Page 17 of A Land So Wide

T he town of Mistaken wasted no time preparing for Reaping.

Farmers and merchants and millworkers alike stumbled out into the dark afternoon. Giant braziers were lit, illuminating the fields and orchards so that work could carry on throughout the night.

Greer remained with Martha, plucking the last of their garden’s vetchling peas, winter beans, and root vegetables.

They piled the bounty on the kitchen table, sorting through every potato and carrot, checking for blemishes, however small.

Greer examined each bushel of apples, picked earlier that week, setting aside the shiniest reds, the brightest greens, and packing them into crates with care.

Only the best could be used for gratitudes. Especially now.

Neither of the women spoke. Reaping was normally a time of great joy.

The kitchen ought to have been full of laughter, songs, and tales from the old country of Danu, Arawn, and the guid folk.

Now they worked in silence, their eyes often slipping toward the side yard, where one of the Warding Stones had moved.

It was on the far end of the meadow, a mere thousand paces away.

It had never been visible from the house before and its wrongness was impossible to ignore.

Greer threw herself into the tasks with abandon, keeping her hands busy, fretting over each leaf of cabbage, every stalk of celery.

She hoped that, if she focused hard enough, it would drown out the conversations she overheard from nearby farms and fields.

There was so much worry in the air, it turned her mouth sour and sick.

People were scared.

People were angry.

People were looking for someone to blame.

She finished filling her last crate of offerings as the sun rose over the Narrows, highlighting the world with pinks and yellows so lovely it seemed impossible to believe anything was wrong.

They’d need to prepare the pies next. Then the bread. Then cut the smoked meats.

Greer’s arms ached as she thought of all the work ahead of them. She hesitated, tracing a finger over a whorl in the table’s woodgrain. “Martha? Could I ask…the night your town was attacked…”

Martha briskly swept the remaining parsnips into a basket. “We need to start on the piecrusts if we ever hope to be done by this afternoon.” She tsk- ed. “Weeks of work in only hours. I don’t know what the Stewards were thinking.”

She pulled down canisters of flour, salt, and sugar in quick succession, as if to banish Greer’s unfinished question with a flurry of activity.

“What do you remember about that night?”

Martha shook her head. “I’ve spent almost thirty years trying to not remember. I’ve no desire to dredge it up now.”

“I just wondered if you saw them. Then. The Bright-Eyeds. Did you see the way it happened?”

Martha’s fingers tightened around the sugar. “I did.”

“You’ve never spoken about it.”

“No. And I won’t now. The world is scary enough without help from me.”

Greer licked her lips, wishing she could phrase what she yearned to ask. “I sometimes dream of what would happen if Mistaken was attacked like that…They’re not dreams, really.”

“Nightmares,” Martha supplied.

“I can’t imagine what it must have been like.”

Finally, Martha turned to face her. Her brown eyes seemed darker, guarded. “No. You can’t.”

Greer squirmed but pressed forward. “Did it feel like this? In the days before it happened, did you know something was wrong?”

Martha considered her question. “No. There was an uneasiness in the air, I suppose—a sense that something was coming—but that was just what life was like then. It was hard and uncertain. Our settlement had no truce with the Benevolence; we didn’t even know they were out there.

So of course…it was terrible, truly terrible, seeing how quickly things can end.

We spend so much time working and striving, raising food, raising families, raising a whole town, and for what? In one flash, it can all come undone.”

“How did it happen?”

Martha hissed sharply, making it clear she would not talk of the Bright-Eyeds.

Greer touched the older woman’s back, trying to re-form her question. “I mean…in the days after…how did the days after happen? I don’t see how you move past that. How you just…carry on.”

Martha shrugged. “There’s not much else to do.

The ones left…the ones who were spared or lucky or whatever you want to call it…

we had to go on. We had to go .” Martha looked to Greer.

“What else could we do? Sit and sob? Close our doors and bar our windows and let the remains of our town fall apart around us?” She shook her head.

“No. We left. We moved on. We moved on and found Mistaken.” She blinked, lost in memories.

“Coming here, seeing the bounties and good fortunes of this town…” She sighed.

“I’ll never forget that. It was like walking into Paradise.

You’ve no idea how good you’ve had it here.

We can’t…we can’t ever forget that. I think all the Benevolence wants is for us to remember. ”

Greer glanced around the kitchen, looking over their progress. She felt as helpless as a small child woken in the night, seeking reassurance against the imagined terrors of the dark.

The terrors weren’t imagined now.

“Do you think all this will work?”

The older woman nodded, then removed a bowl of eggs from the shelf. Flour rose and danced in the morning sunlight as she measured out ingredients.

Greer tried to throw herself into their work, but her unease persisted. “What do you think they want us to remember?”

Martha struck an egg against the edge of the table, and Greer winced at the sudden, brutal crack. The older woman stopped short, peering down at the broken egg. She tossed it to the side, frowning.

Greer’s stomach quivered as she spotted the dark, beaded eye and bloodied yolk of the partially formed chick.

Martha cracked open a second egg. “I think they moved the Stones so we’d remember they could.”