by Kevin Hearne
After her time on Mack Guphinne, she knew two things: She couldn’t live with herself if she kept letting people get hurt or die just to avoid her own destiny.
And her destiny was going to arrive sooner rather than later.
It was seriously hard to maintain one’s coolness while being lowered onto a dinghy using a pulley system designed for large barrels of grog and lard. Vic felt pretty stable and cool on land, but in the air he became awkward and unbalanced. It was a dicey business in the best moments, and choppy seas near Mack Guphinne as Vic neared his longtime goal did not make it a best moment. At last, he would find the cure that would expurge his tea magic, leaving him undeniably swole and masculine.
“Quit wiggling!” Feng shouted from the ship.
“I’m not doing it on purpose, bro! My front half weighs more because it has an extra torso on it!”
“Well, stop being that way, then!”
Vic took a deep breath and tried to shop shaking. “That’s why I’m here,” he whispered to himself.
They finally got him lowered into the dinghy, which didn’t make him feel any less wobbly. He immediately clunked down onto his knees to help stabilize the boat, knowing full well the rough wood would skin his shins. Taking up the oars to row, he realized that it was actually good that there were so many things demanding his attention—it kept him from freaking out about what was going to happen once he reached the interior of the island of Mack Guphinne.
Two of the red-shirted POPO sailors had been sent along to help, and they now cowered in the dinghy, appropriately frightened to be trapped near their first centaur. As soon as the boat washed up on sand, Vic stood and leapt out, and the men dragged the boat farther in and looked about the beach.
“So do you want us to go with you, or…?” one man said.
“Or what?” Vic asked.
The man shrugged. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”
Vic felt that more deeply than he was willing to admit.
“I should be back in a few hours,” he said.
“We’ll be waiting. Unless something eats us.”
The red-shirted man said it as if that was something that regularly happened to his cohort.
It felt harder than it should have, walking away from those two random strangers and the boat that had become home after the other boat that had become home had burned to a crisp. Vic was a war of emotions: great purpose and destiny arm-wrestling with mild terror and discomfort. What if the cure he sought on the island was just an old dams’ tale? What if he’d spent all this time, exposed his magic to friends and enemies, barely escaped death repeatedly, taken lives, and it was all for nothing?
When he looked back, the two tiny sailors in their red shirts waved nervously, and Vic waved in return. He crested a dune and shielded his eyes against the sun, looking for the right path. He was blinded at first, but soon he saw it: a shimmering ribbon of white sand snaking deep into the jungle, just as the legends said it would. His hooves slid a little on the way down the dune, but the path was solid underneath him, tiny shells crunching pleasurably under his hooves. Lush green foliage arched overhead, and glinting metallic insects buzzed from flower to flower as jewel-like birds flitted to and fro and sang raucously in the trees.
“This isn’t so bad,” Vic said, conjuring a cup of lavender Olonkh tea with lemon and sipping delicately as he walked through the dappled sunlight.
But of course he had spoken too soon. About an hour in, he grew concerned about the lack of signage and the distance to the temple, which he was certain he should’ve already reached. He felt the path change under his hooves. The sugary white sand grew dingy and gray and wet, sucking at his bare hooves and making him glad he’d given up horseshoes on the ship. The lush emerald-green foliage slowly curled away and died, making way for graying pricker bushes, sad little weepy trees, and dolorous cattails. The sky went from crystal blue to barnacle gray, and the sun’s warmth faded to a clammy kiss of moisture that made Vic’s skin twitch. Soon the ground became downright swampy, muddy water sloshing in over the path and leaving nasty splatters on Vic’s pasterns. The air smelled of old chowder and mildewed socks.
The path will show itself to the righteous was what Vic had always heard, and he knew he was righteous in multiple ways, but this was ridiculous. At no point had the legends said anything along the lines of The path will show itself to the righteous and then gradually get rather boggy and make the righteous feel as if perhaps they missed the proper turnoff. And yet Vic could still see the path just ahead, zigging and zagging among the plants, always looking as if the next patch of white sand and blue skies might be just around the bend. But with each step, it seemed to disappear beneath him in muck.
Still, he trod on. He’d told the men he’d be back in a few hours, assuming an hour’s trot up a beautiful path, an hour’s soul-searching or whatever, and a quick canter back with his wretched tea magic gone forever, his soul washed clean of mareishness, expunged of pink icing and porcelain saucers and replete with protein shakes and shoulder hair and manly swagger. But it must’ve been hours already. Hours of slogging. Hours of exhaustion as he pulled his hooves from sucking mud and plunged them down again into the same. Hours of flicking off horseflies with his tail and rubbing mosquito bites on his guns. Hours and hours of following an enticing path that disappeared the moment he reached it.
He was dying of thirst, but there was no water—
Wait.
Panting, muscles quivering, he conjured up a jumbo latte mug full of iced green tea with honey. Even as he gulped it, he refilled the mug, slurping until his belly was cold and sloshy. Bolstered by the tea, he rubbed his fingers together and produced mounds of his favorite cucumber sandwiches, dainty logs of pillowy white bread with just the right amount of mayo and a sprinkling of salt on top of thinly sliced cukes. It was like eating coolness, and he finished up his repast, eaten on the hoof, with a handful of cake balls, conjured on their own little sticks so he wouldn’t get his hands too dirty and risk touching the filthy water below to clean them off.
“That’s better!” he said, and looking up, licking his fingers, he found the sandy white trail under his hooves again.
He took to trotting now, enjoying the rise and fall of the trail as it wound through pastures of golden wheat. Birds took flight overhead, dancing and swooping, and he picked up to a canter, arms out, shouting, “I’m king of the world!” and swiftly adding, “But not Pell—ha ha—because we all know that’s Goode King Gustave! Please don’t sue!”
His canter fell back to a walk, and he stepped off the trail to expunge his bladder of what had to be ten gallons of green tea. The moment his last hoof was off the white-sand path, a cloud passed over the sun, and brown water squelched up around his fetlocks, and cattails brushed his belly, and he bellowed, “Oh, come on!” as he took a mighty pee of annoyance.
It took several long moments, as he was both a horse and a man and a repository of much tea, but when he finally finished, he threw his arms at the sky and shouted, “Is this how it works? I slow down or lose faith or stop, and the trail becomes awful? Because that’s not how I was told it worked.”
In response, thunder rang out, and rain poured from the now cloud-filled skies as if someone had dumped a very large bucket directly over Vic on purpose.
“Fine. If this is what it takes to reach my goal, then this is what it takes.”
He tried to sidestep back to where the path had been, but that path was gone. Up ahead, in a lone sunbeam, an enticing ribbon of white sand waited. He leapt for it and fell, staggering into knee-deep water. His hooves sank in soft mud, the cattails closed around him, and the rain pelted him like a million tiny rocks. He was cold to his bones, lost, farther away from home than he’d ever been. Even the cruelty and violence of the Centaur Pastures was better than this lonely darkness. The sun went down, hidden by clouds, as he struggled th
rough gelid water. A light always seemed to dance ahead, showing flashes of shining white sand, but he never reached it. His head hung. He couldn’t lift his arms to conjure food. His tongue grew thick in his mouth, and exhaustion suffused him. He began mumbling to himself, staring down at his equine chest as his body sank in the swamp.
“C’mon, Vic. What’s the matter? What’s wrong? C’mon, bro. I understand. It’s too difficult for you, bro.”
And then his hocks were underwater, his hooves icy.
“Vic! You’re sinking! Turn around, bro! You have to! Come on! Be swole! Fight against the swampness!”
His man torso strained forward, his muscles taut, urging his horse body to comply. When his horse legs just sank deeper, he smacked his rump, again and again, as he’d seen humans whip horses to a frenzy.
“Horse parts! Please! You’re letting the swampness get to you. You have to try. You have to be swole!”
It was almost as if he was being torn in two, as if he didn’t control the horse half of himself any longer.
“Come on. For me! You’re my butt! You’re where I keep most of my organs. Stupid bod! You’ve gotta move or we’ll die! Please!”
Still, his legs seemed so far away, so cold. In a last burst of fury and fear, he broke off a willow whip and smacked his rump with it, hard, screaming, “No! Stupid horse butt!”
And then his rump was underwater. All of him, up to the human nipples. He felt the water creep over his guns, his shoulders, up his throat. But the moment that brown, murky, muddy, slimy water touched his lips, he was done.
“No!” Vic shouted. “That’s nasty!”
As if he’d been struck by lightning, his legs straightened beneath him and his hindquarters bunched to action, full of feeling again and quivering with energy. This time, the nervous dancing of his hooves helped loosen the boggish mud. He unleashed a furious tantarella, feeling his nerves fire and his muscles swell with blood. He fought with his arms, plunged his hooves into the muck, struggling to get out.
“I did not come all this way to die in a swamp!” he shouted. “I don’t care how gross it is! I don’t care if the legends were lies! I’ll go back to the ship and just learn how to be magical before I let this dumb bog win! Screw you, you stupid temple!”
Gaining traction, he turned and reared, and—
His front hooves came down on stone.
The swamp was gone. The cattails were gone. The trees were gone. He was in a beautiful circular temple, the aged russet stones overgrown with lush vines. Kindly smiling statues gazed down at him, and a circular hole in the roof showed bright-blue sky. The air smelled of incense and chai, and somewhere nearby, wind chimes clattered on the breeze. Torches lit the shadowed walls, and candles glowed in a limpid pool set among the stones, each light floating in the center of a lily.
“Uh, okay,” Vic said, lifting his feet nervously to see if he’d tracked any mud into this sacred space.
“What brings you to the Temple of Woom, my son?”
He expected to see a holy woman in embroidered robes, or perhaps an aged monk, or, in his fondest dreams, a pretty Appaloosa centaur mare with a fondness for mullets. But the high, feminine, musical voice had come from…
Was that a chinchilla?
It sat on a tiny stool by the pool, knitting something.
“Who are you?”
“I am the Guardian of the Broken Waters.”
“But you’re a chinchilla.”
“And you’re a centaur. Life, uh, finds a way.”
Vic shook his head in disbelief, but his vision didn’t change. “Am I still dreaming?”
The chinchilla shook her head too, but like he was an idiot. “Of course not. You were never dreaming. You were merely on the path.”
“On the path?”
Huffing a sigh, the chinchilla put down her knitting and strode as purposefully as a spherical chinchilla can toward the confused centaur. “Stop asking stupid questions. You know you were on the path. You know the path was a test. The test took you a long darned while, and that’s why I’m still knitting instead of getting along with my life. Now. Again, I ask you: Why have you come to the Temple of Woom?”
Vic fidgeted, and sugar cubes clattered from his fists, making him blush fiercely. “I wish to be expunged of my tea magic, that I might be whole and swole.”
The chinchilla politely sneezed. “That’s not what you want.”
Vic gasped and looked down. The chinchilla’s teeny hands were on her round hips, and her teeny eyebrows—did chinchillas even have real eyebrows?—were raised in that way that suggested your next answer had better be both truthful and correct.
He cleared his throat. “It is what I want, though. I have this magic, see, and my sire says it makes me feminine and weak. So he taught me how to lift, taught me how to act tough, told me that I had to make up for being born this way. So I…I don’t want to be this way anymore. I don’t want the magic.”
His answer must’ve been the wrong one. The annoyed chinchilla stopped to take a dust bath, her teeth grinding, and then looked up at him again.
“Has anyone ever told you you’re an idiot?” she said.
“Y-yes?”
“And have you ever bothered to look a little deeper and see if that might be true?”
Vic suddenly felt deeply uncomfortable and fought to hold in his apples. He had never been confronted by a chinchilla before, and he would’ve preferred to take on an entire gymnasium of swoleboys to being eviscerated by her knowing, beady eyes.
“I figured there would be time for introspection after I came here and got fixed,” he finally said, trying to keep a stiff upper lip, though his upper lip was mostly just sweat and snot at this point.
“I thought so. Now come down here so I don’t strain my neck. You’re very tall.”
“Or maybe you’re very short.”
“You think? Listen, swoleboy. Turning everything around on the other person won’t work here in the Woom. Here you’ve got to get right with yourself. So come on down.”
Carefully, Vic kneeled, wincing at the touch of rough rock on his poor, dinghy-scraped knees. Once he was there, the chinchilla tapped the floor between them with a claw.
“Pellish breakfast tea, cream, four sugars, and a biscuit, if you can manage it,” she commanded.
Vic conjured it exactly as she liked, and she happily sipped and crunched, her nibbles making an adorable chick-chick-chick sound and her round cheeks wobbling like crazy as Vic quietly prepared for a mental breakdown. Finally, when she’d eaten all that a chinchilla could manage, she put a wee paw on his foreleg and looked deep into his eyes.
“I don’t think you want to lose your magic, kid. I think you like your magic. Heck, I think you love your magic. But your sire’s poisoned you, see? He decided he didn’t like it, or maybe he’s scared of it, or maybe he’s jealous, but instead of getting right with himself, he took it out on you. So you grew up being told you were the one with the problem, when he was the one with the problem. There’s nothing wrong with magic. It’s a rare gift. Something to be celebrated. And that you can do it without a wand is even more impressive. You have tremendous power.” She sighed sadly, and Vic was about to ask her if she was okay, but she wasn’t done.
“So what is it you really want? Deep down in your heart? If your dad didn’t exist and there was no one left to impress, what would you want?”
“I don’t know.”
The chinchilla blew an adorably high-pitched raspberry. “Not good enough. Try again.”
Vic closed his eyes and tried to let his heart speak, but his heart had spent many, many years remaining silent. No answer appeared in the darkness of his mind; no words came to his tongue.
“I just…I mean…”
“That’s it. Into the pool.”
Vic stood and nearly fell over again t
hanks to gravity, blood, and centaur biology not playing well together.
“What?”
The chinchilla pointed at the pool. “I was trying to avoid this bit, as it’s messy, and you’re unwieldy, and I really hate mopping, but you’ll just have to do it. March your rump right into the Pool of the Broken Waters and prepare to be reborn.”
Vic stepped closer to the pool and looked down into its infinite blackness. The flowers holding the candles all politely drifted to the edges, giving him plenty of room. He dipped in a hoof, and it came back slick with something thick and reddish.
“I don’t really think that’s hygienic—”
But someone shoved him in. And it wasn’t the chinchilla, as she was way too short, and shoving a two-ton centaur anywhere requires some mad muscles.
Vic plunged into the pool, tumbling deep underwater. He felt weightless and frightened, his worst dreams of drowning in dark water coming to pass. There was no purchase, no edge, no soft sandy bottom—just endless floating. But then, after several moments of not dying or even feeling his lungs burn, he opened his eyes.
He was back home in the Centaur Pastures, watching a Clydesdale colt run away from a jeering herd, all wearing baseball caps and mitts. The stallion was still young and gangly, all skinny legs and huge hooves, but he was unmistakably Vic’s sire.
“Dad?” he muttered under his breath.
But the scene did not respond.
“Go on, butterfingers!” another stallion called from the herd. “We don’t need your kind on our team!”
“Yeah, you’re supposed to be the batter, not the maker of batter!”
The younger version of Vic’s father galloped away, crying, as Vic watched from somewhere overhead. As the colt skidded to a stop behind a gnarled old tree, Vic saw it: thick yellow glop oozing from his hands.
“It won’t stop,” the coltish version of his father said, his voice high and unsure. “Why won’t it stop?”