Centauriad 1 - Daughter of the Centaurs (21 page)

“And the wild centaurs you spoke of at the table tonight …?” Malora says. “Maybe they descend from the centaurs who fled to the northern Downs.”

“It makes logical sense. But I hope not. Because if this is the case, these wild centaurs could very well destroy everything the civilized centaurs have worked so hard to create,” he says. “Provided the wild ones really exist and are not some story made up by the real thieving culprits. Some of these hibes—” He wags his head, but doesn’t go on.

Malora turns to face Honus. “Are you lonely here, being the only one of your kind?”

He smiles wistfully. “Lonely? Me? I am the
portarum curator
.”

“What is that?”

“I am he who stands at the gates—in this case, the gates of ancient learning,” he says, gesturing to the books. “I am not so much lonely as I stand apart.”

Malora wonders if she, too, is destined to stand apart.

Honus empties his pipe on the balustrade. The embers swirl off into the soft blankness like a swarm of fireflies. He sets the pipe down and turns to take her hand. His is still warm from the pipe. “You look exhausted. Let’s get you to bed. Follow me and watch where you step. I wouldn’t want you to get lost in this exotic potted jungle of mine.”

“Why do you keep all these plants in pots?” she asks.

“I suppose it’s my way of preserving a bit of nature in my own home,” he says. He stops before another arched doorway and holds the lantern high.

It is the room Malora saw when she smelled Orion’s scent Homeward Bound. There is the high vaulted ceiling with the mosaic of an orange sun in the center. The bed has a canopy of blue filmy material that the night breeze gently ruffles. Malora walks to the foot of the bed and sits down. She looks back out the arched doorway. While they are closed for the night, the buds of the flowers growing in the pots are as big as baby’s fists and will, in the morning sunlight, open up into lush, oversized blooms. The tiny, colorful birds must all be asleep, but she sees that the fruits on the trees shine like gems and look ripe for the picking. She hears the sound of running water.

“Is there a stream nearby?” she asks.

“There is a fountain in the garden below us,” he says. “Medon thought of every detail when he made this room for me when I first came here. He thinks I sleep in it every night, and I never had the heart to tell him otherwise. It always
seemed a shame to let this lovely room go to waste, but I could never bring myself to sleep in here. How can I put it? The room never seemed meant for me. Perhaps it is meant for you instead.”

Malora rises from the bed and walks out into the big room. She looks around for Jayke’s rope, finds it lying on the floor near the door, and returns to the bedchamber. Going directly to the hook on the wall, she hangs the coiled rope.

Behind her, Honus lets out his bark of laughter when he sees what she has done with the rope. “Oh, that’s
perfect
!” he says. “Why, it’s a horse wrangler’s wreath. That settles it. This room is meant for you. Now, is there anything else I can get you before I retire?”

“No,” Malora whispers.

“Please avail yourself of the marble convenience. I’ll leave the lantern burning in the big room and one of my sleeping shirts hanging outside your door. Lessons will begin first thing in the morning.” He bows and leaves.

Malora takes refuge between the covers. The mattress molds to her body. Her heart calms as she gazes up at the canopy. The stars on the blue fabric, like golden pebbles seen through deep waters, shift with the breeze and form themselves into pictures: a running girl with flowing hair, a galloping horse, a centaur, a horse with wings, a giant raptor, a lion, a serpent, a man pulling back the string of a bow who looks just like Jayke.

Honus awakes when the sun rising over the Hills of Melea seeps beneath his eyelids. The book he was reading last night,
Lives of the Caesars
, still lies open on his chest, facedown: a
terrible disservice to its already cracked binding. He sits up stiffly and finds a small feather to mark his place. Then he picks his way along the terrace, through the potted jungle, and peers into the bedchamber.

His young guest still sleeps, flat on her back with her arms and legs splayed at odd angles as if she had been dropped to earth from a great height. Continuing on to the pump on the far side of the terrace, Honus fills a bucket with water, wincing when the pump squeaks. He might have drawn the water from the convenience, but this water, which comes from the same spring that feeds the fountain below, makes for sweeter drinking. Then he goes back along the terrace to the big room.

After stirring up last night’s fire, he puts water on to heat. Dough, prepared last night by West, has been rising in a covered bowl on the warm hearth. He brushes olive oil on the top and puts the dough into the oven to bake, then goes off to perform his morning ablutions.

As Honus stands before his shaving mirror, the table now strewn with brooches and ribbons and sashes, he thinks about the girl sleeping in the bedchamber. A careful listener who asks good questions, Malora has the makings of a fine pupil. She is less wild than he expected, more shy than sullen, and more curious than frightened. Honus looks forward to teaching her.

He dresses with his usual care in a pair of auburn kidskin breeches, a crisp white silk blouse, and a dark green satin vest with a pattern of small yellow butterflies. Then he shaves and combs his beard, pats on rosemary aftershave, and gives each horn a quick buff. He returns to the big room to find that the
tea is steeped. He pours Malora a cup and carries it into her bedchamber, arriving just as a cloud of tiny yellow butterflies spills into the room from the terrace and flutters up over the bed. Honus looks down at his vest and feels a jolt of synchronicity. It is all he can do to hold on to the cup as he hears a rushing in his ears and dizziness overcomes him. When the reeling subsides, a thought comes to him with startling clarity: his entire life has been a preamble to this moment, standing here and staring down at the young woman with the nimbus of yellow butterflies surrounding her head. And is it any wonder? For this girl is the pure expression of the Creator, whereas all the rest of them are figments of some scientician’s fevered imagination. To think that this girl, who for all anyone knows might very well be the last of her kind in the world, has been placed in his charge!

Honus’s life so far has been filled with purpose: educating the Silvermanes, advising the Apex, reading. But suddenly, he feels an almost tangible elevation of his life to a higher plain. He considers himself to be a rational being. He has never been given to divination or prognostication or the reading of signs of any kind. Yet Honus knows, as surely as his feet are cloven and there are horns on his head, that this human lying before him is the reason he has come to live among the centaurs; the reason, perhaps, that he was rescued from the ice floe. A new thought occurs to him, which is that he, the
portarum curator
—the one always set apart—is finally no longer alone.

A faint breeze ripples through the canopy and sends the little yellow butterflies tumbling back out the door.

“Malora,” he says softly.

She opens her eyes, blinks, and fastens her gaze on him, recognition gradually warming her face. Then she looks down the length of the bed, out the arched doorway into the garden, where the flowers have exploded into blooms of scarlet and yellow and orange and purple. A hummingbird hovers in a red bell-shaped flower as big as a teacup. Canaries are hopping in the branches of the fruit trees, twittering in the rays of the rising sun.

“Home,” she whispers, and she rises from the bed to go pick fruit.

Malora eats bread hot from the oven, slathered with goat’s butter and honey. This is as much of an improvement over mush and berries as mush and berries were over strips of dried kudu. In the daylight, the view from the terrace is lively. A steady line of traffic files down the great white road. “There is the road I came in on, and there is the Lower Neelah, which flows toward the Kingdom of the Ka,” she says. “And those mountains there to the east …?” She gestures.

“Are the Hills of Melea,” Honus says.

“Home of Patron and Founder Kheiron the Wise.”

“Very good,” he says.

Malora watches the farmers emerging from the stone houses and spreading out across the fields, hitching horses to plows and wheeling carts this way and that. She feels the city, so quiet during the night, come to life beneath her like a great many-headed beast stirring in its lair. She hears the clatter of hooves on stone, wheels grinding, gates clattering, and voices bidding good morning. She imagines the horses, down in the Silvermane Stable, eating their morning oats and
drinking water, safe behind the high stone walls of the city where no predator can get them. A feeling of contentment suffuses her.

Zephele arrives, chattering as she breezes onto the terrace, trailing the scent of wild jasmine with only a trace of the musty smell of the book she carries tucked beneath her arm. “Good morning, one and all. How did we sleep? It’s a glorious morning, isn’t it?” Her cap is embroidered with purple flowers and cocked at an angle so as to show off her ebony curls. Her wrap is lavender with an embroidered pattern of tiny green and purple flowers, and her boots are lavender-dyed kidskin with buttons of ivory. Malora has never seen anyone looking quite so fresh and beautiful.

“How is our dear little human being this morning? Orion sends his fondest greetings. He says to tell you he will be busy in his distillery today. He made me promise to bring you by for a visit after the midday meal.”

“Did Herself see the rakish set of your cap?” Honus asks. “Or did you introduce that particular flourish after you left Her Ladyship’s company?”

Zephele waves his comment away. “I think she’s secretly thanking the Hills I did not wake up this morning with a driving desire to wear a leopard-skin pelt. Apparently, the leopard-skin pelt is all the talk in the house, in spite of my having expressly forbidden it. You look truly well rested, Malora. Did you find Honus’s bedchamber to your liking?”

“Very much,” Malora says.

Zephele inspects Malora’s wrap. “That green silk is lovely against your skin. You sliced this one in half, I suppose? Of course you did. I’m sure you’re quite good with a sharp blade.
Doesn’t our Malora look wonderful! Like a verdant oasis in a red desert. Orion says he is going to speak to Father about your taking on a Hand. It will be great fun, bringing you around to visit all the various workshops and studios so you can decide what you will declare. It’s too bad lion wrestling and leopard skinning aren’t included in the List of the Hand, or I believe you’d qualify for instant recognition,” she says with a broad wink.

While Zephele chatters on, Honus coaxes her over to the low bench and places a book in her hand. “You say you like the comedies. Here is
As You Like It
. Read the first act and tell me what you think.”

Then Honus leads Malora into the big room to stand before the shelves. “From these books, you will learn history to make you wise, poetry to make you witty, mathematics to make you subtle, natural philosophy to make you deep, morality to make you grave, and logic and rhetoric so that you might contend. But first,” he says, taking a flat book with ragged pages down from the shelf, “you must learn
how
to read.” He puts the book into her hands.

Malora sneezes. Honus produces a small square of cloth from the sleeve of his coat and hands it to her. She wipes her nose and looks down at the book.

On the warped cover is a faded picture of a tall, bug-eyed creature of indeterminate species wearing a tall red-and-white-striped hat. The book falls open to a stained and yellowed page showing a small human boy and girl with pale hair chasing two other, smaller creatures with wild blue hair that look somewhat like Twani. The symbols that accompany the pictures are quite large.

Honus takes the book back, closes it, and returns it carefully to the shelf. “Don’t worry. We will come back to this in a few days’ time, when you are sufficiently prepared for its rigors. But letters must come first.”

“Letters?” Malora asks.

“The symbols used in writing and reading,” Honus explains. He steers her over to the hard, straight-backed chair and invites her to sit. He stands next to a large sheet of smooth slate on which he has scrawled the letters in red chalk. Honus points to each letter and says its name, then spits out the sound the letter makes.
“A. A-a-a. B. B-b-b.”

Honus requires Malora to spit out the sounds after he does. Together, they go through the letters, over and over again until she can say all their names, from
A-a-a-ay
through
Z-z-z-zee
. Then he points to them at random, and while she manages the first few, she gets hopelessly mixed up after a while. He keeps tapping the slate with the chalk until she remembers. Her face burns with embarrassment and shame.

When Malora’s head is filled with a jumble of letters, Honus removes his gold-rimmed spectacles and lets her go to the marble convenience to do her business and to splash cold water on her face in preparation for the next lesson. For this, Honus has her take a seat at what he calls his scrivening table. He places a gray goose-feather quill in her hand and shows her how to dip the sharp end of the quill in the ink flask, then gently wipe off the excess ink on the wide lip of the flask. On the slate, he has written out all the letters. Now she finds herself copying them, scratching out the shapes of the letters—instead of spitting out their sounds—onto a large
sheet of paper, the same stuff the books are made of, only new and clean and far less musty-smelling. Honus has incised into the paper a row of straight lines to show her where the letters must sit. Honus gets her started on the first few rows, one letter repeatedly scratched on each row, then leaves her while he goes out onto the terrace to see whether Zephele is “dreaming or reading.” To the sound of their droning voices, Malora continues to dip the tip of the quill in the flask and scratch out the letters. She fills two whole sheets with letters, with Honus returning every now and then to hover and correct her.