The Jekyll Legacy by Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Three Time for a Change

Victorian alchemy meets modern science and magic.
What could possibly go wrong?

 

Who overcomes by force hath overcome but half his foe.

 — John Milton, Paradise Lost, (1667)

 

“He’s coming around, everybody. He’s coming around.”

Hastie wondered what his mother was doing in his bedroom so early in the morning. But wait a minute; the light through his closed eyes was too bright. It couldn’t be morning, maybe it was time to get up. Then he noticed the lump under his left shoulder.

Shifting position to get more comfortable, he wondered why he couldn’t hear the alarm clock, or had he forgotten to turn if on last night. He also wondered why the bed seemed so hard. Finally, Hastie had to wake up and opened his eyes to see his parents and a vision of loveliness looking down on him as he tried to sit up. The pain stopped him.

“Don’t try to move, Hastie, dear. The bunny rat sliced up your chest with its claws before you killed it.”

“Bunny rat?” Memories flooded to the fore. He remembered the formula, the problem with his father’s TSP device, the double moons, and… the bunny rats. “Oh.” It was more a groan than an acknowledgment, but the others smiled supportively.

“Is everyone else okay?”

“Yes, dear. Your father has a bad scratch on his arm, but Selene and I are fine.”

“What happened to the… unh, ‘bunny rats,’ and why call them that?” He tried to get up again and winced with the pain, but made it to a sitting position.

“Lie still, son, and we’ll explain.” Dr. Lanyon pushed an orange and violet colored object shaped like a small squash into his hand. “Drink! It tastes something like cherry cola, but not as sweet. It’s from the tree. I suspect the bunny rats were trying to get to them and we were in the way.

Hastie gagged it down, though it wasn’t all that unpleasant, but the muscles of his throat weren’t working right for some reason.

“Anyway, to answer your questions in reverse order, we’re calling them bunny rats because they have characteristics of both. There’s the long ears and fur like a rabbit and the tail and teeth of a rat. Of course, they are quite a bit bigger than either rats or rabbits.”

“About sixty-five pounds bigger, on average,” Selene interjected.

Dr. Lanyon glared as he would have at any of his students who were rash enough to interrupt one of his lectures, but when she just smiled and stood her ground, he shrugged and continued.

“As to what happened, we killed them. Selene got two, I got one, you got one and your mother got one.”

“One and a half,” Selene interrupted again. “The knife you used to kill yours was the one your mother threw and hit him, which weakened him enough that you were able to finish him off with the blade your mother had thoughtfully provided sticking out of his flank, right though his liver, as it turned out, so he would have died anyway. Plus one got away.”

“We are not sure of that, young lady.”

Selene just rolled her eyes and smiled knowingly at her friend’s father.

“Leave the girl alone, Herbert. She’s right.”

“What? Yes, dear, I mean, how do you know that?”

“I saw it, dear. It was right behind the one you killed. I threw a knife at that one too, but missed. Selene hurled a rock at it and hit it hard enough that it squealed and ran away.”

“So one of those monsters is still out there?” Hastie’s eyes darted everywhere at once as he tried to make sure there were no bunny rats nearby. His awareness of his need for self-preservation had been dramatically heightened by the fight he’d just been in.

“Relax, son. We’ll take turns standing guard, but I doubt it will come back. They seem to be pack animals and it has no pack to rely on any more.” Selene nodded her agreement and somehow that small gesture was more comforting to Hastie than his father’s assurances, but not enough that he was ready to take a chance on sleeping ever again.

“No way am I going to sleep. One of those monsters is still out there and I am not going to give it another chance at me.” Hastie tried to use the back of the tree to help him slide upward into a standing position, but immediately groaned in pain and slid back down.

“Herbert Lanyon the Seventh! I will not allow you to foolishly injure yourself because you do not trust your own father and mother. You will lie down and close your eyes this instant.” Mrs. Lanyon was like a force of nature when she was angry. Long experience had taught both Hastie and his father never to argue at such times.

“Yes, Mother.” Hastie bristled when he noticed Selene snicker, but his mother had laid down the law, so he slowly slid down into a more comfortable position and closed his eyes. He was asleep in seconds.

There must have been an earthquake. The whole world was shaking — and it hurt. Someone was calling him from a distance, “Hastie! Wake up, dear. Please wake up.”

“Wha?”

“Wake up, dear. Please wake up. Please.”

“Wazza matta?” The earthquake stopped and Hastie closed his eyes again, ready to go back to sleep.

“Herbert Lanyon, don’t you dare go back to sleep.”

“Yes, Mother.” His eyes were wide open again.

“Listen carefully, Hastie. We have a problem. The lacerations you got from that bunny rat have become infected. Both you and your father have become very ill. We’ve been discussing what to do and we’ve only come up with one answer. You — actually you and your father — must both take the Jekyll formula and change shape. Do you hear me? You’ve got to swallow the formula and then concentrate. Can you do that, dear?

“Sure, Mom. Right after I take a little nap….”

“Hastie! Don’t you dare go to sleep!”

“Just a nap, Mom. Not long. Just a few more minutes and I’ll get up for school.”

“He’s not paying attention. What are we going to do?”

“I’ll wake him up.” Selene gently pushed Mrs. Lanyon out of the way.

“Wake up, Hastie. Wake up, Hastie. Wake up, Hastie.” Each prompt was punctuated by a slap, each harder than the one before. On the fifth slap Hastie roused enough to slap away the hand and on the sixth he caught it just before it struck.

“Why are you hitting me? Would you like me to hit you like that?”

“It’s okay, dear,” Mrs. Lanyon quickly intervened. “You were sick and we couldn’t wake you up. We had to wake you up. We need you to do something. Can you hear me, dear?”

A nod, but one that threatened to continue on down toward his chest.

“You’re very sick, dear. You might die if you don’t do exactly what we say. You must take some of the formula and transform. It’s your only hope. Do you understand?” Selene grabbed him by the hair to keep him from nodding off again.

Another nod, but Hastie’s eyes were beginning to close again.

“Herbert Lanyon the Seventh! Don’t you dare go to sleep? Do you hear me?”

“Yesss, Mmmm,” he slurred. “Wonegoda sleep.”

Selene screamed into his ear, punctuating each emphatic order with another slap. “You must take the formula and you must transform, Hastie. You must become a centaur, just as your father advised, like the ones we saw down on the plain. Do you hear me, Hastie? A centaur! You must become a strong and powerful centaur!”

Selene placed a test-tube to the injured boy’s lips and tilted it up. When the liquid touched his lips he swallowed reflexively and then choked, nearly spitting it back out.

His mother said, “No, Hastie. Swallow. You must swallow, Hastie, dear.” She held her hand firmly over his mouth to keep the formula inside.

“Don’t worry about him swallowing.” I think he’s swallowed enough. “ Now we just need to keep him awake and focused long enough to start transforming.”

“That’s true, Selene. You keep him focused and I’ll take care of Dr. Lanyon.”

The two women separated and Selene turned back to Hastie. “Listen up, Hastie. I want you to think about centaurs. Do you hear me? Centaurs.”

“I hear you,” Hastie slurred. “Centaurs.” He further emphasized his understanding by nodded his agreement, but concurrently his eyes were glazing over.

“Hastie. Hastie!” Another slap.

“What? Whaddya want?”

“I want you to think of centaurs.

“Centaurs. Right.” His eyes unglazed for a moment and he looked up at Selene. “Say, did anyone ever tell you that you’re really, really pretty? What a babe….” With that he passed out. Even two hard slaps couldn’t rouse him.

“Mrs. Lanyon. We’ve got a problem here. Hastie’s unconscious and I can’t wake him.”

“Oh dear. Herbert, you’d better hold up on taking the formula. We may need both of our medical expertises with Hastie.” They all crowded around the injured boy.

“Do you think it will work, Herbert? Do you think the formula took?”

“I don’t know, dear. We’ll have to wait and see.”

“Look!” Selene pointed. “He’s changing. Maybe he’ll be okay.”

“I just hope we were correct in our assumption that changing would heal his wounds.”

“I’m very hopeful,” Selene responded. “When I changed, a rather painful thigh injury I’d received at football practice earlier that day just disappeared, no bruising, no pain at all, like it never happened. And that old acid scar on my hand from Hastie’s rocket explosion?” She held up the hand in question for inspection. “Gone like yesterday’s newspaper. It should work for him just as well, maybe better, since I think we forced more into him than I drank to begin with. The stuff tastes nasty, you know.”

“We’ll see. We’ll see.”

“Oh, shoot.” Selene was watching the transformation.

“Don’t say that word, Selene, dear. It’s not ladylike.” Then Mrs. Lanyon glanced back down at her son. “Oh shoot,” she said.

The shape that was forming from what had been Hastie Lanyon didn’t seem to be developing hind legs and hooves, much less a tail.

“I don’t like being a centaur. It feels strange.” Emily Lanyon fought to suppress a grin at how whiny her husband’s voice sounded, or was that ‘whinny’ now? She seemed to have a lovely alto voice as well, well-suited to a beautiful centaur mare, which is exactly what she’d become, and wasn’t at all happy about it.

“Well, the breasts are a bit much, dear. Do you really think I should look like that?”

“Of course not, Emily. I guess my depth perception isn’t as good as I thought.” Her words didn’t stop her from blushing.

“It’s alright, dear,” Mrs. Lanyon laughed. “I’m actually somewhat flattered, but we had better get something around those things before you hurt yourself.” Fighting back a giggle, she continued, “I can’t wait to see you cantering.” With that Mrs. Lanyon began rummaging through the junk pile. Finding the flowered peach curtains that had been hanging in the lab she doubled them up and began wrapping them around Dr. Lanyon’s new breasts. Crossing them in the back, she brought them over his shoulders and then tied them between the cups.

“This seems awfully tight, dear.”

“I made it tight on purpose, dear. If those things of yours are bouncing uncomfortably now, when you’re just standing here talking to me, imagine what it’s going to be like when you’re galloping along.”

Dr. Lanyon’s face turned bright red and she staggered a bit, which only served to prove her wife’s point, since her breasts swayed rather alarmingly, even in their improvised confinement. If she could have figured out how to sit down, she would have done so gladly.

“Hastie’s coming around,” Selene said unhurriedly.

The two of them turned to see Selene pointing to a double of herself; except the one on the ground had very light ash-blonde hair and was a little shorter. The double was lying on her back, groaning and brushing her long blonde hair back from her face as if she’d been doing it all her life, using her forefingers to reach around behind her head and spread it becomingly over her shoulders, despite her obvious fatigue.

“Hastie, dear, how are you feeling?”

“Fine, Mom. I’ll get up for school in a few moments.” The blonde rolled over.

“No, Hastie. It’s time to wake up right now.” Mrs. Lanyon was quite insistent and Hastie finally rolled over again and looked up at her mother. Behind her and to the left was Selene — and on her right side was her mother again, but this time she had the lower extremities of a horse.

“Wha?” She was abruptly fully awake and sitting up, staring at the centaur.

“Don’t talk, Hastie,” his mother prompted. “Your father will explain everything presently.”

Hastie just stared from Selene, to her mother the centaur, who claimed to be her father, sort of, to the human woman who said she was her mother, and back to her transformed twin in total confusion. She was even more confused when the female centaur began speaking in her mother’s voice.

“You and I were very sick, probably dying from the infections we got when the bunny rats scratched us with their claws… and yes, I’m still your father, as well as a centaur that looks a lot like your mother. Just like you, I took the formula and changed. We needed a form of fast transportation and we needed to be able to communicate and handle things. Being a centaur, like those we saw that first day, seemed the simplest solution, and obviously wouldn’t stand out as being very odd. Unfortunately, since we’d agreed that the two of us would both change to become centaurs, when the change started I got started wondering what your mother would look like as a centaur. It’s the old ‘don’t think of elephants’ problem. Thus….” she gestured to display her new body.

“Well, I think it’s flattering, what your father has done,” Mrs. Lanyon cooed. “Don’t you? He’s taken my own body as his template and made some minor modifications to idealize it.” Mrs. Lanyon was referring to the slightly larger breasts and the more youthful, thinner and more glamorous face she now had, and declined to mention the handicap that large breasts would present her husband in a world that didn’t appear to contain support lingerie in wide profusion.

“Umm.”

“It’s okay, son. I’m still getting used to it too.” Dr. Lanyon carefully pranced back and forth to demonstrate how facile she’d become in her new chestnut mare’s body. “Your mother will need to do the same, so we’ll have two fast transports for the rest of our little family.”

Hastie once again gazed back up at his parents in confusion, unsure what her father meant. Then she remembered that he’d taken the formula too and quickly examined his body with growing shock and alarm.

“That’s right, Sis,” Selene chuckled. “Welcome to the buxom barbarian babes fun and social club. You’ll be pleased to know that we’re virtual twins.” As Hastie tentatively poked at the offending lumps on her chest, Selene gently slapped her hand away and continued. “Don’t be gross, Sis. You’ve simply got to get your mind out of the gutter, and nice girls don’t play with themselves while people are watching them.”

Mortified, Hastie blushed and pulled her hands away from her chest as quickly as if her boobs had been on fire. Then she started scrabbling around on the ground beside her with her hands, trying to find her clothes without looking down, lest she be tempted to stare at her own breasts again.

“Ahem,” her father cleared her throat. “So, to summarize,” Dr. Lanyon pontificated, in hopes of bringing the conversation back to something more useful to their situation, “Jack has become a fiery-red-haired woman with fair skin and an astonishing number of freckles who is now calling herself Selene. I’ve become a centaur mare with an upper body that’s a duplicate of your mother’s, and you’ve become an ash blonde version of someone who appears otherwise to be Jack’s shorter twin sister, but seems to have avoided the freckles.” He paused, thinking, then added, “which is good, because we can still tell you two apart fairly easily.”

“We’ve always been close friends, Hastie,” the new Selene laughed with great enthusiasm, and more than a touch of malice. “Now we can share cute outfits — maybe even boyfriends too,” she added, obviously satisfied to have reminded Hastie that most of their predicament was her fault. “Double dating will be such fun, dear.”

Hastie was at a loss for words, although she opened and then immediately closed her mouth several times as she tried to get some sort of sound besides a strangled gurgle to pass her lips. She wasn’t sure if she’d been more disturbed by the sinister laugh that had emanated from the redhead standing before him or by her final implication.

“Relax, Hastie, I was just joking,” she said, but not very convincingly, since she followed that reassuring disclaimer with, “We might want to spend a little time alone with our dates, after all.” Then she snickered again.

“That’s quite enough, Selene,” Mrs. Lanyon interrupted. “Hastie is still adjusting to this and I suspect it’s a bit of a shock. Now if all you ladies will excuse me,” she turned her back just in time to avoid having any of the others see her trying not to laugh, “I’m going to go off and become a centaur also, so we can travel more easily. It looks like endless wilderness around here, so we’ll have to travel some to find any local civilization, and two centaurs with two humans can cover a lot more ground than one centaur with three, and we don’t know how long it will take us to find either help or materials your father can use to build another TSP so we can get back to Earth.”

With that Emily Lanyon headed off to the other side of the tree with a reminder for the others to be quiet and refrain from disturbing her, so she could concentrate on doing a proper transformation.

Selene took the time to check for potential hostiles and then helped Hastie up so she could clamber into her torn jeans and shredded tee-shirt, both bloody from the attack, but all she had for now. Flipping the sword into the air, she deftly caught it by the hilt, flipped it again and caught it by the blade so that the handle faced Hastie, then handed it to her.

The blonde woman took it without thinking and began practicing some routines. Selene joined her with the other sword in hand and they began sparring — only to find that they were quite good and surprisingly evenly matched. No one had really noticed that Hastie’s jeans and ragged tee shirt had gradually become a black version of Selene’s skimpy leathers almost as soon as she’d shrugged back into them, nor that they were no longer torn.

“About a half an hour later, Mrs. Lanyon returned, or at least everyone assumed the centaur who came from around the tree was Mrs. Lanyon. The problem was that the upper portion appeared to be an idealized version of Dr. Lanyon the man, but much more muscular and movie star masculine, while the lower portion looked very much like a large chestnut stallion that could have been from the same dam and sire as Dr. Lanyon the centauress, except the stallion had blue eyes instead of green.

“I’m sorry, dear,” he apologized to his husband. “I just don’t understand. I’m quite sure I was thinking of becoming another centaur mare, just like you.”

“That’s all right, dear,” Dr. Lanyon said. “I was actually puzzling over these surprising gender changes myself. I’d originally thought that I’d been very careful to visualize myself as a male centaur, but when I came out as a mare I assumed I had slipped and thought of you at some crucial point, which is true, but I no longer think that it had any effect. With you telling me how careful you’d been, and considering the gender changes the boys went through, mostly unawares, I’m beginning to postulate that there may be more to the formula than great grandfather knew  — or at least admitted.” She grimaced.

The others waited for her to continue, fairly patiently, although Selene was already starting to look grim. She did that a lot, though.

“As I think back on it now, I don’t remember grandfather, who was usually fastidious about details, being very specific about his time as a horse. I think everyone in the family assumed that he felt awkward talking about his thoughts and feelings as an equine, or had difficulty describing emotions and thought so foreign to his, but perhaps his uncharacteristic reticence was due to a radical gender change. That would have been a tremendous shock to his Victorian sensibilities, probably even more than his becoming part animal, or at perhaps human being in animal form.”

“That would be nice, dear, and I hope your theory is confirmed. I would really prefer to think that I’m capable of holding one thought for a reasonable period of time.”

“But that’s not the crux of my new theory, dear, just the explanation of why the exact nature of the change was concealed or suppressed,” she objected. “The original formula was designed to bring out opposite characteristics in the subject, presumably through the promotion or suppression of certain genetic sequences. In Jekyll’s case, the pairs selected were his phenotype along several axes of muscularity, bone structure, and refinement of features, but also his alignment along the axis of good and evil, although what that says about the heritability of moral nature I’d hesitate to guess, and whether there had to be a tradeoff along both physical and psychic lines I don’t know, but that seems to be what happened. In any case, the rather slight and handsome Jekyll was transformed into the ugly hulking brute of Hyde, and Jekyll’s rather timid nature — which had prevented him from embarking on the life of crime he desired, was replaced with reckless greed, unbridled lust, and implacable determination to have his way in all things.”

“But your ancestor claimed to have solved the problem, didn’t he? That’s what fooled poor Hastie here,” Mrs. Lanyon observed calmly.

Dr. Kenyon glared in her son’s direction, obviously still irritated by his precipitous and irresponsible use of the formula, but she was playing some sort of lethal juggling game with her twin that involved eight knives flashing through the narrow space between them faster than his eyes could follow, so his tacit disapproval passed her by. ‘Where are they getting all those knives,’ she thought idly, before she cleared her throat, a habit of her former life when speaking in public, but it had less of peremptory call to attention than diffidence and uncertainty to it, because it was now quite light and feminine, less intrusive than charmingly delightful. “Well, he wrote that he had, but never explained it, and I think that he never solved the binary nature of the serum at all, just shifted the effects to target different genetic sequences, or perhaps ‘states of being’ might be more correct. So he was able to vary the effect of the solution upon one axis of being, the overall genetic heritage a person embodies, but was tripped up by the necessary involvement of some sort of psychic change along another axis, so settled upon the binary — but morally neutral — nature of gender as a substitute for change along more problematic axes such as good and evil, or compassion and cruelty. It would thus appear that the changes in form are inevitably accompanied by a switch in gender. Our ancestors, of course, being proper Victorians, either never realized that the experimental record had been subtly distorted by judicious editing or deliberately suppressed this part of his journals, and simply issued a ban on using the formula as being ‘dangerous’ without specifying exactly what the dangers might be.”

Her wife gazed at her with renewed respect and love. His husband had always been an excellent theoretician and researcher, and so he didn’t doubt that she’d ‘hit the nail on the head.’ “Excellent reasoning, dear, and at least a good working hypothesis, if difficult to prove without further experiments that we’re currently unable to conduct.”

“I’d thought about that as well, actually, and had imagined using tiny amounts of just one vial, divided into many parts, to experiment on small animals, but wouldn’t want to risk it as long as we’re stuck here, because each vial represents a ‘miracle cure’ in extremis, as long as a fortnight has elapsed between medical emergencies, so I didn’t feel that we could risk even one vial until we’re all safely home.”

“I agree, dear. We don’t know yet how long….”

“Ahem,” the two barbarian women spoke in near unison, interrupting their discussion. “If you two are done theorizing, we think we should point out that there’s a cloud of dust approaching with fair speed, and that probably means company.”

“Oh great!” Dr. Lanyon was less than happy about this intrusion into her introspection regarding the situation. “Now what do we do?”

Both of the tall women spoke in unison again, like a Greek chorus of two, “I recommend we grab our backpacks, gather a bunch of these fruits and ‘hightail it for the other end of the canyon, pardner.’ ” If the previous instance of choral commentary had been strange, this instance, with exactly the same phony western drawl, was downright eerie, since it seemed to have been spontaneous, judging from the dumbfounded looks on their faces as they stared at one another.

“Girls, don’t do that. It’s spooky; almost like you’re actually one person in two bodies.” Mrs. Lanyon grabbed the other curtain and piled a dozen of the melon-like fruits into it. Tying it into a bundle and knotting it, he threw it over his shoulder and yelled for the girls to jump on. Two flying leaps and they were racing off towards the far wall of the canyon, the two women using the backpacks as bareback grips to hang onto, although they seemed as comfortable on horseback as they were with their knives and swords.

Dr. Lanyon was right at her wife’s heels, using her hands and arms in front of her ‘assets’ to supplement her improvised bra. ‘Damn!’ she thought. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a New Balance sportswear shop right now! Or even Victoria’s Secret!’

Selene took a brief glance backward. “They didn’t stop at the tree,” she yelled. The others just grunted and the two centaurs broke into a full gallop.

“Try to the left,” Hastie shouted. “I think I see a small arroyo. Hopefully, it’s a way out. If not, it’s a place we might be able to defend if we have to make a stand.”

The cloud of dust was growing closer. Neither Dr. Lanyon nor his wife were fully acclimated to their new bodies and had to concentrate for fear of stumbling. The extra weight of the two barbarian women was also disconcerting as they bounced about on the backs of the elder Lanyons as they galloped.

“I see about a dozen riders,” Selene called out. “They’re all armed with swords.”

“There’s the arroyo,” Hastie pointed. “Only about two hundred yards; I think we can make it.”

The two centaurs were breathing hard as Hastie shouted a plan of war above the rapid hoof beats. “Once we clear those rocks, Selene and I will drop off and prepare an ambush. You two gallop ahead a bit so the dust cloud continues into the pass and then circle back. Grab some rocks. You can throw them from a distance.”

“Get ready. We’ll drop the bags when we jump off.

“Now.” The two women jumped and scrambled behind several large boulders on each side of the small rock cut. The centaurs galloped on and they waited, but instead of continuing to close, the riders stopped just beyond arrow range.

They milled about until one rode forward a couple of yards. “Give yourselves up. You have nowhere to go.”

“We have ample food and water,” Selene called back arrogantly. “We’re simply waiting for the others in our group before attacking you.” Selene ignored the confused look that Hastie gave her. “They will arrive shortly.”

“Then they’ll become our captives as well.”

“They are more than your rabble. They will take you captive, if they do not slay you out of hand.”

“Before you make any additional idle threats,” the troop leader called back, “look behind you. It will be a long walk out of this wilderness without horses.”

“Look to your own rear,” Selene called back, brushing off Hastie’s frantic tugs at her arm. “Our friends will be here shortly.”

The tugging became even more insistent and Selene hissed at Hastie to stop.

“Shut up and look behind us,” Hastie hissed back. Cautiously Selene glanced behind and then sighed as she lowered her sword and let it slide to the ground. Several paces behind the two women the narrow entrance widened rapidly. In the opening were the centaurs. Riders were mounted on their backs holding sharp looking swords pointed at their necks. About a dozen additional horsemen surrounded the centaurs and stood, swords drawn, watching the two barbarian women intently.

As their swords fell and their hands rose into the air, one of the riders called to the others and they rode up to join the group by the rocks, surrounding them with several dozen riders, all with weapons drawn and huge smiles on their scarred faces.

The fallen swords quickly disappeared and thin strips of leather bound Selene’s and Hastie’s hands behind their backs. Additional strips of leather, tied in a noose, were draped around their necks with the other ends attached to saddle horns. Two horsemen examined the centaurs and babbled excitedly when they could not find reins. Leather was quickly placed around their necks too.

Without a word to the prisoners, they started off, only to stop briefly to stare at an explosion of bright light and a tornado of noise surrounding the now distant tree. Five minutes later, the noise and light disappeared as quickly as it had begun, but the tree was missing and no one seemed inclined to investigate its disappearance. The entire group began the trek down the now wide canyon with a distinctly more somber mien.

Selene and Hastie had to trot to keep up with the horde. Given the number of rocks and boulders strewn about the floor of the canyon their eyes were, of necessity, forced down to avoid tripping. Thus, they nearly bumped into the rears of the horses of their captors when they stopped short after rounding a corner.

Brushing hair from their faces with their hands still bound, the two women peered around the horses to see, carved into the side of the canyon, a huge set of doors. The doors were surrounded by a pair of engravings of centaurs, one male and one female. Light reflecting off the brightly burnished bronze covering their eyes, teeth and fingernails; beamed down on the crowd below them.

Even the horses seemed ill at ease and several had to be reined in while their riders murmured anxiously, but the only clear word was “Zampulus.”

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved