“Tell us about the centaur,” they say. “Have you seen him? Have you seen the babies? It’s been so long!”
The doctor lets the girls lead her to a seat before the fire. Her sister brings her a mug of tea, then sits in a nearby chair. She asks, “So have you seen him? Did you give him my thanks for taking those heavy, godforsaken books from my shelves?”
As promised, the doctor had been bringing gifts up the mountain every time she passed by. Last time, she had given the centaur some of her old textbooks.
The centaur had loved them. He loved all her gifts.
“I’ve seen the centaur,” she tells them. “He is as tall and proud as ever.”
They delight in how intractable he is, how stubborn and rude. He is a puzzle that they’ve yet to unlock.
“Have you met the children yet?” her other niece asks. The quieter one, the one who reminds the doctor of herself. “Are they happy? Are they loved?”
“I haven’t met the children.” The girls and their mother sigh in disappointment. “Next time, maybe. Perhaps I should bring him a different kind of gift.”
“Seems to me you bring the centaur everything. And the centaur brings nothing to you,” her sister says.
The doctor looks down at her mug of tea. “He’s lost a great deal.”
“So have you.” Her sister’s voice is sharp. “So have we all.”
“Perhaps. But how is he supposed to know that?”
“He would know if he asked you about yourself. If he spared one moment to think about you.”
The doctor shrugs. “He has no obligations to me.”
Her sister cocks her head at her. She has never been surprised—not when the doctor first told her the story of the centaurs, not later, not now. She is also the child of an almost-witch. She, too, lost her mother in the fire. She has survived all these years by turning her anger into love for her twins, her husband, and the sister she sees only a few times a year. Everything is magical and nothing makes sense. Everything could fall away at any moment.
“He has an obligation to you like everyone else does,” her sister says. “If the centaur doesn’t see that, then he’s not worth your time.”
That night, after the girls have gone to bed, the doctor and her sister sit outside. Together, they breathe the night air.
“You’ve lost weight,” her sister says. “Are you eating enough?”
“What kind of doctor would I be if I wasn’t taking care of my own body?”
Her sister snorts. “You. That’s what kind.”
The doctor chuckles. She always feels very young when she’s with her sister, and tonight is no exception. “Do you miss them?” she says, after a while.
“Always,” her sister says. “And I still see them everywhere.”
The doctor nods. They often talk about this: how their dead mother sometimes seems to appear in a crowd; the way their father, who died last year in his sleep, still sometimes seems to come to them in the face of a stranger on the other side of the street.
“I keep running into the same stories,” the doctor says. “Babies with no faces, extra limbs. Monster children that nobody wants.” She leans forward and rests her elbows on her thighs. “The way that Mama kept running into people who wanted love. What lessons lie in that?”
“The centaur loves his children,” her sister reminds her. “If what you say is true.”
“Yes,” she says. “But he doesn’t want to show them to anybody. He keeps them hidden away on that mountain. And maybe that’s my fault.”
“Mama was not responsible for the choices that other people make, and neither are you,” her sister says, sharply. “If he wanted an uncomplicated life, he should have stayed a horse.”
The doctor laughs, and then sobers. “But what about his children? What kind of life will they have up there, alone?”
“Still not your responsibility. Didn’t you say their mother has new twins? Human ones?”
“Yes,” the doctor says. She can’t keep the bitterness out of her voice. “Perfect babies. A boy and a girl.”
“She’s chosen her life,” the doctor’s sister reminds her. “And so has the centaur. You can’t expect either of them to choose a different one. Perhaps that is the lesson you need to keep on learning.”
The doctor looks away. “That doesn’t seem a worthwhile lesson,” she says.
Her sister sighs. “There are different kinds of magic. And there are different kinds of grief. One person can only carry so many kinds. You of all people should know that.”
“And what if his children want to be in the world? What if they don’t want to be hidden away?”
Her sister has no answer for this; they sit on the step in silence until a call from the house takes them back inside.
It’s the second niece, awake. The doctor goes in to see her.
“Tell me the story again,” she says. “Tell me what happened when the centaurs were born.”
The doctor sits beside her on the bed and brushes the hair out of her eyes. She’s told this story so many times they know it by heart. It is not, perhaps, the best kind of story for children. But it’s the one they always want.
“Three doors for three babies,” she says. “Three doors into the world.”
16
JJ crawls behind the wheel and turns the key. Moira is beside him in the passenger seat while the others sleep in the back, piled on what blankets and clothing they’ve managed to scrounge. JJ turns the headlights on and there it is in front of them—a huge thing come to a sudden jerking stop, half man, half horse, all muscles and startled blue eyes. It raises its hands against the sudden flare of light.
“What the fuck is that?”
JJ is leaning on the horn, and Moira is screaming. She hears a wild shuffling in the back and then the clang of the back door of the U-Haul opening.
A shot rings out and the creature stumbles. Darby steps up beside Moira’s window, the gun on his shoulder. The creature—the thing—looks toward Darby, its hands still up to block the light. Darby fires again. This time, the beast falls.
The impact shakes the ground around them. Moira and JJ sit stunned for a moment, and then they’re both tumbling out of the truck. She gasps in the dark morning air, but only partly from the cold.
The creature lies sprawled in front of them, a dark splash of blood on its lower abdomen, the part of it that looks like a man. Before she knows it, she’s on her knees by the creature, pulling the sweater from around her shoulders and pressing it hard against the wound.
“What the hell are you doing?” Darby crouches beside her.
“It’s hurt.”
“Of course it’s hurt. I fucking shot it.”
“What the fuck is it?” says Brian from Moira’s other side. “Jesus Christ. Jesus fucking Christ. Where did it come from?”
The creature’s breathing catches as Moira presses harder. She sees its eyelids flutter, then close as it passes out. “It’s hurt,” she says again. “We need to get it… somewhere.”
“Sure,” Darby snaps. “We’ll take it to the next emergency animal hospital along the highway. No problem.”
“Well, we can’t just leave it here.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Moira’s right.” JJ crouches down beside her. “We should take it with us.”
“What the fuck for? You want to eat it or something?”
Moira tries not to shiver.
JJ doesn’t answer for a moment. He just stares at the creature. “Are we dreaming?” he asks.
“Everything is a dream now!” Darby yells. “Let’s just leave it and go!”