15. The Timid Centaur and His Dapper, Well-Dressed Friend
15. THE TIMID CENTAUR AND HIS DAPPER, WELL-DRESSED FRIEND
ELOWYN
Several days slugged past. How many, I didn’t know, didn’t care to. All that mattered was that every time I woke, someone was there to pour an overly sweet concoction down my throat.
I hadn’t yet been able to open my eyes due to the swelling, but it wasn’t Dashiell. For one, whenever the king’s most trusted attendant and advisor was there, he would scarcely shut up about the danger my presence, wherever we were, posed to someone else: my mother—a fact he still hadn’t bothered to tell me about. To be fair, I likely seemed incapable of paying attention. But besides that, the tinkling of the tiny bells that adorned his hair always gave him away.
No. Whoever was continuously coming to my aid was the healer, I presumed, but couldn’t be certain, since no one bothered with introductions.
The hands that clutched my chin to eke apart my lips the smallest amount, only far enough for the liquid to slide down, were gentle yet firm. Their skin was callused and rough wherever it brushed against my face, which was tender and sensitive to an extreme.
Several of the times I’d woken, it had been with a start, dragged to the surface of consciousness by sharp pain as the healer tended to my innumerable injuries. Disgruntled tutting would follow, along with some indecipherable mutters, and moments later the sweet tonic would lead me back into oblivion.
This next time I woke, it wasn’t in response to the healer’s ministrations but my own natural alertness. Saying I hurt absolutely every-freaking-where was only the very slightest of exaggerations. Had I not known otherwise, I would have guessed that a house-sized boulder had crushed me—before the Dragon Mother herself had charred me to a crisp and then every single umbrac in the Sorumbra had sunken its suckers into my body before yanking out their barbed points; — and then the queen had sicced her army of deranged pygmy ogres on me with orders to beat me to a bloody pulp.
Gingerly, I attempted to pry apart my eyelids—and this time it worked. My eyelids were tender and puffy, allowing only a squinting view of my surroundings. But it was no doubt a sign of marked improvement. My body was evidently healing. If for no other reason, I knew it because I was finally able to inhale and exhale properly. My breath no longer stuttered in my chest, and if that hadn’t told me I was on the mend, the fact that I could be in my body without being so overcome by agony that I could focus on nothing else would have cemented the conclusion.
I wasn’t irreparably broken. And I certainly wasn’t shattered.
I just wasn’t yet whole.
With my head resting atop a pillow, gazing up at the ceiling, I couldn’t determine much. The ceiling was made of the same rough wooden boards as the walls, though these didn’t allow in light—or rain. A natural, diffuse sunlight filled the room, bright enough to tell me there had to be windows somewhere.
Carefully, and extremely slowly, I tilted my head to the right: more of those crates, these covered with petite vials, bottles, and jars, ointments, salves, and poultices, strips of bandages, copper pots, and a pestle and mortar—the arsenal of a healer.
Mindful of the strong tugging at a wound on the right side of my neck, I slowly turned my head in that direction.
My breath hitched in my chest, albeit for an entirely different reason. A simple, unadorned bed stood beneath a high window. And in that bed lay a woman, eyes closed, face relaxed, as if she were sleeping … or perhaps gone from this realm already.
Blankets tucked around her legs and arms, highlighting how frail her body was, the covers rose and fell along with her steady, slow breaths.
She was alive, though not by much.
Her hair twined in a long braid along the pillow, across the blankets, and down to her hips. The strands were a nearly translucent white that was leached of all color, making it impossible to deduce its original hue.
Her face was gaunt, unnaturally pale. Even ten feet from her bedside and through swollen lids, I could follow a trail of veins as they trawled behind her too-thin skin. Her cheekbones cast dense shadows over her face. Her eye sockets were dark and deep, too easily conjuring the skull beneath that sculpted the flesh.
Amid all that dullness, a shiny, dainty diadem rested atop her crown, standing out like the sun parting the clouds. It was the only sign she’d ever been anything more than this husk.
That she’d been someone’s daughter. Sister. Lover.
That she’d been my mother .
Was , I corrected myself. She was close enough that if she were to open her eyes, I’d learn what color they were.
“You’re awake,” said a rasp that was part disapproval, part observation, and part sandpaper grating against rough stone.
Slowly, I dragged my head across my pillow to look ahead. Even so, I winced with a quiet hiss as a stinging jolt raced across my neck and much of my scalp, and made my jaw pulse like it was about to come unhinged.
“That’s why yer not supposed to be awake yet.”
The owner of that gritty voice was a squat goblin as solid as a tree stump. Seeing him made me realize how uncomfortably thin Pru was. Not just her either. I hadn’t seen a single goblin at the palace who appeared as physically strong as this one .
He lumbered over to the nearby crates, grabbed something, and then climbed up to sit on a stool beside me. When he tipped a small clear bottle halfway filled with an equally transparent liquid against my lips, I shook my head.
That action alone activated a series of pains from so many locations in my upper body I didn’t bother cataloging them.
The goblin arched a hairless, skeptical brow. “Are ye sure?” His tone alone indicated that he was sure I should be taking him up on his offer.
Even so, and even though I was incredibly tempted, I pursed my lips, unwilling to risk another shake of the head.
“Alright, then,” he said, as one did to someone determined to jump into a pit of writhing snakes for no good reason. “If ye change yer mind, just lemme know.”
The more I lay with my countless aches, the more I believed I’d be taking him up on his offer very soon. I risked a one-inch nod, and paid the price for even that with a stabbing yank along my nape.
After that, I wanted very much to ensure he understood I was saying No, but only for now , and croaked out, “Later.”
I spoke as I imagined the ventriloquist did in one of my favored childhood storybooks: The Timid Centaur and His Dapper, Well-Dressed Friend . The only one of his kind, a centaur lived among humans. Shy about how different he looked from everyone else, he spoke solely through his only friend, a dummy named Mauricio .
Based on how easily the goblin appeared to understand me, I fancied myself a successful Mauricio .
“If ye can speak,” said the goblin, “then I recommend ye do that ‘stead of moving any bigger part of ye.”
“Mmhmm,” I agreed, though his suggestion had been a tad bit obvious, hadn’t it? “You’re the one who’s been tending to me?”
“Sure am.” He scowled until lines sliced down from his mouth to his chin as if he, too, were a Mauricio .
“Thanks?” I offered, thrown off by his frown only growing more pronounced.
He grunted, slid down the stool, and gently placed the small bottle in a position of prominence among the others atop the crate. Then he lumbered across the room, opened a door with a creak, and left without a word.
I harrumphed to myself and prepared to wait for his return—what else was there for me to do? When he didn’t come back for several minutes I began to fret. I should have accepted the knockout juice and been done with it. Why did I insist on lingering in my pain? So many patches of tissue itched, stung, or ached that I couldn’t decide which was more pressing, what damage was greater.
After my regret at refusing the tonic had grown into an ache in itself, the goblin finally returned carrying a pail of water in each knobby hand.
Tracking his progress across the sliver of open floor that wedged between walls, crates, and beds, I noticed there was something wrong with his legs.
He wore a clean if simple set of tunic and breeches that exposed him from the knee down. Where Pru and every other goblin I’d ever seen had feet much like those of dragons, with shiny scales and claws the palace goblins were ordered to keep trimmed to useless nubs, this goblin had feet fashioned from what looked like … wood?
“Would ye like me to draw ye a picture so ye can stare at that instead?” the goblin muttered irascibly as he set down one pail and approached me with the second.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to stare. I’ve just…” I stopped to breathe. Being a competent Mauricio wasn’t as easy as I’d imagined. “Never seen feet like yours before.”
I realized I was maybe insulting the very last fae in the Mirror World I wanted to be offending. I needed his talented hands and medicine.
“Ah, it’s alright,” he grumbled gruffly though generously. “No one else’s got ‘em like me, that’s for sure.”
“Why?” I blurted before I could properly consider. At least my curiosity was distracting me from my discomfort…
He plopped the pail on the floor with an audible slosh I didn’t see. “Why, what? Why are ye such a nosy female, ye mean?”
In my current state, it was all too easy to imagine his pain at losing both legs. I took a moment to compose myself and show him true compassion without going over the top to pitying. I very much doubted he’d appreciate that.
Eventually, I asked, “How’d you lose your legs?”
In the book, Mauricio had a thick Spanish accent as he’d originally been owned by a matador who’d met his end on the wrong end of a bull’s horn. I entirely lacked his sophisticated accent, sounding more like an untuned wind instrument.
With a ferocious scowl, the goblin ladled water into a wooden cup and climbed back to sit on the stool at my bedside. Water splashed across his hand and arm but he didn’t appear to notice.
“Curiosity kills the sneakle, don’t ye know?” He shook his head. His hair was thick and shorn short along his head, which was large for his body.
He considered me some more before muttering, “No matter what that windbag claims, I’m not getting paid enough for this .”
“Sorry,” I said automatically. “Didn’t mean to pry.” Only of course I had.
A beat of disgruntled silence from him, continued curiosity from me, and then I heard myself asking, “Was it the queen?”
His large, pupil-less eyes blinked at me. Once, twice, thrice. Four fucking times.
I couldn’t decide if he was shocked I’d dared to ask, angry, or perplexed. All of those, I concluded.
“She did this to me,” I offered, and automatically went to gesture to the length of my useless self with a hand, only to gasp at a pang that shot up my side and along my arm.
I hissed, then snarled, “Am I hurt fucking everywhere ?”
Some of the impact of my distress was likely lost to my ventriloquism. The goblin’s large eyes grew wider. Or was it my Nightguard language? One didn’t grow up among rough-and-tumble dragon shifters without picking up some colorful habits…
His dark eyes narrowed a bit, widened again, then settled. He pursed his lips, then, “Aye. ‘Twas the queen. She did it to punish me, though she had no reason to.”
“Tell me … about it,” I grumbled. “The woman likes to cause pain just for the … sake of it.” I shuddered at the thought of her, then shuddered again when the first set off a series of spasms in my damaged body. “Before I met her…” I sucked in an inhale and forged on. “I never knew someone could be so evil.”
Only after I felt his curiosity pinned on me did I realize I’d been staring at the empty space between us and the wall.
“I’m gonna kill ‘er, you know?” I added, but it was mostly to myself.
“Ye won’t be doing much of anything for a long while still.”
“For now. I’ll heal eventually. Even if it … takes a whole year … I’ll get stronger … and kill ‘er then.”
Silence during which my mother moaned softly. The goblin glanced across my bed at her but didn’t comment.
“I have to,” I uttered, again mostly to myself. “ Someone has to.”
“Standing up to her doesn’t lead to anything good. Ye might wanna take me at my word on that. If not that, then my legs, may the dragons bless ‘em wherever they are now.”
I waited what I guessed was an appropriate amount of time to mourn the loss of his legs, then asked, “How long have I been here? Wait … how did I even get here?”
I gasped, and even that hurt deep in my chest. “Rush!” Left to be the queen’s entertainment . “Saffron.” Probably unsettled and distrusting without me, possibly believing I’d abandoned him. “Pru.” Out in the Sorumbra with all those awful monsters?—
My sudden realization pushed apart my swollen eyelids another tiny bit. “Pru.”
I studied the goblin some more. Beyond being a goblin, he didn’t much resemble her. Plus, I was certain the queen must have hurt many goblins over her reign, not just the one.
Even so, I was inexplicably certain.
“You’re Pru’s granddoody ,” I stated with only the merest of movements from my lips and jaw.
Once more, Granddoody stared at me, blinking at me with those large, dark, depthless eyes.
As fast and ferocious as one of the big cats of the Nightguard Mountains leaping after its prey, the goblin shot to standing, bracing his replacement feet against the stool’s footrest-bar. The cup he’d gripped clattered noisily to the floor. My mother moaned while he leaned over me, pressing most of his weight onto me as if he hadn’t been the one to nurse me back from the edge of death.
His breath was hot along my face though I scarcely noticed for the pain that prickled along my collarbone, chest, ribs, neck—everywhere, dammit.
At first I couldn’t breathe at all for the intensity. After, I could only suck in shallow, ragged gasps.
“Too much,” I eked out as blackness danced at the edges of my partial vision.
He only leaned into me harder, pressing a blade to my throat I hadn’t seen him draw.
While he growled like a vicious, cornered animal, every one of my hard-earned warrior instincts failed me.
I blacked out with a knife a swift slice away from ending it all.