She squinted. I’m goddamned if I understand you.
Sokay. Affy res now.
Okay.
The centaur cleaned her bowie knife and oiled his sharpening stone with a small metal bottle of 3-in-One oil and sharpened the knife, pushing the angled edge across the stone in sure deft strokes, one just like the other. He wiped the blade again and cleaned the slurry from the stone and put the stone away. He held the blade up and turned it before him. A big knife even in his own big hand. He returned it to its sheath and set it beside the girl. She was breathing evenly. He watched her a moment and then turned away.
I’m looking for my mom and dad, she said.
Affy leef dem?
She did not reply and he began repacking his first aid kit.
I think they left me, she said. I think I mighta seen em die.
He shut the plastic tacklebox and returned it to his pannier and began sorting this night’s finds on his Shroud of Turin beach towel.
I need to find out. Alive or dead I need to know.
Know is beddah yeh.
Yeah.
Chay hep find. Now Affy res. Drink wadder too. Don be sick t’morrah.
Okey dokey.
He finished up his sorting and threw away half of it and threw out some of his previous kit to replace with the new and repacked the panniers and set them aside. He opened a bottled water and squeezed it into his gaping mouth.
I think you killed em, she said. Your people I mean. I think I saw it.
He threw the bloodsoaked handtowels and her shredded flannel and the waterbottle on the carfire. The fabrics flared pale blue and haloed and then began to smoke and pop as the waterbottle blackened and shriveled like some prehistoric insect carapace.
Only fair I guess. God knows I killed my share. Maybe someone’s kid saw me, huh.
He looked at her. She lay on her back with her eyes closed. The sheathed bowie alongside. The waning firelight upon her.
Mebbe, he said.
That Avy’s dead now though. I guess thass good but it don’t feel good.
She let out a long breath.
Don’t understand why you don’t wanna kill me like all the others do.
The centaur watched her breathing lengthen and he took up his watch and said no more. After he was sure she was asleep he opened up the two English phrasebooks she had given him and began to read them in the waning light.
Trumpeting awoke her and her first thought was that Chay had made another musical javelin and was trying it out. She sat up and then hissed between her teeth and put her hand to her chest and felt the bandages beneath her shirt. She remembered all of it at once and could not believe she was not dead.
She braced a hand behind her and glared back at the day and shaded her eyes. The morning well advanced. Chay stood in the back of the stakebed truck with forelegs on the cab and looked down at something off the freeway.
She pulled out the neck of her shirt and looked down at herself. She let go the collar and lay back and thought about throwing up. Hell with that. She stood and staggered backward and leaned against the car she’d slept beside. She breathed deep and waited for the pinprick blackness to subside. Let’s try that again. She straightened from the car and stood a moment and then took an experimental step. It didn’t kill her so she took another one. She retrieved her bowie from beside the sleeping bag and took off her belt and put it on again with the knife at her hip. She walked around the charred remains of the convertible. Chay was watching her now but did not move to help her. She nodded at him and he beckoned her on. When she got to the stakebed he pointed off at whatever he was looking at and she started to climb up but when she put a hand on the open tailgate and lifted her leg she felt her cuts grow tight in their bandages.
Loud wet sneezing sounds from the aqueduct now. Chay motioned for her to come around to the front instead and she did.
Three elephants stood bathing themselves in the aqueduct. Two adults and a child. They lifted trunks from the sludgy water and curled them back over their heads and sprayed themselves, dark wet patches spreading in the wrinkled gray. She stared at them in no more wonder than she had when she’d first seen a unicorn. And no less. Both equally belonging to the world she knew, neither more preposterous than the other.
I’ve heard of these, she whispered to Chay. Are they smart like us? Smot, he said. But not like us.