Centaur Rising by Jane Yolen

cascading down his face, his cheeks red with what could have been fever spots but were more likely fear. He’d never seen so many people before. So many loud, angry, scary people.
    Her back to the door, Mom turned and shouted at everyone, those folks who had been our best boarders and who’d stayed longer and had been more loyal than the rest. She really unloaded on them.
    â€œMove it, you big lump!” she cried to Mrs. Fischer, who is actually a little lump, smaller than me.
    â€œ You’re the freaks,” she said to the entire Proper family, who are usually just like their name.
    â€œGet him out of there,” she yelled, pointing at Joey.
    Dr. Herks picked him up and set him to one side just like he was a bale of hay. A light bale of hay.
    Martha’s tongue practically sawed off limbs battling side by side with Mom. She even pushed Angela to the ground, which she hadn’t done on purpose, but would have had she known then that it was Angela who’d brought everyone over to gape at Kai after Joey had shown him to her.
    Angela began screaming as if she were about to be murdered. She has her mother’s lungs, if not her vocabulary.
    Me, I took the low route, crawling on my hands and knees till I got to the door. I had a set of keys on the lanyard around my neck, so I opened the door while everyone else was busy shouting and pushing and jostling for position. Then I crawled inside while Mom and Martha were doing their doubles act.
    Agora knew me, so once I was in, the door shut firmly behind me, she made no angry move toward me.
    I bent down and put my arms around Kai and sang into his ear, “ The eensy, weensy spider, went up the water spout .” I tickled his nose until, like any toddler, he got distracted and began to smile.
    Oddly, everyone outside began to cheer, and the noise set Agora off. She trotted to the door and bared her teeth again, pawing the ground as if getting ready to charge anyone who tried to get in.
    But Kai seemed to think it was all part of a game. He clapped his hands and laughed, a fully human sound.
    Or rather, he almost clapped them. It would be another day before he got that quite right.
    The crowd stopped making loud noises, and Mrs. Proper said, “Isn’t he adorable ?” which seemed to come out of nowhere.
    Wherever it came from, it worked. Everyone was all of a sudden agreeing and smiling, and maybe even getting it, except for Angela, who stomped off because there was nobody—not even her own mother—who wasn’t cooing at the baby.
    At which point Mom turned, and said in a controlled voice that probably only Martha and I recognized as her angry voice, “Come into the office, and I’ll explain everything.” And then in an undertone, she whispered through the window to me, “You stay here and keep the door locked.” She started to go, then turned back. “No wait, first get your brother off the driveway.”
    Robbie —we’d all forgotten about Robbie!
    Martha nodded at me before following the crowd to the office. “Gotta go help your mother feed the multitudes,” she said. And when she saw the puzzled look on my face, she added, “Needing the dough and telling fish stories,” which made less sense at first, since I knew they weren’t going to be serving any food. Only after everyone was gone did I realize she was referring to the Bible story about the loaves and fishes and making puns at the same time.
    It made me extra glad to be running off to get Robbie just to stay out of that crowd.

 
    11
    Games
    T HE OFFICE IS ACTUALLY THE FIRST TWO STALLS on the house side of the barn. Long before we’d come to live there, the former owner had renovated and insulated them. Now it’s a comfortable workroom, heated in the winter, air-conditioned in the summer, with two deep, brown leather sofas and an armchair with a striped seat, where Mom can talk with boarders and visiting