Page 42 of A Land So Wide

T here was a peculiar taste to the water, brackish and dark, reminding Greer of the time a woodchuck had drowned in the well at the mill. It had been nearly a week before anyone had discovered the unfortunate rodent.

Though the water in her canteen tasted like that now, Greer was too parched to care. She drank in great gulps, swallowing it down quickly before she could register the strange taste.

When she’d emptied half the canteen, she paused and set it aside, taking stock of everything.

Her knife was lost.

Her lantern, shattered and gone.

Her bag and all the supplies it still contained…

Greer glanced at the rucksack. It was so close, only just beyond the fire, but it felt miles away.

When she tried standing, she immediately sank back down, the motion too much for her head.

A thin sheen of sweat formed across her upper lip, and she absently wiped it away before studying her fingers.

Fingers, she realized. It took her a moment to realize why this was such a singular thought.

Her fingers were bare.

Her mittens…

She looked across the camp Finn had set up, searching for them, searching for evidence that he’d removed her clothing to dry before the fire, but saw nothing of the sort. She still had on everything she’d worn when she fell into the river, but the clothes were dry now.

Greer didn’t like that. She didn’t know what it meant, how it had been accomplished. Could Finn have stripped every wet article from her, let it dry, and dressed her again, without her stirring?

Under all her layers of cotton and wool—her chemise and undergarments, her dress and sweater, Ellis’s shirt, Finn’s coat—she squirmed uneasily. She peeled off the coat, looking for evidence of tampering, but found only relief.

It’s so hot .

So late in autumn, the thought was absurd. It rang wrong, like a fiddle out of tune, but that didn’t make it any less true.

Greer picked up the canteen again and drank deeply, still ignoring the taste. She kept swallowing till it was empty, and even then she held it straight above her, trying to catch every last drop.

It was still far too warm, and some distant part of her muddled mind wondered if she’d developed a fever, but her head actually felt a bit better. She gently touched the wound; the bleeding had stopped, and the swelling wasn’t as bad as she’d initially feared.

Greer’s eyes fluttered closed.

She desperately wanted to sleep, but couldn’t get the image of Finn as a Bright-Eyed out of her mind. She couldn’t believe she’d missed so many of the signs that he was something more than a trapper, something much more than a human wandering through the woods.

That eye-shine.

The way his breath had not stirred the air around him.

The way he’d known her name.

Her eyes opened and looked skyward.

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed since Finn left, but it suddenly felt too long. Had the other Bright-Eyed returned?

“We don’t hunt our own kind,” he’d said, but what if she saw Finn’s acts of rebellion—saving a human twice over—as justification? What if she was out there right now, circling him?

Greer tilted her head, listening to the far forests for any sign of Finn.

A sense of uneasiness swept over her as she mimicked his gesture.

Greer licked her lips. She felt as if something important was on the tip of her tongue.

All her life, she’d known she was different from others in Mistaken. It wasn’t just in the things she heard, but in the way she felt, too.

The Warding Stones were revered as a circle of protection, holding back the terrors of the wilderness and keeping the residents safe from harm.

But Greer had felt their presence like a collar around her throat—a necklace far heavier than the beads she currently wore—holding her back, keeping her tethered to a place that could never be big enough to satisfy her.

They were a pen, a cage.

Ailie had said something similar once, when Greer had been young, too young to truly remember.

There’d been a satchel on her parents’ bed, the big one that Greer now used for all her mapping excursions. Ailie had been filling it as if preparing to go on a trip.

Even as Greer remembered this, she knew that couldn’t be right.

Where would Ailie have gone? She strained, trying to recall what had actually been going on.

Had her parents had a fight, and Ailie planned to stay somewhere else until their tempers cooled?

They had had a tempestuous relationship—often raising their voices, breaking crockery, smashing plates, hurling glasses—and the house would be filled with Ailie’s tears afterward.

There was nowhere in Mistaken that Greer could go to escape the sounds of Ailie’s sorrow.

On the day when Greer had seen the satchel, her mother had been filling it, not with clothes or food, but with bits of Greer—a box of her baby teeth, locks of hair she’d tied with old ribbons. As Ailie packed, she’d whispered a litany to herself, repeating it over and over, like a prayer.

“They’re just stones, you cannot be contained, they’re just stones, you cannot be contained.”

Even if Greer didn’t remember the circumstances of that day, her mother’s words were etched across her mind like initials set in silver. The echo of them circled through her bloodstream like a heartbeat.

You cannot be contained .

Greer pushed herself up gingerly, expecting a rolling churn of nausea and vertigo, but there was none. Still thirsty, she swiped the canteen and picked her way down to the river, leaving Finn’s coat behind.

She refilled the vessel and drank. The water was clearer now, tasting of cold minerals and thawed snow. In moments, it was empty, so she filled it again. And again.

Her stomach ached, bulging and round and fuller than it had been in days, but she still could not get enough. Going straight to the source, Greer leaned over and sucked up the water like an animal, guzzling it down.

When she’d drunk all she could and was satiated, she sat back on her knees and wiped her lips. She stared across the river, looking at the land she’d come from, the forest she’d crossed. She looked up the hill, back to the fire, to where Finn would soon be returning.

She had no delusions that she was safe in his presence. He was a Bright-Eyed, and that should have been enough to make trust completely impossible, but, worse still, he was a Bright-Eyed who had repeatedly saved her, proving he acted with reckless unpredictability.

Greer couldn’t let down her guard. But she also couldn’t afford to run away from a dinner she had not had to hunt herself. Despite the gallon of water sloshing within her, her stomach still rumbled with hungers unfulfilled.

She turned to refill the canteen one last time but stopped short when she caught sight of her reflection. The water rushed by with too much speed for a perfect reverse image, but she could make out the dark shape of her frame, and the pair of eyes shining back at her with a faint red glow.

She stumbled back from the water’s edge, spilling the canteen all over herself. The water splashed everywhere, soaking into her boots. She winced, ready to feel the icy grip of wet toes in the frigid outdoors, but such pain did not come.

Greer looked through the forest with wild eyes, noting piles of frost-covered leaves, spotting little daggers of icicles hanging from tree limbs. It was below freezing, yet she longed to tear off her clothing, feeling as if it were a sweltering summer day.

Numb, she trudged up the hill to await Finn’s return.

Greer heard Finn’s approach long before she saw him. He was still in human form, walking upright on boot-clad feet, carrying another set of hares with snapped necks.

“You look better,” he greeted her.

“Do I really?” she snapped, standing.

She saw him note her flicker of eye-shine. He stopped short. Though not a single muscle moved in his face, she could tell he was pleased. After a pause, he held up the rabbits. “Hungry?”

She was across the fire circle in seconds, moving faster than she ever thought possible. She charged at Finn, leaping at him like a mountain cat going for the kill, and they fell to the ground, Greer atop him.

She gripped the collar of his shirt with balled fists. “What did you do to me?”