Across the Green Grass Fields (Wayward Children, #6)(13)
Lacking any better ideas about how to cope with this strange new situation, Regan hugged her schoolbag to her chest and hurried after the centaur. Pansy smelled of clean fur and good, honest horse sweat, and that alone was enough to make Regan’s shoulders relax a little. This was all strange and impossible and maybe not even happening, but horses were horses, and as long as there were horses, things would turn out all right in the end.
“So,” asked Pansy, “what brings you here?” Then she laughed, as if she’d just said the funniest thing in the entire world.
“My feet?” ventured Regan. Pansy laughed even harder, her grasp on the unicorn’s horn never slipping.
“I like you, human Regan,” she said. “You’re all right. I always thought a human would be stuck-up and weird, but you’re almost like a normal person.”
Regan blinked. “Why would a human be stuck-up?” she asked.
“I told you; thumbs.” Pansy kept walking, her hooves clopping against the ground. “Thumbs aren’t that common, and most of us that have them aren’t as flexible as a human. We can’t fit into the narrow places where humans can go, and we can’t climb like humans can. We all know we’re limited.”
Regan, who had never considered that a centaur, with a horse’s powerful legs and incredible speed, might think a human was better than them, blinked and walked on in silence. Ahead of her, the unicorn lifted its long, silvery tail and delicately defecated on the path. It didn’t slow down or make any effort to cover what it had done. Regan wrinkled her nose. Manure was manure, even when it came out of a unicorn.
“I don’t think you’re limited,” she said, stepping around the pile of unicorn poop as she continued to follow. In a softer, shyer voice, she added, “I think you’re beautiful.”
Pansy’s laugh was as large as the rest of her. It boomed. The unicorn made a small bleating noise that sounded almost like an objection. Pansy laughed harder. “I can be beautiful and limited at the same time,” she said. “Take unicorns. They’re as beautiful as it gets, and they don’t have the brains to come in out of the rain. They’ll just stand there trying to figure out why they’re getting wet and wait for someone to come along and fix it for them. There’s nothing wrong with being limited, as long as you have people around to make sure those limitations don’t get you hurt. Or drenched.”
“Oh,” said Regan, who had never thought of it that way. “I guess that’s true.”
“You know it’s true,” said Pansy. “Come on.” She swept a curtain of branches aside and cantered through, leaving room for Regan to follow.
On the other side of the trees was a meadow that Regan knew didn’t exist; it was too large, for one thing, vast and rolling off toward the horizon, covered in lush grass that was a shade of blue-green she was reasonably sure couldn’t be natural. Patches of clover and buttery yellow flowers dotted the grass, but those were nowhere near as enthralling as the other things roaming the field.
Unicorns.
Dozens upon dozens of unicorns, in all shades of silver from cloud-pale to mercury-bright, their horns gleaming and their tails flicking away insects brazen enough to land on their glittering flanks. Most moved on their own, but there were a few small groups of three to six individuals, and even a few—Regan gasped aloud—a few babies. Their coats were more pearl than silvery, and their horns were short, stubby things, sharp as needles and ready to pierce the world.
Pansy shoved the unicorn she’d been leading away from her, giving it a slap on one perfectly sculpted flank. It shot her a reproachful look before trotting to the nearest patch of yellow flowers and lowering its head, beginning to delicately crop at the petals.
“They wander,” said Pansy. “Especially the yearlings. Think they know everything there is about staying alive in the woods, when the kelpies and the hippogriffs will rip them to bits as soon as look at them. Nothing territorial likes having unicorns in their backyard. Too much potential for stabbing.” She laughed again, startling some of the nearby unicorns, which trotted away. “But here I am, running my mouth like a filly, when you want to meet the others. Feel up to an adventure, human Regan?”
“Sure,” said Regan, trying to sound as brave as she didn’t feel. “Lead the way.”
Pansy smiled, and clapped a hand on Regan’s shoulder, and tugged her across the field, guiding her the same way she’d previously guided the unicorn. As for Regan, she went willingly, having no idea what else was left for her to do. They crossed the field of unicorns to a stone-and-timber building that Regan hadn’t noticed before, sheltered as it was in the shadow of a copse of pines. Pansy opened the door, and both of them stepped inside, and were gone.
7
WHERE THE CENTAURS GO
PART OF REGAN WAS honestly surprised when she passed through the doorway and found herself in a long, smoky room instead of disappearing back to her own world. Doorways were suddenly untrustworthy; any one of them could be a portal into someplace altogether different, someplace as strange compared to this world of centaurs and unicorns as it was compared to where she’d come from. Her mind balked at attempting to imagine such a world, and so she abandoned the attempt in favor of gawking at her surroundings.
The room was easily twice the length of the stable where her riding horse spent his days, and similar in construction, with a beamed roof and rough wooden floor. Hooks on the walls held tack and sacks of grain and various tools, most of which she recognized, but a few of which she didn’t. There were no stalls. Instead, the whole space was open, filled with smoke from the oil lamps burning on the long tables set up down the middle of the room, their surfaces laden with bowls of salad and platters of roast meat. Regan’s stomach did a flip as she tried to figure out what animals that meat could have come from. Given Pansy’s casual handling of the unicorn, and the fact that the creature was apparently part of a flock to be herded, she could be looking at roast unicorn right now.