Centaur Rising Read Online Free

feet and still wet from its birthing.
    A foal.
    Or something. It was hard to say if I was dreaming or the light was bad. It was … nothing I’d ever seen before.
    A cold shudder ran through me. Maybe fear, maybe disgust. It sure wasn’t wonder or awe.
    â€œIsn’t that the coolest thing you’ve ever seen?” Robbie asked. “Not gross at all.”
    â€œGosh,” I said again, because the foal was only a pony from its hooves to the top of its body. Where it should have had horse shoulders, where the pony neck and head should have been, it looked just like a baby boy, with arms and hands, curly reddish hair, blue eyes, and a big toothless grin.
    â€œGosh!” I said a third time. For someone who desperately wanted magic in her life, that was a pretty small response. But as Martha often said, wanting and getting can be difficult neighbors. And from all the fantasy books I’d read, I knew that the line between gargoyle and angel could be pretty thin.
    The pony boy was too new and too strange for me to really take in. I wasn’t thinking magic, I was thinking mistake .
    Dr. Herks finally looked over at Martha. His eyes widened.
    â€œCentaur,” said Martha, “I never…”
    â€œNo one never,” said Dr. Herks, which was totally ungrammatical but made perfect sense. And then he fainted, which didn’t make any sense at all. Crumpling down from such a height, it was amazing that he didn’t smash his head on the wall.
    Now, that was something I really didn’t understand. I mean, Dr. Herks wasn’t just a vet, but a Vet—a marine who’d fought in Vietnam and been decorated for bravery. And wounded, too, Mom had said. Wounded, but not badly. Just badly enough.
    â€œGet your mother,” ordered Martha. “I’ve got my hands too full with this pony boy here, Agora there, and Robbie by the wall, to be able to manage a fainting vet.” She seemed unimpressed—or at least undisturbed—by the magic or whatever it was in front of her, just as if creatures out of myth had always been born in our barn.
    â€œYou don’t have to manage me, Mrs. Grump,” said Robbie.
    â€œI do when you need managing, Munchkin!”
    I was happy to be out of there, but Mom must have seen Dr. Herks’ Jeep in the driveway, because she was already standing in the doorway of the stall, and I nearly ran right into her.
    â€œGood grief,” she said, then added, “Gerry?” in a strange voice, and went to kneel by his side, which may have been the strangest thing of all.

 
    3
    Pony Boy
    S O THERE WE WERE , Agora on her side, Dr. Herks on his side, and Mom with her arms around him. Martha was holding the newborn whatever. Robbie looked astonishingly pleased, but me, I was just agog.
    Agog was Martha’s word, not mine. She had just said to me, “Hey, Ari-bari, stop opening your mouth like a frog, all agog, and do something.”
    â€œBoil water?”
    She made an annoyed tsk ing sound, as if she’d never heard of any such thing.
    I knew better than to ask her what I should do then, just as Agora got to her feet. She went right to her foal, pushing Martha aside, and started nuzzling him clean, making no distinction between the horse part and the boy part. He was simply hers all over.
    All at once, I knew she was right . Maybe , I thought, I should forget fear and concentrate on awe. At least I hadn’t passed out.
    It was a start.
    Meanwhile, Agora was simply doing what a mare does with a new foal. When she got to his face, he giggled and pushed her away, then giggled again before struggling out between her front legs. He was wobbly—who wouldn’t be with those four legs each trying to go in a different direction?—and waved his little hands about for balance. Wrinkling his nose at all the new smells, he took a couple of tentative baby steps, and then headed straight for Robbie, who was the only one his