Page 12 of A Land So Wide

T he reckoning began not with a whisper, but a scream. So many screams, and the squelch of blood and bone matter.

Resolution Beaufort was dead, impaled on the very tree he’d destroyed lives for.

The settlers wanted to leave the body where it lay. They’d wanted to see it rot, never to find rest in hallowed ground. Some uncharitably hoped his soul would suffer the same fate, putrefying in the depths of a most fiery hell.

But the blackflies had come, drawn to congealing blood, and they were hungry.

Once they’d feasted upon Resolution’s remains, they turned to the survivors, swarming and biting. Welts raised across the skin of child and adult alike, great swelling pustules of pain. The settlers coated their faces and hands with mud and cried for the body to be removed.

Several of the crew were tasked with burying it within the woods, in an unmarked grave.

By the time Resolution was pulled free, it was late afternoon. The men carried his body past giant stones that stood like sentries along the edge of the tree line, flashing and flickering an otherworldly red.

Deep in the forest, the men began to dig. The sun hung like an overripe piece of fruit as it slowly sank behind a mountain ridge.

The screaming began after sunset.

Malbeck Baird was the only one to return. He stumbled onto the rocky beach, eyes rolling mad with terror, and it was impossible to tell if the blood darkening his clothes was from him or the missing others.

He said they’d been digging.

He said they’d thrown Resolution’s body into the pit as the sun set in the west.

Then, he said, the attack began.

Tall, heavyset lumberjacks and sailors alike had been picked up and hurled through the air, not by beasts or monsters, but by wind.

Wind strong and powerful.

Wind that screeched and smelled of lake water and lichen and so much black soil.

The men were tossed about as though they were nothing but a scattering of dried leaves, smashing into trees and boulders, fallen logs and wicked brambles.

The wind had filled with their screams.

Then their gurgled breaths.

Then…nothing.

Malbeck’s head had struck a tamarack. The tree had scraped away his scalp and sent him into blessed unconsciousness.

When he woke, he was in the clearing they’d gone through earlier.

One of the flickering stones loomed over him.

The remains of the men and their shovels lay in ungainly, messy heaps, staining the tall grass red.

The only thing missing was Resolution’s corpse. It had been allowed to remain behind.

He told the group how he’d stared at the stones for a long time, trying to put together what had happened, trying to understand. And as he’d stared at their iridescent brilliance, another light had caught his attention.

A pair of bright eyes shining from the darkness beyond the stones.

Then another.

And another.

The falling twilight had made it impossible to see what sort of animal the eyes belonged to, but Malbeck said they were too far off the ground to be those of a stag, and their coloring was all wrong.

In dim light, the eyes of deer and other prey shone cool tones of white or green.

These eyes were a rusted orange, verging toward red.

Somehow, Malbeck said, he knew these almost red eyes were staring directly at him. They did not blink and they did not come closer, but the lad knew they wanted to. He said he could feel their hunger radiating from them in tangible waves.

Then, in a flash, they were gone.

As the settlers huddled around their fires, frozen with disbelief, they could feel the night press in around them.

They were far from home. Far from help. Far from anything known or certain.

They listened to the shrill cries of unfamiliar birds, the screams of tiny prey meeting their tiny ends, and the footfalls of beasts better off left unimagined.

Some prayed, others cried, and a few stared into the flames with stony resignation, pondering what was to come next.

It had been a mistake to come to this land, that much was certain. But now that they were here, what were they to do?

In the morning, the sun rose over the cliffs of the Narrows, highlighting every bit of debris deposited upon the shore by the night’s waves.

There were barrels of tools, somehow undamaged.

Long ribs of the ship’s hull.

Strips of canvas from its sails.

Sodden messes too waterlogged to name.

An unfortunate length of a tattooed forearm, ripped clean from its previous owner and crawling with ants.

And a most curious crate.

Resolution Beaufort’s swirling initials were carved into its side.

The first mate, Tormond Mackenzie, opened it, cracking the lock with a bar of iron and a grunt of effort.

Inside, remarkably unscathed from their journey across the bay, were papers. Papers and maps, Resolution’s diaries, books and charts, and the original explorer’s account of his time in this land.

Tormond opened up the leather journal and flipped through the pages.

He spotted maps of the bay, the cove, even the little strip of shoreline where they now gathered.

He saw drawings of the trees, those wretched trees that had driven their captain mad with greed and led them here.

He read of the explorer’s wanderings, of the forests and beasts that stalked the land.

He read of his encounters with the people who first lived on the land to the south and with the trappers who had also come from across the sea.

He read of the cold, and the flies, and the strange way the explorer had felt pushed about in his travels, as if an unseen presence guided his steps, nudging him in directions he did not wish to take.

And then Tormond Mackenzie read the last lines of the book, written out by a hand heavy with warning.

This land, with all its bounties and promises, cannot be claimed.

The consequences of venturing farther prove too great a risk.

By all accounts, from nomads both native and foreign, this land has been spurned, though by God or by the Devil, I cannot say.

I should have never ventured upon its cursed shores.