Across the Green Grass Fields (Wayward Children, #6)(28)
“The northern edge of the Hooflands,” said Pansy. “We won’t go past the border, but we’ll go deep into the forest.”
“It’s seen as too dangerous for outsiders,” said Aster. “That’s why it’s the last place the Queen’s spies would think to look for us, but my sisters and I grew up here. The people of the forest tend to keep to themselves, and the perytons aren’t as big of a threat as people make them out to be. We’ll be fine, as long as we can find shelter. The herds here don’t keep animals like we do in the south, so there are no longhouses, but we can keep our eyes open for a traveler’s cottage. If there’s no one already there, we can stay until we build something more permanent.”
It was all so much, and it bordered on dizzying. Regan gestured to the briars around them, heavy with purple-red berries. “Are those edible?” she asked. They looked like someone had successfully crossed blackberries with raspberries, and she liked both those fruits well enough.
Aster nodded. “They are, and good for you as well.”
“Good.” Regan leaned over, filling her hands with berries as Chicory continued to walk, keeping pace with the adults as best as she could. The berries were sweet and tart at the same time, and they soothed Regan’s thirst even as they filled her stomach.
So it was that the herd came to the north.
It would have been easier on them if those who had gone courting at the Fair hadn’t found husbands before Regan was taken, but the world has never traded in “easy” when it didn’t have to. Rose, Lily, and Bramble soon learned they were with foal, and while they fussed about not being able to go back to the Fair if they had colts instead of fillies, they were all pleased by the situation. The “traveler’s cottage” Aster had mentioned turned out to be a barn-like building at the edge of the wood. There was room inside for all of them, but there wouldn’t be once the babies came. There was also a chance other travelers would know it was there, and Regan’s presence meant they needed someplace better concealed. They slept there for three nights while Clover and Aster walked the forest, looking for a place that hadn’t already been claimed.
On the morning of the fourth day, they returned with news of a clearing big enough to suit their needs, near a creek shaded by fruit trees. The herd relocated at once, and construction began the next day.
Pansy put her tools to good use, felling trees with a combination of sawing and well-placed kicks, then helping the others plane those trees down into usable planks. Chicory and Regan couldn’t participate, the one due to her broken arm and the other due to her size, but they were able to forage for food and stand watch. When things began coming together, it happened very quickly.
“It’s like a barn-raising,” said Regan, watching the walls rise into view as the adults pulled them off the ground.
“What’s a barn?” asked Chicory.
Regan laughed and hugged her.
This was a new place, well hidden from the danger posed by a Queen she’d never met, and far from the doors. They couldn’t find her here, she was sure of that. The fact that this meant she couldn’t go home never crossed her mind. In her relief at evading her kidnappers and slipping away from the Queen, she allowed herself to relax.
It took four days for the new “cottage” to be habitable. The interior was one large room, with individual stalls carved out of the back half of the space. Pansy and Aster spent an afternoon building a long table like the ones they’d had back in the longhouses, and once it was positioned at the center of the cottage, the previously impersonal space began to feel like home. Chicory and Regan stayed close, mindful of the dangers they had been warned roamed the woods. Perytons might be less aggressive than kelpies, but Regan had no interest in being eaten.
Finally, on the evening of the fourth day, Pansy called them to come inside, and they did, stepping into a warm, well-lit space that smelled of sap and sawdust and the heat coming off the bodies of the adults. The table was already set for dinner, with all the fruits of the forest laid out and waiting to be enjoyed.
Regan smiled, looking around at her family, and decided, in that moment, that she was home; she never wanted to leave, ever again.
12
TIME DOES AS TIME WILL
“CHICORY!” ASTER PLANTED HER hands on her hips and threw her head back to make her voice carry further. “You need to come back here right now, young lady!”
“Aw, Mom.” Chicory cantered out of the forest, a bow in her hand and a pheasant slung over her shoulder, feathers fanning down her back like a cloak. “Why do you need me now?”
“The babies won’t stop crying, and Lily’s at her wit’s end.” All three women had foaled, two colts and a filly. They were old enough now to have opinions about things, and those opinions tended to feed into one another, so that a single cranky baby could result in three sets of healthy screams.
Regan spent as little time as possible inside the cottage, citing her sensitive human hearing as the reason for her absence. Only Daisy seemed to realize she was lying. Regan’s ears were no more sensitive than a centaur’s, and now that she’d adjusted to the volume at which they lived their lives, she shouted as loudly as the rest of them. Daisy smirked whenever Regan pled her way out of a situation due to her hearing, and let her run off thinking she’d fooled the adults.