23
They run until Estajfan can’t go on anymore. It isn’t even Estajfan who stops—Heather makes them.
“Stop!” she calls out into the night. “We have to stop!”
Estajfan is wheezing, his stomach heaving in and out. Heather scrambles to the ground. “We have to rest,” she says. “Estajfan—you have to rest.”
He shakes his head. “They’ll find us if we don’t keep going.”
“If you drop dead, they’ll find us for sure.” Heather pulls him away from the road and his siblings follow.
The trees are close, lit faintly by the moon. “Lie down,” Heather says as she leads him a little deeper. Estajfan obeys. “Aura,” she says, “you need to check his wounds.”
They all feel Petrolio shudder.
“It’s all right,” Estajfan says. “Petrolio, I’m all right. The woman—Moira—she helped.”
“She shot at you as we were running away!” Heather protests.
“Before,” he says. “She took out a bullet.” He gestures at the crude bandage that still sticks to his flank. “And I—I hurt the boy. I deserved to be shot at.”
“You didn’t deserve anything,” Aura snaps. She kneels by him. Her hands are gentle, but Estajfan winces as she pulls the duct tape away. She inspects the wound as best she can and then pulls a small pouch and a tiny pot from her satchel. She takes a scalpel out of the pouch, dips it into the pot, and scrapes gently at the wound. Then she dips her fingers in the pot and smears grey salve over the wound before she covers it with a bandage.
“What would you do without that bag?” Heather murmurs.
Aura laughs. “It is helpful. Particularly when you have brothers who insist on getting into trouble.”
Estajfan laughs too, then catches his breath in pain. Aura watches him. “If we see that woman again,” she says, “I will thank her. If the bullet was still in the wound, you wouldn’t have been able to run.”
Petrolio stamps his hooves. “Thank her? If we see her again, she’ll be lucky if I don’t trample her into the ground.”
“She was frightened,” Estajfan says. “They all were.”
“I don’t care!” Petrolio shouts. “They shouldn’t have shot you in the first place!”
Aura pulls another bandage out of her satchel—a long strip of gauze—and wraps the length of it around Estajfan’s body. “That’s what they do,” she says, her voice soft. “Humans don’t understand—they will never understand. That’s why we are safe on the mountain in a way we’ll never be down here.”
“Not all humans,” Heather says, hurt. She helps Estajfan shift so that Aura can reach beneath him and pull the cloth up tight, tying it in place. “Some of us have tried. I try.”
Aura puts a hand against Estajfan’s forehead. “Sleep,” she says.
He shakes his head, tries to get up. “What if they find us?”
“If we hear something,” Aura says, her voice firm, “we’ll go. Until then, you need to sleep.”
He looks about to protest, then sighs. Maybe it’s her words, maybe it’s her hand on his head, but soon he’s asleep.
“Where did you learn to do all of that?” Heather says. “The scalpels, the salve.”
“My father taught me,” Aura says. “Sometimes animals on the mountain would get hurt and I would help him stitch them up.” Her voice softens. “Estajfan kept bringing me things for my bag.”
“So human knowledge is good for something, at least.”
If Aura hears this, she doesn’t let on. “Come,” she says. “I hear water nearby.”
They find a creek, bubbling and swift in the dark. Not enough to bathe in, but Heather is able to wash her arms and face, to dip her head under and rinse the worst of the dirt from her hair. When she’s done, she combs her hair out with her fingers.
Beside her, Aura stands pale and silent.
“I won’t hurt him,” Heather says. “I promise.”
“That’s not a promise you can make,” the centaur says. “You don’t know what it’s like to be him, to be us—that’s not something anyone can understand.”
“But I can try,” Heather says.
“Every time someone tries, someone gets hurt,” Aura says. “It happened with our father and our mother. It happened with your father, the first time you came up.” Aura shakes her head. “We belong on the mountain, Heather. I don’t have to like that to know that it’s true.”
“And what about Estajfan?” Heather says. “What about”—and she’s the one to make the gesture now, a wide half-circle, mocking Aura’s earlier words—“whatever lies between us? You said that. Not me.”
“I know. I don’t need to understand that to know it’s a danger.” She waves at the copse where Estajfan sleeps and Petrolio waits. “We’ll take you home. We’ll see that you are as safe as we can manage. Beyond that—I don’t think we can make any promises either.”
When they rejoin the others, Heather lies down beside Estajfan, wrapping her arm over his chest, like she belongs.
Sometime later, the truck passes. Aura is the first to feel the noise in the ground, willing the dark things around them silent and still. The faint beam of its headlights comes in their direction, then fades away along with the sound of the engine.
“Are they gone?” Estajfan says, from where he lies on the ground. Heather is still asleep beside him.
“I think so,” Aura says. On her other side, Petrolio is tense, waiting.
“I broke that boy’s leg,” Estajfan whispers. “I didn’t think twice about it. He didn’t do anything to me.”
“They captured and hurt you,” Petrolio reminds him. “That’s not nothing.”
Estajfan nods. “Still,” he says, “what are we going to do?”
“They’ve passed us,” Petrolio says. “They don’t know where we live or where we’re going. Why can’t we just go home?”
Aura doesn’t look at Estajfan, but she knows what he’s going to say.
“What about Heather?”
“What about her?” Petrolio spreads his arms out wide. “We came to rescue you, Estajfan. You’re as much a part of the mountain as we are.”
“But we aren’t a part of the mountain,” Aura says. “Not in the way that we want to be, not if we continue like this.”
“Like what?” Petrolio cries, waking Heather, who sits up, watching them all.
Aura thinks of their long-ago life on the mountain, just the four of them, the wild animals, the sky. For a moment she’s overcome with longing. Da, she thinks. Da, you were right.
But then, he’d also been unhappy. Hadn’t she known that the best?
If there’s no place for them on the mountain anymore, where else can they go? She pushes the thoughts away and addresses Heather. “They’re heading for the city,” she says. “What do you want to do?”
She can see the longing on Heather’s face—except that she’s not longing for the mountain. She wants her girls, she wants Estajfan, she wants all of it. She wants the life that used to be.
“I need to go back to the city,” Heather says, finally. “I need to say goodbye.”