Page 41 of A Land So Wide

“I can explain everything,” he said, leaping to his feet as he saw her look of recognition.

“You’re dead,” she said, staggering to her feet. Greer held out her arms, listing heavily to the left. She swatted at him even though he stayed back, giving her a sizable berth. “I saw you die.” She frowned, seeing him in double. “Saw…See…I didn’t see. Not exactly. But you died. In that clearing.”

He shook his head, and even that motion made her queasy. “I can see why you’d—”

“See,” she interrupted, fixated. She could feel herself bogged in the mire of her thoughts but was powerless to escape. “I see.”

“Your head…You need help.”

“I don’t need anything. You’re dead.”

“I’m not,” he promised.

Greer had so many words that wanted to come out, but they were tangled and twisting, piling up in her mouth. She could pry just one free, and its simplicity felt like a victory. “How?”

Finn took a step closer, but stopped when Greer flinched. “You’re certain you want to know?”

She wasn’t, but she nodded anyway.

He sighed and, with a helpless shrug of his shoulders…changed.

Greer gaped, unable to say anything, unable to put words to what she witnessed, unable to even gasp.

Noah Finn was there and then was not.

In his place, towering above her, was a Bright-Eyed.

It wasn’t the same one who had attacked her last night.

Greer noticed differences, both subtle and overt.

The Bright-Eyed who’d gone after her along the river had stretched out its talons, showing off four long jointed toes ending with razor-sharp claws.

Finn—her mind balked to use such a label, but wasn’t sure what else to call him—had two claws missing.

Two toes, he has two toes, Greer realized, matching them with the prints she’d seen, first on the hunting excursion with Louise and then at the camp on her first morning in the wilds.

“It was you,” she said aloud. “You’ve been following me all this time.”

“Not always,” he refuted, and his voice was so different now, rounding deeper as it filled a chest cavity so much larger than Finn’s had been.

Than Finn’s is, she corrected herself, and her head spun with the utter conundrum of Finn as a person, alive and not dead, and Finn as a Bright-Eyed, hulking over her now.

As if he noticed her discomfort, he shivered, his entire body shaking with tremors, and changed back to his former appearance.

“You’re a monster,” she accused unnecessarily.

He sighed. “You’re not well. Let me help you,” he said, starting toward her again, and she nearly tripped over herself in an attempt to retreat.

“Stay away from me. I have…” She fumbled in her skirt for her knife, but it wasn’t there.

“I didn’t take it,” he said quickly. “You lost it in the river. I told you that was a terrible place to keep it.” He shifted on his feet, working his way closer without taking actual steps.

“You’ve been following me, watching me,” she said, countering his movement as she circled the fire, trying to keep the flames between them.

“Yes.”

Greer let out a snort of disbelief. “That’s all you’ve got? ‘Yes’?”

“What should I say?”

“You should…” A wave of vertigo washed over her, so strong it nearly brought her to her knees.

Her head was disconcertingly heavy, and it felt almost impossible to remain upright.

A sharp whine rang in her ears, growing in intensity until it was as if the Bellows were going off in her mind.

“You should…” She clutched her head and wailed. “What did you do to me?”

“Nothing! The rocks…You fell…You need help.” He held out his hand, stepping closer.

Greer didn’t want to take it. She didn’t want anything to do with him, but another round of unsteadiness seized her, and she grabbed him to keep from pitching forward.

With more care than she would have given him credit for, Finn helped ease her onto a log. She pressed her fingers against his steadying arm, wondering at the flesh beneath his sleeve. It felt so terribly human.

With gentle touches, he moved her chin, tilting her head to look over the gash with appraising eyes. “Tell me how you feel.”

“Angry,” she admitted, and he had the audacity to laugh.

“I mean your head.”

“It hurts.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“No.” Greer knew she was being childish but was past the point of caring.

He sat beside her, and she wanted to cringe from the utter normality of it. He didn’t feel monstrous. He felt like a man.

“No one knows you can do that,” she said, the conversation feeling strange and surreal. “In Mistaken. There are so many stories about the Bright-Eyeds, but…none of them say anything about…” She paused, unsure of what to call the transformation. “That.”

He said nothing, but the silence was heavy enough to seem like a response.

“You saved me,” she went on, studying the fire. “Twice now.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He shifted, uncomfortable. “I can toss you back, if you mind it so much.”

She saw the joke for the deflection it was. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Finn frowned. “I wouldn’t have let you die. I’m not a monster,” he began, and Greer found the strength to laugh. “I’m not.”

“I know the stories about your kind. The towns you’ve attacked. The people you’ve killed. What but a monster could do that?”

He bristled. “Those towns weren’t an amusement.”

“What, then?” she demanded.

He looked away. “We needed food.”

In all the accounts she’d read, in all the stories Martha had told, never once had it been said that the Bright-Eyeds were feeding.

This made it better. This made it so much worse.

“You were hungry.”

His eyes shifted to her. “Yes.”

Greer studied his hands. His fingers were long but not unnaturally so.

The nails were short and blunt, cut all the way to the quick.

Still. They were powerful hands, hands capable of striking someone down, of snapping someone’s neck.

And she could not forget how fast he’d turned, shifting from Finn into something capable of so much more.

“Are you hungry now?”

He did not laugh. “Are you?”

She was, but said nothing.

He nodded. “You should feed.”

She hated his phrasing. Hated the way it made her sound nothing more than an animal, a wild, mindless thing set only on filling herself.

“Rest,” Finn went on. “You’ll feel better after both.”

Greer wanted to protest, to say she felt fine. She didn’t want to give this Bright-Eyed any reason to think her smaller and weaker than she already was. But her head ached, and the words would not come.

“You saved me today,” she began, unsure of where her sentence was going, “but last night, the other one…” She didn’t know how to complete the thought.

Finn tipped his head to one side, and Greer was struck with the familiarity. It was something she did so often the gesture was written into her muscles.

He’s listening .

Greer found herself cocking her head to the woods, too, trying to hear what he heard.

After a beat, Finn shook his head. “She will not bother you tonight.”

Surprise made her dizzy. “She?”

Greer had not stopped to consider the Bright-Eyed’s sex, but if pressed, she would have guessed male. It had been so aggressive, so cruel and callous. She couldn’t articulate why, but learning it was a female gave Greer an odd sense of betrayal.

Finn stood up.

“Where are you going?” she sputtered, suddenly fearful he would leave her. He was a dangerous creature, but a known one. She could not say the same for the other.

He gestured toward the woods. “You need to eat. Whatever was in your pack is ruined.”

Greer watched the trees behind him and said nothing.

“I will come back.” His promise was a reassurance, not a threat.

“And she won’t?”

Finn shook his head, and his eyes flashed, shining orangish red. His secret had been there all along, only she’d not understood it.

She blinked hard as another wave of vertigo struck her, gripped the log, held on tight. Her head felt as if she was careening to one side, but Greer knew she’d not moved an inch.

Finn snatched the canteen from the mess of belongings she only now noticed he’d set out to dry. He disappeared down the embankment.

Greer stared at the flames. Her mind was congested with thoughts too big to hold, too impossible to fathom.

“Drink this while I’m gone,” Finn said, suddenly returned. He pushed the canteen into her hands.

Greer looked up at him, and for a terrible second, he split into two—her vision doubled. “She really won’t come after us tonight?”

He nodded.

“How do you know?”

“I’ll be with you, and we don’t hunt our own kind.”