Page 3 of A Land So Wide

Louise sighed. “There are a thousand things in these woods ready to snatch up whatever is left on the altars. Ospreys and kites, martens and lynx. Black bears. Foxes. Wolves. I…” She trailed off with a strangled noise of frustration.

“The Benevolence is not what takes them. In all the years since our supposed truce, no one has ever seen a hint of them. Because they’re not there,” she spelled out.

“Then who is protecting us from the Bright-Eyeds?”

Louise rolled her eyes. “Those aren’t real, either.”

Horror unfurled in Greer’s stomach, making her queasy and sick. “But they…! Of course they are! Martha has seen them. They killed her entire famil y. ”

Louise had the decency to look uncomfortable. “We don’t know what killed them. We never saw it.”

“What about the survivors from the other towns? They all say the same thing. You know their stories as well as I do,” Greer said, imagining the bloody chaos, the cries for help, the sky shattering into violence.

“Stories told by the men in charge. Men who have a vested interest in keeping everyone on edge so that they’ll be better listened to, so they’ll be better obeyed. Men like Hessel Mackenzie.”

“What does my father have to do with any of this?”

Louise pinched the bridge of her nose, smearing rabbit blood across her face. It made her look wild and feral. “How do you not see it?”

“See what?” Greer could feel anxiety thrumming within her, could hear the racing cadence of both her heart and Louise’s.

The air between them felt charged and heavy, like in the moment just before a thunderstorm crested the mountaintops, ready to unleash its torrents.

Greer was bewildered by how quickly her insistence on today’s gratitudes had turned into such a tangled, barbed mess.

“Our differences! The way you came trampling through the woods today in a dress nicer than my Sunday finest. The way you can carelessly leave an entire dinner behind on a tree stump. The way I’ve been foraging and hunting and trying to store up my family’s winter rations while you spend the whole day messing about in that damned book of yours, doodling pictures and notes and maps that will never matter! ”

Greer’s mouth dropped, stung by the harsh words, stung that they’d come from her best friend. She turned, unable to take the weight of Louise’s fervent glare, and crossed her arms, holding back the tears that wanted to come.

Only then did Louise soften. “Greer, I didn’t mean that.”

Her spine stiffened with resolve. “You said we were sharing today’s hunt.”

“I say that every trip,” Louise began uneasily. “You never take me up on it.”

“I am today. I’ll leave my share as a token.”

Louise huffed with disbelief. “Are you…are you in earnest?”

Though it pained her, Greer kept still.

After a long, taut moment, Louise cast the organs to the ground, letting them land near Greer’s feet. With a snarl of disgust, she grabbed her bag and stalked off.

Greer glanced back in time to see the flayed rabbits swinging from Louise’s rucksack like broken marionettes.

“Louise,” she started, but her friend had already disappeared into a thicket.

To Greer, each footfall was as loud as cannon fire, reverberating down her sternum and making her heart ache. She wished Louise would come back. She wished Louise would come and apologize. They’d lay out the tokens and go home, their friendship cleanly restored.

Though they’d certainly fought before—they’d been best friends since they were schoolgirls—the fights had always been small and incidental.

Squabbles over dolls, hurt feelings on summer afternoons when the weather was hot enough to spark anyone’s temper.

The week of silence after Louise learned Ellis had kissed Greer on the little footbridge spanning Curstag Creek.

Greer hadn’t told Louise, because she knew it would upset her, and because, after over a decade of sharing every single thought with her friend, it felt delicious to keep one small thing for herself.

But this fight felt different.

They weren’t little girls anymore, fighting over hair ribbons or secrets.

They were grown—Greer twenty-seven and Louise twenty-two—and these stakes were higher, these words were crueler.

Still, Greer waited, certain her wishes would come true.

But as seconds turned to minutes, Greer’s hope began to wither.

Giving up, she glanced to the line of flags shifting in the listless breeze.

“She didn’t mean that,” Greer called loudly, ready to catch the attention of whoever, whatever might be listening. She sighed. “I’m sure she didn’t mean any of that.”

As if in response, the forest fell silent, the quietest it had been all afternoon.

Greer scooped up the scattered organs before ducking under the branches of the Redcaps and stepping past the flags to search for the right altar. She could tell the exact moment she’d crossed over, slipping into an untouched world, alien and new and unmarked on any of her maps.

She was the first person of Mistaken to stand upon this ground, so far from home, so far from the Stones’ hold.

She took in a deep breath, basking in the sensation.

But even as the wonder coursed through her, as heady as a shot of Fenneck O’Connell’s best whiskey, she noticed footprints pressed deep into the spongy moss all about her.

Greer blinked, certain the impressions were a trick of the heavy afternoon sun.

They remained.

She stooped down, inspecting them with her artist’s eye.

They’d been made by feet bare and too big.

Too irregularly shaped.

Her mouth dried as she counted just two toes per print.

Greer knew the woods around Mistaken as well as her own cabin. Her mother, Ailie Mackenzie, had taught her every kind of tree that grew there and every type of animal who roamed its depths. But she could not think of a single one that boasted only two toes.

This was it.

This was a sign.

Louise was wrong. The Benevolence was real, as were the dreadful Bright-Eyeds they protected Mistaken from.

Unable to show her friend this irrefutable proof, Greer wanted to howl in frustration.

From somewhere deep in the woods, a branch cracked, and her heart seized as she suddenly realized she was alone in the woods with whatever had made such enormous two-toed tracks.

“The tokens,” she whispered in a rush. “Find an altar, set the tokens, and go home. The Benevolence will be grateful. The Benevolence will bless your endeavor.” The words fell from her in rote succession, instinctive turns of phrase Martha had spent years drilling into her.

Greer stopped at the first fallen tree she came across, a long length of birch, its papery bark curling back to reveal spiky clusters of comb-tooth mushrooms. Their white branches were as jagged as vertebrae.

She knelt and placed her fingers along the tree, pausing for a moment of genuflection before beginning her task.

Though Martha had given her the words and ways that would be most pleasing to the Benevolence, it was Ailie who had taught Greer to offer reverence for the land and all the marvels it held.

Much of Greer’s childhood had been spent exploring the wilds with Ailie.

During each journey, they would find somewhere to pause for a moment of reflection.

They’d kneel down, skirts pooling together, and the wind would carry away their whispers, tangling them so tightly they sounded as if they’d come from the same person.

Martha’s practices inclined more toward pageantry: laying out the viscera just so, making sure her entreaties held the appropriate note of awestruck fervor, keeping everything rigid and orderly, familiar and routine.

But Ailie had been infused with a profound sense of wonder, urged to see more, learn more, experience more .

She’d believed the only way to show true appreciation was to take what was given, to wander as far as the Warding Stones would allow, basking in the world’s messy glory, reveling within it, and allowing the wild pounding of her blood to be its own sort of prayer.

Greer’s faith was a blend of both women’s teachings. She could almost feel their hands on hers now, telling her to stop and feel the textured warmth of the tree bark, guiding her as she arranged a tableau of offerings, ghoulish and macabre.

A string of intestines.

A liver.

Kidneys.

The heart.

They were covered in dirt after having been cast aside by Louise, and Greer wiped them clean as best she could. When she was pleased with the arrangement, she sat back, scanning the darker depths of pines.

She cleared her throat, feeling her voice waver even before she spoke. “With gratitude and thanks, I leave these tokens as an offering for thee.” Every hair on the back of Greer’s neck stood at attention, attuned and ready. “May they be of good use and bring you great pleasure.”

She held her breath, wondering if today she’d finally hear the Benevolence’s answer. She waited, watching for any sense of movement, any stirring however small.

But it wouldn’t be small, would it?

She glanced to the right.

The tracks were big, so, so big …

Then to the left.

Two toes, what has two toes?

The spruces’ trunks remained in place, unfaltering and still.

The tamaracks’ glow dimmed, and the surrounding woods grew darker.

Closer.

Was the dying light due to an approaching storm, a bank of clouds rolling down from the mountains high above? The falling night?

Was it the Benevolence?

Or, worse yet…the monsters they held back?

The woods waited, stubbornly refusing to offer up its secrets.

Greer kept her eyes fixed on the garish lumps staining the tree bark before her. She could be stubborn, too.

But as she knelt, waiting in a moment drawn too long, Greer felt it, the falling of the sun, the pull of Mistaken. The Stones tugged on her bones like a fisherman testing a catch on his line. Gentle for now, but persistent.

Greer had counted her footsteps today, as she always did when she slipped past the town’s boundary. Ten thousand paces, give or take. Nearly five miles. It would take her more than two hours to return. At least.

She had enough time before First Bellows.

Just barely.

She could wait a moment more.

Another minute. Surely, she could last another minute.

When the strain grew again, tugging at her with unchecked doggedness, Greer gave up and stood, certain that the moment she turned, the trees would come to life, stooping forward to snatch up her gifts.

Greer blew strands of dark hair from her eyes and rubbed her fingers together. They were smudged sticky from the offering. She’d wash them at the first creek she came across. Martha would never let her hear the end of it if she returned home looking like the butcher’s apprentice.

Now that Greer’s feet were pointed back toward Mistaken, her lungs released a breath of air, momentarily free of the incessant pressure drawing at her body. She gathered her supplies, but paused before she could roll up the map.

She’d been so proud of it before Louise’s hateful words had bitten in, poisoning its joy.

She studied the clean lines, the accurate scale, the series of checks marking each copse of Redcaps they’d come across.

It was good work, Greer knew that.

With resolve, she rolled the map into a tight scroll and tucked it into the satchel carefully. She wouldn’t let Louise taint it. She’d stop at the mill and show it to Ayaan Adair, her father’s second in command. He was certain to be pleased.

As she eased the satchel’s strap over her head, something from the periphery of her vision shifted, a pale slip of movement sliding through the trees.

Stealthily.

Soundlessly.

Greer strained her ears, baffled by the silence.

For as long as she could remember, Greer Mackenzie had heard things.

Big things, small things. Things improbable.

Things most impossible. The beating of wings far overhead, conversations from the wrong side of the room, flakes of snow landing upon branches deep behind her home.

Sometimes she feared she could make out the heartbeats of every person within Mistaken, tiny, relentless pulses of life demanding to be acknowledged.

She didn’t know why or how, only that it was a truth she could not escape.

So why were the woods so still now?

A sudden terror staked into her middle. She could feel it pressing close, as suffocating as a damp blanket: the eerie weight of the uncanny.

Strands of her hair danced by her ear, swaying as if someone had softly exhaled just behind her, but she was too scared to turn. Too scared to see.

Something had crept up behind her, and she’d heard nothing .

The impossibility was too dreadful to bear.

Greer scrunched her eyes closed, unwittingly conjuring up images wild and fantastic.

Demons and monsters too horrifying to believe.

Trees that could move soundlessly through the forest like a wisp of mist. Trees with shining eyes.

Trees with two toes. Trees with long, knobby fingers reaching out to scrape her bare neck…

“Hello, little Starling.”

Her eyes flashed open.

She’d heard that .

Hadn’t she?

A voice, low and beguiling. Just behind her shoulder. A voice, as real as her own.

Greer licked her lips. She wasn’t going to look. She couldn’t bear to look. Except…

When her resolve slipped and she whipped around, the forest was still, and her offerings were gone.