by Vonda N. McIntyre
This story copyright 1997 by Vonda N. McIntyre. This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal use. All other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.
Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.
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I love her. And I envy her, because she is clever enough, defiant enough, to outwit our creators. Or most of them. She is not a true unicorn: many of us have human parts, and she is no exception. The reconnections are too complicated otherwise. Our brilliant possessors are not quite brilliant enough to integrate nerves directly from the brain.
So Elfleda is, as I am, almost entirely human from the hips up. Below that I am equine: a centaur. She is a unicorn, for her hooves are cloven, her tail is a lion's, and from her brow sprouts a thin straight spiral horn. Her silver forelock hides the pale scar at its base; the silver hair drifts down, growing from her shoulders and spine. Her coat is sleek and pale gray, and great dapples flow across her flanks. The hair on the tip of her tail is quite black. For a long time I thought some surgeon had made a mistake or played her a joke, but eventually I understood why this was done, as from afar I watched her twitching her long black-tipped tail like a cat. My body has no such artistic originality. I hate everything about me as much as I love everything about Elfleda.
She will talk to me from a distance; I think she pities me. When the masters come to our park she watches them, lashes her tail, and gallops away. Sometimes she favors them with a brief glimpse of her silver hide. Her inaccessibility makes her the most sought-after of us all. They follow after her, they call her, but only a few can touch or move her. She is the only one of us who can ever resist their will. Even this freedom was their creation; they are so powerful they can afford to play with the illusion of defiance.
But the rest of us, the other centaurs, the satyrs, nymphs, merfolk, we strut and prance across the meadows or wait in the forest or gently splash the passersby, hoping to be noticed.
We dare not complain. Indeed, we should not; we should be grateful. Our lives have been saved. Every one of us would have died if the masters had not accepted us and taken us in. We owe them our lives, and that is the payment they exact. Sometimes I think the price too high, but though nothing prevents me from leaping off the mountainside or eating poison flowers, I am still alive.
The noon sun is warm in the meadow, so I walk toward the forest through the high grass. A small creature leaps from his sleeping-place and flees, as startled by me as I by him. Galloping, he surges into the air: one of the small pegasoi. His feathered wings seem much too large in proportion to his body. That is the reason only the smallest pegasoi can fly at all. This one is a miniature appaloosa pony, not as tall as my knee. Half the meadow away he touches down and trots off, folding his blue-gray wings against his spotted sides.
The larger pegasoi, the ones my size, are spectacular but earthbound; they seek flight but never find it.
I have watched one standing in the wind, neck arched, nostrils flaring, tail high. She spread her wings and raised them, cantered against the wind, galloped, rain, but the wings were not large enough to lift her. Our masters use their beasts as they use those of us part human: for amusement, for beauty. It would not occur to them that a flying horse's heart might break because she could not fly.
The shade of the forest envelops me with a cool scent of pine and humus. The loam beneath my hooves is soft. I can feel its resilience, but not its texture. When first I rose, after the operations, the healing, the pain, I could not walk properly. I stumbled and fell and was threatened with punishment if I scarred my bright bay hide. After that I walked slowly but learned quickly. Human beings did not evolve to articulate six limbs, but we are adaptable. I learned to talk, to trot, to run, and I even learned to move
my arms simultaneously, with not too much gracelessness. I did not scar myself, and now my skin-- my human skin-- is tanned as dark as my red-gold coat. My mane and tail and lower legs are black.
The stream ripples by, loud with snow-water. It splashes down a rock slide into a mountain lake that reflects in its depths another, freer world. There the purple-blue mountains are valleys which could be reached if one could find them. The mountains themselves cannot be crossed. One of the large pegasoi, seeking the sky, climbed only halfway to a summit before his hooves slipped on the sheer rock and he fell. He broke his leg. Equine legs are a great trouble to heal, so he was put to death, humanely. As humanely as he had been given this life.
The pond's surface moves and breaks, and one of the mer-people glides onto stones dampened by mist. It is the water-folks' favorite place to sun themselves when the icy water chills their memories of being warm-blooded. I think the being is a mermaid, but I cannot be sure from this distance. They are all slender and lithe, with narrow shoulders and long bright hair. The women have hardly any breasts at all, and the men have no proper genitals. They all have only slits, like fishes, half-concealed among the multicolored scales on their abdomens. I have never seen them copulate with each other, so perhaps the opening is only for excretion and for our owners to use when pleasuring themselves. The mer-people are as deformed one way as I am the other. They have no genitals at all, while I have two sets. I am sure some biological engineer received a prize for clever design. My human penis hangs in its accustomed human place, but above the front legs of a bay horse. My stallion parts are much more discreet, tucked away between my hind legs.
The mermaid flicks her tail, the filmy fin sending out rainbow drops of spray. Another of the merfolk casts himself up beside her. But they do not touch; no intimacy exists between them. Perhaps the feeling has been taken from them, or the cold water slows their passion as much as their bodies.
But, oh, they are lovely. When I wade out to drink, I can sometimes see them beneath the water, swimming together in their own inexplicable patterns, hair streaming gold, silver, scarlet, scales rippling blue, orange, black, all with a metallic sheen. Their tailfins are like gauze, like lace, transparent silk, translucently veined. Their gill slits make vermilion lines across their chests and backs and throats.
They never speak.
If I moved from my hiding place of shadows, the mermaid and merman would disappear beneath the silver surface of the ice-blue water, marring it with ripples. Two sets of concentric circles would touch, and interact, and fade away, and I would be alone again. I do not move. I watch the beautiful creatures sunning themselves, occasionally flicking water over their scales with their fins or their long narrow hands.
I envy their contentment with solitude, their independence, as I envy Elfleda. She and they are never touched by the games our masters play with us. Elfleda watches from a high pinnacle where only she can climb. The merfolk participate when they are called and commanded, but their eyes are blank. I think by the next day they have already forgotten.
I never forget. I remember every incident that has occurred since I was brought here. Soon it will all happen again.
One of the merfolk swims away, then the other. The forest has chilled me, and I am hungry. The sun bursts warm on my back as I leave deep shade and cross the meadow to the orchard.
Light through the mottled ceiling of leaves dapples my flanks. The lazy buzz of a black fly does not disturb me. Having a long tail, I must confess, can be convenient.
A nymph and a satyr copulate beneath a plum tree, oblivious to my presence. They are as brazen as the merfolk are shy. The satyr's short furry tail jerks up and down as she mounts the nymph and clasps him with her hairy legs. His green hands grasp her hips and move up to caress her pink human flesh. On either side of her spine's erect crest of brown bristles her back is slightly sunburned. The nymph arches himself into her and she grunts, twining her fingers in his curly green-black hair. His heels press the ground, his toes curl; her cloven goat-hooves dig up bits of sod. The nymph moans and clasps the satyr to him. Our creators have no respect for the traditional gender of their creatures. They please only themselves, never myth or legend.
I wheel and gallop away to escape the frantic plunging and gasps and groans in the orchards. I have
coupled with the satyr myself, gods help me.
The meadow grass parts before me and the air flows through my mane like water. The birds are silent in the heat but the cicadas' shrill afternoon song urges me onward. My hooves pound the earth, crushing flowers, cutting the turf. Sweat sparkles in my eyes. I pull my elbows close to my sides against the pain of breathing. The air enters in burning gouts. Sweat pours down my chest, breaks out on my flanks, drips down my legs, and flies from the points of my fetlocks as I run. I feel my buttocks rub the sweat into white foam.
The meadow ends and I run among rocks. I leap a huge boulder and come down in scree. The valley narrows,
