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

by Seanan McGuire

thoughts like that made her feel so guilty the soles of her feet itched),

Regan’s mother frowned, filled with a sadness as vast and impossible to articulate as it was when she’d been Regan’s age and squirming under the thumb of her own playground dictatrix,

Something about her tone made her mother freeze in the doorway, a thread of panic wending its way down her throat and filling the hollow behind her lungs, until it felt like there was no room left for anything beyond being afraid.

“No,” said Regan. “No one wants seconds. No one wants to keep sitting here, when we’re supposed to be talking about what’s wrong with me.” “There’s nothing wrong with you,” said her father, and quailed as Regan turned an imperious, oddly adult glare on him. In that moment, he saw what it was going to be like when she was grown and no longer required to bury her ideas and desires beneath those of her parents. She was going to be a force of nature, and woe betide anyone who stood in her way.

If she never had to return to school and confront Laurel’s brutally triumphant, endlessly cruel eyes.

Maybe this was just an art project, but something about it felt wrong. She was trespassing on someone else’s dream.

There’s nothing wrong with being limited, as long as you have people around to make sure those limitations don’t get you hurt.

babies. Their coats were more pearl than silvery, and their horns were short, stubby things, sharp as needles and ready to pierce the world.

with wrinkles and lines worked in the soft skin of her face

clamping a hand down on her shoulder like the pressure enough would be a command to silence.

what exquisiteness she wrought of language And SUCCINCT and COMPLETE *swoon*

the noise so large in the enclosed space that it virtually had physical form.

for a moment, they were just two young girls surrounded by adults, united in a way that had been true since the beginning of time.

birthing, which required care to ensure the infant unicorns didn’t accidentally gore their mothers on the way into the world. Wild unicorns were born with blunter horns, Daisy said, but these were domesticated unicorns, and they’d been bred to look as impressive as possible, which meant their horns were larger and sharper from the beginning.

Taking those things for granted, oh, dream

the two sinking deep into the sort of friendship that only ever seems to come for young things.

Regan blinked, leaning farther back, trying to find her way to the answer. Finally, she said, “A stranger in a red coat breaks into your house and leaves toys and puts walnuts and candy in your socks.”

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 peryton stopped flailing and stared at her with enormous eyes the color of a cloudless sky.

asked, “Are you still going to eat me?” “Not while you’re alive! That would be awful!” The peryton flattened her ears, looking distressed. “Please don’t hurt me.”

To her further surprise, the peryton followed, flapping its great barn owl’s wings and gliding to a dainty landing, keeping a respectful distance from Gristle.

The peryton looked uncertain, or as uncertain as a creature with a face like a skinless deer could look.

She still didn’t believe in destiny. Clay shaped into a cup was not always destined to become a drinking vessel; it was simply shaped by someone too large to be resisted. She was not clay, but she had been shaped by her circumstances all the same, not directed by any destiny.

Mother says she had antlers like cupped hands, full of wind and moonlight, and she was beautiful beyond bearing.”