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“Princess,” they called her, and “my lady,” until some days she couldn’t remember her own name. She wondered if some day her name would slip her grasp entirely, and the Princess would be all that was left of her. That role she played so well, day after day, smiling—but never too much—and laughing—but never too loud—as she paraded her royal self before servants and soldiers, courtiers and common folk. Day by day, the spaces in which she could be herself grew smaller and smaller. Perhaps one day, they would be gone entirely.
But in Centaurworld, no one cared that she was a Princess. Oh, her guards always cautioned centaurs they thought were being too familiar, and there was that whole thing with the horsetaurs and their attempts at high society, but for the most part, the centaurs just did not care. All they cared about was whether her singing voice would harmonize with theirs, or whether she had enough to eat, or, in the case of the shamans, whether she was keeping up with the lessons in magic they had been so eager to impart once they had discovered her interest in it.
The best days in her life were the ones she spent in Centaurworld. And the best of the best were the days she managed to slip away from her guards entirely and experience it on her own.
Today was one of those days. It was only a short leash she’d won for herself today; it was a short visit, just a few hours, and she’d had to promise not to leave the little town that had grown up around the rift. But for those few hours, she could be alone.
She glanced around, hoping to spot some chance acquaintance from a previous visit to spend the time with. Barring that, she would go talk with the maintenance gophertaurs that always crowded this town. Which… wasn’t a bad idea, actually. Maybe then she’d see him again.
She hadn’t gotten the elktaur’s name, either when he had repaired the rift to allow her to return or when her father had thrown a fete to reward him, and she felt terrible about it. She wasn’t entirely sure anyone had bothered to get his name; after all, as her father would put it, he was only a centaur. Worth rewarding for a task done well, like training a horse, but no more than a particularly useful sort of domesticated animal.
She wanted to be better than that. She would be better than that, when it was her turn to rule.
So she drifted back towards the rift, hoping. The elktaur stood out, and not only for the fact that he was the only elktaur on the rift’s repair force. He was entirely unlike most centaurs she had met. Tall and slender and elegant, with those antlers… which she shouldn’t be looking out for right now, she reminded herself, because they were seasonal.
There. That tall straight back, those leaf-shaped and expressive ears, just slipping around a corner ahead of her. She thought about calling out but followed instead, through some instinct she couldn’t name.
She turned the corner and he was gone. But no, there, an open door. Surely he was just beyond?
The room she entered was small and dark, with shelves against the walls, holding tools and strange pieces of machinery she couldn’t identify. The elktaur technician was bent over a workbench, frowning at what looked to be a research notebook of some kind.
The elktaur’s neck straightened as he noticed her, and one of his ears flicked nervously. “Princess!”
She winced. “Don’t… don’t call me that.”
His ears went back, clearly worried. “I’m sorry,” he began, a frantic note to his voice that made her think he would keep stammering apologies if she didn’t nip this in the bud right now.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she said, swallowing her exasperation. “It’s just, I’m so, so tired of being a princess. Sometimes… sometimes I wish I could just be a woman, you know? Just any old woman.”
The Elktaur was nodding along as if he understood, though from past experience with centaurs, she couldn’t be certain what, if anything, he was taking from this. “Then I can call you Woman instead,” he said.
Oh, he had gotten it all wrong. “I—“
“And you can call me Elktaur,” he added with a decisive little nod.
Oh. Maybe he had understood. “I… think I would like that,” she said after a carefully measured moment of silence. She glanced around the room. “What is this place, anyway?”
“My workshop,” he said, no small amount of pride in his voice.
A startled smile stretched her cheeks. “Are you an inventor?”
He rubbed a hand on the back of his neck and fidgeted. “I wouldn’t say that. I… dabble.”
She leaned close to a shelf, examining the array of gadgetry there. “This doesn’t look like dabbling.” She glanced back over her shoulder just in time to catch the Elktaur blushing and ducking his head away from her. “Tell me what it all does,” she demanded.
“It’s just… it doesn’t all work,” he said in a faint and mortified voice.
She smiled again, finding it impossible to suppress the urge. “So tell me what they’re supposed to do, and maybe I can help you get some of them working.”
One of his ears flicked, but this time she thought it was more amusement than nervousness. “I didn’t know you were a technician too.”
“I’m not,” she said, still smiling. “What I am, according to Waterbaby, is a fair way along the path to becoming a shaman.” She reached out towards him with one hand. “So what do you say? Should we see what we can make with your machines and my magic?”
“I guess we could,” he said, staring down at her hand blankly. “Are you waiting for me to hand you something?”
She laughed. “Give me your hand.”
He reached out and put his left hand in her reaching right, which made her urge to giggle worse. “Like this?”
“Other hand,” she said kindly.
He swapped hands, cautiously wrapping his fingers around back of her hand when she did the same to him, his palm warm and callused against hers. “This is… peculiar,” he said in a strange, breathless voice.
“And now we shake,” she said, a little breathless herself, demonstrating with a brisk shake of her hand.
It took a moment for him to start shaking his hand in time with hers, but he got there eventually, until he was pumping her hand up and down with an enthusiasm that was just short of harmful. “This is fun!”
That threatening fit of the giggles overtook her, until she had to extract her hand from his in order to double over laughing.
Oh, she liked him.
When she recovered, she found him anxious once more, his ears so far back they were almost hidden by the shape of his skull. “I’m not laughing at you,” she reassured him. “It’s just that spending time with you makes me want to laugh. It’s… good. It feels good.”
His ears un-flattened, though there was still a cautious set to them. “That’s… good,” he said, his voice gone breathless and strange again.
As she straightened up, she caught sight of something on the workbench beyond. A pair of antlers, their ends roughly hewn, and a sturdy saw. “Are you re-using your antlers now that they’ve fallen off?”
“Er… yes,” he said, blushing. But there was something wrong with the way he said it, and she couldn’t help but press the matter.
“Take off your hat,” she commanded.
“I…”
“Please,” she added.
Shame-faced, he removed the hat. There, hidden beneath, were the sawn-off stubs of his antlers.
She took two swift steps forward and reached her hand out towards him, moved to comfort but not quite daring to touch. “Why… why did you do that?”
He shook his head. “I… I don’t know. I thought maybe… maybe if I looked more human…”
“It bothers you, doesn’t it? The way humans treat centaurs.” She reached up to touch one of the sawn-off stumps and pulled her hand back swiftly when he cringed away from her. “I’m sorry. Was that rude?”
“No, I… no.”
“Do they grow back?”
“I… don’t know.” His gaze was still lowered and ashamed, and it hurt her to see him like this, with this self-inflicted wound that would never be enough to make humans like her father treat him with respect.
“That… would be a shame.” She looked to the workbench, and the antlers laid out on it. “I think I could do something about them, if you’re willing to let me use my magic on you. I could put them back.”
His ears flicked nervously, and his eyes darted up to meet hers. “If you want to.”
“I do. They’re beautiful.” And so was he, even without his antlers, though she wasn’t going to tell him that. “It would be a shame for them to go to waste like this.”
His eyes darted to the antlers, and then back to her. “Do… do you need me to do anything while you mend them?”
“Well… this would probably be easier if you knelt down.”
“All right.” He knelt on the floor next to his workbench, and she approached. His breath went ragged as she reached out to touch the leftover stumps, exploring their contours and the ragged edges the saw had left. She wondered why he had not taken the time to sand them down and make them smooth, but was glad he had not; it would probably make the job she intended to do easier.
She touched the antlers on the workbench next, reaching out with her still tentative magical senses. They glowed in her sight, the same way the elktaur glowed, a resonance that she could use to her advantage. They wanted to return to where they had come from.
She lifted the first antler and set it in place against the stump it had been sawn from, reaching out with her magic. Look, she told the antler. Here it is. The place you are supposed to be.
The elktaur let out a little gasp as the antler snapped back into place, becoming a part of him again. She repeated the process with the second antler, and then stepped back to admire her work.
Oh, he was so, so beautiful.
She had little time to admire him, though. There, from beyond the still-open door of his workshop, the voice of one of her guards called. “Princess! Princess! It’s time to return!”
“I’ll be back,” she said to the still-kneeling elktaur. “I don’t know when, but I’ll be back, and then we can look at some of those inventions of yours.” Instinctively, she bent over and pressed a kiss between his antlers. “Don’t do that again, okay? They belong with you. They’re part of you. Let them be part of you.”
“O-okay,” he stammered, his cheeks darkening in a blush.
“Goodbye for now,” she said, turning to flee the workshop, suddenly overwhelmed, a hot blush of her own spreading over her cheeks.
His hesitant and confused farewell followed her.
She came back. How could she not? A human who felt out of place among humans, a centaur who felt out of place among centaurs, a human who was learning magic, a centaur who preferred to work with his hands. It was the most natural thing in two worlds that they should fall into each other’s orbit, a pair of people who had never quite fit the roles their worlds had prescribed for them.
It was the most natural thing in two worlds that she would fall in love with him, too.
It startled her at first, that love. Not that she felt herself incapable of loving, or incapable of loving him. It was just… something special, even in a world full of magic. Something she would carry for the rest of her life, in the secret heart of her, something that had changed who she was in some irrevocable way. Perhaps it was all the more beautiful for being hopeless, for being something she didn’t dare confess, even to the one she loved.
But she was growing older, and her father was starting to talk of marriages, and alliances, and introducing her to some extremely eligible young men, all talk that made her desperate. Her father was being kind, he said; she could make her own decision among the choices before her. But those choices were limited, and worse than that, none of them were what she wanted.
She wondered sometimes, when she stepped through the portal, what would happen if she slipped away from her guards and just… never returned. The fact that she knew enough magic now that they wouldn’t be able to stop her if they tried made it all the more tempting. Day after day, visit after visit, she hid the growing bubble of panic in her chest from everyone around her.
She couldn’t hold it in forever. Some day, she would snap.
“I can’t do it,” she said one day to her elktaur, as they were bent over his workbench, trying to get a magic mirror to work properly. “I just can’t.”
“Can’t what? Make this work?” he asked distractedly.
“Can’t get married,” she said.
He froze where he was, except for the worried flick of one ear. “Why, uh. Why not?”
She froze as well, her pulse pounding in her ears. “Because… because…” she began weakly.
He straightened up, turning his head to look at her. “Because?”
“Because I don’t love any of them,” she said, her voice catching in her throat. “Because I’m in love with someone else.”
He studied her face for one wide-eyed, breathless moment. And then he reached for her, slowly, cautiously, his fingers caressing the line of her jaw. His thumb rested a moment against her lower lip, and she felt as if the last of her breath escaped in the sigh of relief she released.
Like always, he understood.
Maybe this wasn’t so hopeless after all.
He was tender, her elktaur lover. Tender and careful and so, so perfect. And she would give anything, do anything to have him at her side forever.
But there was still the matter of her father. He had given her free choice… among human men. Among nobles and generals. An elktaur technician would not be his idea of a suitable spouse for his daughter. A centaur anyone would not meet even the most basic of her father’s requirements for the husband of his daughter.
If anyone would know what to do, it was the shamans. She went to Waterbaby first—as the youngest and the newest, Waterbaby was the most willing to accept change, and what she wanted to do was most definitely going to change things. One way or another, it would change things.
And Waterbaby had the power of transformation. If anyone could help them, she could.
“I’m sorry, child,” was all Waterbaby said to that request. “I can change myself, at least for a short time. But if that magic isn’t already in him…”
Her heart sank. “I see.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Waterbaby said, taking her hand. “I’ll send you to the twin tree shamans. They’ll be able to give you what you need.”
She tried to smile. “Promise?”
Waterbaby nodded. “I promise. It may not be what you want, but it will be what you need.”
“I don’t know if I can get away from my guards long enough to travel far. And he”—she glanced over her shoulder at her elktaur—“he’s the only one who knows how to repair most of the problems with the rift key when they occur. He can’t go far either.”
“It has to be a quick trip, huh?” Waterbaby’s expression turned mischievous. “Then I’ll take you both on my houseboat.”
She and her elktaur were breathless and giggling from the exertion and stress of avoiding her father’s guards by the time they scampered on to Waterbaby’s houseboat. And then they were breathless and giggling for another reason: the houseboat flew. Fast.
“I’ll wait here,” Waterbaby said, setting the houseboat down next to a village beside a grove of trees. “You just follow the rainbow road. It leads right to their clearing."
They clambered down the boarding plank on unsteady legs, her elktaur going first and turning to offer a steadying hand as she followed.
It was dark beneath the trees. And then, it opened up again, a bright, beautiful clearing in front of them, with two treetaurs presiding over the open space. On the ground between them was a small pink llamataur. “Like this?” she asked, clearly concentrating. After a moment, a pink bubble appeared in the air before popping as swiftly as it had come. “Aw.”
“Keep practicing, child,” the larger of the two treetaurs said. “We have shaman business now.”
The llamataur glanced over her shoulder, clearly catching sight of them. “Oh! Can I stay?” Before the treetaurs could respond, she was on her feet, scampering over to greet them. “My name’s Wammawink. I’m going to be a shaman some day.”
“Wammawink,” the smaller shaman cautioned.
“Sorry!” Wammawink called over her shoulder. She grinned up at the woman and her elktaur. “My parents say I’m incorrigible.”
She laughed, and so did the elktaur at her side. “Maybe we’ll have time to come visit you before we leave,” she said, bending over the child. “But this is a personal thing, all right? We’d like to talk to the shamans alone.”
“Everything the shamans deal with is personal,” Wammawink said, puffing up her chest. “I should stay. I need to practice.”
“Run along home for today, Wammawink,” the big shaman said. “And if you are very good, we will tell you about it later.” Before the little llamataur could protest, a bubble formed around her and a gust of wind sent her flying on her way back towards the village.
“Forgive her,” the smaller shaman said. “She is very… enthusiastic.”
“It’s all right,” she said, exchanging a look with her elktaur. Even if they could find a way for this to work, children of their bodies would likely not be in their future… but that wouldn’t mean that they couldn’t adopt, and just now she found herself thinking of a small, fluffy centaur child of their own.
“Before you speak, we must tell you that if you step onto the platform”—the larger shaman waved a slow branch at the spot between them that was marked out—“we will give you what you need. But you may find that it is not what you want.”
Waterbaby had said as much. But what she wanted and what she needed was the same—a way to not be trapped in a loveless marriage. A way to be with her elktaur for the rest of her life. “I understand.”
“You do not,” the smaller shaman said. “But tell us what you want, all the same.”
She reached her hand out for her elktaur and he took it, his fingers closing warm and steady around hers. “I want a way for us to be together. One that won’t mean I have to constantly be on the run from my father.”
“Hmmm…” the treetaurs said as one.
“A way to do that already exists,” the larger shaman said.
“What? How?”
“He knows,” the smaller shaman said.
She turned to look up at her elktaur in confusion. If a way existed, why had he not told her about it?
He gave her a look she couldn’t read, something hard and very distant from the warmth of his love, and pulled his hand back from hers. “It’s… it’s just a theory,” he said. “I’ve never tested it. On the day we first met, when the rift was malfunctioning… a woman brought some rutabagataurs through with her. Only when she came through, they had split.” He put his hands together and drew them apart. “Rutabaga,” he said, lifting one hand. “And human,” he said, lifting the other. “I think… if I worked out the resonances, the magical theory of it… the key could pull out the human part of me, too.” His ears went flat and miserable against his head. “I thought about doing it. About trying it on myself. I might have, if you hadn’t come looking for me.”
“A rutabaga’s a root vegetable,” she said, her mind blank, her heart racing. She worked out the logic of what came next one shaking word at a time. “But you’re not that simple. There might be a man there when you’re done, but what about all the rest?” She reached for him, and took his lifted hands in hers. “I love you as you are. All of you. I don’t want half a husband. I want you, whole and complete.”
Tears sprang to his eyes. “But it would make everything so much simpler.”
“Not at the cost of you.” She dropped his hands and reached for his face instead, rubbing her thumbs over lightly-furred cheekbones, burying her fingers in the thickness of his mane. “Come,” she said, standing on her tiptoes to kiss him and then stepping towards the platform, tugging him along after her. “I think I know what we both need.”
He came and stood side-by-side with her.
“Show us what we need to see,” she said.
Afterwards, they sat, arms wrapped tight around one another, pale and shaking. That might-have-been future had been so very bleak, so very distant, so very devoid of the love that was real and right and burning between them.
“Not that,” she said, her voice broken in her throat. “I thought I would do anything. But not that.”
“No,” he agreed.
“So marry me like this,” she said.
“What?” She looked up to find his eyes wide and startled and locked on her face.
“Marry me,” she said again. “Now. Here. In Centaurworld. I bet Waterbaby could perform the ceremony.”
“What about your father?”
“I’ll handle my father.” She laughed, pained and breathless. “If we come to him with it already done, I don’t think he’ll be able to do anything much about it. And if he tries anything… well, I don’t think he realizes just how much magic I’ve learned here. And he’s savvy enough to know that he doesn’t want to go to war with Centaurworld. His armies would be entirely outmatched.”
His ears flicked back anxiously. “I don’t think Centaurworld would go to war over me,” he said, his voice morose.
“Of course they would.” She smiled and stroked his cheek. “You’re a very important person. You’re about to get married to a princess and unify two worlds.”
A lopsided smile creased his face. “I almost believe you when you say that.”
“You’d better,” She sprang to her feet, suddenly full of energy. “Come on. We’ve got a wedding to get to.”
He got slowly to his own feet, laughing shakily all the while. “You’re crazy.”
“And?”
“And I must be crazy too, because I’m going to marry you.”
Centuries from that day, tales were still told of the princess and the elktaur, of the human who became a shaman and the centaur who became a king. Of the two whose union also united the peoples of Centaurworld and the human world.
Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. Real life never is.
But this much is true: they lived, and they loved.
And they were happy for all of their days.