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

by Seanan McGuire

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.

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.

She knew even without asking that Heather was no longer a part of the trusted inner circle: she had performed girlhood incorrectly and hadn’t instantly mended her ways when confronted with Laurel’s anger. She was out.

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.”

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.

Having thumbs is sort of like having a magical sword no one can take away from you.

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

Doorways were suddenly untrustworthy; any one of them could be a portal into someplace altogether different, someplace as strange compared to this world of centaurs and unicorns as it was compared to where she’d come from.

As the youngest member of the herd, the logic the adults lived by seemed to think she would be the best at caring for young things, since she remembered what it was to be one of them. She found herself tapped for babysitting any time the adults got tired of it,

anyone who answered a friend’s honesty with horror and rejection had never been a friend in the first place.