What happens when you choose a new life? You die to the old one, as their father had done so many years ago.
What happens when the world chooses a new life without you? He thinks of the months of going down the mountain and out into the cities far and wide—creeping through abandoned streets, finding food wherever he and Petrolio could. The slow grip of human madness the very thing that kept them safe. What was that? Nothing. You’re seeing things. That’s all.
He thinks of the small blonde woman down by the greenhouse. Elyse, Heather had called her. What was that? she had cried. And Heather, so determined to keep their secret. Elyse. Dead now, like all the rest.
Heather takes a step forward, almost falls, and Aura steadies her. “You’re all right now,” she says. “We will keep you safe.”
“She is pregnant,” another centaur hisses. “She cannot be here.”
“She is my responsibility,” Estajfan calls out, his voice carrying to the edge of the clearing. Countless green-brown eyes simmer with rage. “I will watch her. You are to leave her alone.”
“She doesn’t belong here!” another centaur cries.
“Where does she belong?” Estajfan calls. “Below, with the rest of the dead?”
The mountain centaur who protested moves through the crowd and spits on the ground in front of him. It’s the palomino, the one who spoke to him those months ago. “You have betrayed all of us.”
“I will watch her. I will be responsible for her. I want all of you to leave her alone.”
“And when the child comes?” the centaur says. “What then?” She moves to strike Heather but Estajfan knocks her to the ground with one swipe of his arm.
“Take her to the cave,” Aura says to Petrolio. Estajfan spares a glance behind him to see his brother gather the woman gently into his arms and carry her away. Heather doesn’t look at Estajfan. She doesn’t look at anything.
The palomino, still on the ground, snarls, “If you want a life with a human so much, then leave. Like your father did.”
Aura bends to help the other centaur up, but the palomino pushes her away, her mouth set and furious. Aura addresses them all. “She won’t stay here forever,” she says. “For now, leave her alone.”
Not forever, Estajfan thinks. What does that mean? When his sister turns to look at him, there’s a warning in her eyes, and he stays silent as the mountain centaurs disperse.
“She is only one person,” he says at last. “The mountain is not going to change because of one person.”
His sister only smiles—a sad smile that makes her look, Estajfan imagines, like the mother none of them have ever known. “Change is already here, Estajfan. There is nothing any of us can do about it now.”
Still, it surprises him how quickly they adapt to having Heather around. For the first few days she sleeps in the cave that their father had made ready for their mother all those years ago. Sometimes she eats what they bring her—mountain fruits, the nuts and berries that Estajfan has eaten since he was very small. Sometimes she curls against the wall and refuses to eat, or to look at him, or to speak.
Aura is Heather’s shadow—guarding the door, leading her out now and then to walk among the mountain trees to relieve herself. Estajfan and Petrolio resume their runs down the mountain, this time looking for life instead of food. Carrion birds circle slowly overhead and the streets are empty. Estajfan and Petrolio bend through the doorways of house after house and find only bodies. Children on the floor and parents sprawled near them, dead of madness and grief. Plants have already wound through the windows and into the rooms, taking back the houses.
It is so strange to find the world of humans as silent as his mountaintop home. Maybe more so. There is, at least, no screaming, for which he’s very grateful.
How had he not known this destruction was coming? How had he not seen it? The ground had been starving the humans out, yes, and he’d thought that was the thing making him so uneasy—the casual cruelty of it, the willingness of the mountain centaurs and the animals and the plants around them to let the humans starve.
You have a choice to make, the fox had said, and so he’d made it. He couldn’t stand by and watch them disappear. And so he had done what he had done, had gone down and found food where he could and ensured that Heather and her family survived. Even that had not been enough, in the end.
Tonight he’s in the mountain city, alone in the gathering dark. There is movement at the end of the street; he slinks into the overgrown space between two houses and freezes. Ahead of him, a deer, young and cautious, steps into the twilight. It is eating the vines that grow up the sides of the buildings. It stops to look around, then lowers its head to the vines again.
The blade is out of his hand and plunging into the deer’s jugular before he has time to think about it. The deer drops, instantly. It makes no sound.
He tries to ignore the shiver of rage that rustles through the plants around him. How long has it been since deer ventured into the city? Years, most likely. He withdraws the knife, wipes it clean on the grass.
When he leans forward to lift the body, the vines have already begun to gather it in, green tendrils winding around the deer’s legs and chest and heart.
No, he thinks, and pulls. The vines do not release it, and the body begins to decompose before his eyes. He slices into the deer again and rescues a haunch as tendrils and roots pull the rest of it into the earth.
You made your choice, he hears the ground whisper. The green things curl around his feet and pull at his hooves. He steps out of their clutches, then heads back up the mountain. The haunch stays fresh in his hands and does not rot.
In the mountain clearing, under the moon, he gathers dead branches from the forest and lights a fire. The mountain centaurs mill about, suspicious as always.
“You killed it,” one says to him.
Estajfan shrugs. “She needs to eat.”
“The human has been eating,” says another. A female. Green eyes and brown skin, silver hair. “Aura feeds her every day.”
“She needs protein,” he says. The mountain centaurs do not eat meat—they barely eat at all, from what he can see, subsisting on sunlight and anger.
He and his siblings haven’t eaten meat since their father died.
The centaur glowers at him. “The animals will fear you now,” she says. “The mountain is changing.”
“The mountain was already changing!” Estajfan shouts. “I want to survive,” he says. “And I want the humans—her—to survive. Is that so wrong?”
“Look what the humans did to the rest of the world,” she hisses.
Estajfan sighs and does not answer. He roasts the leg until the smell changes to what he remembers from the days when their father cooked for them. Yes, he knows the stories. The way the dragons vanished, the way the sprites in the salt mines dwindled as humans dug deeper and deeper into the mountains, as they mined for salt, as they hoped for diamonds and gold. The ships that spread death in the water, the airplanes that belched death in the sky.
“They weren’t all bad,” he insists, to himself and to them.
The mountain centaur is unmoved. “Enough of them were.”
Estajfan pulls the roasted meat from the fire and carries it to the cave where Heather waits, just beyond a copse of trees. Aura, keeping watch, takes the meat from him.