Page 14 of A Land So Wide
F irst bellows sounded just as Greer sank onto one of the long benches of Steward House, flushed and out of breath. There was still one hour till sunset, but all she wanted to do was close her eyes and fall asleep.
She and Ellis had hiked every step of the town’s border since daybreak, and her feet throbbed.
She was too sore to walk any farther, but not numb enough to forget the pain.
Her fingers were smudged black and aching.
Her satchel was full of new renderings, new measurements. Still, her work was not done.
Every Warding Stone had moved.
Some had crept in mere yards, as if on tiptoe, hoping the town might not notice their treachery. Others, like the ones in the Calloways’ fields, were far bolder.
Greer’s mind felt impossibly full. All day long, rumors had flown through the community, carried on the wind, and she’d heard each and every one of them.
They did not surprise her. Imaginations didn’t often run wild here. Unable to stray from their small community, the people of Mistaken had learned never to dream of things bigger than their allotted acres.
Those who hadn’t been at the Calloway farm woke to the news of the massacre and, predictably, started looking for someone to blame.
It was so easy to point fingers toward Ellis’s family.
Resolution Beaufort had damned the settlers, luring them across the sea to this cursed cove, and, generations later, his descendants were still scapegoated.
Beauforts were blamed for any problems that plagued the town, from small annoyances—the swarm of blackflies thought to have been brought on by Resolution’s son, Brodie, slaughtering hogs on the Sabbath—to outright absurdity.
Once, Melkin Hambright’s favorite goat had birthed an entire litter of kids fused together with a solid band of rubbery flesh.
He said Ellis’s great-uncle Hezekiah had offered to purchase the nanny from him only weeks before, and claimed that the elder Beaufort had cursed both him and the goat when he refused.
Greer rubbed at her eyes, then was startled from her exhausted reverie as Steward Enoch Macàidh stumbled over her ankles.
He squinted at her down the length of his thin, crooked nose.
The oldest of all the Stewards, Enoch had been going blind for years and rarely left his cottage, situated just a mile from Mackenzie land; he preferred to putter around the certainties of his farm and to leave the town’s affairs to the rest of the council.
His presence here only highlighted what a grave situation Mistaken was now in.
He swatted away Greer’s apologies, his hand clawed into a gesture of superstitious protection. “I find it impossible to believe that you, of all people, couldn’t hear me coming, Greer Mackenzie.”
From her seated position, the wide brim of his hat was like a corona of darkness circling his face.
He made no effort to hide his scorn. Years before, when Greer was a child of only five years, she’d made the mistake of asking Enoch why she could hear breathy, feminine cries coming from the Macàidhs’ house every time his wife, Iona, was in town at sewing circle.
“Enoch,” Hessel called from the front of the room, spotting the confrontation. “It’s good to see you, my old friend. Join us.”
With a noise of indignation, Enoch picked his way toward the other Stewards.
They were nine strong, patriarchs of the town, each descended from the crew who had sailed to the new world.
Though they sat on the council with apparent equal stature, Greer’s father, Hessel—grandson of First Mate Tormond Mackenzie—presided over the group with a touch more authority.
His was the voice that spoke for the group. His was the opinion all others sought.
He stood at the head of the room now, in deep discussion with the others.
The men were poring over Greer’s new maps with great fervor.
As Hessel listened, he glanced across the room to meet Greer’s gaze.
His lips didn’t exactly curve into a smile—Hessel Mackenzie was far too reserved—but Greer could sense a glimmer of approval all the same. He was proud of the work she’d done.
The back doors were flung open, and Louise Beaufort hurried into Steward House.
It was a long building, built of spruce and pine.
Though large enough to hold every member of Mistaken, the structure boasted only two narrow windows, at the front of the hall.
Lanterns hung from the mounted remains of a ship’s wheel, casting over the room a dark-amber hue.
A single aisle ran the length of the room, splitting the rough-hewn benches apart like a seam.
Greer automatically slid over, making room for her friend, but Louise hesitated, a look of uncertainty darkening her face. With an unhappy twist of her lips, she sank into an empty spot on the back row, joining Ellis.
He glanced from Louise to Greer with a look of wary curiosity before shrugging it away.
Greer could see the toll their day had taken upon him.
His face was haggard with exhaustion, and a long cut ran red down one cheekbone.
The last Stone they’d found had moved into the middle of a bramble of thorns, and it had taken them nearly an hour to break free.
After a long stare at her friend—one Louise pointedly did not return—Greer shifted her attention toward the rest of the room.
The townspeople of Mistaken looked defeated. Dark circles rimmed tired, pained eyes. Noses were red; hands were pale and trembling. One long length of bench was left empty. Normally, it would have been filled by Cormac Calloway and his family. The unfilled space was as jarring as a missing tooth.
A hush fell as Hessel Mackenzie stepped forward and picked up the ceremonial gavel—a cut of polished wood from the very tree that had impaled Resolution Beaufort. Still, he struck it upon the Stewards’ table three times, signifying they were ready to begin.
“Friends, I wish we gathered today under better circumstances,” he began, his words slow and steady. Greer supposed he was attempting to offer the residents a show of reassuring strength, but his dark undertone sent a chill down her spine.
They didn’t know why any of this had happened. Nothing they’d say in the next hour would be anything but conjecture.
“As you know, the Warding Stones have…moved.”
“How many?” someone in the front row asked.
Hessel released a deep breath. “All of them, I’m afraid. Mistaken’s footprint has been considerably reduced. The new borders have cut dangerously across fields and homes…fatally, in one instance.”
Unbidden memories of last night’s pulpy mess rose in Greer’s mind, and she winced, wondering that her father could so succinctly sum up the unspeakable tragedy as “one instance.”
“While there were no witnesses, we feel confident that the Benevolence was responsible for the movement of the Stones.”
“But why?” someone at the far side of the room asked. Greer recognized Tywynn Flanagan’s reedy voice, even though she couldn’t spot the baker. “Why would the Benevolence do this? We’ve honored them; we’ve given our tithes. Things like this happen in other places. Not our Mistaken.”
Murmurs stirred, running through the gathered like a dangerous undercurrent.
Tywynn pushed himself to standing, leaning heavily against his cane. “We’ve always had an understanding with them. We have their blessings, their protection. We’re not like those other towns. We’ve not had such attacks. Our sky has never shattered!”
The room fell into uneasy silence.
Other towns’ misfortunes were almost never spoken of in Mistaken.
It didn’t happen often, but occasionally bands of frightened travelers would wander into town, emerging from the forest like a gathering of ghosts. They’d come from settlements along the coast, outposts from the north. They were like Martha, survivors of the Bright-Eyeds.
As keeper of the records, Hessel had interviewed each refugee, committing their grisly accounts into ledgers.
The attacks were always the same. The Bright-Eyeds would come at night, jagged shadows of chaos descending from the sky in whizzing blurs too fast to make sense of. They struck fast, bringing screams, then silence.
One interminable afternoon when she was small, Greer, tired of being confined inside by yet another winter storm, had sneaked into Hessel’s study.
With awestruck horror, she’d read through the memories of the attacks, the way the monsters moved with skittering, preternatural speed, the strangeness of their clicking, clattering calls, and the way those sounds mixed with their prey’s death rattles.
For months after, Greer’s dreams were plagued by nightmares of leathery wings and curved claws.
Though they always began the same way—finding herself on the crest of Barrenman’s Hill, watching in horror as pieces of the sky fell over the cove, swooping and diving and ripping townspeople asunder—the endings varied.
Sometimes Greer, too, was caught and pulled apart, her organs spilling like rain over the town square.
Other times she found herself cornered, pressed up against the invisible line of the Warding Stones, unable to escape as the hulking shape of a Bright-Eyed stalked closer, zigging in and out of shadows as if made of the night itself.
The worst was when nothing happened to her at all, when she watched from her spot on the hill, moving neither to hide nor to help.
An impassive witness, observing the terrible night over and over again without reacting.
The first time she’d had such a dream, she’d raced to her parents’ bedroom, crying and seeking comfort.
Hessel had told her the Warding Stones would always protect Mistaken, then rolled over and huffed back to sleep.
But Ailie, in the dark silence that had followed, had whispered into Greer’s hair that she was far fiercer than any creature lurking in the woods.