Watersmeet by Ellen Jensen Abbott Page B

just awakening, Abisina realized that the sun had peeked over the tops of the trees. She sank back onto her heels.
    Haret’s eyes were moist, his cheeks flushed.
    Abisina had no words to describe her feelings, and a look at Haret’s face told her he felt the same way. They both sat for several moments, joined in awed silence.
    He finally shook himself and broke the spell. Abisina got stiffly to her feet while Haret shouldered his bag.
    “Day is here, but we must go farther before we can stop. Hurry,” he said gruffly. But the hunger around his eyes—appearing deepest when he stroked Sina’s necklace—had eased. He looked more whole.
    Abisina lifted her own bag, and with one last glance at the empty clearing, followed Haret into the trees.

CHAPTER VIII
     
    It felt strange to be walking in daylight, though Haret stuck to deeply shaded places where the trees grew very close together. It was also warmer, and after half an hour, Abisina took off her cloak and draped it over her bag. The fauns’ music still played in her head as she walked.
    Haret stopped in front of her, squinting up toward the sun, touching the mossy side of a tree. Abisina glanced around. Behind them lay forest as thick as any they had moved through, but ahead there was more space between the trees, mounds of rock jutting from the earth, and boulders dotting the forest floor. Patches of sunlight now reached a carpet of fallen leaves, dotted with wildflowers. She noticed that the land sloped upward more steeply, and she was wondering if this might be the foothills of the Obrun Mountains when the woods filled with shouts and the snaps of breaking branches.
    Something grabbed her around her waist and yanked her off her feet. She heard Haret shout, but then the world turned upside down. Abisina’s head flopped toward the ground, which was rushing by below her. The thick, muscled legs of a horse flashed in and out of view.
    She had been captured by a centaur!
    Abisina pulled and struggled, but her bag and cloak hung around her head, tangling her arms. She shook them off and fought like a wild thing, twisting, clawing at the strong arm that held her, trying to sink her teeth into any body part she could. But the arm pinned her tighter, the drum of the hooves never faltering.
    Abisina hung there, trying to collect herself. To her left, she saw the centaur’s muscular human abdomen, flecked with mud and sweat, disappearing into the gray hips of a horse. Gathering her strength, she tried to fight again, but the centaur swung her away from its body and shook her hard. Her teeth clattered together and her bones grated in their joints. She went limp, and it held her again by its side.
    She had to think! Had to get away! Clenching her teeth, she reached out a third time to scratch its belly or kick at its sides. But it shook her again, and Abisina’s neck snapped, and all went black.
    A hard smack against her cheek woke her.
    She opened her eyes to find the cold, blue stare of a female centaur on her. Matted gray hair hung over the creature’s breasts, her mouth twisted in a cruel grin. Abisina sat on a high tree branch, arms pinned to her sides, as the centaur held her waist.
    “What’s this?” the centaur mocked, examining her up and down. “A human takin’ up with mudmen?”
    Abisina tried to get her bearings, but her head pounded and moving her neck sent a stabbing pain through her shoulders.
    “And what kind of human are you? You’re as brown as the mudman! And this hair!” She yanked down the braid Abisina had taken to wearing and stepped closer so that Abisina could see her broken teeth and smell her foul breath. “Are you all human, girlie?”
    Abisina swallowed hard and tried to look past the leering face.
    “Lookin’ for your friend? Don’t worry. My brother has him, and you’ll soon be together!”
    A brown centaur galloped up in a rush of hooves. He was shorter and stockier than the female, his eyes dull, his features