Doppelganger

by Logan Jacobs

  “You think that windmills make wind?” Lizzy asked as she mounted Damask. She was prettily human again. I loved having her around even as a wolf, but I sure had missed the sight of her faint freckles, among other features. I wondered if it was rude of me though to keep wondering what she would look like with a bath if she could already look the way she did without one.

  Regardless, I again gave up the privilege of riding with her by re-assimilating so that each pony would only have to carry one person and one pack as the group started out on the road. Florenia was safely perched atop Elodette nearby. The two brunettes made a rather complementary pair, the willowy olive-skinned one who oozed sensuality and the pale imposing one who seemed chiseled out of ice.

  “And just what else should they be making?” Willobee demanded of Lizzy, still on the topic of windmills. “What does a flour mill make, riddle me that.”

  “Ten years of that, Vander,” Lizzy sighed. “Reckon he’ll learn a snippet or two from us in all that while?”

  “Why, Lizzy Longshanks!” I teased her. “You mean you don’t intend to ditch us before then? A ride to the next town is all Willobee, and I ever promised you, and unfortunately for you, it looks like Ferndale is going to be that place. Perhaps the lack of a green-eyed she-wolf is what’s ailing them.”

  “I imagine that would be a source of true despair for just about anyone,” Lizzy purred.

  “Why, Liz-- Elizabeth, I mean,” Ilandere stammered, “you wouldn’t ever really leave us, would you?”

  Lizzy stared incredulously at the silver-dappled blonde. I’d noticed that she had mostly left Ilandere alone since Elodette showed up. Not out of fear of the archer, but because she no longer perceived the delicate princess as being such a burden on me and by extension on her, now that the stronger centaur had taken her back under her protection. Instead of answering Ilandere’s question, the she-wolf addressed me. “Vander, she is simply not a rational creature,” she remarked. “I have done nothing but bully her for her weakness, not that that was undeserved of course, ever since we met and threaten to eat her when I could stand her prissy little ninny ways no longer. And yet a teensy joke about parting ways, and her eyes well up like unmilked udders? It is beyond the comprehension of a rational creature like me.”

  “You, a rational creature?” Elodette broke stride to scoff.

  “I don’t mean the fact of my existence,” Lizzy growled as her long ears twitched. “I mean the way I approach the matter of existing. That’s different.”

  “Why, but the Princess has told me a little about you, and you’ve made nothing but one… wildly injudicious decision after the next your whole life,” Elodette remarked, in a tone of genuine surprise rather than malice.

  “The Princess,” Lizzy repeated the title sarcastically, “knows little and less about my life, horse. My past decisions may have been… bad, if that’s what you mean to say, but you weren’t there or you would have seen that the ones I didn’t make were even worse. And I never knew that I could have any other kind of life until I joined up with Vander.”

  “I can’t promise you that I’m leading you to a better life than you had,” I interrupted hastily. I loved having each one of my companions around me, but I still wasn’t used to the idea of having followers, people who relied upon me to give them a purpose. All I knew was that my own purpose for surviving the attack that had destroyed my whole order was wreaking vengeance on their behalf. And to be honest it was both magical and strange that four beautiful women and a gnome were now traveling with me. “I can’t promise any of you that. I may be leading you into deeper shit than you’ve ever waded through before. I may be leading you all to your deaths.”

  “But at least we would be dying for our god, and that would be rather glorious,” Florenia said dreamily. “There is nothing I would not do for you, Qaar’endoth, except abandon or betray you, even if you asked me to.”

  “Florenia, I would never ask you to die for me,” I laughed. “It is my job to protect you.”

  “This is why I have to get you out of here,” Elodette muttered to Ilandere. “What has it been, two days? And look how far gone she is already.”

  “I know what it is,” the little silver centaur said sagely.

  “He is not a god, he is so obviously human,” Elodette continued. “A better specimen of one than I thought at first, admittedly, but still undeniably human.”

  “It’s because they made love last night,” Ilandere announced.

  “You know, we should really start planning for when we reach Ferndale,” I said loudly. “We haven’t even discussed--”

  “It has such a potent effect on humans,” Ilandere mused in a tone of innocent fascination. “I cannot help wondering what Vander’s passion might do to me, Elodette.”

  “You, Princess, are destined to perpetuate the royal bloodlines of your herd,” her handmaiden replied sharply. “Your mates must be of the purest, swiftest, and most virile stock. If you believe that it is time for you to bear a foal that could certainly be arranged. We just need to return to the herd and--”

  “I do not like the sort of stallions that you favor, Elodette,” Ilandere said in exasperation as she glanced at me sideways.

  “Ilandere,” I said gently, “selfishly, I would of course never want to lose your company. But I know that the kind of life I will be leading for the foreseeable future, on the road all the time, with danger and discomfort, and never settling down in a real home, is not the right kind of life for you. So I will understand when, someday, you will need to leave me, just like you found the courage to leave your herd. I will be sorry, but I will also be glad as long as I know that you are finally safe and happy.”

  “But Vander, no one has ever kept me as safe and happy as you have done,” Ilandere said as she gazed at me with her enormous doe eyes. “I was hoping that maybe… someday… when you have enough selves that you can spare one sometimes?” she began shyly. “Well, maybe I could have a home with a bed of my own, and one of you could live there with me. I’d take care of you, but I’d understand that you would have to leave sometimes to do more important things, of course. But I’d always wait for as long as it took for one of you to come home.”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake,” Elodette groaned. “I’m going to go look for water.” And she set off at a gallop.

  “That would be very lovely, Ilandere,” I said. “But I, er, you do know that I’m not trying to make more selves in order to be able to start a bunch of households, right? I was more thinking along the lines of building an army. So it might be a long time before I get around to more peaceful activities like that. I hope it does happen someday, but I don’t want to keep you waiting for something that might never happen. I would just be afraid of disappointing you, Ilandere.”

  “You will never disappoint me, Vander,” she replied.

  “I keep analyzing your speech patterns, most careful-like, Master,” Willobee said, and raised his velvet cap to scratch his bald head. “But I still cannot puzzle out what it is you are saying that is all so very special and terribly persuasive. Meaning no offense, Master.”

  “It ain’t about what he says at all, that’s why, gnome,” Lizzy informed him. “It’s on account of what he does. What he does for us, like saving your little gnomish ass from me and mine, but more than that it’s what he shows us can be done.”

  “Even simpler than that, it is a matter of who he is,” Florenia asserted.

  “Thank you all for the compliments,” I said. “But I’m just doing my best to move forward, take care of you all, and claim my vengeance.”

  “You’ve been claiming a lot more than vengeance,” Florenia giggled. “Especially last night.”

  I was about to reply, but then Elodette came barreling back at us. She had perfect control of her colossal physique and stopped inches from when she would have actually trampled any of us, as I had been confident that she would, but the ponies whinnied in panic. They did seem drawn to the giant black centaur in a similar fa
shion as they were drawn to little Ilandere, but they also unmistakably feared her. I couldn’t really blame them.

  “So what’s on your tail, horse?” Lizzy drawled.

  Elodette ignored the she-wolf and pointed behind her. “I found water,” she announced.

  The burbling stream that she led us to, just a little way off the road, was a great relief to all of our parched throats. Everyone quieted down, much to my relief, and gratefully drank his or her fill. I also refilled all of our waterskins. Elodette produced a waterskin from one of her saddlebags that I had not caught sight of before, which was more the size of a flour sack. The only reason I supposed I hadn’t heard it sloshing around in there was that it was as deflated as the rest of ours.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw the she-wolf make a sudden aggressive lunge and heard a gnomish squeal which turned into a gurgle. For a horrible instant I thought that Lizzy was drowning Willobee. Then I realized that she was forcibly washing his beard, which by this point on our journey had turned to a crusty brown and started attracting bugs.

  I left her to it.

  “If only we had some soap, and time to heat the water,” Florenia said wistfully. “I have not had a bath since I left Nillibet’s temple.”

  Lizzy paused her beard-scrubbing to ask in confusion, “But wasn’t that this week?”

  “What is a bath?” Ilandere inquired sweetly.

  “It’s a form of human nonsense,” Elodette replied. I reflected that I liked her a lot better when she and I were working on a project together. It was almost enough to make me wish for more trouble. Well, if the oracle Meline were to be believed, there would be enough of that to be found at Ferndale.

  Florenia explained, “A bath is when you take all your clothes off and slowly immerse yourself in a tub of water that feels almost scalding to begin with, but then as your body becomes accustomed to the sensation of strong heat, it becomes exquisitely blissful. And then you take a bar of soap, scented like any kind of flowers and herbs you please, and glide it all over your skin to remove the presence of any contaminating particles and renew its silken luster. Or better yet, you simply close your eyes and relax all your limbs while a maid does it for you. And then she works gently through all the tangles in your hair with soap as well, and massages your scalp, and rinses the soap out, and then combs your hair with fragrant oils until it shines like a mirror. And if at any time the water ever cools or becomes impure, then buckets of the old water are ladled out, while fresh, steaming water is poured in to replace it. Oh, and usually there are rose petals added to the surface… but sometimes lily petals instead.”

  “Oh. I think I should like to have a bath someday,” Ilandere replied.

  “I think I should like us all to have baths someday,” I agreed. “I hope there is an inn or something of the sort at Ferndale where that can be arranged.”

  “Well, Willobee has had his already,” Lizzy announced proudly. “See? He is as good as new.” She hauled the gnome out of the stream by the back of his chainmail shirt. Really, it was impressive that she could support his full weight with one hand like that, including the chainmail on top of it all. Willobee sputtered like an angry cat, and then the she-wolf gently set him back down on his feet before she handed him back his cap.

  “Now I am sure to rust!” he complained as he wrung out his beard with both hands.

  Florenia gazed at the gnome in astonishment. “Why, what a pretty shade of lavender. That’s Drusilla’s color, you know. Do you dye it?”

  “Dye my beard?” the gnome demanded indignantly. “What do you take me for, a fop?”

  Florenia’s hazel eyes traced his suit of embroidered red velvet clothes beneath the chainmail shirt, all the way up to the foot-long feather sprouting from his cap, and she opened her mouth, then closed it.

  Once we had all drunk as much water as our stomachs could hold, relieved ourselves, washed our hands, and splashed our faces, we mounted back up and set off again.

  By evening, we had reached the second fork which somewhat reassured me that we were still on the right path, although of course the path to Ferndale was not the only path that had two forks in it. We turned right and continued on until I could tell that both Ilandere’s and the ponies’ steps were slowing, in spite of Lizzy and me sometimes walking in order to give them a rest.

  When we made camp that night, Elodette caught us a rabbit, and we stewed it with some of the centaur’s dried mushrooms in one of my pots from the temple which Lizzy had thought worth keeping with us. We also roasted the sweet orange yams from her pack, until they were caramelized on the outside and soft on the inside, and scooped them from their crackled skins. We had to use a combination of hands, teeth, and sticks for the meal, since Lizzy had discarded all my silverware, not to mention the cloth napkins.

  “Can all the centaurs in your herd shoot like you do, Elodette?” I asked her. I knew that the princess could not, but perhaps all their warrior sect had skills to match the giant black centaur’s. If that were the case, they must be nearly invincible as a unit.

  “Well… no,” Elodette replied. “There was only one who was superior. But he passed on some years ago.”

  “Who was he?” I asked.

  “Chiron. My teacher,” Elodette explained.

  “Well, he must have been truly magnificent,” I remarked.

  “He was,” the dark centaur replied softly. “The best of us all.” The firelight flickered in her gray eyes as she gazed off, lost in thought. Then she looked back up at me and offered hesitantly, “If you like, I could try to teach you, Vander.”

  “You would do that?” I exclaimed excitedly. “It’s not… you know… against herd regulations or something, to share archery techniques with a human?”

  The fair-skinned brunette smiled. “No, it’s not. And if you are to share the duties of protecting Princess Ilandere with me, then it is not acceptable for you to be anything short of superb with a bow.”

  “I am not terrible by human standards, but I’m sure I fall far short of ‘superb’ by yours,” I admitted.

  The brunette unslung her bow from her shoulder. “Follow me, then,” she said. “And afterward, you shall help me start on more arrows.”

  “Deal,” I agreed, and we moved off from the camp together to find some suitable targets.

  “There is also one way in which I reckon I am a better fighter than you, Vander,” Lizzy informed my other self. Her green eyes were glinting mischievously.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Wrestling,” the she-wolf replied.

  I looked her curvaceous and well-muscled frame up and down, skeptically and then with interest. “Wrestling…? Do you mean…?”

  “I mean wrestling,” Lizzy repeated. “And afterward, we can try whatever else you have in mind.”

  “All right, but I don’t want to hurt you,” I began, right before I was tackled by four hundred pounds of canine killing machine.

  “No teeth or claws!” I yelled from underneath her. She paused to drag her massive tongue wetly across my entire face in acknowledgement.

  Then she went back to crushing the life out of me. I worked my arm up between myself and Lizzy’s hulking wolf chest so I could breathe and bucked my hips to get some leverage and managed to bend a knee. I used that knee to propel myself forward and try to get my upper body out from under Lizzy while I reached to grab her shoulder with my arm. Then I got my other leg out from under her and hooked it around her flank. I tried to use my foot to dig into her hindquarters and force her more upright toward a sitting position while I simultaneously pushed with my arm from below in an attempt to gain more space. Lizzy was still bearing down on me with all her might and I could tell I wasn’t going to be able to push myself clear from that direction, but I did have enough space to get myself turned around perpendicular to her, so that more of my torso was sticking out from one side and my legs were partly free from the knees down on the other side. I jabbed Lizzy’s ribs with my elbow and kicked as hard
as I could with my legs and managed to squeeze out from under her. Then I immediately tackled her by driving my shoulder into hers while I flung my arms around her neck in a headlock and tried to kick one of her front legs out from under her. Lizzy wobbled, and then she flung herself onto her back using an awkward diagonal roll that had the effect of wrapping my body around hers and once again flattening me between her and the ground.

  Meanwhile, I had discovered that Elodette did not like to shoot tree trunks. She liked to shoot branches. That was what she called them, anyway. But the ones she pointed out should really have been classified more as twigs.

  After I had lost enough arrows to annoy her, even though almost all of them skimmed close enough to their targets that, had I been aiming for a human, I probably would have just hit a different portion of the same organ, the black centaur moved in to start correcting my stance and my breathing patterns and checking the level of muscular tension in various parts of my body. She interrogated me on my perception of wind currents and lighting conditions. She questioned and criticized me on details that I had never even been taught to consider in relation to archery. I still wasn’t convinced that some of them weren’t just centaur superstition mixed in with the genuinely valuable advice.

  On one of my tries, just when I had everything aligned in accordance with Elodette’s specifications, I suddenly winced and shot wide, hitting a completely separate tree than the intended one.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  My other self appeared right next to me, growled, “I told her not to use her fucking claws,” and walked off back toward the others at the camp to rejoin my wrestling session.

  When Elodette finally acknowledged a marginal improvement in my archery skills, we went around and collected as many of her arrows as we could reach. This involved a lot of tree-climbing. I went back to the camp to grab my grappling hook and use it for just that purpose. I brought the arrows back to camp while the centaur stayed behind to collect a pile of branches that she thought would be suitable for new shafts.