Page 4 of A Land So Wide
B lack clouds rolled in off the mountain range to the northwest, setting the world dim long before Greer stumbled out of the tree line. They hung low, seemingly close enough to pluck down, as angry as a fresh bruise.
Great drops of cold rain soon began to fall, soaking the earth and Greer’s skirts in equal measure. She could already hear the tongue-lashing Martha would give her for tracking mud through the parlor.
She passed by one of the monolithic Warding Stones—the widest of their lot, with a chunk chipped away from the top that reminded Greer of a missing tooth—and traced her fingertips over its wet surface.
Red iridescence flickered across it, as if welcoming her back.
She felt an instant lightening as she crossed over the town line, like the setting down of a heavy satchel after a long journey.
Her muscles loosened; it felt easier to breathe.
The Warding Stones were towering shards of black basalt that appeared wholly unremarkable until sunlight hit at just the right angle. Then they shone with a red-hued luminescence. Hundreds of them dotted the perimeter of Mistaken, a gift from the Benevolence, part of their decades-long truce.
The Stones were their protectors, holding back the Bright-Eyeds from ever crossing into town. The Stones were their jailers, keeping the people of Mistaken forever bound to the land.
Giving the forests behind her one final longing glance, Greer turned her focus toward the town. Whether she liked it or not, she was home for another night.
She paused at the crest of Barrenman’s Hill, and glanced across the cove at the rocky cliffs of the Narrows and into the Great Bay.
It stretched out as vast as an ocean and was just as salty.
Sleek whales, dark with banded fins, were regularly seen spouting close to shore, hungry for plankton and krill.
In the spring, the harbor was loud with the barks of young seal pups.
Louise had even claimed to have once spied a shark in deeper waters.
There’d been a schooner docked outside the Narrows for the last two days. Its crew had ferried in much-needed supplies while the captain negotiated lumber prices with Hessel and Ayaan.
Mistaken boasted the only mill up or down the coast that cut Redcaps and turned the bedraggled trees into handsome planks of wood.
Demand for these trees was so high that merchants sailed thousands of miles across the sea, facing untold perils, just to reach their remote and isolated community.
As mill owner, Hessel had been waiting for this schooner’s arrival all summer, rubbing his hands with impatient glee as he pre-emptively tallied the profits.
But the Narrows were now open, and the tall masts and full sails gone.
A burr of worry dug into Greer’s middle as she surveyed the empty bay.
Just that morning, Hessel had said they were still haggling over a final price. Could they have already come to an agreement and transported the lumber across the cove?
The rain began to pound heavier. The sound was so deafening that Greer nearly altered course, leaving the village for the sanctuary of her bedroom.
She could hide away on her straw mattress, covering her ears until the worst of the storm’s fury had passed and everything returned to its usual decibels.
On the other hand, if the schooner had left without buying the wood, her father would undoubtedly be home, banging about in the foulest of moods, darker than even the sky overhead. Greer winced as she imagined the sounds of that rage permeating the house.
As she stood motionless with indecision—the house or the mill? the mill or the house?—her ears pricked with a new sound.
A group of young boys was ambling down the road, careless of the rain or the puddles they stomped through.
Greer took in the hems of their trousers, inches deep with splattered mud, and pitied their mothers.
They carried their writing slates over their shoulders, holding on to the leather straps with a lax air, and were snickering over something from their day at school.
The snickerings stopped when they spotted Greer.
“Isn’t that Old Man Mackenzie’s daughter?” one asked, his voice hushed.
Greer heard it through the chaos of raindrops as clearly as if he were standing right beside her.
“Don’t look!” another warned. “My ma said she can see everything you’re thinking, just by staring into your eyes.”
“My sister said her mother could hold your hand and tell you exactly how you were going to die,” a third boy hissed.
This elicited little noises of astonishment from the group, and Greer’s stomach began to sour.
It was no secret that the people of Mistaken thought the Mackenzie women peculiar on even the best days.
On others, their rumored talents for the impossible verged into absurdity.
Even before Ailie’s death, Greer had heard her mother accused of drinking blood from a neighbor’s horse, bursting into a flock of birds, and foretelling the future.
In her absence, the stories had only gotten worse.
There were never any outright accusations. Hessel’s rank on the council of Stewards and status as mill owner granted them certain levels of protection: no one wanted to anger the man who employed most of Mistaken. But the whispers still found their way to her ears.
Usually, Greer ignored them. But Louise’s hurtful words still echoed in her mind, and she couldn’t bear to push aside the boys’ mean-spirited chatter.
“Is that Benjamin Donalson I see?” she called out, raising her voice to carry through the rain, squinting at them.
The boys froze.
“I’d be cautious going home today if I were you.”
Benjamin glanced from one of his friends to another with wild-eyed wondering. “Wh-why’s that?”
“Your father knows who pinched the coppers from his purse last week. He’s bound to be on a warpath.”
The boy’s face paled, but he shook his head and stormed away, yelling at the others to follow.
It had only been a guess.
But, evidently, a good one.
Just yesterday, Jeb Donalson had been purchasing a tin of nails at the general store. On the other side of the aisle, Greer had heard him mutter under his breath, counting his coins and coming up short.
Greer smiled, watching them go.
“What little shits.”
She turned to the row of shops behind her and caught a bright flash of russet.
Ellis.
He stood under the cover of Tywynn Flanagan’s bakery awning, wearing an apron once blue but now thoroughly mottled with flour. He watched the cluster of boys scurry into the storm, with his arms folded over his broad chest.
Her smile turned to a grin.
Ellis Beaufort’s voice was Greer’s favorite sound in all the world. It was a warm, rich baritone that felt like that magic hour between Bellows, when the falling sun painted the world in shades of gold.
A Beaufort through and through, with hazel eyes and a shock of chestnut hair that burned as blazing as autumn leaves, Ellis had a loud, easy laugh and was always smiling, but never quite as widely as when he spotted Greer.
She approached the bakery, tipping her chin to stare up at him.
“Get out of that mess.” Ellis reached down and hoisted her to the raised wooden promenade that ran the length of the town’s storefronts. It kept the customers out of the worst of the snowbanks in winter and from the thick sluice of mud that plagued Mistaken during every other season.
“Afternoon,” he greeted, pressing a quick kiss to the top of her head. He smelled warm, of rising dough and yeast and the oven’s flames.
“It’s a good one now.” She tightened her grip on his hand, wishing she could grab him by the collar and pull his mouth to hers.
It had been days since she’d last seen him.
They’d been caught in an endless town meeting, stuck and separated by the wide aisle running down Steward House.
Greer had watched him watch her from the corner of her eye, and after the meeting was over, they’d sneaked into the shadows behind an outbuilding to steal as many kisses as they could before Ellis’s younger brothers began to shout for him.
He grinned widely, dimples winking. “How was the hunting?”
Greer hesitated, remembering the way Louise had snarled before leaving the forest. “Fine. Louise shot three rabbits. Didn’t lose a single arrow.”
One eyebrow, as thick as a freshly drawn line on one of Greer’s maps, rose. “Her aim is improving. Stew tomorrow,” he said, clearly pleased, then tilted his head. “What aren’t you telling me?”
She blinked, feigning innocence.
“I know your face better than my own, Greer Mackenzie,” Ellis said. “And right now you look as though you’re about to burst into tears. What’s wrong?”
Greer was certain her forced smiled looked as pained as it felt. “It’s nothing. It’s fine.”
His gaze was unwavering.
She sighed. “Only…” She stepped past him, avoiding the weight of his stare. “Louise didn’t…She didn’t want to leave any tokens behind.”
He made a sound of understanding. “And you did.”
“Obviously.” She tucked a curl of hair behind her ear, uncomfortable.
Ellis rubbed at his jaw, unsurprised. He’d stopped shaving as the cooler weather had set in, and the auburn stubble had grown into a thick beard. “And Louise said something hasty and stupid.”
Greer paused. She didn’t like putting Ellis in the middle of their messes. It wasn’t his responsibility to work through them, and it seemed unfair to make him choose a side. Reluctantly, she nodded.
“The pantry has been stretched a bit thin lately,” Ellis confided, dropping his voice even though the promenade was empty. “The boys are worse than a plague of locusts. Growing pains,” he added.
Rhys and Riley, the Beaufort twins, had turned twelve over the summer, entering that awkward phase of childhood when limbs stretched too long and out of proportion.
To Greer they looked like nothing so much as a pair of downy goslings, tripping over their own feet as they struggled to understand the strange shapes their bodies now formed.