Page 49 of A Land So Wide

T hey traveled along the center of the road.

Burnt-out shells of buildings rose on either side.

The ground was littered with shards of glass and the broken bits of so many lives.

Greer spotted the cracked face of a porcelain doll.

Its body was long gone, and the toy seemed to regard her with an accusatory stare, as if Greer were personally responsible for its missing limbs.

In a way, she felt she was.

“It’s so quiet here,” she murmured, and her voice seemed to hang too long in the untouched air.

She’d expected the town to have the same white noise as the forest—claws scurrying up trees and feathers flapping, birdsong and pattering from the game trail—but there was nothing here. Even the wind seemed far away, shying high above them, unwilling to touch the forsaken remains.

“You look troubled,” Finn said, watching her from the corner of his eye.

Greer had dropped his hand the moment they were on level ground, but he kept finding ways to reach for her, helping her around rubble, steadying her on a slippery bit of ground.

Like a lover. Like a consort. “These people would be long dead, even if Ailie and Elowen hadn’t come. ”

It wasn’t exactly true. The original miners would be gone, but there would have been others, descendants and new settlers. This town would have been thriving had it not been for the Gathered. There would not be this wide and gaping nothing.

They passed by the remains of a small cabin. A crumbling wall held up a column of bricks that had been a hearth. From the shadowed depths came a crack, the sound of weight snapping a branch in two, and Finn and Greer froze, their heads swiftly turning in unison to the source.

A pair of dark, limpid dots stared from the gloomy mess. They were wide and unblinking, the eyes of a white-tailed deer. A doe.

Finn’s stomach let out a gurgle of emptiness, breaking the moment.

In a flash, the doe sprang from the ruined cabin and bounded away. Finn started after it, then stopped short, glancing to Greer. She could feel his expectation, but he said nothing.

“You’re hungry,” she realized. Still, he waited. “Don’t let me stop you.”

“Follow the road through town to the first crest,” he said, pointing.

“We’ll meet there. I’ll save you the best parts,” he promised before changing forms as he crashed through the trees after the doe.

Greer heard a rush of air as his wings burst from him, and she alternated between admiration and horror.

How much of his blood would she need to fly?

Feeling impossibly earthbound, Greer continued through the deserted town.

Most of the remains had been pulled apart long ago, stolen by scavengers or washed away in bad weather, but every so often, Greer caught sight of a length of femur, the wide scoop of a scapula.

She even saw a tiny skull peeking from the depths of a gnarled Redcap.

Its bleached surface looked like the face of a barn owl.

Greer lowered her gaze to her feet, vowing not to look up until she was well outside of Laird.

Even though she knew the brutality had played out long ago, Greer’s chest ached with dread and guilt. This town was not so different from Mistaken, but there’d been no protection from the Bright-Eyeds. They’d had no Warding Stones.

Why should one town be blessed with such favor, such privilege, while so many were not? Greer knew her father and the Stewards would say they’d been selected because of their goodness, their moral superiority, because they’d taken the initiative to make a truce with the Benevolence.

Had Laird not done so? Or Saint Agnabath? Or any of the other dozens of towns Greer knew had been attacked? It seemed like the grandest stroke of dumb luck to be born in a place like Mistaken, trapped but safe, cursed but protected.

Instinctively, she worried at the beaded stones round her neck.

Tears pricked at her eyes as she felt the collective crush of so many lives torn apart.

How could the Benevolence have allowed it to happen?

If they’d blessed Mistaken, why not the other settlements, too?

The people within the Warding Stones were no better than these miners.

They’d had lives and loves, families and dreams. Shouldn’t that have mattered?

As she picked her way over a split and moldering cask of ale, a sound caught her attention, drawing her from her dark thoughts. Slowly, she turned. Though she was certain she’d heard the soft padding of footsteps, she saw no one.

Greer narrowed her eyes and took another step.

Faltering just a half-second behind came the sound. She tested it again. And again.

Whatever followed her only moved as she moved, making it next to impossible to determine where the watcher was.

Greer glanced down the road. She only had a few hundred feet before she’d pass the last of the buildings and escape Laird, before she’d be in the wild once more. She decided to press on.

It came again, a rustled creeping, and Greer tried her best to not imagine the worst.

From the periphery of her vision, she spotted movement slipping in and out of the shadows. It darted though the space between buildings so quickly, Greer almost believed her eyes were playing tricks on her.

“Elowen?” Greer dared to ask, even though she didn’t think it was the Bright-Eyed. She wanted to make her presence known. She wouldn’t hide or skulk, even if that might have given her the element of surprise.

No one answered.

Without thinking, Greer ducked into the crumbling remnants of a cabin. The open space was littered with broken chairs and debris.

“She went that way,” a voice whispered outside, catching her attention.

She kept low, hiding under the remainder of a windowed wall before carefully peeking over its top.

Two figures crept along the back side of the road, dipping in and out of the ruins, clearly following her.

One was dressed in loose, beaded leather pants and a heavy furred cloak.

Its hood was pulled up, obscuring his face. And the other…

Greer paused, instantly recognizing the wool coat.

She nearly fell over herself in her haste to flee the hiding spot.

Her joy echoed off the empty remains of Laird as she shouted his name. “Ellis!”