Page 27 of A Land So Wide

T o Greer, the lock’s tumblers fell in place as loudly as thunder.

She tried the handle anyway. She tried shaking it, rattling it loose, but the Mackenzie cabin had been made of felled Redcaps, and the study’s door was thick and strong.

“You can’t just lock me in here!” she shouted, slamming her palm against the wood. “Let me out!”

“This day was too much for you. You don’t look well. You need rest, food. Martha will…” Hessel stopped short and sighed. “I…I’ll get you something.”

Even through the door, Greer heard his footsteps retreat to the kitchen. She heard him speak to the Stewards. She listened as they discussed her claims, trying to piece them together with the lies Lachlan had told.

“And she saw the boy die?” Enoch Macàidh asked. “We’re certain of it?”

“It was too much for her mind, poor girl,” Hessel affirmed.

“She needs to be kept somewhere safe, where she can’t harm herself.

I’d have Martha keep watch, but she’s still at the Sturgettes’ house.

I couldn’t think of anything better than…

” His voice trailed away, as he undoubtedly glanced toward the study with trumped guilt.

“Ellis isn’t dead!” Greer howled, banging on the door. It stung, but she hit it again, wishing it was a Steward’s face, and again for good measure. “We need to go after him. We need to…” In a nauseating rush, her adrenaline drained away, leaving Greer as hollowed as a cored apple. “He’s not dead.”

Exhaustion made her head spin, and she stumbled away from the door, sank into the chair behind Hessel’s desk, and rubbed her eyes. Her lashes were full of grit and dried tears. Only hours ago, she’d been in Ellis’s arms, happy and hopeful and kissing him before the start of the Hunt.

How had everything gone wrong so quickly?

She had no doubt Hessel would hold her here until tomorrow’s Joining Ceremony, but what then? Would Lachlan try the same? Would he keep her under lock and key, penning her in place like an errant sheep?

Greer’s eyes flashed open and scanned the room for options.

She stared at the door, wondering if she could pick its lock.

She was certain she could align the mechanism’s tumblers just so, listening to them clink into place, but that wouldn’t help if the entire council of Stewards were in the cabin.

Even with the element of surprise, there were too many of them; they were sure to overpower her.

There was a window in the study, but it was heavily paned with lead tracings, and Greer didn’t think she’d be able to shimmy her way through the frame, even if she could find a way to break the glass quietly.

“There must be something,” she muttered, drumming her fingers on the side of the chair.

The room was littered with ledgers and journals, papers and maps.

One entire wall was lined with books, crammed like silvery fish in jars of pickled brine.

Each tome’s spine was stamped with the mark of the Stewards, indicating town records, accounts of events and meetings. They would be no help to her at all.

A little woodstove took up one corner of the study.

It was unlit. Could Greer feign a chill and dash out while a Steward was occupied with the kindling?

Her escape played across her imagination—she’d race through the garden to the trees, where she’d hide till sunrise, then cross the border to Ellis.

But Greer’s boots, hat, and cloak had been stripped from her as she’d entered the house. She couldn’t possibly grab them all before being intercepted.

Frustrated, she slammed her fist on the edge of the desk, rattling Hessel’s wells of ink. She hit it again, just to revel in her minute act of defiance, but stopped short when her ears caught the soft click of something opening. Something near her feet.

Curious, Greer slipped from the chair and knelt on the floor. Her pounding had released a catch, revealing a small door hidden within the desk’s footwell.

She paused, cocking her head toward the door, worried that her clattering might have drawn attention. She waited for approaching footsteps, but, deep in conference over the day’s events, neither Hessel nor the other Stewards seemed aware of her at all.

Greer reached into the hollowed space and felt about blindly.

She tried to not imagine a horde of spiders lurking in the darkness, ready to skitter up her arm.

The hidden section seemed to run the entire length of the desk, and she had to stretch to reach its end, where she just barely touched the edge of something small and wooden.

With a grunt of effort, she managed to grab it and bring it into the light.

It was a box, narrow and long and covered in intricate carvings Greer did not understand. She used her thumbnail to flip it open and blinked against a sudden burst of light.

The inside was a disordered mess of leather cording and bits of dazzling sparkles.

When Greer pulled one of the strings free, she realized they were pieces of jewelry, necklaces and bracelets.

But, rather than diamonds or emeralds, rubies or pearls, or any of the other precious gems Greer had read of but never seen for herself, the baubles were woven clusters of beads.

Each one shone and sparkled with the same otherworldly luminescence as the town’s Warding Stones.

She scooped them out, let them tangle through her fingers. The pieces looked familiar, stirring a whiff of a memory, but she couldn’t fully grasp where or when she’d seen them.

With the box emptied, Greer noticed that a bit of its lining was flaking free.

She toyed with it, picking at the edge, as she wondered over the mystery of the stone beads.

She knew they must be important—why else would Hessel have hidden them away with such care?

—but she couldn’t begin to sift through their significance.

It wasn’t until the box’s entire lining had pulled away that Greer realized it wasn’t a bit of decorative paper at all but a clever cover, concealing a small journal, only a few dozen pages thick and tiny enough to fit into the palm of her hand.

Setting the jewelry aside, Greer opened the book. Its spine cracked with brittle age.

She scanned through the pages, eyes glossing over the old-fashioned script as she tried to discern its meaning.

The book was a list, made up of three columns: one for years, one for names, and the last enigmatically labeled as “Effects.” The handwriting changed over time, and Greer had to squint to make out some of the notations.

But when she turned another page, she instantly recognized Hessel’s spidery scrawl take over.

1754: Catriona Belfour.

In the “Effects” column, Hessel had jotted a series of symbols, geometric shapes hexed through with various slashes.

Neither they, the name, nor the date meant anything to Greer.

She knew of the Belfour family—they owned a parcel of land to the south of the Mackenzies’ farm—but there was no Catriona among them.

She looked at the entry on the next page.

1761: Agnes McKintney.

Greer sank back on her heels, thinking. She had a few memories of the older girl, but they were vague and hazy.

Though she could picture her at the blackboard in the schoolhouse, strawberry-blond hair pinned into careful braids, Greer couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen Agnes or even thought of her.

Questions piled up, like stones forming a house, and she frowned, looking over the dates with fresh eyes.

1761 had been a Hunt year, the one Greer was first meant to have been in. Who had caught Agnes? Greer ticked through as many of the Hunters as she could remember, but each had found some other bride. Agnes had not been found. Agnes had not been caught.

So where was she now?

As Greer tried to wrestle memories from that murky, grief-shrouded year, she turned the page and caught sight of the list’s final entry. Everything within her stopped.

1768: Ellis Beaufort.

She studied the curls and loops of her beloved’s name, jotted down in Hessel’s familiar hand.

Ellis Beaufort .

Why would her father have written his name? What did this list account for?

Catriona and Agnes are gone, and now Ellis is, too .

Greer looked from the book to the pile of jewelry, trying to piece it all together. They were connected somehow, but she was too exhausted to see it. She rubbed at her aching forehead, and as her hand fell away, the memory came to her.

In the clearing, as he’d waved farewell, Ellis’s wrist had glinted, a flickering of light she’d ignored at the time because she’d been so intent on catching his eye. But there had been a telltale flash of red. She was sure of it.

Ellis had been wearing one of these bracelets.

She let this idea sink in, mulling over its implications.

Ellis had been wearing one of these bracelets when he’d crossed over the boundary line, after sunset, and the Warding Stones had not brought him back.

Hessel had a whole box of these bracelets in his study, secreted away with a list of missing people. A list of missing girls, then Ellis.

Which meant…

“Oh, Father,” she whispered. “What have you done?”