Regan shivered as something passed on the other side of a wall of trees, feeling suddenly less like the trees and the creek belonged to her, and more like an uninvited, potentially unwelcome guest. She began to walk a little faster, trying to figure out how far she was from her house. Not too far—this stretch of trees was far more familiar than the trees closer to the school had been. She’d wandered this far from her own backyard dozens of times before. She’d be home soon.
Her heart sank at the thought. She’d have to tell her parents what she’d done—that she’d told Laurel everything and then run away rather than face the consequences of her choices. And then she’d have to start convincing them not to make her go back to school, which was going to be hard, since she was pretty sure “told a secret to the wrong person” wasn’t grounds for a transfer in the district’s eyes. She didn’t know for sure what was, but she knew Heather’s mom had tried to get Heather transferred once it became clear that she was never going to regain the approval of her former friends. It hadn’t worked. Heather was still there, on the fringes of the schoolyard, and only graduation was going to change things.
Regan slowed again, suddenly eager for her journey to take as long as possible. Maybe that was why the shape in the nearby growth caught her eye, and she stopped abruptly, sending a pebble clattering into the creek as she cocked her head and blinked at what was surely a trick of the light.
Two trees had grown around each other, branches tangling and twisting like the wicker of a basket. They looped in and out of one another’s embrace, until they formed what looked almost like a doorway. That was interesting, but not unique; branches often grew together, and the shapes they made in the process could be remarkably architectural. She’d seen castles in the trees when she was little, castles and dragons and all manner of fabulous things.
But she’d never seen a doorway before.
Transfixed, Regan moved closer, eyes fixed on the shape. Unlike most of the optical illusions formed by the tangling of branches, it became more doorlike as she approached, not less. The twigs above it almost seemed to form words; she realized, with a start, that she could read them. “Be Sure,” they said, in spindly, organic lettering.
Be sure? Be sure of what? Be sure she wasn’t really looking at a door in the middle of the woods, since that would be ridiculous? Be sure that trees couldn’t spell words in English, especially not words that were so clearly and obviously written? Well, she was sure of those things, as sure as she’d ever been of anything.
This was probably some high schooler’s art project, something they’d set up so they could take pictures and impress a teacher.
Regan moved closer and closer still, thoughts of the fight waiting for her when she got home forgotten in the face of this marvelous new mystery. 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.
6
WHERE THE UNICORNS ARE
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.