Page 24 of A Land So Wide

Madeline stared at her in stony silence before disappearing back into the leaves. “I can’t believe, of all the girls in town, Lachlan chose you.”

Greer wasn’t supposed to have heard that aside and certainly shouldn’t have responded, but her blood was racing high, and she felt bold and brash. “I can’t, either. Happy hiding, Madeline.”

Greer followed the creek bed as it cut across the deepest part of the forest, winding its way to the farthest reach of the clearing. Over the years, she’d drawn so many maps of the Hunting Grounds, she had her path memorized. She knew every turn to take. She knew where every step should fall.

Up ahead was the clearing.

The trees parted back, revealing the weak gray light of the morning. There were too many clouds in the sky for her to tell what time it was, and Greer wondered how long she’d been fighting her way through the wood’s tangles.

There would be another cannon blast to signal when the Hunters were set loose.

As she raced across the open field, her heart pounded heavily in the center of her throat. There was a bad stitch in her side, and she felt as though she couldn’t draw full breath.

She needed to hurry, needed to find the tree before—

The cannon fired. With her sharp ears, Greer caught the whoops of the men as they took off.

Ailie’s tree was just ahead: an ancient, wizened Redcap stretching into the sky like a drowning man fighting to free himself from a torrent of waves.

Everyone in town knew never to touch a Redcap unless you had on thick leather gloves. The stinging sap would burn for days, causing rashes of bubbling hives and yellow, weeping pus.

It was the perfect spot to hide.

Decades before, a bad storm had blown into Mistaken.

Winds had torn roofs off homes, pulled tree roots straight from the ground, and sent giant boulders down hillsides as though they were nothing more than a child’s marbles.

Rain had poured so heavily it had turned the town into a muddy sluice that took weeks to dry out.

And the lightning…

Ailie had been little more than a girl when that storm had rolled through. A girl out picking blackberries, caught by surprise when the sky had opened up with its torrent of fury and fire.

The Redcap tree had been struck seven times. Ailie had watched in horrified awe as that heavenly fire burned up every bit of sap from the tree, leaving it a scorched shell.

Days after the storm, Ailie had returned to the tree, marveling at how well it looked, amazed how the lightning had carved out a hollow spot hidden straight down the center of the trunk, perfect for hiding.

When she’d run her fingers over the burnt bark, they’d come away clean. No burning sap, no stinging welts.

Ailie decided then and there that, when she took part in the Hunt, this was where she would hide.

Greer approached the jagged Redcap now and circled it to find the hidden entrance. The opening was high up the tree’s trunk, a nearly imperceptible slit in the blackened bark.

She grabbed at a branch and prayed the old tree would still support her weight. Bits of bark peeled away, and twice Greer nearly lost her grip. But then she was up, nearly ten feet off the ground, and peering into the dark shaft.

She shimmied into the hollowed space. With all her layers, it was a tight fit, but once she pulled her hood over her face, she would be completely undetectable from a Hunter’s eyes.

She settled into the snug enclosure and willed her breathing to slow.

She’d made it. She was here. She just needed to wait for Ellis.

Greer didn’t like it in the tree.

Though the space was large enough for her to hide in, it wasn’t comfortable. The wood was hard and unforgiving, and she could already feel a wave of numbing pins and needles consuming her left foot.

Sounds from inside were strangely muffled, and yet too close. She listened for the Hunters, wanting to find Ellis’s footsteps among them, but couldn’t hear anything past her racing heartbeat.

It was impossible to sense how much time had passed by.

A minute? Ten? An hour? Three?

Once her eyes adjusted to the dim light, Greer found her mother’s etchings, the constellations of stars and flowers she’d drawn while in the hollow, waiting for her Hunter to come.

Greer traced her mittened fingers over the little calendulas, marveling at the detail and care Ailie had managed in such confined surroundings.

Greer leaned back as best as she could, trying to release the tension building between her shoulder blades.

How long had she been in this tree?

It seemed like hours.

She feared it was only minutes.

Greer started counting to herself, wanting to keep an accurate calculation of the minutes going by, but the numbers got too high, and she missed a second, then three. She tried again, only to be startled from her count when an enormous cormorant landed on the branches just above the tree’s opening.

It was a large bird, the biggest she’d ever seen, solid black save for its wickedly hooked golden beak.

It turned its tufted head with rapid movements, surveying the clearing with eyes that looked nearly human.

Greer stared with fascination, marveling that the creature didn’t seem aware of her presence.

Until it was.

With another shift of its head, the cormorant peered down into her hiding place, bright eyes meeting hers with a direct and uncomfortably frank stare.

The tilt of its head made it seem confused, as if it was trying to parse out what a human was doing up so high in its domain.

“Hello, little Starling,” it said—the bird’s beak moving as the voice in her head spoke. And then it dove, talons outstretched, and aimed directly at her face.

Greer came to with a gasp, choking back the shriek that wanted to burst from her chest.

It was a dream.

It had only been a dream.

How long had she been dozing?

Wanting to cry as she moved, stretching stiffened muscles and numb limbs, Greer took a quick peek out the tree’s slit.

More clouds had rolled in while she’d slept, making it seem as though it was already twilight. Greer shook her head, scanning the sky for even a speck of the sun. There was no way she’d slept away the entire Hunt. She couldn’t have.

It wouldn’t have taken Ellis that long to find her. He knew she was going to be in the clearing. He knew exactly what tree Greer had planned to hide in.

He should have been here by now.

He should have come.

Unless…

I know that when the time comes Ellis Beaufort will make the right choice.

Her father’s words echoed in her head, and Greer wanted to howl.

Suddenly it all made terrible sense.

Louise’s absence earlier.

Ellis’s now.

Her father had done something. Done something to Louise. Done something to make Ellis choose.

“No!”

She covered her mouth with horrified alarm. The word had slipped from her so quickly, and, given the strange way that sound played in the hollow of the tree, she had no way of knowing who might have heard her.

Cautiously, she rose until her eyes were just over the edge of the opening. It was hard to make out much of anything.

The sky was even darker now.

Sunset had to be only minutes away.

She’d somehow slept an entire day, and why hadn’t Ellis woken her ?

Why hadn’t he found her?

What had Hessel done?

Greer nearly wept as a figure, tall and lanky, made his way out from the tree line.

It was him.

That was Ellis.

Her heart thudded as she waited for him to reach her. Greer wanted to push her way free of the tree and run to him. She wanted to throw her arms around Ellis and claim him for herself, rules be damned.

But she stayed where she was, frozen in the depths of the hollowed Redcap. She had to remember that this was Ellis’s moment as much as it was hers. He, too, had waited seven extra years for it. She would not rob him of his opportunity to find her.

She pinched her cheeks, making sure she’d look flushed and rosy, a bride awaiting her groom.

She waited.

And waited.

Where was he?

She nearly rose up again, wanting to see exactly where he was, but she knew, she knew, that if she did that he’d be right below her, and she’d startle him and ruin the moment.

Fingernails digging into the fleshy meat of her palms, she waited.

She waited until she could bear it no longer.

Too much time had passed.

One peek couldn’t hurt. Maybe she could feign a birdcall, something to snag his attention and set him on the right path.

Greer pulled herself up and squinted over the edge once more.

Ellis was…

She scanned the darkening meadow.

Ellis was gone.

Greer fought to stand up, feet scrabbling for purchase along the smoothed hull of the tree. She twisted about in the tight space, checking the meadow behind her.

No Ellis.

She turned north, where a pair of Warding Stones dotted the farthest edge. A flash of light caught her attention, but it didn’t come from the Stones. It came from something just before them…

Greer blinked, unsure of what she was seeing.

Ellis had gone past Ailie’s tree. He’d gone right by it, heading for Mistaken’s border. He was over two hundred paces from her.

What was he doing?

“Ellis!” she dared to shout, heedless of any Hunters who might be nearby. “Ellis, I’m back here!”

She could hardly feel her feet as she climbed out, all but falling from the tree. When she pushed herself up, struggling to stand on legs as shaky as a newborn foal’s, she saw Ellis had looked back and spotted her.

She waved as a wide smile broke across her face.

Ellis returned her wave, but not her smile.

It was a strange gesture, one that looked far more like a farewell than a greeting.

Greer frowned and started to make her way to him. He shook his head and held his hand out, now a warning, an order to stay put, to stay back, to stay away from him.

Ellis’s lips moved, but, for the first time in her life, Greer could not hear him.

“What?” she shouted, confused and trembling.

He repeated himself, and though she still could not hear his words, she could read his lips. Don’t follow me .

For one dreadful moment, the heavy clouds parted, revealing the last sliver of sun as it slipped under the mountains to the west. Greer watched in horror as the sun sank, winking out like a candle blown.

She heard the three rolls of the final Bellows.

And somehow, impossibly, she watched as her beloved stepped over Mistaken’s border, breaking through the Warding Stone’s hold, and headed into the unknown wild, completely unscathed.

“Ellis!” she screamed, and charged across the clearing.

A giant gust of wind picked up as she approached the border.

Greer tried pushing her way through it but could gain no purchase.

It howled all around her, throwing grit into her teeth and eyes, and she felt as if the world was coming apart, but when she stumbled back toward the meadow, all was quiet. All was still.

“Ellis!”

She shouted for him over and over. She tried again to fight the wind, desperate to find the spot where Ellis had somehow slipped through.

Tears fell, clogging her throat and blurring her vision, making it impossible to see.

When her legs gave way, because she was too spent to hold her grief upright any longer, she sank, striking the ground with her misery and rage.

What had he done? And how ? And—

Greer’s chest felt torn open, as if a wild animal had ripped her ribs apart before devouring her heart in one callous gulp.

She pulled her knees to her chin, burying her sobs into the swell of her skirts.

When a hand fell on her shoulder, squeezing it with warm strength, Greer’s breath caught.

He was back. Ellis had come back.

“I hate to say it, but I am impressed. You really did make me search all day.”

Greer pushed the tears from her eyes and gasped.

Standing over her, his hand now clutched round hers with possessive might, was Lachlan Davis. His face was flushed with triumph. “Caught you.”

Greer blinked with incomprehension.

There was no way Lachlan was with her now, claiming her as his.

There was no way Ellis had crossed through the Stones’ hold.

Not after sunset.

Not today of all days.

None of this could be.

And yet, somehow, it horribly was.

A dark shadow swooped overhead, and both Greer and Lachlan reflexively ducked, fearing another swarm.

But what flew through the sky was so much worse.

It was massive, wings spread wide as it circled over the forest beyond the Stones, like a vulture waiting on carrion. It scanned the area with dark intensity, and Greer could see the exact moment it found what it was looking for. She heard its quick intake of breath.

“Farewell for now, little Starling,” the Bright-Eyed murmured, then drew its wings into a tight dive as it silently began to stalk after Ellis Beaufort.