Page 22 of Across the Green Grass Fields

“You’re my best friend,” said Regan. “I won’t ever leave you like that.”

Chicory sagged, the strange tension going out of her shoulders, and trotted to a stop in front of the cottage. “Mom’s inside. She’s waiting for you.”

“Because that’s not ominous.” Regan slid off of Chicory’s back, patting her reassuringly on the side, and tugged her dripping tunic into place as she walked toward the door. It was comfortingly familiar and solid. This wasn’t a door that whisked human children away to new worlds. It was a door that opened to welcome them home, and was still there when they turned around. She brushed her fingertips against the wood as she stepped through, into the straw-scented gloom that always lingered under the roof.

Aster, Daisy, and Pansy were there already, waiting for her. Their expressions were serious, and Regan felt the ice gather again, chilling her from the inside out. The water dripping from her hair suddenly felt like a punishment, running down her neck and leaving clammy dread in its wake.

“There you are,” said Aster in the frustrated tone she always used when Regan and Chicory ranged too far afield and needed to be brought back to heel.

“Here I am,” said Regan. She turned to Daisy. Daisy, her teacher and mentor. Daisy, who would always, always tell her the truth, and wouldn’t try to protect her like Pansy, or put the needs of her own daughter first, like Aster. “What’s going on?” she asked in a small, pained voice. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No, child, no,” said Daisy. “You did nothing wrong, or if you did”—she paused to shoot a quelling glance at the other two centaurs—“we all did. We’ve become too comfortable here. There aren’t many centaur herds in the forest, and it’s rare for them to leave, or to come back if they do. One of the traveling merchants must have grown suspicious about a new herd settling in these parts, and mentioned it where the Queen’s spies could hear. She’s been looking for you. She knew you were somewhere to be found, as the Hooflands have not been saved.”

“And after I save the world, I disappear,” said Regan, voice still small.

Pansy’s head snapped up. She took a step toward Regan. “Who told you that?” she asked. “Regan, who told you that you were going to disappear?”

“Chicory did. She said you talk about it when you think we’re not listening. Humans come, they save the world, and then they vanish.” Regan’s hands balled into fists. “I don’t want to vanish. I’ll still save the world if I have to, because I like it too much to let it not be saved, but I don’t want to vanish.”

“The Queen knows you’re here,” said Aster. “Her spies will make you disappear if we don’t do something soon.”

“What does she even want with me?” Regan shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense. If she’d been willing to leave us alone, we’d still be in the fields with the flock, not hiding in a forest in the middle of nowhere.”

“She hates you because she’s what you’re going to save us from,” said Aster. “Things have grown worse since we left. The merchants speak of it. Prices for crops and livestock continue to drop, and the Queen sets the prices; she’s to blame. The herds are starving. They can’t afford to eat, to replace their tools, to go courting at the Fair—it’s all falling apart. The Queen sends her soldiers to burn their fields when they refuse to tell her what she wants to know. She’s no fit queen any longer. I’m sorry, but it’s time for you to go to her.”

“I did not agree to this,” snapped Daisy. “We can hide again. There’s more north in the world.”

“No,” said Regan. “The foals deserve better than to grow up hiding, and they’ll hate me for it when they realize I’m the reason they had to. Chicory deserves better. All the herds do. If the Queen is hurting them, we have to stop her. You raised me to save our world. Let me save it.”

There was no way to answer that, and so no one said anything, not even when Regan burst into tears and threw her arms around Pansy’s waist, holding on as if her life depended on it.

PART IV

TO VISIT THE QUEEN

13

THE ROAD TO RUIN

REGAN LEFT AS THE sun was sinking low against the horizon, painting the sky in purple and orange, like a bruise that would never heal. The rest of the herd came to the edge of the wood to watch her go, even the foals, who didn’t understand what was happening, only that their favorite playmate was walking away, a bundle slung over one shoulder and a bow hooked over the other, and that she wasn’t looking back.

Chicory buried her face against her mother’s shoulder to hide her tears. Pansy and Daisy didn’t bother, only stood and let their tears run down their cheeks unchecked. None of them looked away until Regan had reached the place where the road began to bend out of sight. Bit by bit, she disappeared. One of the foals made a disbelieving wailing sound. She didn’t come back.

She didn’t come back.

For Regan, walking away from the forest was the most terrifying thing she’d ever done. She had been afraid before, but the fear had always been connected to consequences, not choices. Laurel’s reaction to her secret had been terrifying; she didn’t regret telling it, not anymore. She wasn’t ashamed of herself. Laurel was the one who had been in the wrong, and anyone who answered a friend’s honesty with horror and rejection had never been a friend in the first place. She’d been afraid when stepping though the illusion of a door had been enough to drop her in a strange new world, but that fear had passed and been replaced with wonder, and love, and security a long, long time ago. She wouldn’t have changed it if she could have.

This, though … this was something she had chosen and was still choosing, with every step away from home and safety. She could run. She could hide. She could refuse to face a Queen who considered her a danger because of who and what she was. She could keep living a happy, sheltered life, protected by her herd, putting her needs above theirs. The foals would be old enough to ask about their fathers soon. They would want the company of their own kind, and they deserved to have it. Chicory deserved it, too. She deserved Fairs and a herd of her own; she deserved a courtship, if she wanted one, and a husband she’d see once a year when she chose to see him at all. They deserved normal lives.

It was ridiculous, thinking about giving normal lives to other people when she was never going to have one for herself, and Regan laughed as she walked, the sound bright and merry in the cool morning air. She was a human who preferred the company of horses, or at least creatures who looked like horses. She was a hero, or she was going to be, and she never wanted to go home, even though she knew her parents had to miss her. She chose this world, where she could never be normal, over the world she had been made for. So it was a little strange that she was so eager to give away the things she could never have, even if she tried to want them.

She was still laughing when a great, shaggy black horse rose out of the ditch next to the narrow road, water weeds tangled in its mane and pond scum dripping from its muzzle. That muzzle was slightly too pronounced for its head, and its lips bulged like they were trying to contain something no herbivore’s mouth should have to hold. It looked at her with one immense brown eye. That, at least, looked like it could have belonged to a normal horse, wide and soft, the color of chocolate, and fringed with long, delicate lashes.

“I’m not coming any closer to you,” Regan informed the kelpie. “And you shouldn’t come any closer to me. I know what kelpies do to anything they think of as prey.” She unslung the bow from her shoulder, keeping it low by her hip as she pulled an arrow from the quiver at her side. “You go your way, and I’ll go mine.”

The kelpie’s lips pulled back from jagged teeth that would have looked equally at home in an alligator’s mouth. Then it said, in a gravelly voice, “Human girl. These roads are not safe for you alone.”

Regan jumped. “They never told me kelpies could talk,” she blurted.