PANSY RAN WHAT FELT like forever but was probably no more than a mile before she cantered to a stop, twisted around, and scooped Regan off her back, setting the girl on her feet.
“Give me your hands,” she said, producing a knife from inside her vest. “I’ll cut that twine.” Her eyes searched Regan’s face, concern and fear evident. “Did they hurt you?”
“They hit me in the head when they took me,” said Regan, obediently sticking her hands out. “It still hurts. But I’m not dizzy or anything, and my dad always said that was how you could tell if someone had a concussion.” A sudden wave of almost painful homesickness washed over her. She missed her parents. She missed her home. She missed her horses. They must be so confused about why she stopped coming to the stable. They must miss her so much.
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” said Pansy, gently taking her wrists and slicing through the twine with a flick of her knife. Pain followed immediately after, rushing into the grooves the twine had cut into her skin, and Regan made a soft sound as she pulled her hands away and began rubbing her wrists. “We should never have let you and Chicory go off alone the way we did. I guess we were thinking the Fair would be safe for you the way it’s always been for us. We should have known better. That’s our fault.”
“Chicory.” Regan’s eyes widened. “Is Chicory okay?”
“She will be, now that we have you back. Poor girl’s been eating herself alive out of the fear that we’d never see you again and it would be all her fault, or she was, when I left to try tracking you down.” Pansy shook her head. “She’s just a foal. We treat her like she’s almost grown because we don’t know what else to do with her, but she shouldn’t be asked to take things this heavy onto her shoulders before she’s old enough to pull a plow.”
“People keep asking me to save the world.” Regan couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her tone.
“Yes,” said Pansy. “That’s what humans do. But the Queen will see that you’re still a child, so I’m sure she won’t ask you to do anything dangerous. Maybe someday, but not now.”
“The Queen thinks I’m going to do something to hurt her.”
Pansy became abruptly very still. “What do you mean?”
“The people who grabbed me said it was because Queen Kagami told them to. They were going to take me to her. They said…” She swallowed, hard. “They said she wouldn’t care if I was alive or dead when they got there. I think they were going to kill me if I made too much trouble.”
“They said the Queen told them to take you.” Pansy’s expression, already grim, darkened further, becoming sepulchral. She offered her arm. “Come. We need to get back to the herd. Chicory will be so relieved to see that you’re safe.”
Regan took the arm without argument, swinging herself onto Pansy’s back and wrapping her own arms around Pansy’s waist. As soon as her hands were joined, Pansy broke into a gallop, hooves churning at the earth, hair whipping out behind her to slap Regan in the face. She held on tighter, feeling a traitorous rush of joy run along her spine. This was what she loved. Riding, running, the world rushing by like a chalk drawing, smudged and blurred and beautiful.
In all too short a time, Pansy was trotting to a stop in front of a longhouse—not one of the ones Regan had seen before. The unicorns were scattered around the field out front, cropping at the grass, ears swiveling as they listened for danger. A few of them lifted their heads as Regan slid down from Pansy’s back. Most didn’t even bother.
They proceeded inside, where the rest of the herd was waiting. Chicory had a black eye and one arm was bound in a sling. She turned toward the sound of the door opening, straightened, and cried, “Regan!” before rushing to them, shoving past her aunts in the process. She flung her good arm around Regan’s shoulders, buried her face against the other girl’s neck, and started to sob.
“I’m okay, Chicory, I’m okay,” said Regan, awkwardly patting her on the back. “Just be careful with my head, please. It hurts.”
Chicory let her go as fast as if she’d suddenly admitted to having fleas. Regan stood awkwardly as the rest of the herd clustered around. Pansy put her hands on Regan’s shoulders, holding her where she was.
“How did you find me?” Regan asked, craning her neck around to look at Pansy.
“Only one road out of the Fair from the merchant stalls,” said Pansy gruffly. “There’s always a lot of shouting during setup, with everyone trying to come in at once. They had to pull a whole food wagon out of the rotation during the Fair proper, and that’s strange enough that it gave me a place to start looking. I’ve been following you almost since you were taken.”
“Oh,” said Regan, not feeling as relieved as she wanted to. She’d still been in danger. Pansy had been right behind them, but they could have killed her before she was recovered, and she’d have to live with that knowledge forever.
Pansy shifted her attention from Regan to the rest of the herd. “The kidnappers were in the service of Queen Kagami,” she said.
“They said they were going to get a lot of money for taking me to her,” said Regan. “Dead or alive.”
The other centaurs recoiled, all save for Daisy, who was the oldest among them, and the most difficult to shock. She pushed her way forward, stopping next to Chicory. “We don’t doubt you, child, but are you sure they weren’t lying about the Queen asking them to take you?”
“I don’t know,” said Regan. “But they thought I was asleep when they said the part about getting a reward for me dead.”
Daisy looked gravely at the others. “Then you know what must be done.”
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.
“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.