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

by Seanan McGuire

Loving horses didn’t make her strange, and strange was something to be feared and avoided above all else in the vicious political landscape of the playground, where the slightest sign of aberration or strangeness was enough to bring about instant ostracization. That was something adults couldn’t understand, not even when they understood other things, like a love of horses or a burning need to go to the state fair, lest a lack of funnel cake lead to gruesome and inescapable death. They thought children, especially girl children, were all sugar and lace, and that when those children fought, they would do so cleanly and in the open, where adult observers could intervene. It was like they’d drawn a veil of fellow-feeling and good intentions over their own childhoods as soon as they crossed the magic line into adulthood, and left all the strange feuds, unexpected betrayals, and arbitrary shunnings behind them.

Regan had known from the beginning that Laurel’s love was conditional. It came with so many strings that it was easy to get tangled inside it, unable to even consider trying to break free. Laurel’s love was a safe, if rigid, cocoon. Regan bit her lip and shook her head, unsure how to articulate any of the things she was feeling. “Laurel’s my best friend,” she said. “Does that make it okay for her to push you around and tell you Heather can’t be your friend anymore? Is that fair? You know there’s no right way to be a girl. Destiny isn’t reality.”

“Why are girls starting puberty so early, anyway?” grumbled Hugo. “I don’t remember any of the girls needing bras before they were thirteen, and now it’s like some sort of a race.” “It was always a race, dear, it was just a race you weren’t running,” said Maureen.

Maybe she wouldn’t have done that if her mother had insisted she take a day off from school to think about what she’d learned and what it would mean for her future. Maybe she would have realized staying quiet wasn’t the same thing as lying, and that while her body wasn’t any sort of shameful secret, she was under no obligation to share it with anyone, especially not with a girl who had proven, over and over again, that she couldn’t be trusted with anything that didn’t fit her narrow view of the world. Maybe she would have realized that if there was no right way to be a girl, there was no wrong way either. But Regan was accustomed to trusting Laurel, treating her like a vicious dog that wouldn’t bite the one who held its leash, even as it barked and snarled at everyone else. Maybe that was why she missed the slow widening of Laurel’s eyes, the slow paling of her cheeks, right until the moment Laurel pushed her chair away from the table and demanded, in a horrified tone, “You’re a boy?!” “No,” Regan protested. “No, I’m not a boy, I’ve never been a boy, I’m a girl just like you, just one whose body’s built a little differently—being intersex is perfectly normal, it’s as common as being redheaded, and we have six redheads just in the third grade. I’m not a boy!”

We should take a moment here, to talk about the wood. It was a small, tamed thing by the standards humans set for forests, long since boxed in on all sides by residential construction, homes and shopping malls and highways. But it remembered what it was to have been wild. It contained the seeds of its own restoration, birds and beasts and stinging insects, fish and frogs and small, burrowing things. If the boundaries were ever removed, the wood would be ready to spring back into its old wildness, for it had never been domesticated, merely winnowed down and contained. Because it was tame, Regan could walk safely, without fear of meeting anything larger than a raccoon or a deer. Because it had been wild, she still caught her breath when she heard something passing in the brush, when a branch snapped for no apparent reason. Such is the dichotomy of forests. Even the smallest remembers what it was to cover nations, and the shadows they contain will whisper that knowledge to anyone who listens.

The doorway, such as it was, opened on a clear patch of ground, clay dotted with green moss and the small white flowers that sometimes grew alongside the creek. It looked perfectly ordinary, and perfectly harmless. “I am sure,” said Regan, and stepped through. She wouldn’t be seen again in the woods near her house for six long years.

“You’re human. You saw a strange door, right? And you went through it, and now you’re here?” “Yes,” said Regan in a small voice. “Welcome to the Hooflands,” said Pansy. “We’re happy to have you, even if you being here means something’s coming.”

“When a human shows up in the Hooflands, it means something bad’s about to happen. You’re tricky little things. Well suited to tight spaces, and thumbs. Having thumbs is sort of like having a magical sword no one can take away from you. It’s destiny!”

🤣

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

“Who’s Laurel? Is she with a different herd? We don’t have anyone here by that name, but if you tell me where she is, we can take you to her.” It would be sad to lose the human so quickly. It would be even sadder to keep the human against her will. Humans were people too, at least according to the stories Rose and Peony told, and she didn’t want to be cruel to someone who was a person. It wouldn’t be like keeping a unicorn penned for its own safety. It would be like someone putting a rope around her neck, and that thought was enough to make the flesh on her withers crawl.

Are there really not humans here?” “Not usually. Sometimes when something big and important is going to happen, a human shows up. Not always. When Queen Kagami grew up enough to take her family’s castle back from the Kelpie King who’d stolen it from her parents, a human came out of nowhere and summoned rainbows and lightning from the sky to help her fight for her rightful place. Everyone says that human was very heroic, and when he was finished with his quest, he disappeared, and Her Sunlit Majesty ascended to the throne. There hasn’t been a human since him.” “How long ago was that?” Chicory shrugged. “I don’t know. I wasn’t foaled. Years and years and years ago. Maybe a hundred of them? I don’t think my mother was foaled yet, either. Maybe her mother was, but Grandma Borage died two seasons ago.”

Humans have short little legs. We’d leave you behind in a blink, and that wouldn’t be nice of us. Something would eat you if you went wandering alone, without your herd.” “I don’t like the sound of that,” said Regan. “Most people don’t, which is why they stay with their herds.”

“Peace, child, peace.” Daisy offered her a smile. “Any of us could disappear at any time. Landslides, predators, even illness, they come for us all if age doesn’t get there first. So you can be my apprentice, and I’ll teach you as much as I can before you leave us, and when you do leave us, I’ll find someone else who wants the things I have to offer.

Daisy smiled, watching the girl go. It had been so long since there was a human in the Hooflands. She didn’t like to consider what might be ahead of them that was bad enough to require human intervention. Humans were heroes and lightning rods for disaster, and none of the stories she’d heard about them when she was a filly had ended gently for them, or for the people around them. Aster had always been careful to tell Chicory the most hopeful of the human stories, the ones where the humans did their grand deeds and disappeared, presumably going back where they came from, but Daisy’s own mother had been less circumspect, and she knew where most of the humans had gone when their battle ended—into the ground. She couldn’t possibly say whether the same fate waited for Regan—it was too soon for that, and she’d never heard of a human hero as young as Regan was, or as eager to please—but the girl was more likely to find her own doom than a doorway home. In the meantime, the herd would care for and tend to her, and part of that caring was keeping her busy enough that her thoughts didn’t devour themselves alive. She was a child, far from home, surrounded by members of a species that wasn’t hers. It would have been understandable for her to fall into despair. The fact that she hadn’t was barely shy of a miracle, and one more piece of proof that humans could do anything when they put their minds to it.

They were going to protect and nurture the girl as long as they could, keeping her safe from a world that would have happily destroyed her. Regan still viewed anything with hooves as a potential friend, looking on them with joy and wonder, no matter how many times she was warned about the kelpies and the perytons and the bat-winged pterippus. It made Daisy wonder how many humans they had missed, children who had stumbled through a door without someone like Pansy nearby to save them from their own adventure. Regan could have been lost before she was ever found, if the kelpies had been only a little bit hungrier on the day she’d crossed over.

She turned her gaze on Regan. “We won’t deny you the Fair, any more than we’d force you to go and see the Queen before you must. You have every right to see and experience and enjoy the world you’re going to be asked to save. See its wonders. Taste its bounty.

Anything with enough brain to know itself as an individual will reach out to others, looking for companionship, looking for other eyes with which to see the world.

“Why are they so surprised?” asked Regan. “None of you were this surprised.” “Oh, we were. We just knew better than to show it. Pansy found you because you were meant to be with us—humans always wind up where they’re supposed to be, and that made you ours. And we didn’t want to scare you off. Even I know how important it is for a herd to have the honor of hosting a human. We’ll be remembered for centuries after you do whatever it is you’ve come here to do. You’ll save the Queen or change the world, and our descendants will be honored for things they had nothing to do with. I know the aunts are going courting, and it’s because you’re here.”

“I’m sorry we had to hit you. That wasn’t part of the plan.” “So untie me and let me hit you back,” said Regan.

“They should have taken you to her right away, so you could begin fulfilling your destiny.” “I don’t believe in destiny.”

“You understand this was for your own good.” “I understand you think this was for my own good.” Regan shifted in the straw, pulling herself as far back as she could manage with the twine binding her ankles. “I understand you think you know what’s best for me, when you’ve never met me before and don’t know what I want.”

“Humans only ever mean upheaval. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t coming to make trouble. The Queen wants you where she can keep an eye on you, and I’m happy to be the one to deliver you.” “I’m not a package, I’m a person!” “You’re a human. Whether you’re a person is still up for debate. Now be quiet, or I’ll give the Queen your corpse and tell her it couldn’t be helped. If the universe really wants us to have a human, it’ll send another one. The hills are heavy with the bones of would-be heroes.”

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.

“We have always held the land above the one who rules it.”

You wouldn’t know what to do without me.” Chicory sobered. “You’re right, I wouldn’t,” she said. “So when they tell you it’s time to go and be a hero, I want you to tell them you can’t do it.” “What?” “Everyone says a human has to be a hero. They talk about it at night, when they think we’re asleep. Mom says you’re tall enough to be an adult human now, and that means you’ll probably have to be a hero soon. But I don’t want you to!” “Why not?” Regan frowned. “If I came here so I could save the Hooflands, doesn’t that mean I should do it? This is my home too. I don’t want anything bad to happen here.” “Because humans go away after they turn into heroes!” snapped Chicory, and Regan froze.

“What does she even want with me?” Regan shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense. If she’d been willing to leave us alone, we’d still be in the fields with the flock, not hiding in a forest in the middle of nowhere.” “She hates you because she’s what you’re going to save us from,” said Aster. “Things have grown worse since we left. The merchants speak of it. Prices for crops and livestock continue to drop, and the Queen sets the prices; she’s to blame. The herds are starving. They can’t afford to eat, to replace their tools, to go courting at the Fair—it’s all falling apart. The Queen sends her soldiers to burn their fields when they refuse to tell her what she wants to know. She’s no fit queen any longer. I’m sorry, but it’s time for you to go to her.” “I did not agree to this,” snapped Daisy. “We can hide again. There’s more north in the world.” “No,” said Regan. “The foals deserve better than to grow up hiding, and they’ll hate me for it when they realize I’m the reason they had to. Chicory deserves better. All the herds do. If the Queen is hurting them, we have to stop her. You raised me to save our world. Let me save it.”

Laurel’s reaction to her secret had been terrifying; she didn’t regret telling it, not anymore. She wasn’t ashamed of herself. Laurel was the one who had been in the wrong, and anyone who answered a friend’s honesty with horror and rejection had never been a friend in the first place.

“The centaurs are weak, and so they hate us. Civilization makes you weak. The centaurs have been civilized for long and long. If we had found you first, your time in the Hooflands would have been a very different thing.” “Yes, because you would have ripped me to pieces and devoured my liver.” “Perhaps,” allowed the kelpie. “But not until the time had come for you to play at salvation. We aren’t civilized, but we aren’t stupid.”

“Here. Get on my back. Humans are notoriously slow, and I can have you to the castle in less time than it takes my stomach to sour.” Regan took a step backward. “If I get on your back, you’ll rip me to pieces.” “Have you saved the world yet?” “Well, no.” “Then no, I won’t. I told you, I’m not stupid. My hunger to survive is greater than my hunger for human flesh. Especially not human flesh that’s been kept by centaurs for years on end. You’ll taste of austerity and bad cooking. No, thank you. Get on my back and I’ll carry you where you need to go.” Still Regan hesitated. The kelpie stomped one foot in the muddy puddle it was standing in. “Don’t be foolish, child. The sooner you save the world, the sooner I can eat you.”

“Where there’s water, you’ll find kelpies. Not all my cousins are as considerate as I am.” “You mean they’ll eat me before I have a chance to save the world?” “Not all of you, but I think you’d regard losing a limb or two as inconvenient enough to make the world harder to save.”

The chill bite of the water soothed her thoughts in tandem with her aching muscles, and she surfaced into a better world. Assuming one could call a ring of kelpies “a better world.” The water horses watched her with hungry eyes, fangs on full display and ears tight against their heads. Regan blinked. No fear followed. The centaurs had protected her too well, and Gristle had carried her too far, and she could never truly fear something that looked so much like her beloved horses. “Hello,” she said. “I’m Regan. I’m supposed to save the world, and I can’t do that if you eat me.”

“Perytons can talk?” “Everything talks, human,” said Gristle. “Even worthless feathered scavengers. Most simply can’t listen. You’d have heard our kind long ago if you hadn’t been with the centaurs.”

The peryton flattened her ears, looking distressed. “Please don’t hurt me.” “I wouldn’t,” said Regan. “I don’t think I could. You have wings and antlers and very sharp hooves. I only have a bow.” “And thumbs, and a kelpie,” said the peryton.

Their hooves clopped softly against the soft earth, and the sky smelled like rain on the way, and everything about the moment was inevitable; everything about the moment had been coming for her since the moment she’d walked through a door that wasn’t and into a world that somehow knew enough to know that it was going to need saving. Not just saving: saving by someone who loved it.

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.

“All queens are bad queens,” said Gristle. “When the queen is a centaur or a faun, they treat those of us without hands as if we were somehow less a part of the Hooflands than they are, when the very world is named for us. When the queen is a kirin or a hippogriff, they behave as if those who eat meat are savages who don’t deserve the lands we live on. There’s never been a kelpie queen. Those doors are closed to monsters like me.” “There’s never been a peryton queen, either,” said Zephyr sadly. “They call us monsters, too, because they can’t talk to us.” “Why can’t they?” asked Regan, confused. “If I can talk to you, they should be able to.” “Civilized people don’t know how to listen,” said Gristle. “All their magic goes into the places they believe it belongs. You, human, have been here long enough to learn some magic of your own, and now any of us can speak with you, if we have cause to want to.”

“How does a queen get chosen, anyway?” “When an old queen dies, every herd in the Hooflands puts forth their finest candidate. They go to the meeting chamber built by the first Alliance of Hooves and Hands, back in the days before we had memory or thought, when the humans came here and refused to claim our pastures as their own. Only one leaves the chamber and ascends to the throne. The others are lost forever.” “One of my mother’s sisters went when this queen was chosen, even though she knew a peryton would never hold the throne,” said Zephyr, sounding almost wistful. “I never met her, but Mother says she had antlers like cupped hands, full of wind and moonlight, and she was beautiful beyond bearing.” Regan didn’t feel like she could say anything about peryton standards of beauty, so she didn’t say anything at all. “As to how the queen is chosen from among the candidates, no one knows,” said Gristle. “Maybe she eats the others. Maybe she takes the throne with a full belly, containing part of every other thinking creature in the Hooflands. Even if she doesn’t eat them, they all vanish utterly and eternally.” Regan shuddered. “But that would mean every reign began with murder. That’s no way to start.” “We know she’s a bad queen now, so maybe she was always bad and just took a while to show it,” said Zephyr. “Yes, but if she killed all the other contenders, then all the other kings and queens before her had to do that too. And if they all had to do that, there have never bee...

“You’ll be a wonderful dinner, after you’ve saved the world. Wisdom seasons the meat.” “I’m not meat, I’m Regan,” said Regan.

“You’ll die soon enough, from the looks of you,” she said. “I apprenticed to a healer. There’s blood on your hands. Your lungs are killing you, and I don’t feel the need to make it any easier.” “But whoever comes to find you will find me, and they’ll know about the lie! They’ll know Kagami was never queen, and they’ll know you’re not a hero.” “Good. Let them learn that destiny’s a lie, and let them find the way to govern themselves, as they should have done from the beginning. Let them learn humans are people, the way you never learned that they were,” said Regan, and turned on her heel and walked away from the old man—away from the old monster—without a backward glance. She didn’t feel like a hero. She didn’t feel like much of anything beyond an exhausted teenager. She still felt like she was saving the world.

“Aren’t you going to arrest me?” “No,” said the minotaur, and bowed. “She ordered us to do things in her name that the Hooflands may never forgive us for. She reigned too long, and became no fit queen. We should not have waited for a human to save us.” “I think you’re right,” said Regan. “And I think all people in the Hooflands should have the same rights and respect, no matter who or what they are. Humans and kelpies, centaurs and perytons, it doesn’t matter. We’re all people here. We all get to have the same chance to save the world.”

“If you’ve saved us, we have no more need for a human.” “You never needed a human,” she said. “We were only ever something you wanted, whether or not we were supposed to be here.

“Why do you speak to the kelpie?” he asked. “Because I’m polite enough to listen,” said Regan.