Free Centaur Rising by Jane Yolen Page B

since you’ve been saying all along it’s some sort of disease, and lots of folks have already taken their horses away, though what they’ll do now that it’s a FREAK OF NATURE and not a disease, I don’t really know, but that’s certainly better than something that might be communicable—another great Scrabble word—but I don’t know if everyone will feel the same way.”
    For a minute, I thought she meant she was wondering if anyone felt the same way about using the Scrabble word. And then I got it ! She’d said “freak of nature” like it was all capital letters. She wasn’t talking about Robbie . Joey had known Robbie for the past four years, and even Mrs. Angotti would never have let him call Robbie such a name.
    She was talking about Kai.
    Dr. Herks leaned toward her, two hundred pounds of angry vet, speaking in a cold, controlled voice that even I could tell was just on the ragged edge of losing it. “Have you said anything to anyone?”
    Since Mrs. Angotti, according to Martha, has no off button and only an on button, that was the only question to ask.
    Martha didn’t lean in like Dr. Herks, but if anything, she was angrier. “Who … else … knows?” Each word was like a bullet to the heart. A strange image for a Quaker girl to use, I know, but that was just what it sounded like.
    Okay , I thought, there’s no one actually around to tell right now. But if Mrs. Angotti knows, everyone will know soon enough.
    If we let her out of the house, Kai was doomed.
    That was when I considered kidnapping as an option. And then I looked at everyone else’s face and guessed that was what they were all thinking, too.

 
    10
    A Loud Noise
    W HILE WE’D BEEN WORRYING ABOUT M RS. A NGOTTI , we hadn’t been paying attention to Joey, who’d sneaked past us into the den and through the dining room, kitchen, and out the back door.
    Robbie said, in a hushed voice that somehow got everyone’s attention, “Where’s Joey?”
    â€œHe was right here,” Dr. Herks said, looking around.
    Mrs. Angotti roared, “JOEY!!!”
    And Martha raced toward the back door.
    I was right behind her, and the others behind me, except for Robbie, of course.
    By the time we got outside, there were four horse trailers lined up in neat rows, their loading doors open. They must have pulled in while we were with Mrs. Angotti, so stunned by her avalanche of words, we hadn’t heard them arrive. But no one was anywhere in sight. The trucks’ doors were wide open, and we could see clearly that no horses had been loaded. Yet.
    â€œWhere are they?” Martha grumbled.
    â€œThe barn!” I shouted.
    By that time, Robbie had somehow managed to roll out of the door and down the ramp, but without anyone to push him, he couldn’t get across the driveway. And the rest of us were so busy heading for the barn, we left him there. His voice followed us plaintively—“What about meeeeeee?”
    We didn’t bother to look anywhere but in the corridor of the barn where Agora and Kai were stabled. The blinds Dr. Herks had hung across the inside of the stall windows had all been yanked off. Some had landed inside the stall, and some, crumpled and stepped on, lay on the ground outside as riders and owners struggled to see through windows.
    I could hear everyone muttering things like abnormal , defective , bizarre . None of them saw the magic, only the monstrous.
    Suddenly, Joey’s piercing voice cried out, “My mom calls it a FREAK OF NATURE !”
    My hands bunched into fists.
    Dr. Herks cleared a path to the stall by picking people up and moving them to one side, but in such a quick and gentle manner, no one had time or reason to complain.
    I glanced into the stall. Ears back, teeth showing, Agora was straddling Kai. He was on his knees and sobbing uncontrollably for the first time since he’d been born, tears