Centaur and sensibility, p.6
Centaur and Sensibility,
p.6
“Is that the road?”
Mr. Beechum’s head snapped around. “What? It cannot be.”
Mary picked up her bag and hopped down from the boulder. She took a few steps forward and… there it was. The clearly defined edge of the road — or at least a road — visible through the trunks of the trees and the receding underbrush. Her steps turned into a run, as though she feared the sight of it could outpace her if she let it. Mr. Beechum soon overtook her, easily clearing the last barrier of weeds and raspberry bushes with his long legs, while the foliage tugged at her skirts before she stepped onto the side of the road.
And there it was. The view that was so familiar to her, the sharp line of a roof further along, sporting a chimney with a few swirls of smoke still rising from it.
“Mrs. Mclean’s farm,” she whispered. Not more than a mile from Millcross, on the other side of the village from where her own family lived. “How?” They had walked so many miles the day before, and at least another mile or so this morning before she had sighted the road. Surely they could not have been so close the entire time, near enough to shout and be heard, to have started a fire and had their smoke discovered by passersby. She set her hands on her hips and turned in a slow circle around herself, one that took in the comforts of everything she had grown up with, along with the view of Mr. Beechum standing a few yards away, contemplating a small bundle of items piled a few steps from the forest’s border.
“What is that?” She walked up beside him. On the ground there was a leather satchel, along with a coat and hat that had been left beside it.
Mr. Beechum didn’t answer at first. But he looked down at the collection of things, his eyes narrowed in distrust.
“Mr. Beechum?” she prompted. “Peregrine?” she tried instead.
“They’re mine,” he said. He looked at her, incredulity creasing his features. “I left them by the road yesterday morning, thinking I would only step into the woods for a moment. But I wasn’t here. I was several miles away. At least I thought I was.”
She picked up the hat. It felt real enough. And she realized as she turned it in her hands that it smelled like him, no matter that it had been sitting out in the open for an entire day and a night. She handed it to him, and he took it, looked at it askance, and plunked it onto his head. “We could not have gone in a circle. I watched the sky, the setting of the sun, I knew…”
“Your coat,” she said, passing that to him as well.
He shrugged into it, and suddenly a little of the wildness of the woods left him. She had thought the sight of it would make her sad, but this other version of him, all properly attired, caught her attention as well as every other iteration of him she had so far encountered.
“Well, we’ve found our way out, it seems.” She picked up her own bag again as he took up his satchel and slung it over his shoulder. “I’d rather not question it, in case an errant bit of ivy decides it’s not done with us.” She stepped up to the road, placing one foot on the bare dirt, as though testing it to see if it would hold her weight.
“Have you decided which way you will go?”
Mary looked left, towards Millcross and her family home, and then right, the road that would take her to Leeds and wherever she wished to travel beyond that. Her fingers tightened around the handle of her bag, while she sorted through all of the aches and pains she had accumulated during her time in the woods, along with the hunger growling its way through her abdomen.
She retreated a step, then turned around and went back to Mr. Beechum’s side. “I’ve decided to go this way,” she said, and slipped her hand into his.
His fingers immediately tightened around hers, even as he asked, “Are you certain?”
She raised one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “You spent an entire day and night with me and never once threatened to pitch me into a bog.”
He laughed, and he raised her hand to his mouth — nearly dragging her off her feet in the process — to drop a kiss on the back of her hand. “Is that all it takes to win your favor?”
“Oh, no.” Mary shook her head, though she could not hide her smile, no matter how hard she tried to assume a serious demeanor. “You have a nice chin, as well.”
Mr. Beechum raised one eyebrow. “A nice chin?”
“Of course.” She took his hand, the one she still held, and pressed it to her cheek. His skin smelled like the woods, like greenery and moss and the faint aroma of blueberries. And something that was uniquely him. It was a smell she wanted to bottle up and enjoy every day for the rest of her life. “And I could never be with someone who doesn’t possess a jawline of at least adequate proportions.”
“Miss Clegg,” he said, drawing her attention back to his face.
“Mary,” she corrected him. “And you’re Peregrine now, correct?”
“I suppose I will have to be. At least it’s not as bad as Mrs. Fluffyfoot.”
“Why, you…”
And so it went, as they continued along the edge of the road, wherever it would take them.
Quenby Olson, Centaur and Sensibility
