared her throat. “How would you know? Have you been spying?”
“Spying?” he said, confused. “I don’t know what that is. I can feel your silence.” He took a step closer. “Why aren’t you talking?”
The girl shrugged. “I don’t have anything to say.” She put the flowers gently on the ground and then picked up the knapsack and sniffed it. “It still smells like him,” she said, surprised. “I thought it would smell like the mountain.”
He looked up at the house. He could feel her mother in there somewhere, sleeping. “Your mother worries about you,” he said.
She mulled this over. “Does she worry about you? The other…”
“Centaur,” he said, giving her the word. “Sometimes. She’s my sister. She always worries.”
The girl smiled faintly. “I don’t have a sister. No one worries about me except for my mom.”
“Everyone worries about you. I can feel that, too.” He spread his hands. “If I could take anything back—”
“It wasn’t your fault he fell.” She looked down at the flowers, cleared her throat. “The flowers he grew are dead now. My mother wouldn’t let me take care of them. She said the greenhouse was too close to the mountain. She’s afraid I’ll go back up.”
“Will you?”
The girl looked straight at him. “I miss the mountain. I was afraid of it, but I miss how it made me feel—strong.” She dropped her eyes as she whispered. “Was he right?”
“You are not meant for the mountain,” he said. “The mountain will not save you. You do not need to be saved.” Her head went up at this, her gaze puzzled and hopeful as she tried to understand. “But,” he said, relenting, “I can bring you flowers, if you want.”
He could tell that it wasn’t what she wanted, but she nodded. “What’s your name?” he asked her.
“Heather.” She looked back down at the flowers, then swallowed hard. “How come I’m the one that survived?”
He thought of the way she made her way through the halls at school. The uneven, inexorable stride. And then he thought of his father, building their life on the mountain alone. “Maybe you were ready to survive,” he said. “Maybe you’ve always been ready.”
“My father used to tell me stories,” she said. “No one’s told me stories for a year.”
“A year,” he repeated, slowly. When she looked at him, he only shrugged. “Humans are like the stars that fall in the sky,” he said. “Everything about you is so quick, and then gone.” He cleared his throat. “I can tell you stories. My father used to tell us stories too.”
“I would like that.”
They stood for a moment in silence. Estajfan cleared his throat. “What kind of story would you like to hear?”
She moved forward until she was standing directly beneath him.
“Tell me where you come from,” she said. “Tell me about where you live.”
In the morning he wakes with a jolt, the air around him hushed and still, another dark dream about that day receding. The mountain centaurs are gone and he is alone on the summit.
The air is clear here. It is so easy to believe that life on the mountain can continue exactly like this, forever.
The red-haired man, he knows, is the father of her twins. Each day he tries to rebuild the city while Heather walks through the trees alone.
She tells her daughters stories. She tells stories to herself. She doesn’t say his name.
She is safe, at least for now. She said that she doesn’t want to see him.
But he can keep her safe. Even if he can’t help everyone else.
THE DOCTOR
The doctor is invited to the mother’s second wedding. She toasts the beautiful blonde bride, the humble, happy farmer with his homely face and capable hands who is her new love. There is wine and good food, and the villagers are happy to see the doctor again, though there’s no denying that they’re also uneasy—they need her, but she reminds them of monsters. But there is nothing to worry about this time around. The new husband has lived here all his life—he went to the village school, spent his summers tending fields with his father. Great swathes of corn and acres of strawberries, row upon row of giant orange carrots and great purple beets. This was the kind of magic the villagers relied on. This was magic they understood.
The mother and her new husband invite the doctor to stay with them. She sleeps in the old back room, the one with the fireplace, which they’ve converted into a bedroom with a view of the gardens. The table is gone. The floors are new, pale wood, smooth under her feet, scrubbed and sanded clean.
The mother seems quieter now, her blonde hair slightly dulled. The doctor isn’t sure why she didn’t give the house to someone else, or even burn it down, but she doesn’t say this. Instead she toasts them at the wedding and wishes them nothing but the brightest kinds of happiness. She dances with the village boys. They laugh at the clomp of her boots, but she’s a good dancer, better than most. When the night ends, she stumbles back to the house alone and falls into bed, leaving the mother and her new husband in the wedding tent.
In the middle of the night, the doctor wakes and hears footfalls outside her door. At first she thinks it’s the newlyweds—they’ve forgotten something, or maybe they need another blanket for the tent. But the steps pause and then someone softly turns the handle. The doctor leaps out of bed and grabs her satchel, searching for her favourite scalpel, polished and sharp. She finds it and holds it in front of her as the door swings open. She says a wordless prayer. She doesn’t believe in the gods, but the night is cold and she is alone and the gods, in this moment, are better than nothing.
Solid darkness enters the room. The scalpel slips from her hands and clatters to the floor. “You,” she says.
The husband—the first husband—cocks his head at her. His face is the same: the anguish hasn’t left him; the shadows are still there. He is quiet in the same way that the mother is—a silence that came in the wake of the children. This is not the first time that he’s been there—the doctor can see that right away. She’s also sure that the mother doesn’t know he comes at all.
He is so much bigger. She wants to stare at the rest of him—the great black legs, the gleaming flanks—but that would be impolite. The doctor has been many things in her life, but she’s never been rude. She keeps her eyes on his face.
“Me,” he says.
How much pain fits in a word? She wants to cup her hands and catch it, throw it away from him the same way she’s disappeared so many other hurts. But there is no way to fix this. She can’t help it—she looks at the rest of him, at the body she doesn’t know.