Of Centaurs and the Vanity of the Huntress

EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, the huntress awoke and dressed herself. She roasted some meat on the fire and ate it with a tea made from herbs and spices, then came to David and raised him up. His back and limbs ached from the hard table and the constraints placed upon his movement by the chains, and he had slept only a little, but he now had a sense of purpose. Up to this point, he had been largely dependent upon the goodwill of others—the Woodsman, the dwarfs—for his care and safety. Now he was on his own, and the possibility of survival lay entirely in his own hands.

The huntress gave him some of the tea, then tried to make him eat the meat, but he would not open his mouth to it. It smelled strong and gamy.

“It is venison,” she said. “You must eat. You will need your strength.”

But David kept his mouth tightly closed. He could think only of the deer-girl, and the feel of her skin against his. Who knew what child had once been part of this animal’s body, human and beast becoming one? Perhaps this was even the flesh of the deer-girl, torn bloodied from her body to provide fresh fare for the huntress’s breakfast. He could not, would not, eat of it.

The huntress gave up and offered David bread instead. She even freed one of his hands so that he could feed himself. While he ate, she brought the caged fox from the stables and laid it on the table beside David. The fox watched the boy, almost as though it were aware of what was to come. While they regarded each other, the huntress began to assemble all that she would need. There were blades and saws, swabs and bandages, long needles and lengths of black thread, tubes and vials, and a jar of clear, viscous lotion. She attached bellows to some of the tubes—“to keep the blood flowing, just in case”—and adjusted the restraints so that they would fit the small legs of the fox.

“So what do you think of your new body to come?” she said to David once her preparations were complete. “It is a fine fox, young and nimble.”

The fox tried to bite at the wire of its cage, revealing sharp white teeth.

“What will you do with my body and its head?” asked David.

“I will dry your flesh, and I will add it to my winter store. I have found that while it is possible successfully to fuse the head of a child with the body of an animal, the opposite does not hold true. The animal brains are unable to adjust to the new bodies. They cannot move properly and make poor prey. In the beginning, I would set them free for fun and nothing more, but now I do not even waste my time doing that. Still, they are out in the forest, those that have survived. They are sickly creatures. Sometimes, I kill them out of pity when they cross my path.”

“I was thinking about what you said last night,” said David carefully, “about how all children dream of being animals.”

“And is it not true?” asked the huntress.

“I think so,” said David. “I always wanted to be a horse.”

The huntress looked interested.

“And why a horse?”

“In the stories that I read when I was little, I came across a creature called a centaur. It was half horse and half man. Instead of a horse’s neck, it had the torso of a man, so it could hold a bow in its hands. It was beautiful and strong, and it was the perfect hunter because it combined all of the strength and speed of a horse with the skill and cunning of a man. You were fast on your mount yesterday, but you were still not one with your horse. I mean, doesn’t your horse trip sometimes, or move in ways that you hadn’t expected? My father used to ride as a boy, and he told me that even the finest of horsemen can be unsaddled. If I was a centaur, then I would be the best of both horse and man in one, and if I hunted, then nothing would ever be able to escape me.”

The huntress looked from the fox to David, then back again. She turned her back on him and walked to her desk. She found a scrap of paper and a quill pen, and began drawing. From where he sat, David saw diagrams, and figures, and the shapes of horses and men, drawn with all the care of an artist. He did not disturb the huntress. He simply watched her patiently, and when he looked to the fox, he found that it was watching her too. So boy and fox remained that way, united in anticipation, until at last the huntress’s work was done.

She rose, returned to the great operating tables, and without another word bound David’s free hand once again so that he could not move. He felt a moment of panic. Perhaps his plan had not worked and she was now about to operate on him, severing his head and transplanting it to the body of a wild animal, creating a new being out of blood and salve and agony. Would she decapitate him with a single sweep of an ax, or cut and saw her way through gristle and bone? Would she give him something to put him to sleep, so that before he closed his eyes he would be one thing and when he awoke he would be another entirely, or was there a part of her that enjoyed the infliction of pain? As her hands worked upon him, he wanted to cry out, but he did not. Instead, he was quiet, swallowing his fear, and his self-discipline was rewarded.

Once he was secure, the huntress put on her hooded cloak and left the house. After a few minutes had gone by, David heard the clopping of a horse’s hooves, and then they faded as she rode off into the forest, leaving David alone with the fox, two beasts on the verge of becoming one.

David dozed for a while and woke only to the sound of the huntress returning. This time, the horse’s hooves sounded very close. The door to the house opened, and the huntress appeared, leading her mount by the reins. At first, the horse seemed reluctant to enter, but she spoke softly to it, and eventually it followed her through the door. David could see the horse’s nose responding to the smells in the house, and he thought its eyes looked panicked and fearful. She tethered it to a ring in the wall, then approached David.

“I will make a bargain with you,” she said. “I have been thinking about this creature, this centaur. You are right: such a beast would be the perfect hunter. I wish to become one. If you help me, I give you my word that I will set you free.”

“How do I know that you won’t kill me as soon as you become a centaur?” David asked.

“I will destroy my bow and arrows, and I will draw you a map to guide you back to the road. Even if I chose to pursue you, what threat would I pose without a bow with which to hunt? In time I will make more, but by then you will be long gone, and if you ever pass through my forest again, I will give you free passage in recognition of all that you have done for me.”

Then the huntress leaned over and whispered in David’s ear. “But if you do not agree to help me, then I will make you one with the fox, and I guarantee that you will not live out this day. I will chase you through these forests until you fade from exhaustion, and when you can run no longer, I will skin you alive and wear you on cold winter days. You may live or die. The choice is yours.”

“I want to live,” said David.

“Then we are agreed,” said the huntress. With that, she fed her bow and arrows to the fire and drew David a detailed map of the forest, showing him the way back to the road, which he tucked carefully into his shirt. The huntress then instructed him in what he had to do. She brought from the stable a pair of huge blades, heavy and sharp as guillotines, then raised them above the operating tables using a system of ropes and pulleys. The huntress adjusted one of these so that it would sever her body in half when it fell, then showed David how to apply the salve immediately so that she would not bleed to death before her torso could be attached to the horse’s body. She went over the procedures with him again and again, until he knew them by rote. Then the huntress stripped herself naked, took a long, heavy blade in her hands, and with two strokes severed her horse’s head from its body. There was a great deal of blood at first, but David and the huntress quickly poured the salve over the red, exposed flesh of the horse’s neck, the wounds smoking and sizzling as the mixture did its work. Instantly the ejections from the veins and arteries ceased. The horse’s body lay on the floor, its heart still beating, while its head lay nearby, the eyes rolling in the sockets, the tongue lolling from its mouth.

“We don’t have long,” said the huntress. “Hurry, hurry!”

She lay upon the table beneath the blade. David tried not to look at her nakedness and instead concentrated on the preparations for the release of the blade, as he had been instructed. While he checked the ropes once again, the huntress gripped his arm. In her right hand, she held a sharp knife.

“If you try to run away, or if you betray me, this knife will leave my hand and find your body before you can get an arm’s length from me. Do you understand?”

David nodded. One of his ankles was tied to the leg of the table. He couldn’t run far, even if he wanted to take his chances. The huntress released her grip upon him. Beside her stood one of the glass jars containing the miraculous salve. It would be David’s task to pour it on her wounded body, then haul her from the table to the floor. From there, he would help her to crawl to the horse. Once the two wounds were touching, he would have to pour more salve upon them, causing the huntress and the horse to fuse together, creating one living creature.

“Then do it, and be quick.”

David stepped back. The rope holding the guillotine in place was taut. To avoid any accidents, he simply had to sever it with his sword blade, causing it to drop down upon the huntress and split her body into two pieces.

“Ready?” asked David.

He laid the blade upon the rope. The huntress gritted her teeth.

“Yes. Do it! Do it now!”

David raised the blade above his head and brought it down on the rope with all of his strength. The rope snapped and the blade fell, cutting the huntress in two. She screamed in agony, writhing upon the table as the blood poured from both halves of her being.

“The salve!” she cried. “Apply it quickly!”

But instead David raised the blade again and cut off the huntress’s right hand. It fell to the floor, the knife still held tightly in its grasp. Finally, with a third stroke, David broke the rope holding him to the table. He jumped over the horse’s body and ran for the door, while all the time the huntress’s screams of rage and pain filled the room. The door was locked, but the key remained in the keyhole. David tried to turn it, but it would not move.

Behind him, the huntress’s screams rose in pitch, followed suddenly by a smell of burning. David turned to see the the great wound in her upper body smoking and bubbling as the salve repaired her injuries. Her right arm too was covered in the salve, and she was pouring more on the floor so that it pooled over the wrist of her severed hand, healing the wound. Using the stump and the power of her left hand, she forced herself off the table and onto the floor.

“Come back here!” she hissed. “We’re not done yet. I’ll eat you alive.”

She touched her stump to her right hand, then doused both with salve. Instantly, the two halves reconnected, and she raised the knife to her mouth, clasping the blade between her teeth. The huntress began to pull herself across the floor, drawing closer and closer to David. Her hand touched the end of his trouser leg as the key turned in the lock and the door opened. David pulled his leg free and ran out into the open air, then stopped dead.

He was not alone.

The clearing before the house was filled with an assemblage of creatures with the bodies of children and the heads of beasts. There were foxes and deer and rabbits and weasels, the features of the smaller animals sitting incongruously on the larger human shoulders, their necks narrowed by the actions of the salve. The hybrids moved awkwardly, as though not in control of their own limbs. They shuffled and staggered, their faces filled with confusion and pain. Slowly, they approached the house, just as the huntress dragged herself through the doorway and on to the grass. The knife dropped from her mouth, and she grasped it in her fist.

“What are you doing here, you foul creatures? Get away from this place. Go back to skulking in the shadows.”

But the beasts did not respond. They just kept shambling forward, their gaze fixed on the huntress. The huntress looked up at David. She was frightened now.

“Take me back inside,” she said. “Quickly, before they reach me. I forgive you for all that you have done. You are free to go. Only do not leave me here with…them.”

David shook his head. He moved away from her as a creature with the body of a boy but the head of a squirrel twitched its nose at him.

“Don’t desert me,” cried the huntress. She was now almost surrounded, the knife striking out feebly at thin air as the beasts she had created encircled her.

“Help me!” she shouted to David. “Please help me.”

And then the animals fell upon her, tearing and biting, ripping and shredding, as David turned away from the grisly sight and fled into the forest.

XVIII

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 762