by Diana Tyler
“And why did you show such mercy, might I ask?” snarls the beast, mockery replacing the hunger on his lips.
“Because you have something I want,” I say. “And I am willing to spare your life for it.”
“And what do I have that you could possibly need,” questions the Centaur.
“Four legs. I need them to get me to the Soukinoi fortress. Then I will let you go.”
She elbows my side and whispers, “I’m going with you.”
“You should go home and stop playing Soldier,” I reply, yanking my knife from her hand.
“Ēlektōr is my home,” says the girl. “And I know how to get there.” I squint at her skeptically and tap my dagger against my thigh. “Fine,” says the girl, reading my uncertainty. “If you wish to be stranded out in the middle of the desert with a Centaur who will likely eat you alive when he gets hungry in a few hours, be my guest!” The girl curtsies indignantly and turns to walk away.
“Wait!” I call out after her. She turns back to me, hands on her hips. “You can come. But I’m not responsible for looking after you.”
“I look after myself,” she yips.
“I can respect that,” I smile. “I do, too.”
The Centaur doesn’t say a word. He paws his hoof into the ground.
I lift my dagger to my face, poised to throw. “Go ahead. Try running. I can tell you want to.” The Centaur tosses his head and neighs bitterly at the Moonbow as it shines upon his misfortune.
With the sword’s tip I draw a semicircle in the sand. During my years as Acheron’s slave, I learned that Centaurs give their word by finishing the circle offered them. The penalty for dishonoring the oath is abandonment by his herd – his family.
“Hurry up, half-breed! You’ve heard her terms!” shouts the girl.
“I have already broken the Centaurian Oath once,” says the Centaur, in a purely human voice. “That’s why I am here chasing down petty thieves, schoolgirl thieves at that.”
“In that case, Centaur, you can be sure the punishment will be far more severe should you break the oath a second time,” I say.
The Centaur shakes his head, swats the rain with his tail, then lowers himself onto his front knees and leans forward. “I doubt it can get much worse,” he says. “I have disgraced my entire kind by bowing down to the likes of you.” And with that, he stretches over the semicircle and completes it with an uncontrollable grimace.
CHAPTER TEN
OASIS
You’d better start explaining yourself before I change my mind and take my chances in the desert without you,” I whisper to the girl as we ride atop the Centaur, Limén fading behind us, a mirage glimmering in the awakening haze of desert heat.
“You wouldn’t return to the old man if you knew what was good for you,” she replies, eyes straight ahead, tone as flat as the barren terrain before us.
“And what does that mean?”
“You told Lysander and the other Soukinoi that you would kill Acheron. Did you?”
“How do you know about that,” I demand.
“I told you already – I’m one of them. And I was there.”
“So you know…”
“About your doma? Of course I do.”
“How did you find me? Do you have a doma for following a person’s scent? Or maybe you’re part canine?”
The girl snickers like a child. “No! But I have something better.” She turns to me and lowers her head as if to whisper. “A Gryphon!” She shrieks the word as loud as she can and crazily bats her arms, causing the Centaur to trot ahead nervously and my anxious blood to warm.
“Careful. You don’t want to upset me,” I say, placing her hand on my pulsing forearm. Her eyes and smile widen with curiosity. “And Gryphons don’t exist,” I add.
“You’ll see. She was released to track you, and found you at Ourania. Then she brought me to Limén to hunt you down.”
“You rode a Gryphon here?” I laugh at such a ridiculous-sounding question.
“I didn’t swim or fly here myself.”
“If the Gryphon is real, why didn’t it just kill me back at the port?”
“She’s a secret,” the girl whispers. “We don’t want the whole world knowing she’s not just a myth. Anyway, stop changing the subject. Acheron is still alive. It was my job to kill you back there.”
I think of Gennadius and Aspasia. They probably woke up just minutes ago and walked into my room to invite me for breakfast, only to find my bed disheveled and empty. I can see Aspasia’s green eyes widening with worry and welling with tears, and Gennadius’s old callused hand clenching hers before leaving to brew for her a consoling cup of tea.
“Incredible…Your job to kill me…” I laugh, my concern for my forsaken hosts diminishing in the wake of this brazen child’s audacity. “If it had not been for me, you would be inside this Centaur’s belly instead of on top of it.”
The girl and I begin to bounce up and down as the Centaur chortles.
“Stop it!” I demand, kicking his sides. He whinnies and trots a few yards until his laughter subsides.
“My ankles were never broken. Did you fail to notice?” the girl says, lifting her legs and pointing her toes as she turns her feet left and right for me to see. “I knew you were following us. I could see you from the roof. So I decided to test you.”
“You risked your life just to see if I would save you?” I ask.
The girl slips her hand into a large pouch fastened to her girdle and reveals from it the end of a dagger’s sheath. She pats it proudly. “I was ready to kill him if I needed to. Then you,” she grins.
I slide back a few inches, trying in vain to distance myself from this cunning child-warrior who has made me into a fool. I feel the Centaur laughing again, but I don’t stop him this time. I deserve every bit of his glee-laced ridicule.
“Don’t be so upset. You have nothing to worry about now, Iris. You’re one of us,” the girl assures me. “Why didn’t you kill him?” she asks, her tone more somber now. “You had the perfect chance…”
“It wasn’t perfect!” I protest. “He had just strangled his favorite slave and left her body lying in the andron like a pile of soiled laundry.” The bolts of heat shoot through me. Hot yellow halos glow around my palms. “He’d always been suspicious of us because we are Eusebians. She set him off. And I was next on his list.”
With that, the halos break apart, giving way to searing red flames. The Centaur freezes, the girl ducks, flattening herself over his shoulders, and I scream, extending my hands toward the mountains. The spheres of fire, bigger than before, crisscross each other in midair and emblazon the sky with twin trails of blinding light.
“Impressive!” snorts the Centaur.
“And that didn’t happen when I tried to destroy Acheron’s house,” I confess, watching the fireball dissipate in the distance.
“You could have killed him with your dagger,” the girl counters. “If you want to be a Soukina, you’ll have to learn the value of sacrifice,” the girl says with the sober conviction of a soldier. I have no doubt but that the lofty line is a Soukinoi dictum instilled in her the day she ran away from home and joined the desert rebels.
“You can’t be older than twelve. – ”
“I’m fourteen!” she snaps.
“You’re still a child, far too young to be stealing Pythonian swords and assassinating slaves like me.”
“I haven’t got a choice, do I?!” I feel heat radiate from her body as she elevates her voice in outrage. “Children like me must fight the Alphas because older, wiser Eusebians like you are too afraid!”
The girl’s words simultaneously sting and sadden me. I am pained by the reality that for the past seven years, I have been a coward, a compliant slave to the man who murdered my brother to assuage his injured ego. But I am also grieved as what little sympathy I have left lurches in my heart for the teenaged outlaw sitting in front of me, a girl who likely will not live to see her next birthday.
&
nbsp; Hardly any more words are spoken for the duration of our journey. The few that are concern the single oasis the girl promised we would reach soon enough, “after we forget what water tastes like.”
When the Centaur sees it, he starts to lope as swiftly as his tired muscles will allow and sends me sliding off his hindquarters onto the hot sand where I sit for some time while my cohorts cackle until their dry throats give out and they take off into the water.
“You tried to kill each other a few hours ago, and now you frolic together like Poseidon’s sea nymphs?!” I yell after them, but they pretend not to hear as they splash and swim from shore to shore, getting their fill of the refreshing pool.
As I walk toward the water, I see on the other side what I think first to be a mirage, but the more I blink and the harder I squint, the more distinct it becomes – an Alpha army on horseback, headed straight for us.
My survival instincts overpowering the impulse to run, I throw aside the sword, untie my sandals, and dive into the water which I then begin to lap rapaciously into my mouth. When common sense returns, I climb out, wring my chiton free of as much moisture as I can, and look up to see the Centaur bounding out of the water, clearly alarmed by the wall of riders on the horizon.
“Where are you going?” the girl calls after us, floating like a sun-soaked cloud on the surface of the water. I point toward the coming cavalry. She swims to shallower water, stands up, and beams at the horde as if it were a festival parade passing through.
“Let’s get out of here! If those are Pythonian, I’ll be dead and you’ll be made slaves or left stranded here!” shouts the Centaur.
“It’s Titus!”the girl proclaims and then rushes onto dry land and stands waving her arms beneath one of seven palm trees that form a green ring of life around the oasis.
“Titus is the Soukinoi general,” the Centaur says to me. “If you grant that the rebel rats have an army…” he smirks.
I point the sword at the ground in front of the Centaur. “Kneel,” I say. Rolling his eyes, the Centaur obeys.
“What now. Are we going to run to meet them, your new family?” he asks. I slap the back of his arm, weary of his sarcasm. “I fear to go too fast. You might fall off again.”
“Stop it, Centaur! I don’t know ‘what now,’ but you’re in this with me. That was the deal,” I say, swinging onto his back.
“The deal was that I would get you to the fortress,” he corrects me. I look out at the fast-moving army, the walls of wilderness around us, and realize that he’s absolutely right. He could run back to Limén, save his own neck, and I wouldn’t be around to tell his Centaur kinsmen that he’d betrayed me. “But I’m not that fast,” he adds. “I think I’ll take my chances.”
The Centaur takes me to the girl, and there we stand in silence, waiting expectantly for the arrival of a general who may waste no time demanding our execution.
“Good afternoon, princess. I’m sure glad to see you. You know how your brother worries.” The Soukinoi general dismounts a majestic gray mare dotted red with freckles. Titus is well over six feet tall, at least fifty years old with tan, weathered skin, high broad cheek bones, and the militant bearing of a man who is neither amused nor surprised by anything. He takes the reins and leads the horse to the girl who throws her arms around its neck. “You should have taken her with you.”
The girl releases her horse. “I would not have risked her being stolen and sold to some Alpha Guardian. Not in a million years!” She kisses the mare’s muzzle. “I apologize for causing my brother concern. But I was delayed by a Centaur...”
Titus eyes the Centaur and walks closer toward him. “Well now we know where that heinous odor is coming from,” Titus says, sending a wave of laughter rippling along the first line of roughly forty soldiers. “Alexa, I don’t know you to be so merciful. Pray tell, what did he do to fall into your good graces?”
“He did nothing. The slave decided to negotiate with him,” says the girl, pointing an accusatory finger at me as though I had committed some dastardly crime. Titus spins in the sand to face me.
“It only makes sense,” says the general, looking at me with a stiff, inscrutable countenance. “She was negotiated with at Okeanos. As were some of the most courageous of all Soukinoi warriors,” he continues, almost at a whisper.
He walks over to me and stands within inches of my face. I look up and find copper-colored eyes that are not filled with hostility as Lysander’s were, nor vainglory like the girl’s. “I hope you are ready for what lies ahead of you, Iris,” he whispers.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ĒLEKTŌR
It is the longest, blackest night I’ve ever endured. So hushed is the desert and so distant the stars that I put my hand before my face and clap three times to make sure I have not gone deaf and blind with lunacy. The Centaur on whom I ride begins to trot; evidently, he is easily spooked.
“Don’t get antsy now. Get some sleep and we’ll be there before you wake up,” I hear a soldier say. I see his silhouette turned toward us, and I nod my head.
“Yes, sir,” I reply. And at the mention of sleep my head becomes heavy as a millstone. I decide not to inform the Centaur that I’ll be napping, and the second I let my chin drop to my chest, my family steps into my dreams…
The four of us sit on the windswept cliffs overlooking the Great Sea, not far from our tannery in Eirene. My father, his back to the water, reclines on a limestone rock while Jasper, my mother and I sit facing him on a woolen, sandy brown blanket littered with crumbs from our midday meal.
My parents are young and ravishing in the summer sun. My father’s beard is thick and black, my mother’s fair face the envy of Aphrodite. My brother and I are the happiest of children, our skinned elbows and bruised knees souvenirs from our many treks up and down this mountain, sometimes to buy salt or find dung for our father’s work, but mostly we run where our imaginations lead us – to the enchanted isle of Circe, the harrowing maze of Theseus and the Minotaur, the wooden horse of Troy, the lair of snake-haired Medusa, and when a fishing boat is left unattended, the god-built Argo of Jason.
My father places a hand over his brow to shield his eyes from the sun, and then winks at me.
“Iris, are you ready to begin?” he asks.
I nod my head excitedly and then rummage through a basket until I find it – a cork mask my father carved for me after accompanying Jasper and me to our very first play not long ago. From the first act to the fifth, all I could talk about were those masks, some contorted in ghoulish, unnatural expressions, others pristine, placid, and painted with pastels. Some featured pointed ears and red satyrs’ horns curving backward, others were topped with gilded laurels. But all transformed the amphitheater into a fairyland rife with Cyclopses, sea monsters, warriors and witches. I was hypnotized by the masks and insisted to my father that I must have one so I too could become dauntless, dazzling, colorful, crafty, simply by donning a thespian’s mask.
The mask I hold in my hands has not been painted yet, nor does it have horns or a chaplet with which to adorn my head. It is ordinary, nondescript, without frills or emotion, “suited for any adventure of the stage,” my father had said. I place it on my head and go to him, eager to enact whichever drama or comedy he orates. But rather than standing to take his place as the leading hypokrites – “the one who interprets” – he smiles warmly and whispers, “It is your turn to perform.”
I shake my head. “No, papa, I don’t know the story! I don’t know my lines!” I say vehemently. My father places a hand on my shoulder.
“I know, my dear. You must improvise.”
Before I can argue further, the mazarine sky turns menacing over the ocean, churning ferociously in smoky whorls of black and gray. As if breaking through a dam, a deluge of rain is released, bringing with it forceful winds that push me onto the gravel-laden ground.
“Stay here, on the rock,” my father says calmly, pulling me up. He stands and makes his way to Jasper and my mother who are hastily p
acking up our perfect picnic scene.
“Wait! Wait for me!” I cry out, but my voice is swallowed by the squall’s unforgiving gusts. I try to remove the mask, but no matter how hard I twist and pull and pry, it doesn’t budge. I look up toward my family and see them leaving, each running with a basket over their heads toward home.
“Don’t leave me!” I yell, vocal chords straining to send the words flying on the wings of the wind. But the wind is pitiless, my voice weak, and though I can’t feel the warmth of my tears through the rain or hear the sound of my cries through the storm, I know that I am weeping harder than I ever have. In fact, to this point in my life, I have never known the kind of soul-deep suffering that can fill the body, from breath to bone, with the bitter cold of the moon’s dark face…
My family now hidden somewhere beneath the canopy of fir trees covering the mountain, my gaze rises to the only face left before me – that of the moon’s, smiling boldly into nature’s belligerence and the eyes of a deserted child. Then, before this child’s eyes, the moon’s surface begins to undulate, morphing into a winter-white pond quickened by the bashful light of spring. I stare into it, mesmerized by the rise and fall of these impossible lunar waves, and watch as the waters recede, rolling away into blackness until nothing remains but a disk of smooth obsidian…a mirror…
The wind quiets, the rain softens, and I abandon the rock, anxious to see what the moon is reflecting, to see if it will reveal my family rushing back for me now that the storm has ceased.
But what I see shining inside the iridescent orb is my own masked face! I see my hands slapping at it, tugging desperately to tear it away and throw it into the ocean, but as I pull, the mask begins to take on the color of my flesh. It’s coming off! It’s coming off! I think. But as I stand and watch, waiting for the mask to liquefy and fall like rain onto my feet, I am sickened by the image the moon is unveiling.
“No!” I shout. “Go away! Stop it!” But the face doesn’t stop; it mimics my every syllable. It is my face, the wicked face of Acheron.