Chapter 30

On the wrong side of the river on an unknown planet.

Ureeblay and Pegasia walked along, through the sun-dappled grass of the Centaur Way. They moved toward the Cool-Eve heading to his camp with the forest canopy high over their heads. As the grade of the wide path started a gentle climb, Ureeblay was thinking of all the things the surprising, young Centaur woman had told him. Those new ideas were like the busy bees out in the fire-meadow that lay somewhere ahead of them through the trees. However, the bees Pegasia brought into his meadow now buzzed around inside his mind. As he walked along beside the girl, he shook his head trying to clear his thoughts. The new ideas remained as he felt the weight of his long braid of hair move against the back of his neck and down over his vest and the handle of his spirit hammer.

Some of the buzzing notions Pegasia released in his head Ureeblay understood, and some ideas he didn't. However, he could not believe the young Centaur woman's claim that this Dauktaur—who according to her was a two-leg, as he was—actually created the first Centaurs from mixing together something she called ... ah, jains.

Ureeblay was certain he didn't have the slightest idea about most of the World Mother's secrets and mysteries, but he also felt certain that creating new life and bringing it forth was not the same as mixing up a good soup as Pegasia had made this Dauktaur's creation of Centaurs sound. At least the young man was thankful that, as a Daughter of Churon who seemed to hold a special place in Centaur culture, the young woman quickly was losing her heavy accent.

"Ssss, Ureebay," Pegasia asked him, her hooves thumping on the grass as she walked along beside him, causing Ureeblay to question just how quietly she could move if necessary. "How did yah come to be ahn ... ssss... on this side of the rivah? Anly the Dauk-taur's men have crassed the big rivah."

The young man wondered how the Dauktaur's men got across the Toolie, and hoped Pegasia knew. However, he recognized it would be rude to answer her question with another question.

"Well..." said Ureeblay, thinking of a reply and becoming aware of the scent of her drying hide coming from his left.

He liked her smell, and that helped him focus on the here and now. Ureeblay knew that paying attention was the only way they could hope to travel without something dangerous taking them unaware. He didn't know how close the Centaur warriors Pegasia said were after her might be; however, she didn't seem worried about that threat now. The young man remembered his sire had told him once that sometimes a man might find danger waiting for him when he was with the people he trusted the most. After his experience with Achinay, Crosof, and the log, Ureeblay realized he was starting to gain a new understanding of his sire's words.

"Well, it wasn't an accident that brought me here," said the young man, aware of not only his footing in the grass with each step of his moccasins but also the reassuring weight of his spirit hammer against his upper back and his quiver holding spears and his caster against his left hip. As the Centaur Way crested the rise, the green foliage around them reduced the distance he could see down through the trees. Quickly casting his glance further around their surroundings, Ureeblay was reassured by the sound of bird calls and insects in the forest. "I did not intend to cross the river," he told Pegasia.

"Not an accident—" the Centaur girl asked him, the humor in her voice evident. "—but?"

"I was with two boys I thought were my good friends," said Ureeblay to the young woman with the wet, woven bag of mussels against her right withers that flexed with each step of her front legs. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her glance around the forest on both sides of them as they walked along the elevated knoll, following the Centaur Way. He could tell the young woman was paying equal attention to their surroundings and to what he was saying when she turned her head and grinned at him.

"We traveled from Sweet Water camp, where I live with my mother and sister, and hiked over the foothills to the Toolie," Ureeblay explained, "with a group of hunters to learn from them. The hunters went out to scout the area for game, and the three of us were fishing close to our camp near the big river. The two boys dared me to walk out on a big tree trunk sticking out into the Toolie, with what was remaining of the top caught up on the high riverbank. We could see big fish swimming in the deep water close to the roots of the tree. They said I wasn't brave enough to try and spear one, and that my departed sire hadn't been a good teacher. They called me and my sister names and said I was a coward."

"Yangsters can be main," said the young Centaur woman as she looked at Ureeblay with a hint of sadness in her sky-blue eyes and gave him a soft smile before turning her attention back to the trail and their surroundings.

"These two youngsters were mean, yes. When I took the dare and got out by the roots that were sticking up out of the water—" Ureeblay continued, glad that he wasn't feeling all of the emotional pain he'd felt before, now that he was telling Pegasia about what had happened. However, he could feel a lump of cold anger developing in his gut remembering Achinay and Crosof's betrayal again—as well as worry about the pain his mother and sister must be feeling, and that he might have died because of what the two boys had done. Instead of completely upsetting him, the growing, cool anger made him more aware of Pegasia to his left and the forest they were walking through, while filling him with the certainty that he would not rest until he saw his Mother again. He would also deal with the pig-eyed coward who had shoved the log free as well.

"—Achinay, the smaller one," Ureeblay told Pegasia as they moved along the short grass of the Way and started down the other side of the tree-covered rise, "jumped up and down on the end of the log stuck high on the bank, and then he pushed it free. I didn't know how to swim at the time—but I can now—so all I could do was hold on to the roots as the trunk floated out into the river."

"So Maki boys," Pegasia commented, "can be as stupid as Centaur boys."

"Don't know about that, but I will not lie," Ureeblay admitted, noting the angle of a few shafts of Father Sun's rays that managed to make it through the thick canopy of leaves overhead and strike the forest floor around them as they continued downhill, "I was afraid for my life the whole time I floated down the river. The next day, the log finally dumped me in the shallow water close to the bank a little ways upstream from where the Muddy River back there empties into the Toolie."

"Yahr not hopin' to find the saim log," Pegasia asked with a teasing grin that made Ureeblay feel that everything was going to be all right, "are yah?"

"Ha! No, I am not!" the young man laughed, smiling back at the girl. "That log must be long gone by now, and I'll need a lot more than one log to float everything I've collected across the Toolie. Besides, I'm not exactly certain where I came ashore. You see, I must have caught a fever," he told her as a light-blue and white bird with small, spiky, black feathers sticking up from its head started chattering a shrill string of jeehaw-jeehaw-jeehaws at them from a branch ahead and to the left of the descending trail.

Haranguing them with its shrill calls the whole time, the bird swooped toward Pegasia and Ureeblay for daring to venture into its territory before darting back to the same perch.

"That jay," Pegasia said with a wave of her left hand, "was not here when I walked by earliar. Shee, were yah very sick?"

"I'd say so, I don't have clear memories after getting out of the water, that is, until I was a good distance upstream," the young man informed Pegasia and gestured back behind them with his hickory staff again. He was also ready to use the sturdy length of wood to fend off the small bird if it might try to drive them from its territory as they passed the tree where the angry bird perched. "I have fever-dream memories of traveling along the other bank—I don't know how far I went upstream, or how many days I was sick. Once I was feeling better, I just kept heading along the Muddy River and toward the Eve until I found a place I could cross to this side of the river.

"I don't know why I came over to this side of the Muddy River," Ureeblay told Pegasia, while slightly behind them the small bird gave them one last loud call as it flitted away uphill in the other direction.

"Feelin' like ah stranger in ah strange land, were yah?" Pegasia asked him, each of her hoof-falls making a soft thump against the grassy ground as they continued moving downhill.

"I was just wandering around, feeling sorry for myself," said Ureeblay with a shrug that made him aware of his gear strapped against his body, "and trying to survive. That is, until I saw the first Hurst—I mean—the first Centaur warriors on my back trail. I thought they were after me, so I started heading toward the Morn, back here to the Toolie.

"I need to find a way to get back to my mother and sister," Ureeblay told Pegasia. "They must be worried, and who knows what lies Achinay has spread about what happened to me. He probably told everyone in Sweet Water camp that I drown, or that some big fish ate me in swirls of my blood and bits of my raw flesh. I wish I could protect my mother and sister from his lies somehow. He's always stretched the truth past the breaking point. And ... when there is no truth he can tell..." the young man's voice trailed off as he and Pegasia walked along.

"This Achinay," the Centaur girl asked, sounding as if she were considering her question as her thick tail swished a fly off her rump, "he's ah, ssss, ah story tailer?"

"There is a difference between telling a story that everyone understands is a story," the young man said, hearing the cool anger in his own voice, "and lying to impress people, or to hide your own fault by saying things happened that didn't."

"E toru taha ki nga korero, " Pegasia announced, holding up her right fist as they neared the bottom of the hill "Ssss ... there are thuray sides to every story."

"Three sides?" Ureeblay asked her. He'd heard people say, "There are two sides to every story, " when talking about something happening between two people or two groups of people. And he'd heard, "Only the spirits can say, " or, "only the World Mother knows," when something happened that didn't have an obvious or quick explanation and any shaman weren't around to provide their wisdom. Now it seemed to Ureeblay that the Centaurs had another way to look at things.

"What are these three sides?" he asked.

Pegasia raised her right thumb and said, "Yahr side." Then her index finger pointed up in the air beside her thumb and told him, "What this Achinay tells fowks."

"Which will grow each time he tells the tale to folks—," Ureeblay said as the Way flattened out again, "—believe me." Here and there among the grass on the trail and the brush under the trees he saw small piles of storm-swept evidence from the recent passing floodwater. "Now, what is the third side, whatever Crosof tells people happened? Hah—he won't want to get into trouble either. I doubt he says more than, '—I don't want to talk about it.'"

"Naw—" Pegasia told him as her right, middle finger stuck out to join her other two digits as the young man and young woman walked along in the dappled shade looking at each other, "—what really happened."

Ureeblay was confused and, as he placed the toes of his right moccasin on the ground, he almost stepped on a finger-thick stick at the base of a small reef of driftwood protruding into the path on his side of the trail. Without thinking about it, he quickly shifted his weight and lifted his heel to avoid cracking the stick. Is Pegasia saying, he wondered, that she doesn't trust my side of the story?

As he walked along beside the Centaur girl, he was surprised at what she'd just told him. Part of him noticed the Centaur Way they were following through the trees made a sharp left turn ahead of them. The young hunter decided that when they reached the turn he would lead them straight ahead until he could see the edge of the fire-meadow. Then they would turn right and move parallel to the meadow in the trees until he found his trail going off to his camp.

"Well, then ... what actually happened?" Ureeblay heard himself ask Pegasia before he knew he was going to speak, aware he was gripping his hickory staff tightly in his right hand and had his other hand resting on the spear shafts coming out of his quiver as he thumped the rounded end of the hickory prod against the ground with his next step.

"I was not there," said Pegasia in a matter-of-fact sounding young voice, dropping her right hand to her side as her three extended digits blended into her open hand.

"But," she added, with a sweep of the hand toward his chest and sounding as if her explanation was enough, "I am here with you now, and you are my... pro-tec-tor."

"Ureebay, how lau-, how long have yah been on this side of the rivah?" Pegasia asked, slightly tilting her head toward Ureeblay. Absentmindedly she lifted the fingers of both hands up to her right jaw and she spread her fingers, slowly working them down through her drying, long hair to her lower stomach. The young man and young woman moved through the trees in the edge of the woods with the expanse of the fire-meadow on their left as they walked in the direction of the Toolie.

Zxz double moons on this side "I've seen two full double-moons on this side of the river," said Ureeblay, noticing that while she was working out the tangles in the long hair hiding her brown chest her right nipple appeared for a moment. He quickly looked back in front of them feeling a small flush warm his ears. "Ahhh, that is the time when both moons are full ... at the same time in the night sky—but you probably know that, Pegasia, being a Daughter of Churon. You also might be aware that the next double-moon will happen soon," the young man told her, realizing he was distracted at the sight of her nipple and blathering, as his sister would say.

"I do," the Centaur girl said, her voice sounding pleased, Ureeblay thought, "and I know."

"I saw the first Centaur warriors on my back trail a hand-and-two days before the last full double," the young man added. "That was when I started back this way." Using his hickory staff without thinking about it, Ureeblay flipped another stick off to the right side of their path from the grass in front of his moccasins.

He couldn't help but shoot a glance back at the young woman. She started working her dark-skinned fingers down the other side of her hair while glancing from side to side. It occurred to Ureeblay that they were approaching the point where he'd entered the trees from the meadow earlier in the day.

Looking away from Pegasia again, as she continued to comb her fingers through her long, reddish-brown hair, the young man recognized the deeply furrowed, dark-brown bark covering the straight trunks of three trees just ahead. On the ground between the triangular arrangements of the waist-thick oaks, he saw the traces his travel-drag left behind. When he pulled his load of supplies through the clumps of bracken, grass, and the remaining fallen leaves deposited by the floodwater on the forest floor, the drag ends left two evenly spaced, small ruts in the soil between the river oaks.

He didn't need to follow the travel-drag trail to find his camp now that he was in territory he recognized, but he would. They would reach his camp soon enough, and Ureeblay was relieved to see that there was no sign that any Centaurs had passed this way following his back trail.

"See my trail between these oak trees? We'll follow it to my camp, Pegasia," the young man told his companion, gesturing with the hickory staff in his right hand. "Once we get there, it won't take long to get my food supplies down onto the travel-drag. Then you can lead me to your camp."

"That is good, Ureebay," the Centaur girl told him, still working on her hair with her fingers. "I want to see yahr travel-drag. Have yah got many things yah've ... ssss ... collected?"

"My travel-drag is getting full," the young man told her, taking a deep breath that puffed out his chest. Ureeblay felt proud of his accomplishments since he'd speared the small flats-pig, freed the young wolf after killing the vines of passing, and harvested a treasure of wondrous terrace bog apples. Those two days suddenly seemed like they happened ages ago.

"Do you have much to pack?" Ureeblay asked the young woman, hoping they could reach the other side of the Muddy River as soon as possible.

They walked between the river oaks and turned right, starting to follow the drag-pole tracks on the ground. The young man was happy to see he'd left no noticeable footprints behind. "I mean, before we can head out for the, ah, Nota Piriti, where you said we can cross the Muddy River to get to this tapu land you told me about? I'd like us to have plenty of time to find a campsite that gives us some protection and still have enough daylight to gather a good supply of firewood. I must tell you, I am starting to look forward to a demonstration of your cooking skills with the fresh mussels you spent so much effort gathering, and some of your salt. I'm still growing after all."

"With yahr help," she told him with a pleased grin blooming at the corners of her generous mouth, "we can pack quickly at my camp. I have ... ssss ... panniers for hoiho e rua," she told him, taking her fingers out of her combed hair and sticking up her right thumb while extending her index finger, demonstrating the number. "For tauw hoiho. And yah're already tall for a tauw-leg, aren't yah?"

"Two," Ureeblay repeated the number without thinking about it. "I'm not that tall, am I? And just what are panniers?" he asked, recognizing she was talking about the taboo hoiho again; whatever kind of an animal a hoiho was. Thinking of animals, he wondered where the wolf was as he stepped over a clump of thick bracken in the soft shadows cast down from the canopy overhead.

The young man figured his traveling and hunting companion must have found something truly extraordinary to keep her away from getting to know Pegasia. After chasing off after that big, colorful dragonfly along the riverbank, the wolf probably caught the scent of something irresistible. Perhaps she was hunting out in the fire-meadow by now. I can always whistle for her, he reminded himself.

"Sheee ... panniers are kete, sss ... basekits," Pegasia told him, gesturing back to the basket of mussels over her lower back and resting against her withers, "for TWO hoiho. Basekits laajah than this wan ... biggah. How do you say, Ureebay?"

"Ahh... one basket, bigger, and larger," he told the Daughter of Churon while pushing over another clump of bracken in his path with his hickory staff, not worried about hiding his passage at this point. He was certain Pegasia's hooves would leave some prints on the ground along with the two pole marks already there.

"So you have two bigger panniers? Enough for two of these animals," Ureeblay asked, emphasizing in a teasing tone of voice the correct pronunciation of the number as she'd done. "Hoiho—not to be hunted and not to be eaten—but tell me what one looks like so I'll know if I ever see one."

He wondered how the young woman would manage to get two more, bigger basket arrangements on her lower back as well as the woven-hair containers holding the mussels if she carried much gear in these panniers of hers. He knew she was strong, but still—how far could she swivel her torso around over her front hips to place heavier panniers on her lower back, and then get them off again?

The young Centaur woman slightly turned her hair-draped, bare torso in his direction, and reaching over with her right hand, Pegasia gave his left shoulder a little, playful push that made him take a step to the right to maintain his balance.

"Yah're going to see hoiho soon enough," she said smiling, and a three-note laugh came out of her wide mouth and long throat that Ureeblay thought sounded delightful. He saw her sky-blue eyes twinkling with mirth while she held his gaze. "They are my hoa pai ... sssss ... like yahr daugg to yah. My hoiho are my hoa pai ... good friends ... ssss ... trail mates. We take care of each othah. They help me—as it was in the beggaining."

"In the beginning?" he asked the young woman walking at his side along the wide woodland trail. Her large eyebrows went up and she nodded her head, saying nothing. "So," Ureeblay asked her, "you have hoiho? Like my companion, the wolf? Two hoiho—to go along with two panniers?"

"Sheee ... thuray hoiho," the young woman told him, her eyes flashing.

"Three hoiho?" Ureeblay asked her, surprised, and suddenly interested in just what a hoiho was, that the animals could be companions to her as the wolf was to him. Do they help her hunt?

"That is what I said," the young woman told him. Pegasia knit her eyebrows together, cocked her head back, and she met Ureeblay's gaze as she walked beside him while a swarm of questions started buzzing around inside his head again.

"Ureebay," she asked him, sounding quite serious, "what is yahr daugg's ingoa, her name? You nevah said. Where were yahr manners back at the rivah—not intraducin' yahr friend to me? Yah were just settin' on yahr rump, acttin' like yah nevah met a Centaur before."

All Ureeblay was able to do was snort in response to her teasing and keep walking. He thought there were more important things they needed to discuss than talking about why the wolf did not have her own name. Only on the Eve of the Toolie would I worry about an animal not having its own name—well, that was not dinner. This is turning out to be another day of wondrous happenings.

"As I am your protector, you need to tell me about the Centaur warriors who are after you, Pegasia," Ureeblay said as they moved steadily through the trees heading away the fire-meadow, following the trail made by his travel-drag.

"Right, mate," said Pegasia, sounding unworried to the young man. "Weill, they are a taitamariki toa hapori, a ... sss," she told him, and from the expression on her exotic face, Ureeblay could see she was searching for the right word, "a sah-sigh-ety ... of young warriors."

"A society?" he asked her, as he turned his gaze from Pegasia to the trees ahead of them. "So these are young warriors who are members of a special group?"

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the young Centaur woman nod her head and look over at him. She nodded her head again, causing the tips of her drying, reddish-brown hair near her waist to flutter against her moving muscles as they walked along.

"Yes, Ureebay, they're members of ah new, seekret society of the youngest warriors from the Twilf Tribe," Pegasia explained. Then suddenly she frowned and he could hear the sound of disapproval in her voice when she said, "The Twilf Tribe means ... sheee ... the one-stone-and-two-fingers tribe, called the Roa Te Tao, the ... Long Spears Tribe. Their aincestaurs were the laist group of Centaurs the Dauk-taur's people braught farth from the place of dahvalipment—from the place of barth—acrass the rivah in the tapu lands many, many ginerations agau."

"The Twilf Tribe," the young man said, carefully repeating the number. Then wondering when this was supposed to have happened, he asked, "And their ancestors were the last, being the Twilf Tribe born—how many generations ago?"

"Yes, Ureebay, they were the last," Pegasia replied, "many, many ... generations past—over ... shee ... three stones and two generations of my people ago."

"Three stones and two?" he echoed her words, considering the number of cycles she was referring to as he absentmindedly stepped over a dead stick on the forest floor. Then a thought hit him.

"Ahh, Pegasia, just how many cycles of the seasons," he asked, glad that he'd learned many counting concepts listening to the shaman, and conversations between his mother and her friend the camp healer when he was a youngster, "how many cycles do your people number for one generation?"

"Sheee ... eight yars, sss, as you say—a hand-and-three cycles, Ureebay," the Centaur girl told him, pushing a low, thin branch growing from a tall sapling out of her way with her left hand.

Shocked by her words, he just walked along beside the Centaur girl thinking. A generation for Centaurs is half that of my people! Just how many cycles old is Pegasia? He realized he considered that she was a cycle or two, at most three cycles younger than he was—but if Centaur girls normally had their first baby when they were hand-three-cycle-olds!

He took a slow, deep breath to calm down as he walked along under the canopy of leaves overhead, hearing the soft, syncopated rhythmic thump ... thump each time a pair of Pegasia's hooves met the ground.

He took a second lungful of air in through his nostrils, smelling the odor of the Centaur girl's hide again, the earthy loam of the soft soil, and the river smell from the basket of fresh mussels against her withers, all mixing with the rich forest air.

Just how different are Centaurs from the way my people think and feel? the young man wondered as he slowly exhaled. Other than physically, just how different is Pegasi from the Welow Swongli girls I know—not that I really know how Welow Swongli girls actually think or feel!

With only his Second Life experiences to guide him in providing his knowledge of the deeper mysteries of young women, and the joys the World Mother created for men and women to share, Ureeblay admitted that trying to gauge what any female, other than his mother or sister, was feeling or thinking could be disastrous.

Trying to clear his thoughts, Ureeblay shook his head, feeling his long braid of hair move against the gear on his back. He gave the hickory staff held in his right hand a squeeze as he lifted the end off the forest floor with his next step. The familiar weight of the prod in his grip was reassuring.

"Are yah all right, Ureebay?" Pegasia asked him, sounding genuinely concerned as she slowed down to keep pace with him. He felt the soft, gentle touch of the fingers of her right hand against the bare skin of his left upper arm. A little charge of energy radiated from that spot. He realized he liked her touch, and he felt comfort from her gesture as she maintained contact with his bicep. He realized that he wasn't alone any more, even if Pegasia was a Centaur.

Perhaps, Ureeblay thought. as long as Pegasia and I am willing and able to talk, and work to understand each other, we won't be as different as two-legs and four-legs might seem.

"I am trying, Pegasia," Ureeblay finally answered, "to understand all the things you are telling me. Do you realize that to my people, a generation is stone-hand-one cycles long? What did you call them... yars?"

From above the forest canopy off to their right came Ureeblay heard the honking of what Ureeblay knew were black-neck geese flying unseen and low, and coming from up the Muddy River valley and the Eve. The young man slowed his pace even more as did Pegasia beside him, and they both looked up. Turning their necks and heads, the young people followed the movement of the deep, musical ka-ronks! above the high limbs and thick cover of leaves. The concealed flock passed over them; both now standing still. The calls of the big birds hidden above the treetops began to fade with distance, heading off toward the Morn and the Toolie River to their left.

Looking back down, Ureeblay saw a wistful look on Pegasia's exotic features as she continued to gaze after the geese calls. As he turned to resume following the drag marks, Ureeblay caught just a glimpse of a small profile hanging back among the treetops, slightly to the left of the trail. He knew the shape could only be the great-grandsire's dorsal shell suspended upside down from the high branch over his travel-drag.

The young man had left his netted-down food and supplies that could attract scavengers suspended high off the forest floor. As soon as they reached his camp, Ureeblay planned to quickly lower the turtle shell in the bed of the drag and then cover it with part of the second vine net he'd made. Other than the gear he usually wore on his body, his shorter sling wrapped around his head, and the hickory staff he carried in his right hand, everything else he owned was hanging from the high tree limb or already on his travel-drag. He would leave behind the small teepee of firewood and tinder he'd readied to start his campfire.