rises, and ends in a sheer wall of stone. I stumble, stop, stand spraddle-legged, knee-locked, and try only to breathe.
Later I realize I still have a plum in one hand and a peach in the other. The juice, where I clasped the fruit, runs between my fingers. I tear the pulp with my teeth and swallow it slowly until all that is left are the seeds. Fruit trees are hybrids; they reproduce only freaks, sports, throwbacks. I fling the seeds among the jumbled rocks, where they will have no chance to grow.
The sweat dries on me as I plod down the mountain. A dull ache creeps up my near hind leg from the center of my hoof: I think I have a stone bruise.
Back in the meadow I lie down in deep cool grass. I am never comfortable sleeping now. When I stand, like a horse, my head droops and I wake with a backache. Lying on my side with my head pillowed on my arm is awkward, and my hand always goes to sleep.
The shadow of the mountain is creeping over me when I wake. It will be dark soon, and the moon will be full. I fling out my forelegs and push myself to my feet.
A flash of white among the trees draws my attention.
'Elfleda!'
She stops and turns toward me, tilting her head gracefully to draw the spiral horn from beneath the branches. She has small breasts and long, strong hands. Human skin blends into animal hide at her navel, but like the rest of the equiforms she has human sex organs between the beast forelegs. Our owners must have bred and chosen Elfleda's animal part carefully, for it is both horse and deer, with a musky taint of goat. She lashes her tail.
'Hello, Achilleus. What do you want?'
'I...' But I want nothing from her that she will give. She is not cruel, only detached. She does not feel for me and I have no reason or excuse to expect her to.
'They'll come again soon,' she says.
'I hope not.'
'They will.'
'And you'll watch for them.'
'Yes,' she says. I do not understand, since she can ignore almost all of them, why she does not disappear into the forest when they come. Instead she watches, and our masters see her and grow jealous of her freedom. What they give, they can take back.
Elfleda flicks her tail again. The black tip touches the point of her horse-shoulder, her withers, her flanks. The wind lifts her short fine hair away from her head, away from her back, haloing her in silver light. I step toward her, and she does not back away. But I am covered with sweat and dust and I smell like hot horse, hot human. I am embarrassed to approach her like this. She watches me, waiting, unafraid. She knows she could outrun me if she had to. They made me large, taller than I was in life-- in real life-- but she is quick and her hooves are sharp; and they did not take away so much of my humanity that I would force myself on her. That would be bitter love indeed.
'I wasn't thought ugly before --' My voice is querulous. I should not speak to her like this, as if I would be content if she took me out of pity.
She frowns, then her brow clears and she steps toward me. 'If you were, Achilleus, you know it wouldn't make any difference to me.' She reaches out: I can feel the heat of her hand near my face. She has never touched me before.
I draw back and turn away. 'You still don't find me attractive.'
'That isn't fair.'
And even now I do not look at her, thought I know she is right. 'You've accepted their rules. Nothing holds us to them.'
'Do you think not?'
'What keeps you from loving me?'
'We love, or we do not love.'
'We let them control us.'
'We cannot stop them,' she says, and again I know she is right. Between the times of their coming I want to believe we could all resist them, if we tried, and I blame our obedience on our weaknesses and our guilt, our willingness to be controlled and thereby absolved of all responsibility. But when the compulsions come to me--
Elfleda touches my arm and I start violently. She jumps back, as surprised as I, her other hand still raised, pointing toward the sky where she sought to draw my attention.
'Look.'
Darkness has fallen. I look at the stars and see a brilliant multicolored light approaching. Above us, our masters ride in a great dirigible that floats majestically over the crest of the mountains. Its engines are nearly silent. Lights festoon its cabin and illuminate the tree-tops below. It passes directly over us and we hear music and faint laughter. I look down at Elfleda. The lights paint her, red, violet, blue, green. Her expression is wistful, hopeful. She does not look at me.
A sharp cry of delight or distress draws my attention back to the dirigible. When I look down again, Elfleda is gone.
But what does it matter? What does she matter? Others desire me, if she does not. If I felt tired and spent a moment ago, I am excited and powerful now. Half the forest lies between me and the meadow, and if I do not hurry I will be late. But the distance is nothing. Evergreen branches brush me with their fragrance as I run. The ache in my hoof is no more than an insect bite.
All of us gather in the meadow, beast and beast-human alike. The little pegasoi cavort and scamper among us and over us, while the flightless ones display their plumage. A gryphon sitting on its haunches on a boulder roars and screeches, and the unearthly light of the aircraft shimmers around us all. The dirigible descends slowly, so immense it blots out the stars. I catch one tether-rope and the centaur Hekate takes another. Hekate pulls harder than I, the muscles in her haunches bulging like fists. The dirigible tilts down on her side and she laughs. We drag the craft to earth against its lifting force, glorying in our strength, and bind the ropes to trees. Our masters step down upon the ground.
They are ordinary humans, as ordinary as we were before they changed us. They look so strange, walking normally on two legs, hoofless, clawless, hairless. They are small, weak, omnipotent. They smile on us and we wait, hoping to be chosen. They are all as beautiful as flowers. The gryphon bounds down and rubs felinely against their legs.
A silhouetted figure stands in the hatchway of the aircraft, hanging back. He steps down and hesitates with the light flowing across him. His face is coarse, his expression uncertain. He is both curious and frightened.
'Hekate!'
The ugly boy vanishes from my mind. One of our masters is calling dark Hekate, and she obeys, her black hair streaming in the wind of her speed. Her great hooves plough the ground as she stops before the slender young woman. Her horse-part is heavy through the shoulders and haunches, powerful and immense, ebony highlighted through the spectrum by the dirigible's illumination. In her other life she must have been a formidable and stunning woman, for she is a compelling myth. The young human leaps upon her back and drums her bare heels against her sides, laughing. Hekate wheels and bolts across the meadow, her tail held high like a plume. The vibration of her hoofbeats echoes around us.
Two satyrs bound along beside her, as fleet and randy as goats. Their musk mingles in the air with the pungent sweat of Hekate.
A light pressure on my back: 'Run, Achilleus, follow them.' A nymph clasps me with his long pale arms, his fingers across my belly. I can feel his slender legs around my ribs, but he is weightless. 'Run, or
they'll leave us behind.'
I obey as if he were a master. I follow Hekate's path easily through the trampled grass and silver darkness. I leap an obstruction and realize later it was nothing but the human's flimsy robe. I gallop through a shallow extrusion of the lake, flinging spray in all directions, passing naked humans who wade toward the rocks of the languorous merfolk.
Hekate and the human stand gilded by moonlight. They embrace, the human standing on Hekate's broad back, leaning over her shoulder, bending around to hold and kiss her. They glance toward me. The human woman laughs.
