Page 39 of A Land So Wide
Her scream tore up her middle as she balled her fingers into fists. She bared her teeth against the force of the cry’s fury, and sent it out into the world.
It was just as loud as it had been before.
Like a meteor smashing into the earth, it displaced everything around her, causing whole trees to lean away.
Rocks and the gritty pebbles of the riverbank were cast back like scattered marbles.
Even the river’s current was affected, as waves sloshed up the opposite bank before carrying on downstream.
Greer could see the air around her ripple, sending out compact waves of sound.
And the Bright-Eyed…
It tumbled from the sky, pitched off-kilter by the surge, rolling over itself as it plummeted.
It struck the ground on the far side of the fire with a tangible thud, nearly knocking Greer from her feet.
It remained flattened and still until the last note of her scream faded, and for one long, worrying, yet elated moment, Greer believed she had killed it.
She took a tentative step toward the heap of flesh and claws, but it suddenly flexed, staggering to push itself up.
Greer gaped at its inverted joints, at the way the forearms jutted at angles extreme and so very wrong.
It reminded her of the furry, too-muscular front legs of the wood-nymph moths that liked to lay their eggs in Martha’s buttonbush.
The Bright-Eyed scuttled down the riverbank, obviously dazed but keeping a careful distance from Greer. Gaining confidence, it tested its wings, opening their great expanse again and again, and Greer had to squint her eyes against the dirt kicked up in their wake.
It swooped back and forth in lazy circles as it recovered, riding the air currents like a scavenging bird of prey.
Finally, it landed in a tree branch on the far side of the river, shaking the whole Redcap.
With it nestled in the thick branches, all Greer could see were its shining eyes and the curved arc of its wings.
“You’re full of surprises, little Starling,” it mused. “We would do well to remember that.”
“We?” she asked, willing her voice to not quiver.
The scream had left her feeling scraped completely raw.
Her head reeled, dimming the world to a horrible muffle of indistinct sounds.
But she sensed a new wariness in the creature and wanted to capitalize on its uncertainty while she could. “Are there many of your kind here?”
Its laughter was deep and wet, and Greer wondered if she’d managed to hurt it, if those visible sound waves had damaged something soft and fragile and important inside. Or perhaps the Bright-Eyed had been injured during the fall.
She fervently hoped for broken ribs.
“More than you’d guess, little Starling.”
“Why do you call me that?”
“Why does it bother you?”
Greer could feel it baiting her, trying to get her to scream again. “It was my father’s nickname for my mother.”
The words were out before she even realized she recalled such a thing.
For all their fights and her mother’s melancholy, there had been happy times between her parents.
Hessel would softly tease Ailie about the scattering of freckles across her face, about her hair, pitched in moody shades of night, calling her his Starling.
The creature blinked at her, unsurprised.
“How would you know that?”
“How do you think?” Its response came infuriatingly fast. It didn’t need space to ponder, time to think. It went straight for the answer most guaranteed to inflame Greer.
“You watch us, obviously,” she began. “But how? The Benevolence keeps you away. The Warding Stones hold you back.”
“Do they?” it wondered aloud.
“Don’t they?” she threw back, pulling out her necklace and brandishing the beads.
The eye-shine tilted, studying the stones, studying her. “So, so full of surprises.”
“Why do you want Ellis?” she demanded.
“Why do you? He’s no longer yours. He chose to leave.”
“He was forced!” Greer protested.
The Bright-Eyed shook its head, revealing a quick glimpse of a snout, wrinkled and boxy, and thin lips flexed around a mouth full of fangs. “The sacrifice always goes with a willing heart. That has always been the way.”
“What do you do with them?”
“What don’t we?” The Bright-Eyed smiled so broadly its serrated teeth winked out of the darkness, and Greer’s heart sank.
Overhead, the clouds began to drift apart, revealing a sliver of moonlight.
From somewhere in the woods, alarmingly nearby, a familiar howl rose up, and both Greer and the monster glanced toward the sound.
The Bright-Eyed tipped back its head and let out a similar cry, eerily vulpine but somehow bigger, somehow more dangerous.
The wolf fell silent, clearly cowed.
Greer wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry.
She’d seen the damage wolves could bring. Steward Kinship’s entire line of sled dogs had been torn to pieces by a rogue male and his mate. The sounds of the attack had haunted Greer for weeks afterward.
But this wolf, the alpha of its pack, had immediately turned tail, ceding its territory and place as top predator.
“Where is he going?” she asked, drawing back the Bright-Eyed’s attention.
“The wolf?”
“Ellis.”
“Say you do make it to my mine, what then? Do you truly believe two puny, fragile creatures such as yourselves could really best my Gathered?”
“Yes,” she said quickly, too quickly to decide if she meant it or not.
The Bright-Eyed let out a snort of laughter, sounding stronger than before. “I hadn’t thought you’d be so humorous, little Starling. How we’ve underestimated you.”
“Yes,” she said, keeping up her wall of bravado. “You have.”
“Your scream did catch me off guard,” it admitted, swaying from foot to foot. The branch creaked heavily. “That won’t happen again.”
Without warning, the Bright-Eyed sprang forward, crossing over the river with talons outstretched.
Before it reached Greer, it exploded into hundreds of smaller creatures.
Furry moths and swooping bats. Barred owls, barn owls, and great horned beasts.
They fluttered around Greer in a dizzying dance of absolute chaos, swooping and scratching and driving her mad with their clicks and screeching, before scattering into the night.
Greer stared up at the sky, unable to sleep.
Before settling into her nest of fur and pine boughs, she’d built up the campfire to a towering inferno, letting the flames keep watch.
She felt confident the Bright-Eyed wouldn’t come back that night and was mostly convinced it had scared away the wolves, but Greer didn’t want the light burning low.
She couldn’t bear the thought of waking to absolute darkness, not after she’d seen what the Bright-Eyeds truly looked like.
Not after seeing what they truly could do.
Everything around her now seemed suspicious.
Were those soft hoots across the ravine actually from a saw-whet owl, or had the Bright-Eyed returned, mimicking their calls as it had the wolf?
Flickers of eye-shine, set low to the ground, appeared to belong to a male fisher out on a hunt, but what if they weren’t?
What if a part of the Bright-Eyed that had burst free was spying on her?
The night felt full of eyes, and Greer squirmed in her makeshift bed.
She’d expected to fall into a stupor of exhaustion, but instead she watched the starry sky, feeling something amiss. Sleep would not come, no matter how she wished for it.
Greer thought through the day: waking to find Noah Finn hadn’t returned, exulting over Ellis’s tracks, meeting the Bright-Eyed, then releasing that scream…
She felt as though she’d overlooked something, something important that needed to be noted. It prickled at the back of her neck, so persistent she finally rolled over and sat up.
There would be no sleep for her.
Greer stood and stretched and set to work making tea.
It was hours before sunrise, but she wanted to be prepared to face the river at first light.
She studied the map while the juniper sprigs brewed, following the river’s line until she spotted a quirk in its bend that looked just like the one in front of her now.
Greer was about to set aside the map, ready to fill her mug, when she caught sight of three unexpected words halfway up the first mountain range on the paper.
Sandry Mining Company .
She frowned, remembering. The Bright-Eyed had said something about Greer making it to its mine. She scanned the map once more, searching for any other mining settlements.
There was only Sandry.
The Bright-Eyeds must be using the old mining camp as their…Greer paused, uncertain of what to call it. Roost? Den? Lair?
Whatever it was didn’t matter.
Greer had located where Ellis was headed.
And as soon as the sun rose, she was going after him.