Centaur Legacy (3 page)

I had nearly forgotten. I was so lost
in the moment with Drake that it was easy to toss out a few of the
Centaur rules that seemed stupid to me. I understood thousands of
years of traditions wouldn’t be able to dissolve in front of my
eyes, but it didn’t mean I had to like them. Drake had grown up as
a Centaur, where acceptable behavior didn’t include pre-marital
anything; instead marrying as early as sixteen was encouraged.
These practices were archaic to me.

I’d grown up in California, as a human.
Mom had turned her back on Centaurs and all the rules that governed
them. She had never once acknowledged that either of us was
something other than a normal human, and she never discouraged me
from any kind of dating.

I think I got some form of sex-ed
classes in school every year from sixth grade up. Sure, most of the
curriculum talked about abstaining, but in reality the teachers
focused on safe-sex and pregnancy prevention. I had never put the
premium on abstaining that Drake did, because no one I knew thought
that way. On the flip side of the coin, none of my friends were
willing, nor would their parents have allowed them, to be married
at sixteen the way Centaurs did.

I was twenty-two, and marriage wasn’t
anything I’d ever given a second thought to. I loved him, I was
sure I’d never want another, but I wasn’t willing to elope with
him. I had a feeling that as long as I clung to my desire not to be
married, Drake would cling just as hard to his belief that
“uniting” before marriage was off the table. I knew exactly where
his beliefs came from and how far entrenched they were in his mind.
Regardless of what I thought of them, I was sure he wouldn’t
miraculously change his mind here.

Drake detangled himself from me, “That
wasn’t much of an interrogation, but if that’s the response I get:
ask another question. I thought you’d want me to start at
kindergarten and work my way forward.”

Still distracted by his shirtless body
next to me, I said, “Oh, all right. I’ve met your mom; since she’s
the reason we were able to escape, I already like her. What’s your
dad like?”

Drake’s demeanor changed when he
answered, “He’s Centaur. Very set in his ways. He doesn’t mix with
humans, at all, not even in his business. Humans see houses he’s
built and try to hire him – he won’t even return their
calls.”

“Really?” That statement made my heart
skip a beat when I remembered what his mother had told me
yesterday. “Your mom told me that you’d asked them about breaking
your engagement with Bianca. She told me, at the time, she thought
you wanted a human. How did that conversation go?”

“Mom basically told me to do what made
me happy. . . Dad glared. I knew what his reaction would be when I
asked; I was more hoping for my mom to be okay with it.”

“But you didn’t tell her you wanted to
break it off to be with another Centauride?”

Drake’s expression was shy, and I
wondered if he was going to answer me at first. When he spoke, his
eyes locked on mine, “I didn’t know if you felt the same for me,
Cami.”

Having not grown up with two parents,
the dynamics of two people with opposite belief systems sounded
foreign. “If she had been against it, neither of us would be here
right now, would we?”

“The fact that Bianca was still in love
with Gage had a lot to do with me wondering if I could go through
with marrying her – I’d thought that even before I met you. My
parents are like most Centaurs: they didn’t know each other that
well in the beginning. They started a family and a life together,
but love for each other wasn’t one of their priorities. I wasn’t
sure how they’d feel about me breaking my engagement, regardless of
the circumstances.”

“That’s sad.”

“It’s not happy or sad, Cami. It just
is what it is.”

“It’s not sad that you almost married
someone you didn’t love? Someone you knew would never love you
back? By standing up for yourself and breaking the engagement, you
risked your parents disowning you. You don’t think that’s
sad?”

A smile began to creep across his face.
“When you put it that way, it’s a little sad. But there are things
we get to experience that humans will never know the pleasure
of.”

“Like what?”

“
Like running so fast it
feels like you’re flying. Being united with another where words are
no longer required because you are so attuned to them you can hear
their thoughts and share in their joy. Those are things humans
never experience, and I think that’s sad.” Drake looked away. He
was searching for a subject change when he asked, “You haven’t told
me much about your mom. What was she like?”

Almost no one had asked me about her.
Lots of people told me they were sorry for my loss, but no one
would know why that loss was such a big gaping hole because no one
knew her like I did. “She was intensely private. She didn’t hang
out with other moms. She wasn’t on any school committees and only
came to the school when she had to for conferences. She only had
one friend that I knew of. She was always working, but Mom always
had time for whatever was important to me.”

I stopped for a second,
remembering how she told me, “
Everything
in life is your choice. Choose wisely
.” I’d
heard that phrase from her my whole life, but I didn’t understand
its double meaning until after she died.

“I went through a phase where I told
her I wanted to be a Marine Biologist – she worked it out so I
could help a Marine Biologist from SDSU. After that lost some of
its novelty, I decided I wanted to be a cop; she pulled some
strings so that she and I could ride along with a cop a couple of
weekends. Whatever I told her I was interested in, she found a way
to help me do it. She’s everything I ever wanted to be . . . I
still want to be.”

Drake was still caressing my cheek with
his knuckles, “But she never told you about Centaurs?”

I shook my head, “Nothing. It’s almost
like, in her mind, she wasn’t one. I guess I shouldn’t claim to
know her mind, but since I showed up in South Carolina, every
Centaur kind of lets it run their lives – she wasn’t like that at
all.”

Drake shook his head, “It doesn’t run
our lives. It’s who we are.”

“Only because you let it be who you
are. My feelings for you don’t have anything to do with you being a
Centaur. You could be a human house painter, and I’d feel the same
way.” Drake looked away, and I worried I’d unintentionally struck a
nerve.

I needed for him to understand, “I feel
the way I do because you risked everything that was important to
you, with no promise that I’d feel the same for you. When it was
obvious Bianca loved Gage, you didn’t try to guilt her into staying
with you. You didn’t try to force her to marry you. You were
willing to let her be with Gage – you found a way to be happy for
them. When I was teetering on the edge of folding in on myself from
loneliness at Zandra’s house, you appeared out of nowhere to back
me off of the ledge.”

A smile emerged at the memory, “Your
crazy idea to sneak into my room, after everything I’d learned
about traditions, rules, and acceptable behavior – that’s not
something a Centaur does.” My fingers grazed his cheek as his eyes
smoldered at my confession, “That was something a man in love does,
someone who was willing to kiss his carefully laid out future
good-bye. That’s why I fell in love with you.”

Drake wrapped both his hands on either
side of my face and pulled my mouth to his. Just before our lips
touched, “I’m glad you noticed, Love. I was running out of
ideas.”

As my thoughts swam wildly, I wondered
how long kissing him would be enough? My whole body ached for his
touch. I loved the way my body reacted to his. How long could I
hold out before I was willing to give in and be married to him? Or
would I be able to convince him to give in to the desire he felt
for me?

(Camille – Dublin,
Ireland)

We landed in Dublin. One of the pilots,
Chip, met us at the stairs before we could depart. “Mr. Strayer set
up reservations for you; he just sent them to us.” Chip handed me
the piece of paper, “We’ll refuel now. My number’s on that sheet of
paper. As soon as you’re ready to go, send me a text, and we’ll
meet you here at the plane. Any idea how long you think we’ll
stay?”

Drake shook his head, “Sorry, Chip, it
could be a day, or we may be here for several weeks.”

“Understood. We’ll need at least thirty
minutes to file a flight plan and do a pre-flight check, so if
you’re going to be in a hurry, give us as much notice as you
can.”

It took all of three
seconds to realize we needed to find some clothes. It had been cool
in the evenings at home, but we stepped out of the airport into
what felt like an icebox.
Icebox
is a relative term, but having never been beyond
the balmy weather of the southeast and southwest United States, the
air was wet and cold. The low temperature coupled with wet air
chilled me all the way to the bone: it was rainy and in the
mid-forties, while we were dressed for eighty degrees.

We found our hotel, a clothes shop that
specialized in wool coats and socks, a shoe store with a sub-zero
guarantee on their hiking boots, and a bookstore that carried local
maps. I had expected the Ireland I’d always seen in the tourist
brochures. The dirt roads, emerald green pastures that went on as
far as the eye could see, the cobblestone streets hundreds of years
old, the clip-clopping of horse drawn carriages – wherever they
shot those pictures, it sure wasn’t Dublin.

Dublin had an energy all its own. Pubs
lined street corners, roof-top bars blared dance music, and
enthusiastic voices echoed to the passersby on the street. Cars
littered the street with the same hustle and bustle of any major
city I’d ever seen.

When Drake said we were going to be
looking for the pasture of Thessaly, in my mind we weren’t going to
look for it on foot – I was wrong. We had bundled up to prepare for
the next ice age and driven our rental car south of
Dublin.

Once we were nearly an hour south of
the city, we took a roundabout; eventually the pavement
disappeared, and we found ourselves on a road with little more than
one lane. Each time a car approached us, I squinted, hoping both
cars would fit on the tiny road. Sheep seemed to own as much of the
road as the cars, and fifteen minutes after we’d turned off the
main thoroughfare, we found ourselves in our first traffic
jam.

Rather than a mangled car blocking the
road ahead, it was a flock of sheep that decided enough traffic had
passed, and they were in no hurry to yield the right of way.
Cottages with thatched roofs littered the countryside. The further
we drove south, the more it felt like we were going back in
time.

We were here to find my Uncle Zethus,
who supposedly lived in the pasture of Thessaly and had an arrow
with magical powers. I gazed out the window trying to remember the
story Zandra had told me. A light caress on my arm turned my head.
Drake kept his eyes on the road as his fingers nimbly wrapped
around my hand. His thumb caressed the top of my hand, shooting
tingles up my arm.

I loved the sensations he could give me
with almost no effort on his part. As my mind wandered to the light
touch on my hand, a question came to mind. “What do you know about
the arrow?”

“Well, we know it existed a couple
thousand years ago. Gramps said Chiron’s family kept the arrow, but
no one’s seen it for a long time.”

“I know it’s the arrow that poisoned
Chiron, but why’s it so special?”

Drake didn’t take his eyes off the
road, “Hercules had been walking on the beach and found a ship
wrecked high on the rocks. When he explored the debris, his uncle,
Poseidon, rose from the sea, warning Hercules to leave the ship
alone.”

“Poseidon didn’t want Hercules to touch
the ship?”

“The crew had neglected to pay homage
to Poseidon before they sailed. Poseidon sent a sea creature to the
ship to remind them to ask for Poseidon’s safe passage. The crew
refused and slaughtered the sea creature. In retaliation, and as an
example to others, Poseidon threw the ship onto the rocks for all
the other sailors to see.”

“Okay?”

“Hercules wanted to make his own
arrows. He asked Poseidon if he could use the wood from the mast
for the shafts of his arrows. Poseidon agreed, telling him a god’s
weapon should be born of a god’s wrath.”

“So the arrow was magical because of
Poseidon’s shipwreck?”

“Partly. Hephaestus was the god of
fire, metalworking, and stone masonry. He made the arrows’ tips.
There were no sharper tips to be found on or off Mount Olympus.
They could puncture a person’s flesh just as easily as a pool of
water.”

I remembered back to the endless
lessons in Zandra’s garden, “Zandra told me something about the
tips, but it wasn’t how sharp they were.”

Drake nodded, “Right, the poison.
Hercules made a trip to Hades and dipped the tips in the blood of a
Hydra. Not only could they slice through skin with no effort
whatsoever, when they sliced, they deposited the most toxic poison
available into the wound.”