Page 11 of A Land So Wide

“G reer! Where’s Greer?”

Hessel’s panicked voice rang high above the mêlée as Greer and Ellis crept from the loft.

Their caution proved unnecessary. Chaos had erupted, and not a single person gave them so much as a sideways glance.

Everyone was clamoring, loud and harried, trying to find unseen loved ones and guess at what had caused the cries.

No one else heard the call for help, Greer realized. Only the screams .

As they pressed through the crowd, making their way out into the yard, she felt Ellis pause, unsure if he’d be welcomed. She took his hand with resolute assurance. It didn’t matter what her father wanted; Greer needed Ellis with her.

She watched Hessel note their clasped hands, watched his jaw harden, but there were too many other pressing things for him to comment on it. He leaned in, keeping his voice low and hushed. “Can you tell where the cries are coming from?”

Greer was taken aback. Hessel had never spoken of her strange gift, never acknowledged its existence. But now he knew she could help. With a queasy sense of gratification, she nodded. “From the south, out by Cormac Calloway’s place?”

The Calloways owned the largest flock of sheep in all of Mistaken.

A generation before, Arthur Calloway had allowed the mill to chop down every Redcap on his land, then spent the profits on three sets of rams and ewes, bought from a passing mercantile ship.

Now nearly every family in town owned at least one Calloway sheep.

Their wool helped ward off the frigid cold, and their mutton made for delicious broths and roasts.

“Someone is shouting for help.”

Hessel paled, then turned to the nearby Stewards. “We should take a search party and investigate.”

Ellis held up a hand, waylaying them. “You’ll need weapons. There’ve been bear tracks down along the creek.”

Michael Morag scoffed. “So late in the season?”

By Reaping, black bears were usually secreted away in their lairs, dreaming of spring salmon.

Ellis did not back down, even in the face of the Steward’s scorn. “It’s a big one, too. Gil Catasch said he caught sight of it while he was checking traps. It was white.”

Greer froze. White bears didn’t usually come so far inland—they preferred to stick to the coast, where the ice was thick and their prospects for a meal much easier—but every so often, one would venture along the shores of the Great Bay, making its way to the cove.

They were monstrous beasts, nearly as tall as a man when on all fours, and more than double that when prompted to stand on two legs.

The bears were impossibly fast, able to outrace nearly anything, despite their massive girth.

A bear so far outside their normal hunting grounds would likely be disoriented with sickness or very hungry.

Greer swallowed back the urge to run home, to flee from the danger like the child she no longer was.

Neither Hessel nor Ellis could be left on their own.

Not in the dark. Not with a white bear roaming the woods. Not when she was the one who could hear it coming.

The air between her father and Ellis grew taut before Hessel finally nodded, conceding. “Roibart!” he called out. “How many rifles do you have?”

The race through the dark woods to the Calloways’ farm felt feverish and surreal. Nothing seemed to play out in linear time. There were cries in the dark and strange flashes of light as everyone from the barn warming took up lanterns and weapons and charged after the Stewards.

Greer caught sight of scythes and pitchforks, broad knives and wooden rifles. Wide-eyed children clung to their mothers’ skirts.

As they headed through town, men shouted at sleeping houses, calling for more weapons, more hands, more help. Dazed couples, still dressed in their sleeping gowns and nightcaps, wandered out. They tugged on coats and cloaks and joined the party.

When they reached the Calloway house, nothing seemed amiss.

The group stopped short before the darkened structure, swaying with exhaustion and uncertainty, their whispers and speculation hushing to silence.

Then came the crying. It was faint at first, a wayward kitten wailing for its mother.

Slowly, Greer turned, tilting her head toward the noise, toward the incoherent gibberish, the wet coughs, the strange grunts of pain. Tears pricked at her eyes. She’d never heard such anguish in all her life.

“Father!” she called out, stopping Hessel from approaching the cabin.

She could feel the weight of Mistaken’s attention fall upon her, as heavy as the hinged bar of the pillory at the center of town.

“They’re not here!” She licked her lips, wanting to cover her ears as a trembling moan singed them.

“They’re in the fields. With the flock…I think. ”

Without waiting for the Stewards’ command, the townspeople pressed forward, climbing the grassy slope. Ellis fell alongside Greer, gently folding his hand round hers, but she barely recognized him. Her head throbbed and felt hazy, too full of Mistaken’s whispers.

As they crested the hill, the whispers died, replaced by breathless gasps and murmurs for mercy. At first, Greer swept her eyes over the field without horror, unable to identify what she was looking at.

It was dark.

The blood made everything darker.

The rest of the group staggered up, brandishing their lanterns and oil lamps, small beacons of light daring to hold back the night’s terrors, and she began to understand.

There was a hand.

A hoof.

A foot and something that looked like the back of a man’s head. The curved bit of scalp and skull wasn’t attached to anything else. It was just there, lying in the field, with so many other similar shapes.

In the center of this mess was Tàmhas Baird. He’d been making the noises. He’d been the one crying and snorting and sobbing as he held on to the partially intact form of Fiona Calloway.

They’d been smitten with each other since Beistean MacIllenass’s barn raising last spring, and it was common understanding that Tàmhas would catch her in the Hunt.

Except now Fiona was no more, and Tàmhas could only cling to what was left of her. His mouth was open and moving, but his cries for help had died away, replaced by heaves of grief and the wet sound of air trying to escape from a throat scoured raw by screaming.

He stared at his approaching neighbors with dull incomprehension, eyes glassy and unseeing.

Ellis reached him first. “Tàmhas,” he said, gently placing his hand on the young lad’s back. “What happened here?”

The bear, Greer thought. The white bear .

But as she looked over the field, spotting parts of the Calloways and their herd of sheep, she understood it wasn’t that. No bear could cause so much destruction, so much wanton carnage.

This was something worse. This was something far…

She looked up, searching the sky.

Had the Bright-Eyeds somehow broken through the Warding Stones? Had they gotten into Mistaken and attacked the Calloways, massacring them and their flock? A single bear could not lay claim to so many kills, but a Bright-Eyed? An entire pack of them?

Greer felt sick, and turned away, wanting to throw up. Why would the Benevolence have allowed this? Why wouldn’t they have stopped them? How could they have—

Then she saw it.

Greer froze, studying the line of Warding Stones. Their hulking shapes rose from the earth in craggy cuts of burnished red, cutting across the field like a carving knife through flesh.

The rocks weren’t supposed to be here.

Not this far into the field. Not even along this ridge of land.

Greer recognized their shapes instantly. The big one, just beyond where Tàmhas knelt with his broken beloved, was miles off its mark. It had stood watch over Calloway land for generations, but not here. Not in the middle of their pasture.

Greer’s eyes swept over the carnage with new understanding, counting each Stone.

The Calloways and their sheep hadn’t been attacked.

The Warding Stones had moved.