The herd continued at the same pace, neither slowing nor speeding up. When they reached the wide woven archway marking the entrance to the Fair, Pansy waved them to a stop and turned her attention on the girls. “Be careful,” she said in a low tone. “Don’t start anything you’re not certain you’ll be able to finish. Chicory, if anyone makes a grab for Regan, you run.”
Chicory nodded, suddenly solemn. Regan tightened her grip around the centaur girl’s waist, holding on as if she feared someone was going to snatch her off at any moment. Pansy nodded, face splitting in a wide grin.
“All right, kids, go and have fun!” she said. “The Fair belongs to you today!” She leaned over and slapped Chicory on the flank, startling the girl into leaping forward, crossing the boundary line into the Fair itself.
The whispers and pointing started immediately, as everyone who saw them stopped to stare at Regan. Some of them looked startled, some amazed, and a small few looked almost enraged, like they were looking at something obscene. One of the deer-centaurs started to cry, clapping her hands over her mouth.
“They’re just not used to how ugly you are yet,” said Chicory. “Once they get used to looking at your weird face, they won’t stare like that.”
Regan snorted, discomfort melting away in the face of familiar teasing. “You better be nice to me, or I won’t help you with your hooves anymore.”
“Will so.”
“Why?”
“Because you love me too much to let me split my hooves when you don’t have to.” Chicory trotted on, angling toward the delicious smells filling the air. “We can get roast nuts and baked apples and fish pies in the market square. Real good food, not that mush Rose and Daisy like to serve.”
Regan, who would have been willing to commit crimes for Oreos, made a noncommittal noise. Chicory laughed and kept going, ignoring the murmurs of the crowd behind them, some of whom had started to move closer before she started moving away.
“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.”
“Me? I thought it was because your mother said you needed a playmate.”
Chicory snorted. “It takes a year to have a foal, and they’re useless when they’re born. Even worse than unicorn babies. I won’t play with anyone who comes out of this courtship for a long, long time. Mama didn’t want another foal until I was old enough to work with the rest of the herd, and no one else could afford to go courting. Our flock does pretty well, but not that well.”
Regan was starting to realize that even what little she’d thought she understood about centaur relationships was wrong. She shook her head, trying to find the words she needed to unsnarl a confusing knot that was only getting worse the longer she let it stay tied. Finally, in a strangled voice, she asked, “They’re paying for boyfriends?”
“Is a boyfriend like a husband?”
“Yes.”
“Then yes.”
“But that’s…”
“How else is the stallion supposed to know the foals will be cared for? You have to show you can support the baby you’re hoping to have before you can go about getting one. And since it’s the mare who walks away with the foal, it’s only fair the stallion should get something out of the deal. So Mama and the aunts and anyone else interested in courting go to see the stallions, and some of them will come back with foals, and some won’t.”
“But…” It was a reasonable arrangement. Regan could see that. It certainly would have simplified things for most of the high school students she’d known, who seemed to be constantly preoccupied by the question of who was dating who, or who wanted to be dating who, or who had a crush on who. Laurel had been starting that, and so had some of the other girls, in the months before Regan ran away. She’d never quite seen the point. When compared to spending her time playing, boys were just sort of … boring.
Regan stopped, composing her thoughts, before she said, “Where I come from, ‘husband’ means you’re only ever with your wife. Husbands and wives live together, and raise children together, and try to be happy. My father says a good marriage takes work, usually after Mom asks him to catch a big spider and take it outside for her.”
“Husbands sometimes have more than one wife, but never more than two or three,” said Chicory. “If they sire a colt, they have to be prepared to take him on as their own, and too many wives would make that hard.”
Regan blinked slowly. “This is really complicated.”
“I bet husbands are complicated where you come from, too. You just aren’t old enough to know all the ways how.” Chicory cantered to a stop in front of a line of small, brightly colored wagons. They weren’t big enough to have housed an adult centaur; instead, satyrs and fauns and more of those odd horse-legged people leaned out of their serving windows, handing bags and bowls of their wares to waiting customers. “I want baked apples.”
Regan inhaled, taking her time about it, letting the mingled aromas of a dozen types of unfamiliar treat fill her nose. Then she slid off Chicory’s back, steadying herself on the other girl’s side as she waited for the feeling to come back into her thighs, and said, “I want some of those roast nuts, and a fish pie. I have money.”
Chicory pawed at the ground, clearly uncertain. “I’ll come with you.”
“No one’s going to snatch me in the food court,” said Regan, the uneasy awareness that children had been snatched in food courts before flooding in on the heels of her words. But that was in another world, one filled with bullying, backstabbing humans, not in this brighter, cleaner world of horse-people and honest answers. She would be fine here.
“Okay,” Chicory said. “But we don’t leave the wagons, right? You’ll get your lunch and I’ll get mine, and then we’ll sit together to eat it.” There was a cluster of low wooden tables off to one side, about half with benches, presumably for the satyrs and other bipeds to use.
“We don’t leave,” Regan agreed, smiling broadly as Chicory backed up and turned away, heading for the wagon that was distributing apples.
Feeling freer, even though her friend was only a few feet away, Regan took a deep breath and approached the nearest wagon, where a faun was passing out bags of roast nuts that smelled like absolute heaven. She stopped when she reached the window, smiling at the woman with the delicate deer’s antlers growing from her temples.
“One bag of nuts, please,” she said in her sweetest talking-to-adults tone.
“That will be one bale,” said the faun as she reached back and grabbed a bag. Then she gasped, eyes going wide. “You’re the human!” she exclaimed. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize, you looked like a silene—”