Across the Green Grass Fields (Wayward Children, #6)(27)
Pansy nodded. “I do.”
Regan looked between them. “I don’t!” she said. “What are you going to do?”
“We’re going to run, child,” said Daisy. “We leave the flock, and we run, as far as our hooves will carry us. You are the future of the Hooflands. It is your destiny. The doors open only when we’re standing on the cusp of greatest need, and you wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t chosen you. That the Queen would set herself against you is regrettable, and a sign, perhaps, that she has forgotten the balance of things.”
“What does the Queen do, anyway?” asked Regan, trying not to resent the fact that even the centaurs thought she was here to fulfill some unwanted destiny. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. She refused. “She rules, but what does that mean?”
“She sets the prices for herds and harvest,” said Daisy. “She decides which livestock will have value and which will not. She sets guards against the deep forest where perytons and kelpies live, to keep us safe. Her armies watch the borders against invasion from outside.”
“Wait,” said Regan, who had never heard a murmur of anything outside the Hooflands. “What lives outside the Hooflands? And what invasion?”
Daisy looked uncomfortable. “No one knows,” she said. “There hasn’t been one in living memory. But the Queen keeps us safe. She walks in sunlight, blessed and kept by the Hooflands themselves, and without her, we would fall to darkness.”
“But the price for our livestock has been going down as long as I’ve been old enough to know the herd’s finances, and the price of other food keeps going up,” said Chicory. “Is she really keeping us safe if we have to keep working harder in order not to starve?”
“I don’t know,” said Daisy. “She’s the Queen. That means we follow and obey her. Or it always has, before she became a danger to our Regan. She’s our Queen. Regardless, if there are sides to choose, we’ve already chosen ours.” She knelt, resting her weight on her forelegs while her hind remained straight and high, tail lashing. “We have always held the land above the one who rules it.”
Regan stared, shocked and a little terrified, as one by one, the centaurs who had become her family mirrored Daisy’s gesture. Finally, she turned to Pansy and asked, “What will happen to the unicorns?”
Pansy smiled. “There are other herders. We speak with them often. Several know what happened, that you were taken from the Fair. When we haven’t come to speak with them for several days, they’ll send someone to check on us. Finding us gone and the flock alone, they’ll do what good caretakers always do, and they’ll care for them. We’ll have to buy new stock when this is over, but that’s a small price to pay for the survival of our world and the safety of our child.”
She reached out then, gently brushing Regan’s hair away from her face with one thick-nailed hand.
“You ready to run away with us, kiddo?”
Unable to speak past the lump in her throat, Regan nodded.
Later, neither she nor Chicory would be able to remember many details about that night. There was a brief squabble over who she was going to ride with, before Aster said Chicory’s legs were fine, even if her arm was broken, and Regan could ride with her. The rest of the herd would be carrying their possessions. They were leaving the unicorns, but taking their resources—clothing, food, tools, and Daisy’s stores of herbs and tinctures. They were going to disappear, not die. That meant taking some precautions.
“The Queen’s castle is south of here,” said Daisy. “We go north.”
The others agreed, and when they were done packing and strapping their worldly goods to one another’s backs, Pansy lifted Regan off her feet and set her gently astride Chicory. Mindful of her friend’s injuries, Regan slid her arms around her waist and held on tight as Chicory set off at a gentle trot, following the adults.
They moved down the road in as close to silence as eight adult centaurs and one filly could manage, leaving the longhouse and unicorns behind. Rose was the last out of the yard; she looked sadly at the unicorns as she closed the gate behind herself, locking them inside. Then she trotted after the others, catching up in short order.
They walked through the night and all the way to morning. Regan fell asleep on Chicory’s back, resting her weight on the other girl’s shoulders. When the sunlight shining in her eyes finally woke her, she opened them on what seemed to be a whole new world.
Gone were the cultivated fields and grazing herds she’d grown accustomed to, replaced by orchards and thorn briars and the looming outline of a massive forest. There were no fences or walls, only the stretch of the land in all directions, stopped to the north by a line of mountains the color of slate, topped with snow and seemingly taller than the sky. What looked like a rabbit with a deer’s antlers dashed out of the brush and across the path, vanishing into the tall grass.
The path was another change. It was pressed dirt, studded with wildflowers and weeds, and nowhere near straight or regular enough to earn the title of “road.” Pansy looked over, smiling wearily.
“Good, you’re awake,” she said. “We’ll keep going until nightfall, but where we’re headed is somewhere no one will think to look for us. You’ll be safe.”
“Where are we?” asked Regan muzzily. She rubbed her eyes, sitting up straighter.