Across the Green Grass Fields (Wayward Children, #6)(18)
It was the sort of thought that benefitted no one. Daisy shook it off and walked faster, following Regan’s tracks to the longhouse.
Inside, Regan and Chicory were playing an elaborate game of tag, both laughing. Chicory was faster, but Regan was nimbler, and managed to evade being tagged by jumping off a table and grabbing the lowest of the ceiling beams, dangling. Chicory squealed and grabbed at her legs while Regan thrashed.
Daisy cast an indulgent smile at the girls as she trotted to where Aster, Rose, and Lily were repairing one of the nets they used to subdue the stallions when they grew too aggressive. “Foal’s here,” she said. “Good, strong colt. He’ll be a fine stallion someday.”
“Regan told us,” said Aster, and tied another careful knot in her mending. “She said you’ve asked her to serve as your apprentice.”
“So I have,” said Daisy.
“I always thought Chicory—”
“Chicory is a fine, clever girl, and you should have all the pride in her that you can carry. Take her to meet her sire when we go to the Fair. She’s earned the right.” Daisy scowled as Aster turned her face away. “If you didn’t want him to be a father, you shouldn’t have chosen him.”
“It wasn’t his fatherhood potential she was looking at,” murmured Rose. Lily snickered, stopping only when Daisy turned her scowl on the pair.
“And you! Neither of you has an aversion to men or motherhood, and you’re both young. The herd needs replenishing.”
“So we take apprentice contracts,” said Rose.
“Or you take husbands at the Fair and you foal in the spring,” said Daisy. “We won’t have a human forever, however much we might wish we would. Humans don’t work that way.” She cast a mournful glance at the two children chasing each other around the beam. “Soon she’ll be gone, and her clever hands with the rest of her. We need to build the herd, or Chicory will be an elder surrounded by the foals of strangers one day. That isn’t fair to her.”
The other women were briefly quiet, considering their own childhoods, and how lonely they would have been if they’d had no one but adults and apprentices to share them with. Finally, Lily nodded.
“Come the Fair, we’ll go courting,” she said.
“Good,” said Daisy, and the children played, and the time passed, and it was far too late to take any of it back.
9
OFF TO THE FAIR WITH BANGLES AND BEADS
ANOTHER SEASON PASSED, ONE day at a time, so quickly that Regan forgot she was meant to be worrying about her parents, far away from her and probably worried about where she was. Getting to them would mean risking a door, if a door could even be found, and she was still leery of those, even when they were solid, ordinary, and familiar, like the doors of the longhouses that provided safe haven for the herd as they moved closer to what she now recognized as the Fair.
One of the old stallions broke his leg and had to be put down, because there was no better way to ease his suffering. The horns of unicorns had no healing power after all. There was meat on the table that night for the first time in months, and this time, to honor the unicorn’s sacrifice, Regan ate with the rest of them. It was sweet and tender on her tongue, surprisingly so, and Pansy laughed at the expression on her face.
“You thought we raised these things for their charming personalities?” she asked. “They give good milk and they make decent cheese, but they do their best work on the dinner table.”
Regan, red-faced, ducked her chin and didn’t answer.
Time kept passing. They moved to another pasture; the mares who had belonged to the old stallion for the longest stopped looking for him, and settled to focusing on the latest crop of foals, who were growing up fast. Regan continued to study under Daisy, learning which herbs could ease a pain or break a fever, and which mushrooms could be pressed for good medicine, and which ones would kill in a mouthful. She still spent most of her time with Chicory, the two sinking deep into the sort of friendship that only ever seems to come for young things.
Regan grew taller, arms and legs lengthening as if they were trying to catch up with Chicory herself. She dropped from a tree onto Chicory’s back while the adults were rounding up the flock, and Chicory laughed as she broke into a gallop, the two girls forming one body as she raced across the meadow. Prior to that, when they moved from place to place, Regan had ridden either Pansy or Daisy. After that, she rode Chicory almost exclusively, and the two of them took to sleeping in a tangled heap of limbs and hair and noisy sighs. The adults all agreed, without a word exchanged, that if Regan’s act of human heroism was to give comfort and friendship to one lonely centaur girl, they would consider her efforts to have been well spent.
And then, in what felt like the blinking of an eye or the rising of a single sun, it was time for the Fair.
Chicory and Regan were ordered down to the pond, which had been verified clear of either kelpies or large snapping turtles, to scrub themselves until they shined. When they returned from their ablutions, dripping, they were met by Aster and Daisy, who ordered them to sit in the corner of the longhouse and stay as clean as possible. The rest of the herd was already absorbed in rounding up the unicorns, chasing them into a temporary paddock and guiding them down the path toward the distant promise of the Fair.
“Both of you will behave today,” said Aster, in a tone which left no room for argument. “You will obey your elders. Chicory, you will stay with Regan at all times, and if anyone attempts to touch her, you will stop them.”