THE AIR ON THE other side of the doorway seemed sweeter, cleaner, like it had been fed through some sort of filter that strained out every imperfection. Regan was too young to fully understand pollution and urban contaminants; she didn’t recognize that what she was smelling was an absence of exhaust fumes. She could tell there was a difference, even though she knew it was silly to pretend two steps could have made any real difference in the air.
The little white flowers she crushed under her heels made a sweet perfume, crisp and almost spicy, sort of like fresh-cut ginger root. She sniffed again before kneeling and picking one of the uncrushed flowers, rolling its stem between her fingers. It didn’t look like the flowers she’d seen elsewhere along the creek. It had the wrong number of petals, and the little speck of pollen at the center was a cheerful shade of pink, rather than sunny yellow.
Regan straightened, flower held between her thumb and forefinger, a shiver of unease running along her skin. Maybe this was just an art project, but something about it felt wrong. She was trespassing on someone else’s dream. She didn’t want anyone trespassing on her dreams, and that meant she shouldn’t be here. She turned back the way she’d come, intending to return to the path that would lead her home, and froze.
The doorway was gone.
The creek was there, and the hardpacked earth beside it, but it didn’t show any traces of footprints; it looked like no one had ever walked there at all. The trees seemed denser and more tangled, and she couldn’t see any houses or fences through them; this was a wood that had never known what it was to be penned in or encroached upon. Regan was familiar enough with this walk that she knew at once that the trees had changed. She stood, gaping, the flower falling from suddenly nerveless fingers.
She was still frozen when the unicorn stepped out of the trees. Its coat was a luminous white that seemed to glow against the shadows. Its head was shaped more like a deer’s than a horse’s, with a delicately pointed muzzle and large, mobile ears set to the sides rather than at the top. Its eyes were huge and liquid black, filled with glittering specks like stars.
But most impressive was the horn.
It was long, straight, and spiraled like the heart of a seashell, colored with the same mother-of-pearl shine. Regan had never seen anything so beautiful in her life. She couldn’t even move enough to gasp, only stare, transfixed, as the living dream walked on golden hooves toward the creek. The unicorn didn’t seem to realize she was there. Its ears were twitching, taking in every tiny sound around them, but its eyes were on the water. As Regan watched, it bent its long, graceful neck and began to drink.
Her heart felt like it was about to explode. Maybe this was her reward for everything that had happened; maybe she was being given the most beautiful death possible. Maybe—
“There you are, you stupid thing,” bellowed a voice, louder than any voice Regan had ever heard, even though it didn’t sound like a shout; it was just a big, booming voice. The speaker stepped into the open, and the reason for the volume became apparent. Regan’s head spun like all the air had been sucked out of her body, leaving her dizzy and on the edge of passing out. A unicorn was one thing. A centaur was something entirely else.
And this was a centaur. From the waist down, the new arrival was a black draft horse with shaggy steel gray feathering around its vast hooves. It was at least sixteen hands tall—taller still once its human half was taken into account. Viewed from a distance, and without her horse half, the centaur’s human half might have seemed like a muscular woman in her early twenties with hair the same steely gray as her tail and the fur around her hooves. Seen up close, she was gigantic, Amazonian, built to scale with her equine lower portion.
Regan had never seen a human being so large, and she still couldn’t breathe as the centaur trotted over to the unicorn, grabbed it by the horn, and began pulling it back toward the trees. The unicorn went docilely, seemingly accustomed to this treatment. In a moment, it would be gone, and the most magical thing Regan had ever experienced would be over. She finally managed to pull in a tiny breath, making a faint whimpering sound in the process. The centaur froze, hand clenched tight around the unicorn’s horn, and turned to look behind herself. Regan noted, almost dispassionately, that the centaur’s ears were shaped somewhere between a human’s and a horse’s, as impossible as the rest of her.
None of this was happening. None of this could be happening. She must have fallen and smacked her head against one of the larger rocks that dotted the water. It was the only explanation for what she was—what she couldn’t possibly be—seeing.
The centaur blinked slowly. Her eyes were steely gray, like her hair. How nice that she’s color-coordinated, thought Regan, and swallowed what would surely have been a borderline-hysterical giggle.
“Human?” said the centaur in a wondering tone. It was the same tone Regan would have used to say “unicorn,” had she been able to speak. “Are you a human? Am I standing in front of a human?”
Regan tried to pull in a breath that she could use to shape her reply. Her lungs refused to cooperate, and all she managed to do was make a faint, wounded wheezing sound.
The centaur let go of the unicorn’s horn and clapped her massive hands, producing a sound akin to thunder. The unicorn flicked one petaled ear but didn’t run. Regan swayed in place, more sure than ever that this had to be a dream. Nothing else made sense. Unicorns weren’t real. Centaurs weren’t real either, and if they had been, they wouldn’t have been utterly enchanted by the sight of a human.
“You’ve just arrived, haven’t you?” asked the centaur. “Bright and beautiful and brand-new, and I found you! Me, Pansy, found a human before someone else had a claim to chase. That’s even better than bringing back a lost unicorn! A real human—you are a human, aren’t you, not satyr or silene playing games with poor Pansy?”
“I’m human,” whispered Regan. Her voice sounded dull, almost deadened. Still, now that she’d found it, it was willing to let her keep going, which she considered very sporting of it. “You’re not real. None of this is real. Unicorns don’t exist.”
“But here I am, and here’s a unicorn, and there you are.” The centaur beamed. “Come on, human, let’s go see the others. They’re going to be even happier about this than I am.”
Regan shook her head. “No. This isn’t real. Centaurs are characters from Greek mythology. They’re not named ‘Pansy,’ and they don’t take lost human girls to see their friends. I’m dreaming.”
“You must be a lot of fun at parties, if you always argue with your dreams,” said Pansy, cocking her massive head. “Look, you have two choices: either this is happening, and you have the chance to meet Her Sunlit Majesty, which is a rare and glorious privilege, or this is a dream, and you have the chance to dream about meeting Her Sunlit Majesty. Either way, telling me I don’t exist doesn’t seem like a very good way to move forward. You want to take a deep breath and try again?”
Regan took a deep breath. Her knees buckled, and before she had a chance to react, she found herself sitting on the ground, crushing more of the little white flowers. She stared at Pansy. “Her Sunlit Majesty?” Her butt ached where it had hit the ground. She was probably going to bruise. She’d never been bruised in a dream before.
“Queen Kagami, ruler of the Hooflands for as long as I’ve been living. Longer, even. She’s the first kirin queen we’ve had in, oh, ages, and ages.”
“Kirin?” said Regan blankly. She had encountered the word in her reading, but not often enough to know what it meant.
“Like a unicorn, but smart as a person.” Pansy sighed dreamily. “They’re beautiful. Her Sunlit Majesty is supposed to be the most beautiful of all.”
“Supposed to be?”
“I’ve never seen her. No one has. She’s too beautiful for common folk to gaze upon; only the human will get to see her. I’ve never even been to the castle, because I’m just a herder, we don’t have lots of opportunities to travel that far from our fields.” Pansy brightened. “But now I can! Because you’re here! Oh, everyone says only the human gets to see the monarch, but maybe they let the person who brings the human have a look as well! That would be a story to share a supper over. Me, seeing the Queen.”
Regan felt like she was drowning. “This is real,” she said. There were too many details she wouldn’t have invented on her own.
Looking amused, Pansy nodded. “This is real,” she agreed. “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.”
“Something’s … coming?” Regan scrambled to her feet, dusting crushed flowers and mud off the seat of her jeans.
“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!” Pansy held up her hands and wiggled her own thumbs exaggeratedly. “Centaurs have thumbs, but we can’t fit in a lot of places humans can, and we don’t swim very well.”
“Swim?” asked Regan blankly. She was starting to feel as if she’d been dropped into a conversation that had started long before her arrival.
“Sometimes swimming counts.” Pansy grabbed the unicorn by the horn and tugged it toward her. “If you’re done being shocky and convinced none of this is happening, you should come with me. Everyone’s going to be so excited to meet you! Do you have a name? I can’t just keep calling you ‘the new human.’”
“Regan,” said Regan unsteadily.
“Good name,” said Pansy. “Well, come on, Regan. We can’t stand here all day and expect the world to come to us.” Still holding the unicorn’s horn, Pansy began walking into the trees, back in the direction from which she had come.
Lacking any better ideas about how to cope with this strange new situation, Regan hugged her schoolbag to her chest and hurried after the centaur. Pansy smelled of clean fur and good, honest horse sweat, and that alone was enough to make Regan’s shoulders relax a little. This was all strange and impossible and maybe not even happening, but horses were horses, and as long as there were horses, things would turn out all right in the end.
“So,” asked Pansy, “what brings you here?” Then she laughed, as if she’d just said the funniest thing in the entire world.
“My feet?” ventured Regan. Pansy laughed even harder, her grasp on the unicorn’s horn never slipping.
“I like you, human Regan,” she said. “You’re all right. I always thought a human would be stuck-up and weird, but you’re almost like a normal person.”
Regan blinked. “Why would a human be stuck-up?” she asked.
“I told you; thumbs.” Pansy kept walking, her hooves clopping against the ground. “Thumbs aren’t that common, and most of us that have them aren’t as flexible as a human. We can’t fit into the narrow places where humans can go, and we can’t climb like humans can. We all know we’re limited.”
Regan, who had never considered that a centaur, with a horse’s powerful legs and incredible speed, might think a human was better than them, blinked and walked on in silence. Ahead of her, the unicorn lifted its long, silvery tail and delicately defecated on the path. It didn’t slow down or make any effort to cover what it had done. Regan wrinkled her nose. Manure was manure, even when it came out of a unicorn.
“I don’t think you’re limited,” she said, stepping around the pile of unicorn poop as she continued to follow. In a softer, shyer voice, she added, “I think you’re beautiful.”
Pansy’s laugh was as large as the rest of her. It boomed. The unicorn made a small bleating noise that sounded almost like an objection. Pansy laughed harder. “I can be beautiful and limited at the same time,” she said. “Take unicorns. They’re as beautiful as it gets, and they don’t have the brains to come in out of the rain. They’ll just stand there trying to figure out why they’re getting wet and wait for someone to come along and fix it for them. 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.”
“Oh,” said Regan, who had never thought of it that way. “I guess that’s true.”
“You know it’s true,” said Pansy. “Come on.” She swept a curtain of branches aside and cantered through, leaving room for Regan to follow.
On the other side of the trees was a meadow that Regan knew didn’t exist; it was too large, for one thing, vast and rolling off toward the horizon, covered in lush grass that was a shade of blue-green she was reasonably sure couldn’t be natural. Patches of clover and buttery yellow flowers dotted the grass, but those were nowhere near as enthralling as the other things roaming the field.
Unicorns.
Dozens upon dozens of unicorns, in all shades of silver from cloud-pale to mercury-bright, their horns gleaming and their tails flicking away insects brazen enough to land on their glittering flanks. Most moved on their own, but there were a few small groups of three to six individuals, and even a few—Regan gasped aloud—a few babies. Their coats were more pearl than silvery, and their horns were short, stubby things, sharp as needles and ready to pierce the world.
Pansy shoved the unicorn she’d been leading away from her, giving it a slap on one perfectly sculpted flank. It shot her a reproachful look before trotting to the nearest patch of yellow flowers and lowering its head, beginning to delicately crop at the petals.
“They wander,” said Pansy. “Especially the yearlings. Think they know everything there is about staying alive in the woods, when the kelpies and the hippogriffs will rip them to bits as soon as look at them. Nothing territorial likes having unicorns in their backyard. Too much potential for stabbing.” She laughed again, startling some of the nearby unicorns, which trotted away. “But here I am, running my mouth like a filly, when you want to meet the others. Feel up to an adventure, human Regan?”
“Sure,” said Regan, trying to sound as brave as she didn’t feel. “Lead the way.”
Pansy smiled, and clapped a hand on Regan’s shoulder, and tugged her across the field, guiding her the same way she’d previously guided the unicorn. As for Regan, she went willingly, having no idea what else was left for her to do. They crossed the field of unicorns to a stone-and-timber building that Regan hadn’t noticed before, sheltered as it was in the shadow of a copse of pines. Pansy opened the door, and both of them stepped inside, and were gone.