“Four chickens are not going to feed a whole fucking city!” Joseph yells. “Three chickens even less. What’s wrong with you?”
“The rest of us are starving!” Elyse shouts. There’s a grumble around them after she says this, a whisper of unease through the crowd.
“Elyse. Just stop,” Annie says. “You’re only going to make things worse.”
“Why am I the only one who sees what we need to do?” Elyse cries. “We’re going to starve if we don’t make even harder decisions. You can’t celebrate any of this aw—” She bends over and coughs heavily, her shoulders heaving. She stumbles forward, then rests her hands against her thighs and heaves again. Her cough is thick and wet, insistent. All-consuming. When she is finally able, she straightens, her face resolute. “It was just one chicken.”
“She’s not just a chicken,” Joseph says. His voice breaks. “She and the others are all the family I have left.”
“Joseph,” Tasha says. “I’m so sorry.”
“This is all your fault!” he shouts at her. “I should have left months ago. We all should have left months ago.” He gestures wildly to the dead bird at Elyse’s feet. “You want that chicken? Fine. Take it. I am leaving this place. Fuck all of you.” He turns and begins to stalk back to his house.
A man breaks away from the edge of the crowd and follows him.
Then another person, a woman this time.
Another.
Another.
“Joseph,” Tasha calls. “Joseph.”
None of them turn around.
At last, Tasha turns back to the crowd still standing in front of the wagon. “We’ll be all right,” she says. “Don’t worry. We have a plan.”
But the spell is broken now. People begin to drift away from the square to their homes, leaving whatever else Tasha might have said to them unspoken.
“Maybe they should go,” Elyse says, after most of them are gone. “That’s more food for us, anyway.”
Tasha’s eyes rest on Heather, who has stayed with B in the square. “They’ll come around,” Tasha says. “You’ll see.”
The next morning, Joseph’s house is empty. He and his chickens are gone.
The weather gets hotter. They eat a bowl of rice a day, topped with one can of beans, split between the two of them and the girls. They plant the gardens, and hope, as their stash runs out.
Sometimes Heather finds apples or other fruits in their backyard. B is too beaten down to ask about such gifts now; he just accepts them, and eats his share.
He still goes to the strip mall to help Tasha and Annie when he can. But sometimes he sleeps away the day. Sometimes they all sleep, as the vines grow over Joseph’s old house, choke it into memory.
On the days that B leaves, Heather musters the strength to take the girls to the greenhouse. One foot in front of the other.
Then, at last, one day Estajfan comes out from the trees when she grows close.
“Heather, please don’t come to the greenhouse anymore,” he says. “Save your strength.”
“I can do it,” she says. It is still possible—even with her belly, even with the girls. Delirium keeps her going now. These terrible, hysterical gifts.
“Heather.” Estajfan comes to her and puts his hands on her shoulders. “Heather, stop coming here. Please rest.”
“I rest here or I rest at home.” She shrugs. “I’d rather be here with you.”
He watches her face. “And your… B?”
She looks away. “All you have to share now is what grows on the mountain, right?”
“We still look,” he whispers. “We go farther and farther, but things are harder and harder to find.”
She closes her eyes. It is not hard to see. This abandoned city, that abandoned town. Large humps of green that used to be houses, smaller humps that might have been cars on the roads.
There are smaller humps even than those, almost imperceptible in the green. This one big enough, perhaps, to have once been a person. A child. The flowers that bend around them are bright and terrible—orange and purple and a brighter yellow than she’s ever seen, giant half-moon traps that hang off the vines on other houses. Bushes with dark, juicy berries, soft white oleander plants that choke the hydro poles that stand still and useless, lining the streets.
She takes a breath, then opens her eyes. “You need to take us up the mountain.”
He looks at her. “You should have left a year ago.”
She laughs at this. “Well, I didn’t. You really think I could leave?” Then she says it again. “Estajfan. You need to bring us up the mountain. Me. The girls. And B.”
He shakes his head.
“Estajfan. Please.”
Silence. She watches him clench and unclench his fists. Then he says, “I can bring you.”
“Yes,” she says. “And the girls. And B.”
“Just you. The mountain is the centaurs’ home.”
She steps back from him, one arm around each of the girls, a hand half covering their ears as though they understand. She opens her mouth. “N—”
“Heather.”
She turns as Estajfan jumps back into the trees and disappears. The ground rumbles beneath her feet.
Elyse is coming toward her, from the field. She stops in front of Heather, breathing hard. “Heather?”
Heather digs her fingernails into her palms. The girls whimper, weak, against her collarbone. “What, the horse?” she says.
“That wasn’t a hor—”
“You’re tired, Elyse.” Heather starts to walk back in the direction of the city.
“That—that thing—it was more than a horse!” Elyse lunges forward, grabs Heather’s arm. When she tries to shake her off, Elyse holds on even tighter.
For a moment, everything around them stops. There is no birdsong, there is no rustle of the leaves. There is no wind.
“In the beginning,” Elyse says, and she lets Heather’s arm fall, “a horse fell in love with a woman.”
“That’s just a story.” Heather resumes walking, her heart beating loud in her ears. She fights to keep from screaming. Estajfan. Estajfan.
“It’s up there, isn’t it?” Elyse says, stumbling after Heather. “On the mountain. My grandmother—she used to tell us stories. It’s up there, and—” she coughs, ugly and painful, but keeps coming— “oh my God, Heather. Did he say—I heard ‘centaurs.’ Are there more of them?”
She doesn’t turn around. One foot in front of the other. Forward. Forward. Never back.
“What’s on the mountain, Heather? Do they…” Elyse falls silent for a moment, and Heather can almost hear the gears working in her mind, pieces falling into place with terrifying precision. “Was it them who brought the food? Is there food up there?”
Heather keeps walking, willing herself not to cry. Elyse struggles relentlessly behind her. “No one has been up the mountain in years,” she says. “There is no food. We all know that, Elyse. We’ve told stories about the mountain forever.”
“You were there! You—” And then Elyse stops. “You knew,” she says. “You’ve known this whole time.”
“You’re making no sense, Elyse.”
“I’m making perfect sense!” Elyse cries. “You kept this from all of us while the whole city was starving?”
“Is starving,” Heather mutters. She feels Elyse watching her. “We are starving, Elyse. We will continue to starve until it ends.” The footsteps stop, and finally Heather turns to see Elyse half hunched over in the middle of the overgrown road. She and the girls are almost home; she has to shut this girl down. “You didn’t see anything,” Heather says. “I walk the forest all the time, Elyse—I know how the shadows and the light can trick you. Stop grasping for hope that isn’t there.”