Centaur Rising by Jane Yolen Read Free Book Online

Hannah?”
    â€œDo?” she started and then her voice began to run downhill. “What do I want you to do ? I don’t … I don’t know.” She started to cry quietly. And I hadn’t heard her cry since … well, since forever.
    I tiptoed away, but as I walked to the barn, I thought, We’re all taking baby steps here. Shakily, slowly. And someone—maybe everyone—is going to fall down.

 
    6
    Four Days
    T HE REST OF THE DAY WAS CHAOS . Mom had already called everyone who was boarding a horse or riding, and she only had to leave messages with two maids. The two boarders who called back wanted to make sure:
    1. It wasn’t a prank call.
    2. Their horses weren’t in danger.
    3. They didn’t have to move their horses to a more expensive farm.
    4. Riding lessons would continue after the short break.
    Everyone agreed to give us the four days’ grace, so Mom relented and let Robbie have an hour in Agora’s stall watching the pony boy sleep.
    â€œWhy does he sleep so much?” Robbie asked me when I’d pushed him in. “I want to play with him.”
    â€œBabies sleep a lot,” I said, reminding him how he’d been when Mom brought him back from the hospital. “All day and hardly at all at night.”
    â€œThen I want to be here at night, too.”
    â€œMom will never allow it.”
    He knew that was true and didn’t say a word more about it.
    *   *   *
    I left him in the stall and then put four sawhorses across the driveway. Mom said it was to prevent anyone else possibly trying to come in.
    For the first three days the sawhorses worked.
    For those three days, I balked at wearing the quarantine outfit. It was too big, and I kept tripping on the long pants. I hated the mask.
    But I kept the outfit close. We just didn’t know when someone might show up.
    Surprisingly, no one did.
    Oh, we still got mail, and one package, and a grain delivery. But Mom managed to keep them from coming anywhere near the barn, even though we had to haul the grain in from the front porch ourselves.
    â€œBreathing space,” Martha called it. None of us expected it to last any longer than that.
    And honestly, with the extra amount of barn work I now had, mucking out the additional stalls, I wasn’t sure I wanted it to last any longer. But we had no other option but to try for more time.
    We did get occasional help from Dr. Herks, who checked in every day and never balked at picking up a hammer or taking a turn with the oats buckets or straw bedding. He had hauled most of the sacks of grain in the wheelbarrow. It helped that there was a ramp off the porch for Robbie’s wheelchair. But the rest of the work was done by Mom and Martha and me.
    *   *   *
    On that first day, Mom and Martha strengthened the barriers to Agora’s new stall. Instead of blankets for the windows, Dr. Herks bought blinds at a shop in Springfield, which Martha hung on the inside of the windows. At the same time, Dr. Herks put up spotlights, a new lock, and an inside bolt. The lock had five sets of keys.
    The next day, Martha gave us lanyards she’d made for the keys, all in different colors. Hers was deep blue, Mom’s yellow, mine pink, Robbie’s light blue, and Dr. Herks’ green.
    â€œIf a key goes missing,” she told us, “we’ll know by its color.”
    â€œWe’ll know because the person who lost it will be looking for it,” Dr. Herks said, flapping his arms and pretending to be panicked.
    Martha glared at him with a face that could turn a man to stone.
    I was reading a book of Greek myths whenever it was my turn on foal watch. I needed to find out what I could about centaurs. It had these great paintings in full color, so real-looking it was as if the artist had taken a photograph of the characters, not just made them up from his imagination. I knew—from a unit in fourth