by Jane Yolen
When she returned with Agora, the pony stood anxiously to one side, refusing to look at Chiron and shifting from one forefoot to the other.
“I don’t want to leave these people, this family,” Kai said simply.
Mom stepped forward. “He’s still really just a boy, Chiron, too young to be taken away.”
“Gracious mother,” Chiron said, bowing his head to her, “the centaurs were created to be immortal. Death can come to us only through accident or murder. But we were also a quarrelsome and unruly folk and brought about our own destruction. I am the only one left, allowed by the Powers to come down to your world and help bring into being a new line of centaurs. I saw you and your family and the pony when I emerged from the light and knew at once you were good folk. I entrusted you with my only son for the year of his gestation and the year of his learning. But now—”
“You can’t just take him!” Robbie cried. “He needs us. We need him. We … we love him.”
Chiron pursed his lips. “I have always been puzzled by how much humans rely on love, when truth and honor are much better allies.”
I stepped forward. “Will you make a bargain with us, great Chiron?”
He laughed. It was almost a horse snicker. “A bargain?”
“Leave Kai here for another year of learning. So he can help train others to take his place. He speaks both our language and Horse. And after, let him come back for visits … every solstice, and Christmas and…” I thought quickly. “July Fourth and my birthday and Robbie’s.”
Chiron stood thinking about that for a minute, then, turning to Kai, said, “What do you say, my son? I will not force you. To force someone to do what is right is itself wrong.”
Kai went up to the old centaur and embraced him, then stepped back. “Old one, your reputation for wisdom has not been overstated. In a year, the school of horse therapy will be well established. I’d be honored to go with you and help bring back the centaur folk to the land of our grandfathers. But now my home, my family, my work—all I love—is here. I say love because it is the finest of human emotions. It would be dishonorable to leave my loved ones right now. And I would think ill of you if you forced me to.”
Chiron thought for a long moment. “That is a bargain I can keep,” he said. “And”—he looked right at me, his dark, wise eyes full of humor—“it is a rare human who can outbargain a Greek god.”
“They say Quakers are great at making bargains,” I said.
“What are Quakers?”
“You will have years to discover this,” said Gerry with a chuckle.
We shook hands all around, except for Martha, to whom Chiron flashed the peace sign. She blushed.
Kai then showed his centaur father how Robbie could ride on his back, looking strong and whole, the shooting stars over their heads.
I gasped. It was the exact picture from my dream. Maybe that had been the real magic.
The old centaur nodded, as if only at that moment had he truly understood Kai’s role in our world.
So we had food and drink and more laughter until—like any star in the sky—Chiron faded into the dawn.
I wasn’t fooled into thinking he was a dream or that he was gone for good. Still, I knew he was an honorable god and would keep his side of the bargain.
Just as he knew we would keep ours. I would make sure of it. For all of us, but especially for my liminal brothers, Robbie and Kai.
ABOUT CENTAUR NAMES
Centaurs are creatures found in Greek mythology, and in Greek their names are pronounced a bit differently than you might think.
As a group the centaurs, or Kentauroi (KEN-tawr-oy), were savages—half man, half beast—who lived in the inhospitable mountains and forests of Greece. They were thought to be untrainable and untamable beings who often got drunk and acted in horrible ways: kidnapping women, killing men, stealing from their neighbors, quarreling with their friends. Eventually they became feared guardians of the gates of Hades (the Greek version of the Afterlife).
The one centaur who everyone agreed was entirely good was Chiron (KAI-ren; also spelled Cheiron or Kheiron), whose foster father was the god Apollo. Chiron was civilized and kind, with great knowledge and skill in medicine. Some of the princes he taught were Jason, Perseus, Ajax, and Theseus, among others.
Other centaurs of note were Pholus (FOE-lus), Nessus (NESS-us), and Centaurus (ken-TAWR-us).
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This book is a fantasy, but two things are not.
The first is the phenomenon of the thalidomide babies, commonly called seal children, which happened in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when doctors in Europe gave out thalidomide pills to pregnant women suffering from terrible morning sickness.
No one understood at the time that those pills would have hideous side effects, producing children with severe handicaps. In fact, doctors then believed that no drugs taken by a pregnant woman could cross the “placental barrier” and hurt a growing fetus. But the thalidomide effects soon became an international scandal as upward of 20,000 babies in forty-six countries were born with deformities ranging from flipperlike arms and legs to twisted hands with fused fingers or no thumbs to children being born with no limbs at all.
By 1961, the drug had been banned by most countries for use by pregnant women, but it was still sold in Canada until 1962.
My husband and I were spending a year traveling in Europe in 1965 when I found out I was pregnant. I was so terrified by the thalidomide scandal that I refused all medication, returning home severely iron deficient, something that was quickly rectified by taking iron tablets in my last trimester.
* * *
The second thing that’s true is horse therapy, also called Riding for the Handicapped, Equine Assisted Therapy, and other similar titles. It is important to note that the word disabled didn’t replace the word handicapped until the 1980s and 1990s, so I have used it throughout the story.
We cannot say exactly when horses were first trained to help those who were mentally or physically handicapped/disabled; however, we do know that in ancient Lydia in 600 B.C. it was recorded that people with various disabilities rode horses.
The first actual study of therapy riding was done in France in 1875 by Dr. Cassaign (or Chassaignac), who used riding to treat certain neurological disorders. In the 1920s in England, soldiers wounded in World War I were given riding therapy.
Lis Hartel was Danish dressage champion in 1943 and 1944 when she was struck by polio. The doctors thought she would never be able to walk again or ride, but she was determined to compete and practiced hard. She needed help getting on and off her horse, and had to walk with two canes, but still she won a silver medal for Denmark in dressage in the Helsinki Olympics in 1952 and again in the 1956 Melbourne games. And she dedicated herself from then on to helping handicapped riders.
In the 1950s, British physiotherapists were exploring ways to help people who suffered from many different kinds of disabilities and hit again upon the idea of using horses for therapy.
The English Riding for the Disabled Association (RDA) and the North American Riding for the Handicapped Association (NARHA) were both founded in the same year, 1969. After that, riding for the disabled got a huge boost, and it eventually became an accepted therapy around the world.
Horse therapy has strict rules about the kinds of horses to be used, their training, and safety measures for riders. It is as real as other therapies. Perhaps—as Ari and Robbie and Kai might say—“realer.”
About the Author
Jane Yolen is an author of books across all genres—picture books, fantasy, science fiction, and graphic novels, including How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?, The Devil’s Arithmetic, and Foiled. She is also a poet, a teacher of writing and literature, and a reviewer of children’s literature. She has been called “the Hans Christian Andersen of America” (by Newsweek) and “the Aesop of the 20th century” (by the New York Times). Her books and stories have won the Caldecott Medal, two Nebula Awards, two Christoph
er Medals, the World Fantasy Award, three Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards, the Golden Kite Award, the Jewish Book Award, the World Fantasy Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Association of Jewish Libraries Award, among many others. She lives with her family in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Text copyright © 2014 by Jane Yolen
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Yolen, Jane.
Centaur rising / Jane Yolen. — First edition.
pages cm
Summary: In 1965, a year after Arianne thinks she sees a shooting star land in the fields surrounding her family’s horse farm, a baby centaur is born and the family, already under scrutiny because Arianne’s six-year-old brother has birth defects, struggles to keep the colt a secret.
ISBN 978-0-8050-9664-4 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-8050-9665-1 (e-book)
[1. Centaurs—Fiction. 2. Horses—Fiction. 3. Farm life—Connecticut—Fiction. 4. Abnormalities, Human—Fiction. 5. Secrets—Fiction. 6. Single-parent families—Fiction. 7. Quakers—Fiction. 8. Connecticut—History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.Y78Cen 2014
[Fic]—dc23
2014015964
eISBN 9780805096651
First hardcover edition 2014
eBook edition October 2014