The best known daughter of Demeter is Persephone, who was stolen to the Underworld to become the bride of Hades, and who brought to the world both Spring and Winter by her eating of a few pomegranate seeds. But Demeter had many other daughters. This is the story of one, Despoena, who loved the centaur Cheiron.

Feeling very satisfied with herself, the goddess Demeter trotted along the beach in the form of a mare, enjoying the cool wind whipping through her dark mane and tail and the salt spray dampening her legs. Just beyond the surf, she could sense Poseidon raging. If she could have formed the expression with her equine mouth, Demeter would be smiling. The smitten god had pursued her for months now, and each time he approached, Demeter would shift shape and escape him. Once again, Poseidon's lewd suggestions and groping were thwarted by her assumed form.

A vast shape writhed and coiled upon itself, barely visible below the tumultuous waves. A waterspout rose from the ocean's surface. Sensing trouble, Demeter back away, her ears flattened.


"You forget, dear goddess, that I created the horse from the salt froth of my own waves. As a horse, you are subject to my sovereignty."


Trembling, Demeter took an involuntary step towards the sea. Inwardly, she cursed herself. She was a perfectly ordinary mortal mare - well, a stunning mare, perhaps, but mortal nonetheless. She couldn't even shift out of her counterfeit shape until Poseidon released his control of her.


Frigid wavelets sucked greedily at her hooves as Demeter was seduced into the surf. The waterspout swirled impossibly closer, and the sand shifted, throwing the goddess in mare's form to her side. She squealed with indignation as the waves crashed over her again and again, the current sucking her into deeper water. Water foamed in her nostrils and the surf pounded her body unmercifully. After what seemed like hours, she felt herself freed, and swam with desperate strokes back to shore. She galloped across the sands, up the beach towards the trees, where she stood glaring through her bedraggled mane at the calm surface of the sea.


There was no question as to whether their union bore fruit. Both were gods, the embodiments of raw creation. His seed was potent enough to get a stone with child. His ardor spent, Poseidon found himself in a generous mood. The sea god sent a gusting wind inland, lifting Demeter's soaked, trembling body and depositing her by a small farm in Thessaly. He sent a dream to the elderly farmer to seek out a certain grove by moonlight, and there he would find a mare in need of special care. For Demeter must remain a mare until the child is born.

When the foal was birthed, nine months later, the farmer could hardly believe his eyes. What emerged from the black mare's womb was a creature that was formed like a small child to the waist, and from the waist down was a foal. As soon as the umbilicus was cut, Demeter flung herself upwards and changed back into her proper form. An almost palpable roar knocked the man off his feet and a blue-white flash dimmed the sun above. Where the black mare had labored was only an scorched bit of straw, and the centaur child, whimpering but unhurt.


The farmer knew he should be afraid of what was obviously a monster, but the newborn did not look threatening or evil, just helpless. He gathered her up in his arms. Her long legs dangled, and she wrapped her small, chubby arms around his neck.


The farmer carried the baby into the house and fed her bread dipped in milk and honey. By the time she finished her sloppy meal and slept curled up in front of the fire, his heart had been won over. The farmer's own children moved away years before, and since his wife died his days were long and lonely. He named the little one Despoena, and raised her like his own daughter.


Sooner than a human baby, she began to walk and speak, and he found her as bright and cheerful as any child. The first time she followed him to market, the villagers were rather alarmed, but the old man explained she was a gift sent from Poseidon, god of horses as well as the sea, to comfort him in his old age. Despoena soon became a favorite with the other children, and grew up with them side by side. She knew she was different from them, but didn't consider herself the lesser, and certainly never thought of herself as an animal. To the villagers she became just another little girl, and no one besides the boys her own age ever teased her - and these she easily beat up.


As the years passed, Despoena grew into a beautiful young centaur, lithe and muscular, lovely in the parts comparable to both humans and horses. Her chestnut coat gleamed like molten copper, and her red-gold hair flowed like flame when she galloped. Days spent in the sun only sprinkled light freckles across her milk-white skin, and her green eyes snapped with intelligence.


Yet she found herself strangely lonesome, and tormented by odd longings and periods of inexplicable sadness. As the girls she grew up with married and bore children, Despoena remained alone. She knew it was because she was half-horse, and for the first time her own body displeased her. She tried to spark a relationship with various young men of the village, but although they were clearly interested, and many consented to play with her a bit, she was in the end too dissimilar, and none would touch her below her human waist in the way that she desired. These encounters left her more morbid and frustrated than before. But even in the depths of her despair, she knew she was not an animal, and would never consort with ordinary stallions.

Her father grieved as he saw the bright daughter he loved so much seemed destined to live her life without the solace of a family. He and the other folk of the village were simple people, uneducated in the classics, and had never heard of the race of centaurs. As far as they knew, Despoena was the only one of her kind to walk the earth. The old farmer prayed to Poseidon and Aphrodite, and perhaps they heard him.

In the summer of her seventeenth year, Despoena met a strange apparition while tending her father's grapevines. A little creature parted the foliage and stared at her, wide eyed. It was the size and general shape of a fat marmalade cat, but it had the tail of a snake, and an eagle's grasping talons instead of forepaws, and small wings sprung from its back. Oddest of all, the face it turned to her was that of a sweet human child. Despoena watched in delight as it settled down to groom itself like any cat. She was careful not to make any sudden moves for fear of scaring the creature off.

The winged cat-creature peered up at her sideways, and in between strokes of its tongue, asked her in a bell-like voice, "You a centaur?"

"My name is Despoena," she said. "What is a centaur?" She had never heard the term. The villagers always referred to her as the filly-girl.

"You centaur, sure," the creature decided. It worried at a matt of fur under its wing, and she waited impatiently for it to speak again. "Bring message to all centaurs."

For the first time, Despoena noticed the little animal wore a golden collar. It reached under it with its sharp foreclaws and drew out a slip of paper. Despoena took it gingerly when the cat-creature offered. She read, slowly and with care. The creature watched her face eagerly. "

"An invitation to the wedding of Peirithous and Deidameia? But why? I have never heard of them."

The creature nodded, and fluttered into the air. "All centaurs come. Big party. You come, as I fly, seven day's walk. Bye now!"

And with that the strange messenger fluttered away, quickly vanishing into the distance. Despoena diligently noted the direction of its flight, tucked the note into her satchel, and raced back to the house to tell her father.

He could shed no light on the strange invitation, except that Peirithous was a Lapithai and the son of Ixion, a famous warrior of his generation, and some said the elder Lapith was a favorite of Zeus himself. This left Despoena even more baffled, but she still resolved to go. The old man cautioned her that sometimes rich, powerful men liked to collect and exhibit oddities of nature, though it pained him to refer to his treasured child that way. She might be walking into a trap.

But Despoena was adamant. "The little creature called me a 'centaur', father. If there are others, I am one of a race. Perhaps I will find a 'centaur' man."

She blushed, but the old man smiled with understanding. As much as it tore at his heart, he knew he wouldn't be around to protect her forever, and he would never condemn her to a solitary life.

"I give you my blessing, daughter. Take with you my old dagger to protect yourself, and come back home as soon as you can." He took her into his arms and stroked her coppery hair as she thanked him in between sobs. "And I expect you to bring me back a passel of four-legged grandchildren, understand?"

She set out the very next morning, with only the most basic of equipment so that she could travel swiftly. The old farmer watched until her bright form passed out of sight, and for quite a while after.

Though Despoena was far swifter han any human, she never had occasion to travel further than her own village. Used to cultivated fields and well-maintained roads, she was at first troubled by the rocky path that meandered through steep mountains thickly cloaked in ancient pines. The first night, the howls of wolves who dared not hunt to close to the village kept her awake half the night. When she woke to the mists of morning, her legs were stiff and sore from the unaccustomed climb. But after a quick stretch and a breakfast of wild fruit and bread from her pack, she felt refreshed enough to continue onwards.

On the sixth day of her journey, she saw the first signs of other centaurs. She paused at a fast-flowing stream to refresh her goatskin and noted the marks of many unshod hooves in the muddy bank. With growing excitement, she saw the front hooves were imprinted much more deeply than the hind, the same difference she had seen between her own prints and those of the village donkeys. They seemed to mill about, then converged on a path leading deeper into the woods, off to the north of her destination.

She decided to join up with the other centaurs before attempting to find the wedding. As she trailed them, she wondered for the first time what she would say and do when she saw her first centaur. Would they welcome her as a lost sister, or reject her? Would they make her pass some sort of test before she would be allowed to travel with them? Would her human ways seem strange or repulsive to them? What if all the males were already spoken for?


She fretted so much she almost tripped over the centaur male reclining in the ferns.

He swarmed upright, rearing. She looked up, startled. Never in her life had she seen herself reflected whole, and at first could not in her mind reconcile the man with the horse. He was huge, wide and solid, muscled like a blacksmith. His ruddy human skin was only a few shades lighter than his bay coat, and after her surprise wore off, she noticed he was shaggy as a mountain pony in the winter, his dark mane and tail were tangled with leaves and vines, and his wide hooves were chipped. He wore only a crude leather strap from which hung a variety of stained and rusty weapons.

For his part, the centaur man reacted as if he'd seen a ghost. He dropped back to all fours, looking around wildly as if suspecting some kind of trick was involved. He put a hollow animal horn to his lips and blew a short, unmelodious blast, then raised his wooden cudgel and stared at her, his eyes showing white.

Feeling as if she was in some sort of bizarre dream, Despoena tried to smile at him and look as harmless as possible. She was struck by the sudden fear that perhaps the other centaurs were no more than beasts, more horse than human. But why, then, would the Lapith man invite them to a wedding?

The underbrush rustled, and she found herself surrounded by centaur forms. Her eyes could not take them all in. They seemed to come in every color a horse could, from ivory to pitch, and all the browns, reds, golds and grays in between. Some were even splashed and spotted, or had stripes on their legs. They varied as much as the men in the village had, some tall, some short - though the shortest was still taller than a draft horse - some thinner, some more muscular, but all had a sort of dirty savageness to them, and a similarity in their high-set eyes and long noses that made them look related.

A towering centaur with thick muscles and an off-white coat splattered with small, dark red spots shoved his way to the forefront. He knelt before her, and she saw an unhealed wound crusted with dried pus on his haunch. It looked like a bite.

"My lady," he said in an oddly accented voice. "A vision, surely a gift from Our Father."

"Our Father be praised!" the others shouted in a ragged chorus. Somehow she doubted they were referring to Zeus.

The spotted centaur took her hand in his, and stared with unsettling intensity into her eyes. His own were as yellow and slanted as a wolf's. "I am Nessus, son of Ixion, the leader of the centaurs."

"I am called Despoena. I have been summoned to the wedding of the Lapithai, and I followed your tracks here. If I displease you, I shall be on my way." She almost hoped she would be sent away. Her first good look at the centaur race was not encouraging. Still, she reasoned, these must be the guards of their village, and would by nature be rough and threatening.

Nessus's eyes widened. "Summoned? But you are not of Ixion's tribe. How odd. Where do you come from?"

"A village, many days walk from here. I was raised by a good human man, but I do not know my true parents. My father was charged by Poseidon to care for a horse which gave birth to me and then disappeared in a blast of sound and light."

"One of the god's byblows, perhaps?" Nessus scratched his bearded chin, still holding on to her with his other hand. "Never mind. You are a special creature, and we welcome you into our family."

Nessus drew her forward, and the other centaurs gave way, eyeing her the way a dog eyes an unattended lamp chop. She was uneasy, but could see no opportunity to break away.

The centaur's settlement was not the village she had pictured in fond daydreams, houses with wide doors and no stairs, neat rows of gardens and plenty of shade trees. It looked like a barbarian encampment, skin tents huddled around a central fire. Nessus graciously excused the camp, saying that they too were in route to the wedding and had not thought better accommodations would be needed.

"Who is this Lapithai, Peirithous? Is he a centaur?"

Nessus laughed. "No, he is an ordinary human."

"You say you and your brothers are the sons of Ixion, but my father claimed Peirithous is Ixion's son, too."

"He is Ixion's son by a human woman. We are Our Father's special children. Zeus gifted him that he might breed us, the centaurs."

She wondered how their birth could have come about, but was unable to conceive of any way that did not disturb her, and so decided to drop the subject.

Nessus seemed to have marked her as his special charge, although that didn't prevent the other centaurs from staring, drooling, and trying to brush against her or lay their thick-fingered hands on her flanks. When Nessus saw this, he would snarl like a wild beast and strike at his brothers with his cudgel, but they only waited until his attention was elsewhere and tried again.

Nessus escorted her to the campfire and bade her to eat. She skipped over the foreign-looking stew and poorly cooked hare, but consented to nibble on the coarse bread. It was not until halfway through her meal that she realized all the centaurs staring at her were males.

Unnerved, she asked, "Where are your women and children, Nessus? I would like to speak with a female of my own race, for I have never seen another centaur before this day."

"Perhaps you can excuse my companions their, ah, attentions. You are the first female of our race we have seen." The spotted male blew out his lips, exactly like a horse. "My dear, there are no female centaurs. The blood of Ixion and his sons is so strong it produces only sons. That is why you are such a precious, precious prize."

Despoena bit back her retort. She decided that if these barbarians were centaurs, she wanted no part of her own kind. And now that she knew the reason for their interest in her, she was certain that to stay would end in tragedy.


When she finished her scant meal, he led her to a tent made of a whole untanned cowhide hung over a tree branch and lay across the entrance, ostensibly to protect her. Despoena felt she would be safer off without his protection. Nessus's coat reminded her of spoiled cream flecked with dried blood, and he smelled strongly of unwashed flesh. Even more than the others, there was an almost tangible danger about him, an unseen but threatening force building like ozone before a lightning strike.

They conversed, but she was too distracted to do more than murmur hollow admiration at his boasting tales of his own prowess in hunting. Soon he sagged forward, snoring. Despoena remained awake until just before dawn, and then slept only fitfully.

*********************

Late the next morning, after the last groggy centaur awoke, they trooped to the Lapithai wedding. As Despoena suspected, they set out rather too late, and by the time they arrived, the actual ceremony had already taken place. The guests were gathered in a great garden, decorated with strewn flowers, cloth-of-gold streamers, tame doves and more of the little winged cat-creatures with silk ribbons round their necks. The gorgeously dressed human guests were listening to a speech made by a man who, had his human legs been replaced by a spotted horse's body and his brown hair changed for blood red, would have been the image of Nessus, or any of his brother centaurs. Peirithous did not react to the centaur's arrival, but the slender young girl by his side did, her face falling in dismay. From her finery, Despoena guessed she was the bride. The scarred, grinning man as old as her father who reclined on a litter was surely Ixion himself.

She waited, expecting Nessus to introduce her to his human relatives, but he and the others only cheered their half-brother, then made haste toward to the feast. The humans quickly gave them room.

In moments, each centaur seemed be milling about with an armful of various roast meats or barrel of wine under each arm. There was plenty of each, for Peirithous must have warned the slaves to prepare for centaur-sized appetites. Eager to stuff themselves with the fine fare, the centaurs ate like starving wild beasts, tearing off great mouthfuls and literally choking their food down unchewed as they gnawed off their next bite. They drank holding the barrels with both hands, heedless of the wine pouring down their chests. When one felt full, he would let out a resounding belch that echoed up from his cavernous stomach like a shout from Hades, then reach for more. The humans, nibbling on the fruits and cheeses the centaurs ignored, looked at Despoena with dour anticipation, as if waiting to see when she would join in. She wished she could disappear.

Suddenly a shout went up. Despoena recognized Peirithous's voice, speaking in the same accent as Nessus. "My bride!" he bellowed. "Where is my bride!"

At this the centaurs reared and squealed with laughter. Nessus winked at her and elbowed the centaur nearest to him, who made a vulgar gesture. Scandalized, Despoena was certain they had done something with the woman, and that the humans would make them pay in blood. As the humans ran about in confusion, she trotted hastily to the edge of the clearing. She burned with shame. Although was knew she was not related to these barnyard brutes, she was undeniably a centaur, with all that implied. She swore she would return to her village and live out her days among the humans who accepted her because they did not know of her heritage.

She surveyed the scene one last time, to ensure the reason for her choice was engraved on her memory in case she ever entertained the notion of seeking out centaurs again. She was just in time to spy a new centaur gallop into the garden, one she had not seen before.

He was tiny, a terrier to the other centaur's mastiffs, but in no way scrawny. His coat was silver with snowy dapples, and though he looked young and vigorous, his long hair was platinum white. He was the first centaur she had seen wearing anything like clothing. A scarlet cape draped his shoulders, copper bracelets encircled his wrists and coronets, and a harness held both satchels and a golden lute strapped to his sides. Unlike the cudgels and bone knives of Nessus's tribe, he carried a finely-made bow.

She was more amazed by the boy astride him. Although she had cheerfully pulled her father's plow, she never allowed anyone to site on her back, and was disgusted that he would consent to be ridden like a common donkey. His rider was a naked human male of seven or eight, with a mop of brown curls. He clung to a decorated belt around the dapple-gray's human waist. The centaur bade the child to dismount. The boy stood with his back to a tree, his little spear held out in front of him, his blue eyes wide.

Nessus focused with some difficulty on the new arrival. The spotted centaur seemed agitated, turning in clumsy circles, then shook his head and chuckled thickly. "Aha! The little pony decides to come after all. We are honored. Boys, come say hello to our cousin. Bring him an amphora of the best!"

The dapple-gray glared disapproving at Nessus stumbling towards him, holding out a sloshing jar of wine. His tail swished, slicing through the air. Nessus loomed over the little centaur, dark wine and grease dripping from his beard, but the dapple-gray did not back down.

"Don't be absurd," the new centaur said in a surprisingly deep voice. "You're making fools of yourselves, and now you've gone too far. Look, even now the human men are running for their weapons."

Nessus snorted, then raised his tail and passed wind loudly. "That - for human men!"

The other centaurs roared approval. A hulking bay trotted up to them. He was struggling with a pretty human girl, trying to hold her on his broad back. She wriggled like an eel and managed to slip down. Beneath the grime and tears Despoena was horrified to recognize the bride, Deidameia. She charged forward to help the girl, but only went a few paces before another centaur, a sooty dun, snatched the bride up and drew her into a slobbery kiss. The girl screamed like a scalded cat and tore at his eyes. He smacked her, and she went limp. His brother centaurs laughed and began ripping off her flimsy robes.

Despoena found herself beside the dapple-gray. She tugged at his cape, imploring,

"That is the Lapith man's bride, sir! If they hurt her, the humans will kill them all."

The dapple-gray turned and looked at her, not with Nessus's carnal appetite, but with delicate wonderment. His eyes were warm brown, with a startling ring of gold round the pupils which gave him the piercing stare of a hawk. He was not as small as she had first thought, just seemed so next to the bulky Nessus. He was well built, with lean, hardened muscles, and his coat was glossy as finely polished marble. With a visible effort, he tore his gaze from her and shrugged the bow from his shoulders.

"Can you fight, girl?"

She nodded, drawing her own long dagger.

The dapple-gray raised his fine head and pointed. "Do you see the man there, wearing a black lionskin? That is Heracles, my nephew and favorite pupil. He will rout Nessus's gang before they presume to much on their familiarities."

"But what about Deidameia?" Already the centaur males had her naked, and now were beginning to fight over her unconscious body her like puppies quarreling over a bone. Despoena feared she would be torn limb from limb, a fate perhaps kinder than what the descendants of Ixion planned for her.

"We will see to that," the dapple-gray said, drawing an arrow from his quiver and fitting it to the bow. The two centaurs charged forward as one.

The dapple-gray loosed arrow after arrow with swift accuracy, wounding and antagonizing but not killing. The wild centaurs bellowed in rage and confusion, too stupefied by wine and their full bellies to fixate on his flashing form. Bit by bit, he harried them, shepherding them away from the wedding grounds. Despoena darted among them with the grace of a swallow, slicing and stabbing, then dancing out of their clumsy grasp. Often she would catch the eye of the dapple-gray from across a sea of heaving, sweating bodies, and he would grin in approval. They fought their way to where two centaurs held the now conscious and terror-stricken girl on a boulder while Nessus levered himself upright, his stallionhood fully unsheathed.

Despoena's vision blurred, and she saw in Deidameia's place the girls she had grown up with - little Hermione, who braided her tail with sweet vines and wished aloud for a tail of her own to braid; Eunice, who taught her to sew and who made her her first doll; Iolanthe, the only adult woman who let the young centaur babysit her children; Neola, with whom she giggled and spied on the boys before the boys started chasing the girls. Howling in outrage, Despoena hurtled at Nessus, dagger flashing.

Concentrating on his prize and in an alcoholic daze, the spotted centaur easily fell before her. She gouged his hide a dozen times, and he squealed and thrashed like a sacrificial pig. Someone placed a restraining hand on her arm, and she whirled, teeth bared. It was only the dapple-gray, who steadied the sobbing bride with his other hand. The scowling human with his black, oiled beard and the lion's face snarling above his own countenance strode up and lifted Nessus as easily as if the brawny centaur was a bale of hay. Nessus struggled uselessly, urinating in fear.

"I can handle this mob. Better take little Lio and your lady away, old friend," Heracles said. "Maddened humans will not distinguish one centaur from another."

With that, he flung the spotted centaur towards a group of his fellows, who were advancing with threatening whoops and raised cudgels. The centaurs went down in a ludicrous tangle of limbs. As Heracles gently took Deidameia into his arms and carried her towards her groom and the human guests, the dapple-gray trotted over to his little rider and knelt for him to mount. Despoena looked at the grim humans and drunken, swaggering centaurs facing off, and made her decision.

She cantered after the dapple-gray, who waited for her to catch up. They disappeared fleetly into the overgrown pine forest, and for a long while Despoena was simply content to run at the dappled centaur's side, matching his pace and exulting in her own strength and speed. They finally stopped on the banks of a secluded mountain lake. The dapple-gray stripped himself and plunged shouting into the waters. The boy hung back, frowning at the prospect of a bath. The centaur called to him, and when the child pelted for the trees, he laughed and went after him, lifting his legs high so he practically trotted in place. The centaur let the child outdistance him, then swooped in and lifted the little one high above his head.

Over the child's loud objections, the dapple-gray trotted back to the water's edge. "Join us, Lady!" he called to Despoena. She followed, shyly. After all, she had always left uncovered the parts of her that human girls never revealed, not even on the hottest days of summer when they would go bare-breasted. But this centaur man made her aware of herself, not in the distasteful way Nessus did, as if he were about to devour her, but in the same way that seemed to make human girls titter and blush.

The water was cold enough to stop her heart, and she stood up to her equine chest, gasping. The dapple-gray and the human boy were splashing each other playfully, and a stray splash drenched her. With a squeal, she splashed back, and from then on she was too busy trying to evade ducking and icy sheets of water to worry about her nakedness.

After a healthy romp, they spread themselves on shore to dry in the dying rays of the sun. The dapple-gray passed around bread and cheese and a skin of sweet, unfermented fruit juice.

Despoena sighed with contentment, and caught the male centaur watching her in appreciation. Suddenly modest, she drew her shortened tunic about herself and pouted. "Sir, you fought by my side and have seen every inch of me, and we still haven't been properly introduced!"

"I am called Cheiron, and this is my current pupil, Askeplios. He is training with me to become a healer, aren't you, child?"

The curly-haired moppet nodded gravely.

"Cheiron, the teacher of heroes?" Despoena covered her mouth and giggled.

The dapple-gray frowned, tilting his head, unable to discern the source of her amusement. "Not only heroes. The healers do more good in the world than the heroes, perhaps, but are rarely made the subject of epic poems."

Despoena choked with laughter. "All these years, I have heard stories of you, and I never realized you were a centaur! Why, the storyteller of our village always called you a horseman . . . and I thought he meant a man who rode a horse!"

The two centaurs enjoyed a good laugh, especially when the puzzled little boy broke in with, "But aren't you a horse-man, Master?"

It was many day's journey to the caves in the crags of Pelion where Cheiron lived, and the two learned much of each other. Cheiron had instructed many humans who grew up to change their world for the better, and he remembered them all in fond detail. Despite his clean-shaven, youthful face, Despoena realized he must be very old to have done so much, that he was in fact an immortal. She became frightened, not so much of him than of her growing attraction to him. She doubted she herself was an immortal, for she was born of a mortal mare, and how could such a wise creature as Cheiron possibly heed someone like her, who would be like the flicker of a candle-flame in his long life?

In return, Despoena told him of her father, and the many friends in the village of her birth, and how she was prompted to seek others of her kind.

"I, too, received a missive from the little creature. It is called a pettisphinx, and although it is swift, it is not very bright. Peirithous must have instructed it to bring an invitation to all the centaurs, never considering there might be more than his half-brothers in the world."

"You are not of Ixion's tribe, then?"

"I should hope not. Ixion was once a champion of Zeus, you see, but his filthy carnal habits made even the King of Gods, no abstainer himself, disgusted and unnerved. Zeus cursed him so that every mare Ixion consorted with would bear a centaur. It was intended to shame him, but Ixion is rather vain of the hairy fiends and their capacity for wine and women. The old lecher even got around to producing a human son eventually, whose wedding we crashed today. Now I, I am something entirely different, though the children of Ixion and I share similar forms. My grandsire was Uranus, first ruler of the universe, and my granddam was Gaia, the goddess of earth. They had my father, Cronos. You know of him?"

Despoena nodded. "He wrested rule of the universe from Uranus, but then went mad himself, and devoured his children!"

"Not all of them. Zeus, father of our present gods, defeated him. He couldn't be killed, of course, so Zeus imprisoned him. The elder god proved hard to control. His mind was gone, but he still had all the abilities - and desires - of a god. In the form of a horse, he ravaged the sea nymph Philyra. I was the get of that union, half human and half horse. A miscegenation, an abomination."

"But . . . you are half-brother to Zeus himself!" Despoena took his face in her hands, forcing Cheiron to confront her vibrant green eyes. "You are a god, or at least a demigod."

"I have no interest in the affairs of the gods. My humans are not savages, to worship half-animals. I would not sully the pantheon by my presence." He smiled gently. "Besides, to me life on this wild earth is far more interesting than the monotony of Olympus. The gods cannot account for everything, and I enjoy watching for the wild seeds that occasionally flower in the cracks of creation."

"Do you see me as an abomination, Cheiron? After all, we share a similar descent and form." Despoena's eyes were downcast, and masses of rusty hair veiled her down turned face.

"If I cared to believe in such things, I would say the fates made you for me. In every line and movement, you are beautiful to me. In my long life, I have seen many beautiful women, and many beautiful horses. But you, woman and horse, are more beautiful than any."

She looked up, wild-eyed. "Then let us go forth, and make a new race, half-god, half-monster!"

She returned with Cheiron to his mountain cave, and the two centaurs pledged their lives to each other in a simple but heartfelt ceremony. Despoena summoned her old father to her new home, and the old man lived out the rest of his years comforted by his daughter and the ministrations of his son-in-law.

Despoena was the child of the sea god and a goddess in mortal form, but because her mother birthed her in a mortal, Despoena too was mortal. But Cheiron was unchangingly young, as immortal as any full-blooded god. It did not bother her much, for Despoena aged much slower than a human woman. Her only disappointment was that she could never bear him children. She did not know if one or both of them was barren, of if their different ancestry prevented breeding.

Still, she had Cheiron's many young charges to look after, and they filled her days as the awkward little boys with their childlike ways grew into strong, studious men under Cheiron's tutelage. She learned, too. With infinite patience, he taught her to read, and she discovered a whole new world of philosophy and beauty from Cheiron's extensive collection of scrolls. She was particularly fond of plays and poetry, and once he discovered this, Cheiron often escorted her to a cliff where they could see the human actors perform in their natural amphitheater. In time, he taught he knew, a history that stretched back to the birth of time - of the heavens and the dancing stars, how to find the hidden treasures of the earth, the virtues of all healing herbs, and the speech of birds, and of prophecy and of hidden things to come.

She had all but forgotten the tribe of Ixion until one day when she was tending her herb garden. A four-legged shadow fell across her, and she said, "Hand me my trowel, dear one. This weed has roots in Hades, I believe."

A rough hand grabbed her shoulder and forced her to her feet. Despoena screamed in panic when she saw who held her.

The years had not been kind to Nessus. His once blood-red mane was now the color of dust, and from the look of his right foreleg, it had been broken when Heracles threw him and healed without being set. The scars she inflicted on him stood out proudly against his mangy, spotted coat. The centaur's face contorted in a savage, snarling grin, showing his jutting yellow tusks.

"Still so pretty," he hissed. Saliva dribbled from the corners of his mouth, and his grip tightened as Despoena struggled and kicked out with her forelegs. "A little too thin, but still so full of spirit, my fire-lady."

"I am nothing of yours," Despoena cried, and struck him in his crooked leg. He fell to his foreknees, releasing her. She darted around him and galloped up the hillside, calling out for Cheiron to bring his arrows.

"Yes, come out, Pony! I have arrows of my own," Nessus roared. Despoena paused, balanced on a rock. Nessus had drawn a bow, and notched a distinctive-looking arrow to it. He carried no quiver, and no other weapon. A premonition seized her, but before she could call out to Cheiron, he swept past her and directly into Nessus's line of fire.

Cheiron's shot took Nessus in the throat, but not before he fired off his single arrow. It struck Cheiron in his foreleg, and, too weak to stick in the bone, bounced off. The slight wound shouldn't have fazed the dapple-gray at all, but he fell as though he were a marionette whose strings had been cut.

Nessus yanked the arrow from his throat and laughed out a ghastly gush of blood. He had eyes only for Cheiron, writhing on the ground. He didn't see Despoena until she leapt down beside him. She whirled, facing away from him. The foul centaur took one last lascivious look at her firmly muscled hindquarters as she kicked like a mule. Unable to support himself on his misshapen leg, Nessus was propelled off the cliff and plummeted to his death on the rocks, far below.

Panting in shock and exhaustion, Despoena knelt beside her beloved. Cheiron's wound was small, but he groaned in delirious agony, and had to lean on his wife to walk back up to their cave home. Even then, the trip took almost an hour. Cheiron fainted a few hundred feet from the entrance, and Despoena had to drag him inside.

Nothing the great healer ever told her prepared her for what Nessus' arrow had done. She assumed the spotted centaur had coated the arrowhead with some sort of poison, but she knew of none that acted so swiftly or so potently. Cheiron himself was too afflicted to speak. Frantic with fear, Despoena sent a pettisphinx winging toward the home of Askeplios, now a grown man and a fabled healer in his own right.


He came as fast as humanely possible, but it was still days before the man entered the old familiar cave and found Despoena waiting for him within. Askeplios took his old mentor in a fierce hug, then pulled back. Her distress had ravaged her. The gray streaks in her flaming mane and tail had widened, and her dull pelt was pulled tight over her ribs. Her green eyes swam with tears as she explained what happened. Cheiron now raved in a fever, and his devoted wife's hide was bruised from where he had struck out in hysterical pain. Askeplios told her to remain in the front chamber as he tended to Cheiron, and not to expect to much.

He was even more shocked by what he saw. The centaur was thin as a jackal, his tanned skin a sickly sallow color. His sweat-drenched mane and beard were straggled and tangled. His eyes stared in to nothingness as he trembled and mumbled nonsense. The wound was inflamed, and the fur had fallen out around it. Red threads of infection laced the bare skin, and thick pus seeped from the wound's black depths.

Hours later, Askeplios emerged from the centaur's bedchamber, ashen and shaking. Despoena held a loaf of bread to her mouth with one hand and was dipping another in honey. She dropped both and sped to the man's side as he sat down heavily and put his head in his hands.

"No, finish your meal, Poeni. I brought it for you, assuming you wouldn't have eaten," Askeplios said. "By the gods, we have all the time in the world, I think."

"What do you mean," Despoena asked, dreading the answer she was sure she knew.

"The arrow, it was one belonging to Heracles, you said? Poisoned, then, with hydra blood. One of his monster-slayers. Nessus must have picked one up where it had fallen at the wedding where you two met and hoarded it all these years, while he stewed in his own misery and jealousy."

"So . . . Cheiron . . . is dying, then."

"Dying, and likely to keep dying, for all of eternity," Askeplios said in a voice harsh with grief. "He is an immortal. The poison will devour him from within, but he cannot die."

Despoena felt as if the earth had turned to void beneath her. Even Cheiron's death she could cope with, if only by flinging her mortal self over a precipice to join him in the hereafter. But for him to live on in unending agony was too much to bear. Askeplios held her as she wailed, and stood well away as she raged, and when her strength finally left her and she collapsed onto the floor of the cave, he huddled beside her.

"Poeni, dear, Poeni. You and Cheiron mean more to me than my own parents, and I can only comprehend a small measure of what you feel for him. I will tell you, there is one hope."

"Calling on the gods?" Despoena buried her head in her arms. "They have no love for their half-animal kin."

"I am aware of that."Askeplios spoke quickly, in an odd voice. "I am thinking of a tree, the only one of it's kind in creation, in a secluded valley far south from here, along the old mountain trail. I have heard the travelers and lore-masters say that eating a silver apple from it's boughs will cure any illness."

Despoena surged upright, her mane swirling about her. "Tell me where they are! I must go, now!"

The man tried to calm her, with little success. "I only hesitated to tell you because some sort of monster guards the tree! I could not bear to send you to your death for such a scant hope. No man has returned from there alive."

"I am not a man, nor less a human," Despoena said calmly as she strapped a skin of water and her old dagger to her belt. "Bring on the most horrible dragon, and I will thrash it like a disobedient pup."


Askeplios did not try further to dissuade her, merely watched as the aging centaur mare thundered down the twisting mountain path, then entered the cave again. *******************

The path to the hidden grove of the silver apple tree was tortuous, little more than a goat's trail, crossing unbridged rivers and sometimes becoming so faint she was forced to backtrack and cast about blindly until she picked it up again. Still, Despoena pushed herself to her limits and galloped whenever the ground was flat enough. She ate on the run, and slept lightly, waking to rue the hours she lost in rest. Soon, however, she came to the valley Askeplios had described, and found a glen surrounded by a high, wrought-iron fence. Rather surprisingly, the gate hung open. She advanced inside, stepping lightly as a deer, but no unseen trap was sprung.

Just inside the gate, she saw a marble statue of a young man. Beautifully executed, highly realistic down to the individual fibers of hair, it was nonetheless a surprisingly ugly statue. The boy depicted was no muscular godling, just an gawky youth standing flat-footed, his arms dangling at his sides. Not repulsive, Despoena thought, just ordinary. She wondered why a skilled artisan would invest obvious effort in such a plain-looking statue. She couldn't imagine anyone commissioning it. Well, perhaps it was an experiment that didn't work out. Probably the artist, too attached to destroy it, had instead consigned it to this grove far from human eyes. The centauress continued past it.

She could see the clearing only a few strides before her, but the foliage struck out at her like sentient things. Great vines writhed like snakes underhoof. She trampled them, ignoring their thin shrieks and the stinging milky sap that sprayed up from their wounds. Moss stretched like spider's webs across the path, and she slashed it with her old dagger. Gaudy flowers bloomed as she passed, enveloping her in stinking clouds of pollen.

The foliage ended abruptly, leaving a small meadow clear. The tree itself, the only thing growing there besides velvety grass, was raised on a little mound, and backed by steep cliff from which flowed a trickling waterfall. The tree was small and gracefully twisted, the branches bowing under the weight of their fruit. It's deeply lined bark flushed the delicate rose tint of a young woman's skin, and the silver apples sparkled among the fleshy, deep purple leaves like stars in the early evening sky.

Breathlessly, Despoena trotted towards the tree.

A dire roar split the air, and she turned to see a horrifying creature burst from the jungle and plunge toward her. It was as tall as an elephant, its lowslung, muscular body was lionlike, but with something of a lizard or dragon in the whip tail and the row of spikes decorating its spine. From a tangled mane glared a face with features smashed flat, like a pug-dog's, above which glared a single, ghastly eye. Almost absurdly, a pair of white, very human breasts hung from the creature's chest.

Breaking into a gallop, Despoena strove to reach the tree before the monster did. The meadow seemed to stretch into infinity, the apple tree dwindling into the distance. The monster shrieked and gathered itself for a leap. Feeling as if her heart would burst, the centaur flung herself forward. The tips of her fingers brushed a low-hanging fruit, and it fell neatly into her palm.

Clutching the silver apple to her chest, Despoena whirled to face the monster. Panting she drew her dripping blade and prepared to fight her way out.

But the creature only stared, its cyclopean eye glazed as if with tears. Its fang-lined jaws gaped, and a low, miserable wail escaped it. As Despoena stared in disbelief, the moan formed into words.

"I have failed, I have failed," the creature sobbed as it crept forward.

Unsure, Despoena backed away slowly. The monster turned to her, its fangs bared in a silent snarl. Speaking with difficulty through her choking fear, Despoena said, "I am sorry to have . . . caused you such . . . grief. I need but one small apple, to save the life of my husband."

The creature rose, staring at her with the unwinking gaze of a snake. Despoena's rump struck the gate, and she realized it had closed behind her. The fence was too high to jump, and topped with iron spikes besides. She spoke to the monster in soothing tones, as she would a cornered, injured animal. "He has been wounded by a treacherous fiend's poisoned arrow. Since he is immortal, my beloved will suffer an eternity unless I bring him one of your apples. Please," she said, her voice breaking. "He and I are the only ones of our kind. I cannot live without him!"

"You fool. You know not what you do," the monster grated. "You seek to help, but you have caused me and my child agonizing torment."

It turned away, and Despoena sagged in relief. "Tell me," she whispered.

The creature crouched by the silver apple tree, and ran a humanlike forepaw gently along an exposed root. The branches trembled slightly. "This tree you see before you is my own child, transformed by the same hideous curse that changed me into this foul form. My name was once Eleora, back when I was a normal, human woman, a widow who lived my only daughter on my late husband's estates. I no longer cared about men in my life, but I wished my daughter to marry a rich, influential man who would care for her and our lands once I passed away. Is that so terrible a thing for a mother to want?"

Without waiting for Despoena to answer, the monster continued, "In my haste to see her married, I betrothed my daughter to a handsome, wealthy, but wicked man. She begged and pleaded, but I thought her a foolish youth ungrateful of a mother's concern. My daughter languished in their marriage. When, after a year, she suddenly seemed to bloom again, I thought she had finally realized what a good situation she was in, or had decided to resign herself."

"She found a lover?" Despoena guessed.

The monster nodded. "I had forgotten what it was like to have the heart of a young girl. Little did I know her betrothed was a sorcerer. When my daughter became pregnant - without ever having lain in his bed - he knew the truth and cursed her. He turned her into an apple tree, to fruit forever but never to seed. In me he saw a traitor, to have offered in marriage an unworthy girl. But there was still some small tenderness in his heart for her. So he made me as I am today, to guard her."

"And . . . your daughter's lover?" Despoena whispered.

The monster's face twisted into a wry grin. "You passed him on your way into the grove."

"I am truly sorry, Eleora," Despoena said. "And I did not know I was plucking an apple from your poor daughter. But what harm can there be in it now? I only wished to use the healing powers of the fruit for my husband."

The monster fixed her with her unwinking saucer-eye. "As we stood before my son-in-law, transformed, he relented a bit, just a bit. 'In a thousand years', he said, 'when I have long since gone past caring, you shall regain your human forms. But guard her well, mother, better than you watched her in life, for each apple eaten from her boughs will add another hundred years to your sentence'."

Despoena trembled, feeling the silver apple grow heavy as lead in her hands. "What shall become of me?"

"Every being who invades my lonely grove to violate my daughter for their own purposes suffers my curse. I transform them, intensify some hidden aspect of themselves, and most leave here as appalling monsters. I think, perhaps, you are the first one to pluck a silver apple for the welfare of another, and not your own. However, I cannot let you go, lest I risk my life and my child's still further. Because you have trespassed, you must be punished," the dispassionate voice said. "But because you did so with good intentions, I shall allow you to choose your fate."

Despoena wept, but knew Eleora was perfectly within her rights. Had she known the tree was the creature's own child, transformed, she would never even attempted to pluck a fruit. But the damage had been done. She wiped away her tears and raised her head bravely. "I understand."

"My magic is but little, and I have scant control, but I give you this choice," Eleora said. "I will transform you into a full human, or a full horse. In either form you will be a perfectly ordinary representative of your kind. Your child, your children I should say, for you bear twins, are innocents. I will not punish them."

The centaur women staggered, dropping the precious apple unheeded. After all these years, she was finally to be a mother!

So the baby - babies! - would remain centaurs while she transformed. Despoena thought of poetry, eating with utensils, combing out Cheiron's tail, drinking wine, laughing . . . holding Cheiron's warm body in a close hug. Things she could never do as an animal. But the choice was clear.

"As a human, I could never bear centaur twins. And I cannot condemn my unborn children. Let me be a horse, then."

The monster's maw spread in a sad smile. "Even in this, you put others before you. Go, take the apple. I will give you the chance to return to your home and speak to your husband one final time."

Despoena picked the silver fruit up from where she'd dropped it and bowed on her forelegs to the creature. Then, wordlessly, she left the grove. As she passed the statue of the young man, she couldn't resist a backwards glance. The creature, once the human woman Eleora, sat before the apple tree with her head bowed. Despoena turned away and began her long trek home.

Despite the dread weighing her heart, he strong legs sped her home swiftly and surely. Soon she arrived back at their cave. Lio came outside when he heard her approaching hoof beats. He looked pale and rumpled. Blinking in the sunlight, he ran to her and stumbled into a hug.

"Thank the gods, Poeni! I was worried. Did you succeed?"

"My husband," she husked. "How fares he?"

Frowning at her tone, Lio said, "Not well, I fear. I haven't been able to get more into him than clear broth. And the wound festers despite every salve and poultice I try."

"The pain?"

Lio looked away. "Continuous. No potion I know of can do more than give him a few hour's relief."

Despoena drew open her pouch and removed the apple.

Lio breathed a sigh of thanks, and took it from her as if it he expected it to disappear in a puff of smoke. "I will wake him immediately!"

Despoena nodded silently. Her bleak expression finally registered on the human, and he asked, "My lady, you should be prancing with joy. Your husband will soon be restored to you. Yet you look as if the shears of fate were even now closing on your own mortal thread! What troubles you so?"

"Not death, I fear, but a fate much worse. Did nothing in your texts refer to the apples being cursed?"

Lio gasped, shaking his head. "No! Oh, what have I done to you? Please, speak the word and I will bear the curse in your place."

"It was my hand that plucked the apple. In doing so I added another hundred years to the suffering a of a cursed mother and child. I will bear my own curse in return as best I can. But come, let us bring this hard-won apple to my beloved. Let me speak to him and hold his hand one last time. Then, I beg you, do not be frightened by what you may see."

Lio hugged her again, burying his face in her fall of hair. She felt the wetness of tears against her cheeks - his and her own. Gently, she pulled away from him and trotted into the cave that was her and Cheiron's private chamber.

The greatest of centaurs lay stretched out on his lion skins. He looked worse than when she had left. He had not even enough strength left to struggle. His entire leg was now swollen and blackened, and the wound stank of rot. Despoena knelt beside him and pressed the apple to his lips.

At first, he turned away, sickened even by the thought of food. Then his nostrils flared, and he bit eagerly into the apple's silver skin. Despoena held it for him, wiping away the juice that ran down his chin. Cheiron ate the entire apple, even the silver seeds. When he had finished, the light of sanity returned to his eyes, and his trembling muscles unknotted and relaxed. The wound let out one last gush of liquified, infected tissue, then closed, the new pink skin sprouting dark gray fur. Despoena pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. His skin was cool - the fever broken.

"Quickly, my beloved, I must speak to you one last time," she said.

Cheiron lay his head back. "So, it is ended then."

"Darling, no. I found the apples, but I have paid a terrible price. I'm given a few moments to share with you."

Cheiron listened as she told him of the terrible story behind the apples, and the ironic fact that they finally had become parents.

"Already I am losing the feeling in my fingertips," Despoena quavered. "Please, hold me to you while I can still hold you in return!"

Feeling his strength return, Cheiron surged upright and took her into his arms. "Brother!" he bellowed. "Zeus!"

Despoena's soft skin roughened with hair under his grip. Her face stretched out as her arms dwindled into useless paddles.

A radiant cloud drifted into the cave and coalesced into the form of a magnificent human male. Cheiron lowered his eyes respectfully before Zeus, king of the gods.

"My brother, I ask a great service of you. My Despoena has been cruelly afflicted, merely for saving my life. Surely it is the work of a moment for you to restore her to me?"

Zeus reached out and drew his burning fingers through the mane of Despoena, who was by now fully horse. She shuddered but did not flinch away.

"Even the King of Gods cannot control the Fates. Her thread has been spun, and I cannot undo it."

"Then change me, too!" Cheiron demanded. Despoena whickered, and he put his arm around her neck. She nuzzled his chest.

"You would be a mere mortal horse, living a mortal span," Zeus gently reminded him.

"I am tired of this long, solitary life, my brother. I have taught my human students well. They are heroes and healers, and have no more need of my guidance. Only once have I found a true equal, my love. If she must suffer, I suffer with her. I can do no less."

Askeplios stepped forward, squinting at the figure his weak mortal eyes saw only as an amorphous, blinding incandescent shape. "This burden is as much mine as anyone's. I will keep them safe, and raise their children like my own. The race of centaurs does not deserve to die for this."

Zeus merely nodded. Cheiron staggered as his face crunched and stretched into a new shape, and his arms retracted like a turtle's head into his shoulders. The light of the god's presence dimmed, and after long minutes Askeplios's streaming eyes adjusted to the gloom. Cheiron stood beside Despoena, delicately nibbling her nape. Two perfect horses, an aristocratic dappled stallion and a comely chestnut mare heavy with foals.

That night, new stars blazed in the heavens, and the human scholars connected them to form the constellation Sagittarius, the wise centaur.

Askeplios sadly led Cheiron and Despoena back to his home, and cared for them there for long years. Though he spoke to them every day he never received a sign that his two old friends and teachers recognized him.

When the foals were born, he named the strawberry roan female Tasida, and the male, Kistur, who was born pitch black like his divine grandmother, but gradually grayed out as he grew. He taught them all he knew, and many times told them the story of their ancestors, in a slightly altered form. In his ending, the foals were already born when Despoena's curse activated, and their parents were translated into the stars. If Tasida and Kistur ever suspected the stallion and mare their uncle Askeplios called Noble and Dear were their own parents, they never gave any sign.

They were the first of the true centaurs, born of two centaur parents, though not the last. For although Despoena was a mature mare and only foaled a few more times, as an immortal Cheiron became a stallion just entering his vigorous youth, and fathered many handsome centaur foals on mortal mares.

In time the descendants of Cheiron grew to be a mighty tribe whose wisdom and nobility blotted out in the minds of men the memories of Nessus's malignant tribe. When, after a long life, Despoena finally passed away, Askeplios saw the first and only sign of his mentor's lost sentience as the gray stallion stood over her still body with tears running from his eyes.

* END *