Page 28 of A Land So Wide

B y the time Hessel returned to the study, bringing Greer a tray of food, pale-gray light had begun to brighten the horizon.

Greer had already returned everything, tucking the box back into its hidden drawer.

Everything but one piece of jewelry.

She’d selected a necklace, hiding it beneath her dress and sweater. The cord was long, and the beads hung between her breasts, a cold mass that felt uncomfortably present against her bare skin. Greer had the terrible notion that the flickering might shine through her layers of wool.

“I thought you’d be hungry,” Hessel said, setting down the tray of cold cuts of smoked venison, a hunk of bread slathered with too much butter, and a mug of cider. She noted he hadn’t brought a knife or fork.

Greer reclined in the great leather chair behind the desk, her legs kicked irreverently over one arm.

Hessel remained standing, clearly waiting for her to leave the chair, but she stayed put, eyes fixed on the partially open door.

Had his hands truly been so full, or was this an attempt to see if she’d run?

After a beat, Hessel took the smaller chair. “You don’t look like you’ve slept at all,” he continued, as if this had been his intended arrangement all along.

She remained silent.

“You should try to rest before the ceremony.” Hessel cleared his throat, unnerved by her stillness.

Greer had never seen him so disquieted before, so eager to fill a void.

“For what it’s worth…I am sorry about the boy, Greer.

It’s a terrible loss for his family.” Hessel sighed.

“And for you, I suppose…in this moment. But you’ll see.

Things like this always happen for a reason.

” He nodded, and she wasn’t sure whom he was assuring. “For a good reason.”

Anger simmered just below her sternum, radiating down her limbs, and she had to press her arms tightly to her chest to keep from lashing out. “For the good of the town?” Greer scoffed.

Hessel’s eyes brightened, until he noticed her sarcasm. “You don’t see it now, but yes.”

Greer sat up, placing her feet on the ground as she leaned toward her father. “Why wasn’t Louise at the Hunt?”

It was Hessel’s turn to fall silent.

“The Stewards denied her request to sit it out. They said she had to hide. But then she spent the day at home, and Ellis somehow stepped out into the wilderness after sunset. Why? How? What did you do?”

“I?”

“Who else? You set it all up. You forced him into some sort of bargain. Louise could stay with Mary if he…if he—what?—didn’t come find me?”

His gaze fell, and Greer knew she’d guessed right. She studied him as though he were a stranger. He felt like one. She knew he disliked Ellis. She knew he wanted someone different for her. But she hadn’t thought him capable of…whatever this was.

She willed the tears pricking at her eyes to not fall. “Do you really hate him so much?”

Hessel considered the question. “I don’t…I don’t hate him. But I will admit…I was cheered it was Beaufort who went into the woods yesterday.”

She felt the heaviness of the beaded necklace against her chest. Hessel didn’t know that she knew of the jewelry, that she’d figured out what the baubles could do. “You were cheered?”

He blinked.

“You knew he’d go into the woods?” she tried, pressing for a response.

“Of course I did.”

She shook her head. “But that’s impossible. Crossing over the border is impossible.”

“Not as impossible as you think.” He glanced toward her. “You’re a clever girl; I always thought you’d put it together.”

She waited.

“Haven’t you noticed there’s always someone who doesn’t come back from the Hunts?”

Agnes, Greer remembered with ferocious clarity. Agnes never came home .

Memories of other girls surfaced. Girls who had to be forced into the Hunting Grounds. Girls who’d screamed and scratched. Girls who’d claimed they’d rather die than be caught. “The girls who run.”

Hessel frowned but nodded. “They usually are girls, I suppose. I…I wanted to wait till you and Lachlan were more settled into family life, once he was ready to take on more responsibilities, to join the Stewards, but…” He sighed, as if it couldn’t be helped. “What do you know about the truce?”

Greer felt herself shrug. “Only what the Stewards say.”

“Enlighten me.”

She shifted uncomfortably, and recited the story with rote efficiency.

“When the settlers arrived…there were all sorts of dangers. The wind and the flies, the cold and the ice. There were predators—wolves, white bears, wolverines. Lynxes and cougars. The Bright-Eyeds. But then the Benevolence came, and the founders saw how powerful they were. They begged for their help, and the truce was struck. They promised to give us their protection.”

They trapped us here .

Greer didn’t say those words aloud but couldn’t stop them from darting across her mind, like a sneaky mouse racing along the baseboards.

“And in return we give them?”

She furrowed her brow, incredulous that he wanted her to answer such a question. “Our gratitudes. The harvests at Reaping.”

Hessel’s stare was as heavy as a thunderstorm. “Anything else?”

Greer studied his desk as if it might have the answer, then gasped. “Not anything. Some thing. Some one .” Her stomach lurched, feeling sick. “They want one of us. A sacrifice.”

Hessel made a sound of surprised pleasure. “I knew my estimation of you was not misplaced.”

“What do they do with them?” Greer asked. She could picture the story play out, following her father’s hints as clearly as a line on a map. “The Benevolence—what do they do with all the girls who run?”

Hessel had the decency to look uneasy. “It’s not as if anyone has ever come back to tell the tale.”

“Do they give them to the Bright-Eyeds?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do they ? Do you tell those girls what they’re running to?”

“Of course not. They’re already willing to forfeit their lives. They get what they want, and we do as well. It’s a perfect arrangement.” He brushed at the knees of his trousers.

“It’s barbaric.”

“It’s necessary,” he corrected flatly. “If the founders hadn’t agreed to this one little thing, we wouldn’t be here. There would be no Stones. The Bright-Eyeds would have hunted us off within a fortnight. One life every seven years for the safety of the town is a payment small indeed.”

“You think he’s dead,” she realized. “Ellis.”

Hessel weighed out his response. “You truly saw a Bright-Eyed?”

She nodded. He made a sound of disappointment, but she understood it was not for Ellis.

“Will it count? His sacrifice? If the Bright-Eyed got him before the Benevolence could?”

Her father looked at a loss for words.

“He’s not dead,” Greer decided. “I’d feel it if he were.

Here.” She touched her chest and could feel the shape of the necklace beneath her fingertips.

A plan began to stir, deep in the recesses of her mind.

It wasn’t entirely formed yet, but the foundation was being laid, piece by piece, brick by brick.

She had the necklace.

She had her maps.

She just needed…

Greer frowned. There was so much she needed. So much she’d be unable to source stuck in this room.

A sound caught her attention then, the padding of footsteps soft and sly. They were too light to be any of the Stewards, too surreptitious. Someone had slipped into their house and was sneaking about.

Greer waited for Hessel to hear the intruder, but he just stared, mulling over her words. She wondered at his oblivious ignorance, and for the first time, instead of envy, she pitied him: how terrible to go through life so completely unaware of what was truly going on around you.

“Perhaps he’s not,” he finally allowed. “But if Beaufort is alive now, if he somehow managed to survive a night out there, it’s only a matter of time. As you said, there’s the wind and the cold, the wolves and the bears. The Bright-Eyeds.”

Greer caught a sharp intake of breath, the clap of fingers over someone’s mouth to stifle a whimper. She recognized the pitch and instantly knew the footsteps belonged to Louise.

Louise was here.

Greer’s mind raced, putting the last bit of her plan together. How could she let her friend know what she needed without giving her presence away?

“Ellis is alive,” she said firmly, more for Louise’s benefit than Hessel’s. “He’s alive, and I’m going after him.”

Her father’s laughter was short and dark. “He’s gone. You need to let him go.”

Greer shook her head, seeing a slim chance. “I just need a bag. I’ll fill it with my maps, and food and water, and then I’ll go after him. You won’t have to send anyone with me. I’ll go alone.”

“You’re not going anywhere except down the aisle of Steward House to wed Lachlan Davis,” Hessel snapped, his patience waning. “That. That is where you are going. And this is where you’ll stay till then.”

He stood up so abruptly that the wooden chair beneath him clattered over.

Greer heard Louise dart away to keep from being caught. She wanted to cheer as she heard her friend slip out the front door, undetected. She prayed Louise was on her way home, already sorting through what Greer would need.

She narrowed her eyes at Hessel. “I’d rather risk every creature in the whole of the woods than spend even one night as Lachlan’s wife.”

Cheeks burning with anger, Hessel left the room, slamming the door behind him.