Across the Green Grass Fields (Wayward Children, #6)(25)

Everyone in the Hooflands had hooves. They never walked quietly, unless it was on grass or soft earth, and while there was a layer of straw covering the floor, it wasn’t enough to muffle the sound of hoofbeats. Human feet in sneakers worn smooth as river rocks were another matter. She moved silently across the room, and no one came to see what she was doing, or seemed to realize she was loose.

It was too dark for Regan to see anything, so she placed her joined hands against the wall at roughly the height of a knob or latch and began tiptoeing around the edge of the room, waiting for the moment when her fingers would snag against something that didn’t fit.

She had made it almost halfway around when she felt cool metal, not machined like the latches back at home, but beaten against an anvil until it turned smooth. It was textured, something like brick and something like rough wood and something like a wrought iron fence. Regan swallowed, closing her eyes in silent hope, before grabbing it and pushing down as hard as she could.

If she’d been a smaller or less athletic child, she might not have had the strength to move the latch. She leaned against it with everything she had, and it clicked, a tiny but somehow terrifying sound, before it swung away from her, taking a large piece of wall with it.

Outside, it was dark, and the moonlight hung silvery over an unfamiliar field. She took a shaking step forward, and then another, until she was standing next to the building where she’d been confined, and could see that it was closer to a traditional barn than anything else she’d seen in the Hooflands. It was more constructed-looking than the longhouses the centaurs favored, with a sloping roof and whitewashed walls.

She took another step, and then she was running, racing for the distant line of what she assumed was a fence. Every time her feet hit the ground, it sent a jarring impact all the way along her spine to the sore spot on her skull, which throbbed and ached in tempo with her flight. She didn’t slow down. Instead, she ran faster, loping along until she felt like she could outrun Chicory, like she was the fastest thing in the world.

Behind her, she heard a door slam open and the bull-headed man’s angry bellow as he realized his prey was escaping. If he’d been a centaur, it would have already been over, with no chance of escape, but he was a biped like her, only bigger and bulkier, which meant he might be slower. The faun and the silene were smaller, sure, but they had less motivation to run than she did; she was confident enough to keep on going. The throbbing in her head got worse and worse, and her lungs began to ache, but she had to get away.

Destiny wasn’t real. Destiny was for people like Laurel, who could pin everything they had to an idea that the world was supposed to work in a certain way, and refuse to let it change. If these people said her destiny was to see the Queen, she would prove them wrong. She wasn’t their chosen one. She was just Regan, and as Regan, she ran.

Then the fence was there. She couldn’t climb it with her hands tied, so she dropped to the ground and rolled below the bottom bar. For once, her delayed puberty seemed like a blessing and not a punishment; if she’d developed the hips or breasts she’d been envying on the other girls before coming to the Hooflands, she might not have been able to fit.

Unfortunately, rolling meant she saw what was behind her, and what was behind her was the faun, running faster than seemed possible with her narrow legs and cloven hooves. Regan rolled, moving out of reach just as the faun reached the fence. She lunged across it, trying to grab the human girl, but Regan was already scrambling to her feet and backpedaling across the grass, getting further out of range. The faun began climbing the fence, and the other two were close behind her, their hooves not carrying them as quickly. They carried them all the same.

Regan spun around and broke back into a run, heading for the distant smudge of a tree line. There would be kelpies there if there was water, and perytons if there wasn’t, and either way, she’d be delivering herself into their terrible teeth—but their teeth seemed suddenly less dangerous than the people chasing her. Their teeth didn’t want to bind her to a destiny.

She was halfway to the trees when a dark shape loomed out of the underbrush, racing toward her at a pace she couldn’t have hoped to match, much less beat. I guess the kelpies heard me coming, she thought, already resigned to what was going to happen next. Still she kept running, as hard and as fast as she could, until it felt like the muscles in her thighs would tear and break away, until it felt like there was nothing in the world but running. At least she’d die knowing she’d tried; at least she’d go down fighting to the last to survive.

Then the figure drew close enough for her to see the moonlight glinting off the steel-gray of her coat and the matching steel-gray of her hair, and Regan’s heart leapt as she held tied hands out to Pansy, silently pleading. The centaur barely slowed as she reached down, grabbed Regan around the waist, and slung the girl across her back like a sack of wheat, wheeling and running back the way she’d come.

Regan watched as the figures of her kidnappers dwindled in the distance and were gone.





11





THE AFTERMATH OF THE UNTHINKABLE


PANSY RAN WHAT FELT like forever but was probably no more than a mile before she cantered to a stop, twisted around, and scooped Regan off her back, setting the girl on her feet.

“Give me your hands,” she said, producing a knife from inside her vest. “I’ll cut that twine.” Her eyes searched Regan’s face, concern and fear evident. “Did they hurt you?”