Under the sky, beside a river, outside a wooden house Leda and Chela are teasing each other. Chela is five and very strong in the body. Leda is three and very strong in the mind. They were both born in this lush valley, where I am lying at the moment. They both eat like proud valley-folk, bending fruit trees down to their mouths or using a rake to gather grass and straw. Chela is always eating, he has a feed-bag slung over his broad back at all times. He speaks infrequently, preferring to let Leda talk. Leda is smaller, like me, more like the mountain-folk that I come from. Leda loves fruit but she loves sugar above all other things. Most of us centaurs are partial to a sugarlump, before a gallop or on a cold night, but Leda is just dotty about them. It is probably a good thing that there are no sweetshops in our little river town, she would waste her fine mind trying to puzzle out how to get her hands on the treats. As it is she wastes her time competing with her brother. It is almost as if she is trying to overwhelm him with energy to make up for her lack of size. She dances around him like a Terrier around a Saint Bernard, occasionally he rumbles a reply to her jibing questions.
“Do you think you can swim the river? Do you think you can? Eh?”
“I could, but you are too small.”
“Don’t you think that a lumbering pig like you would sink? Don’t you? Eh?”
“I can swim better than you.”
“Prove it then. Dare you. Dare you! Double-dare you!”
“I don’t have to.”
“Scared. Are you scared? Is my big lumpy brother scared?”
“I’m not scared.”
Leda knows that he will not swim the river. Not because he can’t but because he is a good boy, despite his size and strength. Leda is the chancer in the family. She thinks that there is one rule for Leda and another rule for everybody else. She is always trying it on, dodging chores and running away from her parents when they try to tell her something that she doesn’t like. Everybody loves her though because she is just full of life. She can be a little cruel to her brother, though. I think that she is trying to spur him into being as quick as her even if that is impossible. I think that she should lay off Chela so I call them over.
“Le-DA... Che-LA.”
“Granny Em!”
“I’m coming Gran.”
Leda is quicker off the mark and her slender legs carry her towards me at a brisk trot. She still moves a little like a foal, bouncing up and down and not looking where she puts her feet. Half way towards me she is overtaken by the massive black barrel that is her brother. He charges like a cavalry horse, his hooves thunder on the turf. As he runs, not even at full gallop, he continues to eat. His hands are in his foodbag and his smiling mouth is crammed to the gunnels with sweet grass. His legs move like the cams in a great machine, powering him forward, while his upper-half, the human half, relaxes. There is no frown of concentration in his face. He beams at me, his Granny Em, hardly noticing how fast he is going, or that his sister is galloping flat out trying to keep up with him. As usual he pelts straight up to me and greets me as if he had a thousand urgent things to tell me. Then he just stands there in front of me, grinning, his arms folded.
As Leda approaches I look at her and think how much like me-at-her-age she must be. Her mane is blonde like mine was, and stretches right down her back. Her horse-parts are dappled brown and white, with most of the white on her legs. Her tail is long and full of decorations. I was always one to tie beautiful oddments into my tail, when I was young.
“What is it Gran? What do you need?”
“You look like you are at a loose end, sit down and listen to a story.” I always enjoyed sitting down, in the mountains it is the custom. There isn’t so much to eat up in the thin air and you must gather your grass by hand. Our cousins the horses have very effective teeth for cropping the sward but we centaurs must use our hands and the tools of humans. Leda flops down next to me but Chela stays standing on his four solid legs.
“When I was your age, Chela, but still your size, Leda, I lived in the high forest, as you know. Eating mossy grass and nibbling the new shoots on the fir trees. My parents were small and quiet. They were easily pleased and they had all the freedom of the high slopes. I was a handful for them. I grew as big as my father very quickly and I ate into their limited supply of food. They wanted me to stay but I made my choice and left for the good of us all. Our hidden valley in the clouds had only one way down and I had to spring from rock to rock like a mountain goat to keep my footing on the treacherous path. I came down out of the clouds with the sun blazing. The sun on the clouds made a dazzling rainbow and I walked underneath its arch and into a world of bright green. Having grown up on a mountain peak I didn’t know about all this...” I waved my tail around the lush riverside, “all this growth.”
“I ate my fill for days and days but I found that I had grown as tall as I was going to. The extra food fueled my youth and my rashness. Life down-the-mountain seemed to be limitless. There was all the grass you could eat, all the space you could ever need. There wasn’t so much water as on the high free slopes but it was so much warmer it felt like constant luxury. Why did my parents not live down here? Maybe the cold heights were all they knew, maybe they had never gone to find out what the world was really like.”
“I grew strong, I lived freely and I lacked for nothing. I met humans and used their tools. That doesn’t sound strange to you but to me the two-feets were very alarming. Their bendy legs with their double-jointed knees spooked me. I didn’t understand what advantage there could be in the unbalance of two legs. Later I saw a miller climbing the stairs of his mill and a builder climbing out along a pole using his legs like a second pair of arms. I saw the usefulness of their little legs then but their tiny toes still made me champ. They still make me champ today, they are so delicate and fragile. They look as if they could break off if you ran at a good speed.”
“Humans were strange and are strange but their tools and machines are very useful. They make the shoes that you are wearing Chela. And of course you know that they write many of the books that you read, Leda. They can’t do a simple job as well as one of us but they will keep pottering away at job after job until late in the night when you or I would have gone to sleep. They are very industrious but they are very envious. They envy our strength, the bat’s ears, the fox’s eyes, the cat’s feet. They envy the mole and her secure tunnels under the earth. Remember that they are always comparing themselves to the world and finding themselves lacking and you should have no problems with humans. But I am getting off the point of my story.”
“I walked without fear through the human villages. They stared at me, I stared at them, they stared at me. I would speak to them and they would start in surprise. They would speak back but at that time we shared no languages and I couldn’t understand them. I caught food for those who were kind to me and I carried pleasant children on my back. I was given many gifts because they thought that I was lucky or magical or a good omen or something. They hung scented flowers from my mane. I was famous in each village before I got to it and someone would be waiting for me with a basket of fresh-cut grass as I arrived.”
“All of the villages were strung out along a strip of filthy water called a canal, not good to drink. I couldn’t tell what the use of this water was but it was square-cut and human-made and had to be for something. I passed through many villages before I found out what it was for.”
“First I saw a great and noble centaur coming along on the other side of the water to me. He was much larger than me, no surprise as he had grown up in such a rich world, with such verdant plantlife.”
“He was tall, many hands even then, and his hair was black, but with white legs like yours Leda. He wore no jewelery and he looked sad. His arms were down by his sides and he walked slowly, with a methodical gait like human steps. Only his eyes registered his surprise at seeing another centaur. Then there was a flash of anger and his face became sad once more.”
“As he walked by on the other side of the canal I saw that he was pulling a long rope. The rope was tethered to a building that sat in the canal. Before my disbelieving eyes, stride by stride, he pulled the building towards me, along the canal.  As it passed it cut off my view of the other centaur and so I had to look more closely at it. It was not a building but a flat, heavy boat. It was piled high with planks and humans. The humans were burly and strong and they toiled all over the floating island that moved slowly through the countryside. Behind the timber barge was another barge, with nobody aboard but a cargo of vegetables and grain.”
“I was transfixed by this sudden explanation for the canal and I stood stock still and stared as it inched past.”
“As I stood, from atop the first barge a red faced human threw a rope. The rope landed around my neck and shoulders. Then another wider lasso fell around my waist and the two tethers tightened. I was to numb to struggle. All my experiences of humans had led me to believe that they were respectful, generous folk. I didn’t understand what was happening completely enough to stop it.”
“Where the barge had been one horse power before it was now two”
“But Dear Granny Em!” Leda overcame her shock to speak, “You can’t have been caught! How could anyone want to catch you in a rope?”
“I was much younger then, I was strong and nimble and useful. The humans saw me much as they saw the tools that they made and used. They harnessed me, like they harnessed the power of wedges and wheels. They put me to work as quickly as they put the discovery of triangles or fire to work. They were not cruel, beyond taking my freedom. And it was not all lost as I thought it was at first.”
Chela still stood silently eating but he looked much happier to hear that.
“I got to speak to the big, black centaur that I had glimpsed earlier and I asked him why he had looked angry after he had spotted me. And he said,”
“I was angry because I wanted to meet you and then I realised that I was going to because they would catch you. It almost feels like my fault that they caught you because I wanted to speak to you. I have not spoken for a long time and it feels good now, but I am still angry.”
“He spoke with a strange low-land centaur tongue but I understood him and he understood me. He told me that he was also thankful to me for taking some of the load off his back. He said that he was sorry about this also because I should not be there to bear his burden. I was so happy for a while to talk with another equestrian that I didn’t mind being tied to a boat for the privilege.”
“But then we went back through all the towns that I had been to when I was free. And all the people who had been so kind and respectful now saw me roped and pulling and human barge. I felt very low. I was ashamed that I had been caught, even though I didn’t know that it was a trap. Some people recognised me and were kind, some people did not recognise me and were still kind but I could see in some of the humans’ eyes that they didn’t know what to think. Some looked sad and some looked strangely happy. I see now that they had got ahold on the great strength that I had and they envied. They felt they were my equal now because I was pulling a load, I had felt that they were my equals before I was pulling a load, even if their toes are freaky.”
“Very slowly we pulled the barge all the way to the end of the canal. Then we stood and waited in a black quarry while sooty air swirled about and the barge was piled up with black rocks. Both barges were filled with heavy black rocks and we two centaurs were roped to the other end of the water-train. More slowly and more painfully this time, we pulled the barge away from the black pit. Getting it started from dead in the water was more than I thought I could take but it started eventually. The rope dug into my shoulder and my hooves dug into the black sand path as I pulled. I thought about what it must have been like for the stallion when he must have had to start the barge off alone. I tried to be strong for him, and I know that he was trying to be strong for me.”
“The second time going through the villages I knew as a pack-horse was worse than the first. I was known only as a slightly curious servant, it was as if I had never run free. It was awful.”
“But the stallion kept my spirits up when he saw that I was flagging. He could pull even harder than he usually did and the tiny let-off that I got was like a loving hug from him. He pulled my load when I thought that I could not and he picked up my spirits when they were low with a jaunty song in his strange accent. He made me laugh when I didn’t want to look at the people looking at me. He made me laugh.”
Chela was looking disturbed again, he hadn’t put his hand in his food bag for a while. He chewed the same plug of grass again and again, grimacing. Leda’s eyes urged me on.
“Soon, he made it seem soon, we pulled the traveling circus, that was the barge, into new lands.”
“They were lands such as I had never seen, all bursting with goods and foods and people for the barge. The lands were plentiful and the humans found many things for them to swap for their black rocks. As the barge traveled it smelt less and less bad as the rocks were replaced with scented cloth and baskets of dried spices. Sometimes we ‘horses’ got a strange and welcome treat. I enjoyed an orange that I was given one day but when an over enthusiastic human tried to force a strange spiky fruit called a durian into my hand I took one smell and threw it away, much to his consternation.”
“In these plentiful lands the barge ‘acquired’ another centaur. It was a slender male, all white and the humans tethered him in front of me to even the strain up. To do this the humans used a floating bridge made of logs. They pushed the bridge across the canal and held it in place with ropes. I had to strain to watch, the bridge was behind the barge. They led the colt over the bridge and trotted him up in front of me.”
“As sad as I was to see another equestrian being tied onto the barge it was more company and less weight, especially for me, so I welcomed him. His name was Calif. He and I and the black stallion pulled the laden barge all the way to the other end of the canal. To a great city where the barge came out of the plains and right down to the harbour. The city was thronged with people, dressed in finery and rags, selling rice and buying rouge.”
“A horse trader from an enormous boat walked down and looked at the three of us, the three centaurs. He glanced at me, looked longer at the black stallion and gazed lovingly at Calif.”
“Such a fine horse” he said loudly.
“Do you like games?” he asked equally loudly.
“What kind of games?” said Calif.
“Do you like work then?” the trader countered.
“I think I may be faster at games.” Calif didn’t want to miss a chance to be free of the rope.
“You shall play.” The trader seemed absolutely sure.
“Our first piece of luck came then, the trader told us all to wait until we were leaving the city again and to take our chance when we got it. The barge loaded up, this time with crates of bottles from overseas and with bars of gold under guard. We moved out again, hoping it would be our last time.”
“When we had pulled all day we had lost hope and as we stopped for the night I lay down and I may have cried a bit.”
“I was being a foolish child for at that moment came a swish and a drumming of cloth-wrapped hooves in the dark. Calif was off and running, a human on a horse beside him dropped a blanket over his revealing whiteness and the two sped into the dark. I was free of the rope also but there was no way that I was leaving the black stallion alone again. I didn’t care that without strong centaurs to pull their barge all the villages and towns along the canal would suffer and maybe die. Let them pull their precious barge themselves.”
“I was free but the stallion was still tied, how could I reach him before I was captured again? I had no bridge to push across the water. I was too small to jump across. The stallion shouted at me to run and save myself and I roared at him to shut up and let me think.”
“I was becoming clever at using human inventions, whether in the world or in the mind and now I saw that the stallion’s rope was long enough that he could jump the canal over to me and I could untie him. I called out my plan but there was no reply.”
“Then out of the darkness came a mighty shout, followed by my beloved who landed well on the bank beside me. I was fast with my fingers and we ran off together, free at last.”
Both children were now grinning from ear to ear, it was all ok. The black stallion was obviously their grandfather and they had obviously survived their adventures. There was no need to worry about their precious Grandma Emma any more, she was, if not home safe, then at least on her way.
“I can tell you how we got home to my parent’s mountain in the secret valley another time, your faces tell me that you have heard enough. Remind me to tell you also about how we picked this spot to live. And how we built the bridge across the river. And about the wild times that we had before the town grew up around us and made us respectable. And about the fruit we gathered and the lazing by the sweet river.”
“I bet it wouldn’t be as exciting as the story you told us today.” Piped up Leda.
“Why! You young tyke!” But Emma was pleased that they thought her life had been exciting. She thought that their lives were pretty exciting too.