Page 34 of A Land So Wide
T he sound of the river was maddening.
All day long, Greer had listened to its rushing susurrus, but she had yet to come across a single sign of it.
She checked the maps and then the compass again, uncertainty creeping in and souring her stomach.
She’d always prided herself on knowing exactly where she was on any given map, but here, in this unfamiliar land, she felt lost.
She was lost.
“Perhaps the scale is wrong,” she muttered, not wanting to admit her predicament. A faulty cartographer was easier to blame, even if it didn’t fix the problem. “I’m not at the river yet because the measurements are off.”
When she spotted a rock formation rising through the canopy, she dumped her rucksack at its base and began climbing, eager to see above the tree line. So far up, she should be able to survey the land, see its entire sprawl as if she were a bird in flight, and find that damned river.
When she reached the top, Greer wanted to cry.
There was so much land between her and the mountains, so much wild space full of dangers unseen and unimaginable. It was desolate and vast, so much bigger than anything she could have ever guessed, peering at the world from the cliffs of the Narrows.
How could such a small corner of a map span so wide?
The impossibility of ever finding Ellis crashed over her.
She felt like a fool. Setting out into the wilds, she’d been so full of certainty and confidence. She’d pictured reaching Ellis in record time, easily able to double her pace over his, ready to take his hand and save him.
Every bit of that fantasy now made her cringe.
She’d been so na?ve. So stupid.
But she wouldn’t be any longer.
Greer held out the map before her, lining it up with the view of the mountains as she saw them now, and attempted to do the math. She counted trees, converting their numbers to yards, the yards to miles, and then she looked at the map again and pinpointed where she was.
The river was not far, half a day’s hike, maybe less if she pushed herself.
Greer took one last look, studying the miles of wilderness, looking over the trees and ravines, the starting foothills of the mountain range, over the snowcapped behemoths themselves. She cupped her mittened hands around her mouth and cleared her throat.
“Ellis!” Her cry echoed like a gunshot.
She fancied that the wind was on her side, and imagined it taking her words straight to Ellis’s ears. He’d stop in his tracks, eyes wide with surprise, and turn.
“Ellis Beaufort,” she tried again, wishing with all her might that she could summon the power that had magnified her scream before. “Can you hear me?”
Seconds ticked by, filled with the chatter of a flock of birds who were hiding somewhere in the trees below.
“Ellis!”
Nothing still.
“I’m coming for you!” She shouted her promise to the sky, to the trees, to anything that might be listening.
“Why?” came a voice, came the voice, somehow here with her now, even in the middle of this stretch of solitude. That awful, impossible voice.
Greer startled, then scanned the forest floor below. Nothing stirred. She looked through the branches around her. Was it roosting in a tree?
“Where are you?” she demanded.
“Here,” it answered, sounding as if it was off to the west. “Here.” The voice came from the east. “I’m right here,” it whispered, sounding as if it were only steps behind her, its lips nearly brushing the fine, downy hair of her ear.
Greer could feel its breath across her skin but would not give it the satisfaction of turning to look. She understood it would not be there.
“Are you ever going to show yourself?” she dared to ask. “Or do you just mean to creep around, whispering your little asides till I drop over from exhaustion?”
“Be careful what you wish for, little Starling,” it hissed, and Greer recalled her dreams and the creature who’d backed her up against the Warding Stones, making her watch as the town of Mistaken was torn apart. She remembered the slashes scored deeply into the skull of that unknown girl.
“I’m not scared of you,” she lied.
“Oh, little Starling,” it sang, arcing over the sky, swooping past her on wings unseen. “You should be. You will be.”
“Where’s Ellis?” she demanded. “Is he safe?”
Its laughter was dark with amusement. “Are you?”
Greer let out a cry of frustration, and though it lacked the scream’s power, it was enough to startle the nearby birds. They exploded from the tree, and Greer wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.
They were starlings, their small bodies sleek and dark as they sliced through the air like bullets, flying circles around her.
Instinctively, she covered her head and ducked low.
She could hear each of the starlings’ heartbeats, fast and panicked.
The murmuration seemed to expand, then shrink around her, whizzing by, as images were quickly formed, then lost. Despite the sheer multitude of bodies flying through so small a space, they never ran into one another, they never struck Greer.
She dared to raise her head, squinting through the chaos, and wondered if she could climb down from the perch. Surely, the birds wouldn’t follow her into the depths of the forest. They needed room to fly en masse, they needed space and open air and—
Greer frowned, spotting something on the ground below her.
It was still, mostly hidden in the shadows of the trees, but then took a concerned step forward, standing upright on two legs.
It was a person.
She blinked in disbelief even as her heart hopped high in her throat. “Ellis!” she exclaimed, trying to be heard over the rustle of a thousand starlings. “Ellis, I’m up here!”
Heedless of the birds, Greer hurried to climb down the rock, but with all the lichen and ice and snow, she slipped, skidding over the edge.
She fell into the starlings, and for one moment, she had the strange notion that they would save her, that she was one of them, and that they would come together and spirit her away to safer ground.
Her feet would land as softly as an autumn leaf, and she would race to Ellis while the flock of starlings cheered for her, for them, for their new life of freedom and love and—
The ground raced up to meet her, faster than she could have imagined.