Page 27 of Across the Green Grass Fields

“Thank you,” she said, turning to face both the strange creatures who had become her traveling companions. “I wouldn’t have made it this far, this fast, without you. But now it’s time for me to keep going on my own.”

“Let me check first to be sure it’s safe,” said Zephyr, and launched herself into the air before Regan could object. The peryton gained height with surprising speed, banking and wheeling above the castle walls, and perhaps there were advantages to being thought of as an unthinking monster, because no one raised any alarms at her presence. Regan stayed where she was, watching her fly, suddenly understanding how a peryton could be considered beautiful. Zephyr was lovely in the air.

When Zephyr landed again, she shook her head, like she was chasing away the last slivers of the wind, and said, “There are guards in the high battlements, but they won’t see you if you enter from down here. Your way is clear.”

“Thank you,” said Regan again. “I’m ready to continue.”

“Good luck,” said Zephyr.

Gristle didn’t say anything at all, only watched as Regan turned sideways and squeezed into the break in the wall. He stayed there, silently watching the space where she had been, until Zephyr spread her wings and leapt back into the air, and he was alone. He paced a circle, then lay down in the grass, head resting on his forelegs, and waited.

Inside the wall, everything was darkness and stone, pressing down on Regan until it felt like there was no air left, and she would surely suffocate and be forgotten. Would the door that caught her in the first place go hunting for another human child to sweep away, leaving them here to save the world? Or would that take too long? She was supposed to save the world, but the world had done just fine for five years while she was happily running through the woods.

She worked her way deeper into the narrow tunnel, until every trace of light was gone and she was simply squeezing her way into infinite shadow. Just as she thought she could go no farther, her questing hand hit open air, and she was able to force her way out of the wall, into the cool, draft-ridden open space beyond.

Still there was no light. Regan grimaced, put her hands in front of herself, and began feeling her way gingerly through the darkness, stopping when her foot struck what felt like the base of a stairway. They were deep, narrow stairs, cut to suit a human’s tread, and not the longer stride of a centaur or kelpie or other four-legged creature. It was strange, but not strange enough to keep her from feeling around until she found a bannister and beginning to pull herself up into the darkness.

It had been long enough since she’d had cause to climb a flight of stairs that she stumbled several times, catching her toes against the steps, nearly falling into the dark. How many other aspects of being human had she allowed to slip away from her while she was running through the forest? It was an impossible question, and so she kept going without stopping to answer it. The light began to return, a little bit at a time, the world going from utter blackness to gradients of gray, still dark at first, but thinning, until she could see her own hands, until she could see the carved shape of the bannister winding its way upward, into the highest reaches of the castle.

Regan kept pressing onward, until the light was bright enough to read by, until the stairs leveled out at a small landing, connected to a long hall. Unslinging her bow from her shoulder, she swallowed hard and walked on.

The air in the castle was cold and stale, nothing like what she expected from a palace. It should have been warm and bright and filled with life, scented with cake and tea and other delicacies. This didn’t feel like walking into a castle. It felt like walking into a tomb.

The thing about walking into a tomb is that it leaves plenty of time to consider what a foolish idea that is. As she walked, Regan remembered Pansy telling her about Queen Kagami, back when she’d first arrived in the Hooflands.

Regan stopped.

According to Pansy, Queen Kagami had been assisted in reclaiming her family’s castle from a wicked kelpie king by the last human to come to the Hooflands. But Zephyr and Gristle agreed that a kelpie had never held the throne, and said the crown was passed by a challenge, not along family lines. Why would they lie to her? Why would Pansy, who was a second mother now, have lied to her? Unless the centaurs weren’t lying, just mistaken—but then why did they have one history of the Hooflands, while the kelpies and perytons had another? It made no sense.

It made no sense unless Gristle and Zephyr told the truth when they said that there was one set of rules for the people who agreed that they were people, and another for the monsters who everyone else agreed couldn’t be people at all. It made no sense unless the Hooflands had been unfair since the very beginning.

“I can hear you breathing,” called a voice from somewhere up ahead of her, old as the grave and dry as dust. “Come in, little intruder. Come in. I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve been waiting for so long.”

Regan had never seen a kirin, but from what she remembered, they were shaped much like unicorns, with hooves and horns and long, equine muzzles instead of flat human faces. The voice had none of the faint lisp she was accustomed to hearing from equine lips. The voice was low and tired and ancient, and entirely indistinguishable from a human’s. Cautiously, Regan started walking again, suddenly deeply glad for the bow in her hand.

A door stood open a little distance down the hall. Regan peeked around the frame, into the room on the other side.

It was large and square, with tapestries on the walls and carpets on the floor. A fire crackled in the grate, struggling and failing to warm the space. At the center of the room, positioned well away from the walls, was a tall canopy bed, mounded with pillows, and at the center of the bed was a human man, his hair grown long and wispy to match his unkempt beard and mustache. His body was so slight and wasted that it barely made a shape beneath the covers, which might as well have been tucked down flat.

He met Regan’s eyes, lifting his head the barest fraction of an inch in the process, and smiled.

“Took you long enough,” he said.

16

THE DANGER OF DESTINY

“I EXPECTED YOU YEARS ago,” the man continued. “I thought you’d do what I did, and make the first person you met bring you straight here, assuming you could see them as a person. I thought you’d be eager to get down to the business of heroism and fulfilling your destiny. Not to run off to the woods and live like an animal. I suppose I shouldn’t make assumptions.” He coughed, covering his mouth with his hand; when he pulled it away, his palm was red with blood. “But you’re here now, come to save the world the same way I did.”

Regan stared at him. “I thought you disappeared after you helped Kagami take the throne,” she said, lips numb.

“Is that what they say? Well, I suppose it’s a better story than ‘I slit a silly little mare’s throat and bled her out in what she thought was going to be her throne room.’” His voice was cold, dispassionate; not cruel. He would have had to care at least a little to be cruel. “I was seventeen years old. I had a lover waiting for me, a farm I was set to take over when my father died, and suddenly, these talking horses were telling me I had to be their savior, even though there wasn’t anything to save them from. Kagami was the one who found me after I tumbled through my door. She said the king had ordered her family’s fields burned when they refused to pay their taxes, and so she thought saving the world might mean overthrowing the king. It was as good an answer as any. She took me here, to the palace, and I learned the king had been dead for decades, and an ancient human woman had been secretly ruling in his place, never showing her face to the representatives of the herds who came to call on her, never stirring from the palace. She was even older then than I am now, if you can believe it.” He coughed again, almost smiling. “I had never seen anyone so old. It seemed impossible that she should be among the living. She had been here since she was a child, speaking to her subjects from behind a curtain, and had been waiting for me for years.”

“You killed her,” whispered Regan.

“Yes, I did,” said the man. “She told me how to operate this palace from the shadows, and I killed her at her request, and then I killed Kagami, before she could go back to her farm and tell the others that their beloved king had been a human woman all along. That was how I saved the world. I took the old woman’s place behind the curtain. They all believe the Queen’s splendor is too glorious for any of her subjects to behold, and they’re happy to obey a voice without a face when it tells them to do things they already believe to be correct.”

Regan blinked, disbelieving. “How did murder save the world?”