Page 21 of A Land So Wide

T he dream began the way it always did.

It was night, spring now. The air was sweet with newly blooming coltsfoot, lupine, and harebell. The sky was, too, an impossibly vivid velvet, wild with stars and the throaty calls of great horned owls.

Greer stood at the top of Barrenman’s Hill, looking down at Mistaken, at the cove it hugged as tight as a comma. Beyond the cove, beyond the Narrows, was the Great Bay, and beyond even that was everything Greer desperately wanted but could not have.

Dots of lights moved across that watery horizon. She knew they weren’t falling stars but great ships, full of people, and was struck by the terrifying realization that every one of those many people, on all those many ships, had a life so much fuller than anything she could ever imagine.

She envied the things they’d all seen, and hungered for the things they all knew, and wondered if any of them grasped just how damned lucky they were.

That hunger burrowed deep in Greer’s middle, squirming and twisting like a live thing, and when she pressed her hand to her stomach, she half expected it to move, like a babe quickening in its womb.

“Starling,” a voice hissed, rushing high above her, nothing more than a rustle of night air.

She glanced up just as the sky came alive with shapes that were neither stars nor the black spaces between them.

They shivered and shuddered, roiling with uncanny movement, falling upon the town with flashing eyes, descending into homes, winking out hurricane lamps and tapered flames as the screams began.

Greer stood atop the hill and knew she ought to move, knew she should try to help, but her feet would not budge. They were stuck to the ground, as if caught in a sluice of thick, squelching mud, and she wasn’t sure whether to be ashamed or relieved.

It wasn’t until a piece of sky landed behind her, plummeting to the earth with all the force of a meteor, that she grew afraid.

Greer looked back and saw nothing but the black of a forest grown impenetrable with mysteries. Then the rusty, reddish shine from a pair of eyes large and set impossibly high off the ground.

A piece of sky.

A Bright-Eyed.

He moved through the shadows on legs strange and wobbling, picking his way toward her, and the sound of his care reminded Greer of the afternoon when a bat had landed in their yard, too sick with the maddening illness to fly.

It had traveled through the grass on the tips of toes never intended to be walked upon, its wings folded in jagged angles curious and strange.

That same sort of wings stalked toward her now.

She snapped her gaze back to the town. For all her curiosity, Greer did not truly want to know what this creature looked like. He was certain to be more terrible than anything her imagination could conjure.

“Greer.”

He drew out her name with tender familiarity. This was not the voice she’d heard before, the one from the woods and the clearing and the sky. The one who called her Starling.

Goose bumps ran wild over her arms. “Why are you here?”

“Me?” he asked, surprised, wounded, wondering.

“You. Them.”

She pointed to a family racing toward the Warding Stones, trying to escape the dark, skittering shadow that followed.

The mother—holding her infant son—struck the unseen border and ricocheted back into the nightmare on her heels.

Her scream was cut off in a burst of wet splashing.

Greer’s stomach heaved but she didn’t move a muscle, too aware of the Bright-Eyed at her own back and his capacity to inflict the same ending upon her.

“Why is the Benevolence allowing this? Where are they? Why haven’t they come?”

Something deep in his gullet clucked like the dry laugh of a loon.

“Oh, Greer.” He sounded sad and sympathetic. “You don’t know.”

“Know what?”

A twig snapped, and Greer felt the creature just behind her now, just shy of the curve of her shoulder blades. The air shifted differently, flowing around two forms instead of one.

Her body, as small and slight as she’d ever felt.

And his…

He was so much bigger than her, so much bigger than any one person had a right to be.

He’s not a person, she reminded herself. No matter how much he sounds like one .

The night breeze stirred, playing over the Bright-Eyed’s wings and haunches, his too-large toes and talons.

His breath warmed her neck, fluttering the strands of loose hair there, and though Greer knew this was a dream, a dream she’d had so many times before, it felt real.

It felt as though she truly was there now, on top of the hill, trapped against this monster.

His sigh sounded as ancient as the earth, as dry as the paper Greer drew her maps on. His response was nothing more than a murmur, a waft of breath caressing the shell of her ear. “No one is coming for you but me.”

Something brushed the swell of her cheek, and Greer startled. It had been as delicate as a butterfly wing, as soft as a fawn taking its first tentative steps.

“Close your eyes, Greer,” the Bright-Eyed murmured, and she could feel him shift, removing any space left between them. “You don’t need to see this.”

“Them?” she asked, her eyes flickering over the town, where dark stains splashed over porches and windows, clapboard sidings and wooden walkways. The screams had stopped now, mostly.

“No. Me.”

Just before the Bright-Eyed changed, shattering his form into a thousand nocturnal creatures—slithery, blue-spotted salamanders and leathery bats, sharp-faced foxes and those horrible fluttering furred moths—Greer could have sworn she felt a soft press against the nape of her neck, his kiss as swift and tender as the moments after were terrible.

Greer woke up gasping for air.

Bedsheets looped around her limbs, tangled and sodden. Her skin was flushed and clammy as the last of the nightmare left her. She pressed a hand over her heart, trying to calm her ragged breaths, trying to still her racing pulse.

Greer’s eyes darted around the room as panic bubbled up in her throat, choking her. In an attempt to get her bearings straight, Greer began to recite the list of things she knew to be true, just as Ailie had taught her.

“You are not on Barrenman’s Hill.”

She nodded.

“The Bright-Eyeds have never attacked.”

Another nod. Her heart no longer felt as though it were about to explode from her chest, and she took that to be a good sign.

“The Bright-Eyeds are not here.”

Even as Greer said this, it didn’t seem as certain a truth as her others. She could still feel the warm imprint of his kiss on her neck. The timbre of his husky voice still resonated in her ears.

“It’s the day of the Hunt,” she tried again.

That was unfortunately true.

With a final nod, she pushed herself from the sweat-stained sheets.

The morning had dawned so darkly that it still felt like night. Any trace of sunlight was bullied away by snow clouds, and a sparkle of jagged frost coated every stationary thing. Icicles hung in lines of bared teeth, giving the window’s view an air of menace.

It’s going to be miserable, Greer thought, as she braided her hair.

This was not the way she’d wanted her Hunt to start.

Ailie had told many stories of her own day—of retreating into the hollowed trunk, breathless with anticipation, of seeing Hessel’s hand pull her out, and of all the interminable boredom that unwound in the time between.

Her mother had spent the long hours scratching elaborate etchings inside the tree, trying to keep her wonders and worries at bay.

But that day had been bright. That day had been warm.

Greer had always imagined squirreling herself away in that same tree.

She wanted to find Ailie’s drawings and add one of her own, scratching out a hasty rendering of Mistaken while waiting for Ellis.

In these daydreams, it was always unseasonably warm, and she’d emerge from the hollowed tree in a beautiful dress of voile and lace, with flowers in her hair, and her cheeks would be pink with fresh love.

There would be no flowers today. And her cheeks would be red and stinging from wind and frostbite. Her dress would be wool and covered away by sweaters and her thickest fur-lined cloak. A knitted hat would cover her braids, and her hands would be too bundled by mittens to sketch anything.

Greer didn’t know how to draw Mistaken anyway.

Not anymore.

She turned from the window. “Why are we doing this?”

For the good of the town .

There was a soft knock at the door. Greer turned, expecting to see Martha, but it was Hessel, seemingly summoned by her thoughts. He was already dressed, though Greer doubted that he’d ever gone to bed. She eyed his coat, wondering if the mysterious note was still secreted in its pocket.

Her hearing had returned in slow degrees as she’d tried to sleep. She’d heard him leave the house, his footsteps clattering down the porch, down the walk, down toward town, and Greer had lain in bed for a long while after, guessing where he’d gone.

Before she could find out, sleep had seized her. Then—the dream.

“Good morning,” he said. “I…I brought you coffee.”

Greer supposed he’d meant it as a kindness, something warm to fill her belly before the long, cold wait, but Ailie had warned her of drinking too much, ruefully musing how differently the Hunt played out for the Hunters and the prey.

The men began their morning with a great feast, eating their fill of rich, hearty foods, drinking coffee and tea, and even little nips of whiskey, so that they’d be warm and full of energy for the search to come.

But the women needed to remain silent and still.

Some would have to wait the entire day to be found and claimed.

Greer often wondered how many marriages resulted from a too-full bladder.

“Thank you.” Greer wrapped her fingers around the mug, letting it warm her even without drinking.

Hessel shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot, his size taking up an uncomfortable amount of space in her room. “I imagine you’ve picked your spot?”